Modified On December 26, 2006
One of our most popular columnists, Dan French, has surfaced. He last wrote for us when he landed a gig writing for Dennis Miller at CNBC. (He had written previously for Craig Kilborn on Late Late Show and for Fox’s Best Damn Sports Show, if we’re only going to list the high-profile positions.)
His columns (now archived at the end of the above link) remain among the most-hit files on our server and for good reason. French headed to Hollywood with his eyes open and his pencil sharpened. Our readers are among the most savvy in the business, due in no small part to having had regular access to his dispatches from the balmy, batty epicenter of the entertainment industry.
Out of the blue, we received a holiday present in the form of an email that announced that he would be sending us columns once again. From his perch in Austin, TX, our What Works columnist will resume the analysis. His prologue follows.
So, on July 23, 2006, roughly seven years after arriving in LA, I jumped on the same highway– the 10– that brought me there, and headed east, out of the city, to move back to Austin, Texas. True story– on the way out, just past Upland, I paced Hulk Hogan in a convertible, hanging with him at his cruising speed of 90 mph for about twenty minutes, until he turned off onto the route to Palm Springs, flipping me the finger because I had spent too much time within his allotted celebrity space.
Ah, now that, my friends, is a proper exit from LA– full of all sorts of nuanced lessons in meaningless, yet somehow meaningful, brushes with important, and yet utterly unimportant people.
It’s been a while– oh, probably three years– since I last wrote anything to Shecky, which is probably a good place to begin to find an explanation for why I decided to get out of Hollywood and back into the Hinterlands. It’s kind of a big story, and most of it I won’t get into here because who really cares, but basically, after three staff writing jobs, and lots of tiny writing jobs here and there, and lots of driving of city streets, and lots of job chasing and packet writing and friend-making and experience-getting, to tell you the truth, I got tired of the work of Hollywood. I got a little tired of “the game,” and of the city, but mostly, I got tired of the actual work. I got tired of endless production of material, most of which went unused, that would be churned and burned and abandoned and forgotten forever. I got tired of the politics, and the impression-management and the effort around the work. But beyond all that, I got tired of working for people who, though all talented in their own way, never made me laugh. I was spending all my own creative capital constantly feeding a voracious furnace– television– that I couldn’t even force myself to watch– even if I had written the piece that was on the air. So, I’m saying that I didn’t leave because of creative differences, I left because of creative waste. Because I could easily see myself at the end of all of this sound and fury I call my life, looking back and not being able to point to a single thing that I had created, or helped to create, that I thought was “good” or interesting or enlivening or even palatable.
Ugh.
But let it be known, I probably would have stayed in that system if I couldn’t see other options that might also be lucrative, and perhaps more satisfying. Hollywood money is good money. When you work, as long as you’re not being screwed by a non-guild signatory show (there are lots of them now)– the money is great, and therein lies the ultimate tar pit truth of Hollywood– big money makes you put up with big a-holes. And even makes you start to think you’re creating good product. Although, sorry, you aren’t. Even if it’s “popular.” It’s still mostly– okay, almost always — crap.
But I make humor for a living, so to leave the place where most of that is done, and move away from the production facility, you better have a plan. And I guess I do. Ill ‘talk about it here more in the future, but basically there are things opening up on the Internet, in standup, and in the great splintering of the media, that will allow more people to do smaller things, own them, and then watch while Hollywood tries to buy them. I know this because I’ve got experience in that system, I know how much that system needs product, I know why that system can’t produce interesting product on its own. So I’m taking that experience elsewhere to see if I can make the theory– that good humor can be created on smaller budgets in non-Hollywood cities, then sold back to Hollywood– into any kind of reality.
I’ll keep you posted.