THE PATSY

A few years ago, my wife and I were at the airport heading home from a trip when she spotted someone going the other direction on one of those airport people movers.

“Wait. Was that someone you knew?”

“Maybe. He looked like a guy I knew in high school.”

“A guy? Or A GUY?”

She ignored that.

Apparently, on a recent girls’ trip, he had come up in conversation, and everyone tried looking him up. Nobody could find him.

“He’s not on social media.”

This immediately seemed suspicious to me.

“Only murderers and spies have no digital footprint.”

Without missing a beat, she said, “Maybe he’s both. At least that’s what my friends and I decided.”

Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool.

And somewhere between our gate and baggage claim, my brain did what it does best: took a completely innocuous moment and turned it into a television series.

What if my wife’s old high school boyfriend suddenly showed back up? And what if he wasn’t just some guy with no Instagram account? What if he was a Jason Bourne-level international spy? And what would I do if he wanted me out of the way?

Absolutely nothing. I would be dead almost immediately.

And that became THE PATSY, about the world’s safest man whose life gets blown up when his girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend shows up to win her back and turns out to be a deadly spy.

Like a good spy handler, I recruited my friend David to write it with me, Danny to produce it with us, and off we went on a yearssssss-long mission to get the show made.

And for a while, it really felt like we were going to make it.

We attached an amazing showrunner. Then a killer Canadian studio came aboard. Then two wildly talented Canadian actors. Suddenly, all the pieces seemed to be lining up.

I started imagining that we were going to move to Canada and make a television show.

Actually, “imagining” is being generous.

I convinced myself that was what was going to happen.

This is one of the more dangerous things about trying to make television for a living. At some point, hope quietly turns into expectation. I wasn’t thinking, “Maybe we’ll make this show in Canada.” I was thinking about when we made the show in Canada.

I looked for a house in Vancouver in a great school district.

We sent the pilot to the Canadian networks. They read it. They loved it. And then we started pitching.

I pitched from offices. I pitched from my dining room. And with each pitch, I felt like I was getting better at telling the story. Then came a pass. And another pass. And somehow, instead of convincing me this thing wasn’t going to happen, every pass made me more convinced that it still was.

The last pitch happened while I was on spring break with my family. I took the call from a hallway in our hotel, which is exactly as glamorous as making television sounds.

I was in the middle of explaining the elaborate world we’d spent years building while hotel guests kept trying to get through the exit door directly behind me. The button to unlock it was in front of me. They had to press the button and open the door at the same time, which apparently was a much more complicated operation than it sounds.

So while pitching international espionage, I was also silently directing hotel traffic.

“The button.”

“The door.”

No. “The button AND the door at the same time.”

It happened two more times.

At one point, a housekeeper came around the corner pushing a vacuum. I gave him a look that apparently communicated, “I am trying to sell a television show right now, and this is not the moment to fuck with me.”

He turned that vacuum around, and I went back to international espionage.

When that pitch ended, everyone was convinced this was going to be the yes.

Then a few days went by. No answer.

A few more. Still nothing.

Days turned into weeks, and somewhere during that stretch, David and I convinced ourselves, or maybe he convinced me, or I convinced him, who is to say, that we needed to take matters into our own hands.

So we tied our Colin Hanks’ Hankskerchiefs around our faces like hostages.

The logic was impeccable. We were trying to sell a show about spies, and they were holding us hostage waiting for an answer. So we’d send photographic evidence that we had actually been taken hostage and would only be released upon payment of one television series order.

Someone talked us out of sending the photos.

We did not sell the show.

Would we have sold it if they’d let us send the hostage pictures? We’ll never know.

The passes came with incredible compliments. They loved the writing. They loved the pitch. They loved the world. They just didn’t love any of it enough to make it.

I would love to tell you that made things easier. It didn’t. I expected to be working on that television show right now instead of writing a Substack about the television show I thought I’d be working on.

And here’s the truly stupid part: just before I sat down to write this, I was working on another television show inspired by my life.

Yep, I’m doing it again.

I’m falling in love with the characters. I’m imagining the world. I’m thinking about who could play everyone. I’m picturing the meetings going well. I’m picturing somebody saying yes. I’m probably already visualizing the fucking premiere.

I’ve been doing this for more than twenty years. I know how this works by now. I know most things don’t get made. I know a great meeting doesn’t mean anything. I know a compliment isn’t a yes. I know you can have the script, the producers, the showrunner, the actors, and the studio, and still somehow end up with a picture of yourself tied to a chair.

And somehow, I still believe the next one is going to happen.

Maybe that’s the trick.

Belief is what gets you through the low points. It’s what keeps telling you that you can do this, even when everything around you suggests otherwise.

And if you’re reading this, you’re either related to me or seeking my advice. So I’ll give you this: if you don’t believe in your art, nobody else ever will.

Believe in it.

Especially when the world is throwing vacuums at you.

Because maybe this time, you’ll be right.

I believe I will be too.

And when we both are, we can celebrate by buying new Jet Skis and cruising out to Catalina together.

Oh, have I told you about the rom-com I wrote about a destination wedding gone awry on Catalina?

You are going to love it.