All Aboard

As all of you know, Toni and I wrote a very funny sitcom pilot - "The Six Fifty-Seven". You also know that it was shot on an MBTA commuter train on December 10, 2005. It was many months (nearly a year) before we even saw an edited version of the film.

The verdict - unusable.

Half-hearted efforts to re-edit (and possibly re-shoot) the script were derailed. Finally, hands in the air, our dreams of sitcom success were abandoned.

I was crushed.

Really crushed.

I put on a brave face. I waved off the setback as a "Well, shucks, shoulda seen THIS coming" attitude but really, this bothered me. A lot.

So much effort had been put into the writing, casting, producing and shooting that it was heartbreaking to see that it was all for naught. We let down our flawless cast. We disappointed friends and family who had invested their own time and energies into letting us work on this project. Toni and I, like countless others before us, were destined to become yet another "failed writers" story, cast unto the dung heap of broken dreams.

Time passed. Whenever I thought about our sitcom it felt like a death. I missed Jack, Liz, Jenn and Tim but I couldn't talk about them. It was "too soon" and my head was definitely not in the right place about it. When we did discuss it, we always thought that it could work as an Internet series. Webisodes of "The Office" and "Battlestar Galactica" proved that there was a growing presence of TV viewers on the Internet but, since these are known properties, they already had a built-in audience. Later I found Felicia Day and her wonderful web series "The Guild". "There's potential here," I thought, "but its too soon for me."

Flash forward a year and a half later and Joss Whedon fills the Internet with "Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog". While, obviously, Joss Whedon brings both his name and bank account to a project like this it was not a slam-dunk story. This had to be good. It was. The writing needed to be quick and witty. It was. On the day of its release the Internet crashes from people trying to access the site. When they saw it they told their friends. Word of mouth drove this thing into the stratosphere. It is, literally, a smash hit.

And I thought to myself, "We can do this."

Now, I'm not sure as to why I had this thought at this moment in time. But I did and I can't let it go.

Maybe we can do this and maybe we can't. But we have to try to do something with "The Six Fifty-Seven".

Time to get busy.