By Clint McElroy
HQ 101 | SPRING 2018
There’s one thing they don’t tell you about the profession of writing, and that is you spend a lot of your time writing … proposals!
It’s not enough to put words on paper. A “SIC” (Someone In Charge) has to agree to give you money in exchange for those words. This might surprise you, but most SICs are not going to take your word for it that you are brilliant or that the things you create will result in record-breaking publishing sales figures or lucrative three-picture deals with Disney. So, you have to convince them with proposals.
Since retiring from radio, I have written a pile of proposals. Some have resulted in offers to create things. Some have not. OK, most have not. But you have to keep throwing stuff at the wall.
I have a proposal ready to ship out to a SIC in the media business, but since I have known the readers of this magazine longer, I am going to share it with you first. It’s a television show called The Big To-Do.
This reality show would follow me as I endeavor to check items off of my bucket list. I can hear you now, saying, “That’s so morbid!” But a bucket list is really the complete opposite of morbid. There have to be things you want to experience in this life, aren’t there? You have to take your shot, and this is me taking my shot.
This is the list of items I want to check off:
• Watch Star Wars with John Williams. What was he thinking when he agreed to do the music? Was it just a gig or did he know it was going to be something special? Who shot first — Greedo or Han?
• Go streaking with Will Ferrell. It took a lot of guts to strip off every stitch of clothing and go running through suburban streets in Old School. Could he do it again now? Could I, some 42 years after I first streaked past Twin Towers West in college?
• Be an alien on Star Trek. I don’t care how many hours it would take in the makeup chair, I want to bring a cup of Earl Grey tea (hot) to the captain of the Starship Enterprise. I would also be willing to be sucked dry by a Salt Vampire. I’ll let my agent work that out.
• Write a comedy sketch with Mel Brooks. Let the greatest comic mind of the last century recreate a session in the writer’s room of Your Show of Shows, with me filling in for Carl Reiner, Neil Simon or Mel Tolkin.
• Eat a Swanson’s TV dinner with Anthony Bourdain. And not just any TV dinner, it’s gotta be fried chicken. I want to see his reaction when he realizes that some of the peas have jumped the aluminum barrier and shifted over into the mashed potatoes.
• Co-host a radio talk show with Kelsey Grammer. I’ll bet he still has some serious radio chops after all those years in front of a microphone as Frasier. We could even get David Hyde Pierce, aka Niles, to call in.
• Hit the batting cage with Johnny Bench. Let’s see if No. 5 can still bring the lumber. Oh, and let’s see if he remembers hitting a foul ball to me during batting practice before a game on Sept. 7, 1983.
• Play charades with Michael Cerveris. Yes, he’s an award-winning actor, but I suck at charades. Let’s see if his thespian skills can overcome my ineptitude?
• Go trick-or-treating with Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alyson Hannigan and Anthony Head. Can you imagine how many candy bars I would get showing up on doorsteps with Buffy, Willow and Giles in tow?
I don’t see how any media SIC can possibly turn this down! But if they do, keep watching Facebook. I might just do a Kickstarter for it.
