Creating controversy

The following is a Team Billy post.

Being bored as I currently am, I've decided to stir the pot a little. I've been discussing production difficulties with Bj lately (actors' schedules, finding a proper set, whether or not to buy one of those "Hang In There" posters of a kitten on a tree branch, etc.), which has led me to think about what part of making this series is the most difficult.

On first glance it would seem clear that Team Bj faces many more obstacles. He has all of these problems to work out before he even starts recording, then an all new set of issues once that little red light on the camera lights up. My role - on the surface - appeared to involve little more than sitting on the couch trying to get my wife to laugh at dirty jokes.

But let's go a little deeper. Bj has to work a schedule around the actors' availability, but the actors exist. Bj has to find an office in which to film, but that office exists (somewhere). Bj will have to edit the footage from the shoots and piece it together into some logical order, but that footage will exist at that point. When I started writing, there was nothing. We're talking Old Testament darkness, people. I had to create these characters and squeeze words out of them. I had to create their lives and their work and their hopes and dreams and still somehow work in Wilford Brimley.

Of course Team Bj would argue that I had it much easier. He'll say stuff like "Billy's so smart and funny and people like him a lot. It wasn't hard for him to write this at all because he's incapable of NOT being funny. He can read the phonebook and have people peeing in their pants. I'm jealous of his awesomeness." Team Bj would say that the burden of putting such perfection on film is all but impossible, but do not be swayed. He's getting to live in my fantasy land, which is reward enough for all the sleepless nights filming and then the other sleepless nights editing and producing these shows that no one but our respective mothers are going to watch anyway.