Back in November, I gave one of my sitcom specs to an Executive Producer on Will & Grace. This was a re-write based on notes she had given me on an early draft, at which point she had said she’d “give it to the guys” after I punched it up. Well, I finally heard back from her, and the bottom line is that I ain’t quitting my day job.

Here’s a transcript of the voicemail she left me:

Chuck. It’s (Executive Producer). Sorry it took me a couple of days to get back to you. Umm… I read your script. And I think you did a GRRREAT job. Uh — It’s really funny. And really, uh… great. Um. So… You probably want to know what I think you should do next. Call me. And, uh, we’ll… talk.

She loved it, can’t you tell? Ha.

I “probably want to know what she thinks I should do next”? Uh, no, she was supposed to say “I’m giving it to the showrunner and we’ll see what he says.” It was pretty clear from the message and her tone of voice that this was a blow-off.

When I finally got her on the phone about a week later, that’s exactly what it was. Her big advice was to “Get an agent.” Duh. I was giving her the script to bypass the agent routine — and she knew it. And when I pointed out that at age 41 it was unlikely any sitcom would be interested in me even if I came in through an agent, she suggested that I ask the agent (that I don’t have) to look into getting me rewrite work for features. I didn’t bother pointing out that those assignments go to the David Koepp‘s of the world because very few film producers are going to be interested in having their multi-million dollar movies rewritten by an unproduced newbie writer. What would be the point? She was blowing me off as nicely as she could.

So that’s it, that’s the stake in the heart of my TV writing dreams — again. I had already killed them once a few years ago, but they reanimated and zombified themselves with this producer. Now they’re dead again, but it doesn’t hurt as much this time — I already said goodbye once.

This time around was more like the body twitching and you think for a second “Wait, it’s not dead yet!” — and then the corpse farts. It stinks, but it confirms what you already knew: it’s over.

I think Jeff sums it up beautifully:

Ralph Nader has decided to join the presidential race. He must be the kind of guy who in school told the absent-minded teacher not to forget to give out homework.