Pitching — it makes you feel like Willy Loman, staring at your thumbs trying to sell something. And the weird thing about showbiz is, you spend 45 minutes in a room with someone and are supposed to know if you want to spend two years with them. ''What if they're a freak? What if I'm not their type of freak?'' So I explained — okay — pitched the idea. And here is where I back up for a second. Probably the hardest part for me and all the people I have worked with (like Kids in the Hall, say) is, we all got in this business to make stuff. Not explain it.
When I started, I would just think it was funny to do, say, a repetitive song about the Daves I know. Or whatever. So I tried it. I couldn't explain what's funny about it. How can you discuss the absurd? And it takes the fun out of it. That was the best thing about The Kids in the Hall — I would say, ''I want to do a thing with a drum machine where I dance and then stop. And then maybe, I don't know, start up again.'' And someone would say, ''We better get you a drum machine.''
But I did pitch my idea and three networks wanted to do it. I looked back on that sentence I just wrote and it felt like bragging. So I'm sorry, but it was part of the hard process of figuring out where to go with the show I was beginning to love.
The next few months were the madness that is pilot season: Flying in actors to ''test'' and not having the time to actually meet them. Yet somehow I found all these actors, who I just wanted to be around. People who just wanted to make something cool and couldn't believe we all got to do it. (And that hasn't always been the case with things I've done. When someone seems like a freak....) I remember sitting in the lobby of ABC where another show was testing and seeing children signing contracts while their parents watched. And I thought to myself, The next few months are going to be fun. And they were. And they weren't. But they were a lot more fun than writing a film you will never see about people we will never know.... Or trying to explain to that big tree what I had been doing with my time....
Carpoolers premieres on Tues., Oct. 2, at 8:30 p.m. ET, on ABC.
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