Painless Love Busted

In 2017, Bruce Eric Kaplan, New Yorker cartoonist, screenwriter, producer (Girls, Six Feet Under), and showrunner for season two of Nobody Wants This, wrote a pilot for Sony about a woman who falls in love with an incarcerated man half her age. When he’s unexpectedly released, they grapple with how to actually be together. It was Harold and Maude meets Moonstruck, strings, as Kaplan describes it. Sony did not move forward with the project, but some years later, Glenn Close read the script and signed on. This seemed promising—but by January 2022, Kaplan was no closer to getting the pilot made. And so, “to keep from going mad,” as he writes, he began obsessively chronicling the next six months of false starts and backslides, the promised Zooms, the canceled Zooms, the meetings and pre-meetings. (A representative for Close didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

In February, Pete Davidson entered the chat—Close’s “friend,” whom she had “great chemistry with,” as she apparently described in an email to Kaplan. (When VF reached out to a representative, Davidson was not available to comment for this story.) Unfortunately, this only prompted further scheduling chaos. “At one point,” Kaplan writes, “Glenn pitched out doing an entirely different show that was about her and Pete working together at a Target in Staten Island, then traveling around the middle of the country having ‘kooky’ adventures with people.” With some despair, Kaplan writes, “It was like being in a writers’ room on the first day of a season, but sadly, the two people making all the pitches were not writers.”

In other hands, the book might have read like an extended exercise in sour grapes. Instead, it’s an idiosyncratic meditation on creativity, success and failure, self discovery via frustration—and, because Kaplan includes dispatches on his home life, it’s about the ecosystem of a family, too. A fellow writer can also recognize it as a writer’s revenge. After hours of unpaid labor, Kaplan wielded his weapon (his keyboard) and reaped his reward (a book deal). Kaplan sums up the project as “a portrait of the fever dream that is my brain.”

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On a call with VF before a day in the Nobody Wants This writers room, Kaplan talks shop.

Vanity Fair: It’s very meta to be in a Zoom with you after reading about all these Zooms with you. I’m surprised that we didn’t have to reschedule this, although I think throughout the whole book you weren’t ever the cause of a rescheduling.

Bruce Eric Kaplan: Literally, not once. When someone says “here are the five days [I’m available],” I take the first one. If someone gives me five times in one day, I take the first time.

You’ve been in TV for over 25 years. Was this experience particularly Sisyphean, or was it just the first time you wrote it all down?

When I started out, there were three networks. You would have an idea; you didn’t even need a producer. Your agent would say, I have meetings set up for you on Thursday and Friday with ABC, NBC, CBS. You would have them on Friday at five o’clock. Your agent would say, like, All right, no one’s interested; all three are interested; one is interested. And then it was over. It was a 72-hour experience, basically.

and so on…

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, the book “They Went Another Way” by Bruce Eric Kaplan is a unique and thought-provoking memoir that delves into the world of Hollywood and the struggles of a writer trying to make it in the industry. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in the behind-the-scenes world of television and the creative process.

**FAQs**

Q: What is the book about?
A: The book is a memoir written by Bruce Eric Kaplan, a cartoonist, screenwriter, and producer, that chronicles his experiences in the television industry and the struggles he faced in getting his work made.

Q: What is the book’s tone?
A: The book has a witty and humorous tone, with Kaplan’s experiences and anecdotes providing a behind-the-scenes look at the world of television.

Q: Who is the book recommended for?
A: The book is recommended for anyone interested in the world of television, creative writing, and the behind-the-scenes stories of how shows are made. It is also recommended for anyone looking for a unique and entertaining read.