The Hollywood Reporter columnist reflects on his recent stint as a new television scribe: “It all had that same fast-break-no-look-pass feel of the Showtime Lakers working unconsciously together.”
When it was announced in September that I would be joining the writing staff of opens in a new windowHulu’s rebooted Veronica Mars series, some people took it as a sign that the zombie apocalypse was imminent. The first sign was Ed Sheeran appearing in Game of Thrones. What was next? Meat Loaf showrunning Black-ish? Mike Tyson as dialogue coach for the opens in a new windowDownton Abbey movie? Others expressed excitement that I would bring a diverse perspective to the show. I did campaign hard for more characters over 7 feet tall, but their systemic prejudice kept most actors between 5-foot-1 (Kristen Bell) and 6 feet (Ken Marino).
For those still scratching your heads at how I ended up in the writers room, the journey started a couple of years ago. I was writing an article for the Los Angeles Times about some of my favorite young-adult novels. My writing partner, Raymond Obstfeld, suggested I read Slave Day by Rob Thomas, about how a high school tradition of auctioning students and teachers for a day of humiliating servitude to raise money for the school affected several students, including two black characters. The writing was sharply intelligent, the themes subtly literary. I was especially impressed by how well he captured the conflicted mind-sets of the black characters. Rob read my article and, when his publisher announced it was reissuing Slave Day, he asked me to write an introduction, which I happily did.
I then asked Rob if he’d look at a pilot for a noirish series that Raymond and I were working on about a black troubleshooter for L.A.’s Dunbar Hotel, once the most elegant and prominent black hotel in America. Set in 1944, the script features gangsters, spies, civil rights and jazz. Because most of the characters are black, and its historical setting, we knew it would be a hard sell. But Rob enthusiastically embraced the story and took it to Warner Bros., which bought the series. A couple of weeks later, Rob asked if we’d join his writing staff for the rebooted opens in a new windowVeronica Mars.
To give you some context, neither Raymond nor I were looking for more work. We have a full schedule of projects, so if we had been offered to write on a series we weren’t passionate about, we would have said no. But the original Veronica Mars is one of my favorites. It expanded the boundaries of both the mystery genre and the high school drama genre by combining them in such a clever, witty and intelligent way that the whole exceeded the sum of its parts. Raymond was a superfan: He teaches the Veronica Mars pilot in his English lit courses at Orange Coast College. No way we weren’t doing this. Our only fear: screwing up a series we loved.
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