call my agent

but he's better on fax

My bestie, Tom, and I have an imaginary agent. His name is Jerry. He’s not a good agent, and frankly I’m not sure anyone in the biz even returns his calls, but what can ya do? Sure, we could fire him, but we probably won’t until a better fit comes along.

We’ve been with Jerry for about a year, since TV writer fellowship application season 2024. Tom and I applied to one of the network programs as a writing team, and that application asked for something none of the others had: a staffing pitch for one of their existing shows. But why send just a straightforward pitch when you can send a pitch that’s also a covert dialogue sample?? That’s how we “signed” with Jerry! I’m pretty sure writing from a rep’s POV was Tom’s idea, then I wrote the first draft of his pitch, then we edited it together. And it still cracks me up!

For the full effect, you should know that Jerry is approximately 80 years old and has a thick New York accent. From Jerry’s desk to your inbox, please enjoy:

Hiya, how’s things? It’s Jerry. I heard you’re staffing for that ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING, and boy have I got clients you need. These kids, Tom Young and Megan Downey, they’re perfect for you. I don’t know how you haven’t hired them already! I sent you the samples, you gotta read ‘em, they really encompass everything in your show from every angle.

They’re huge theatre nerds, it was their college major together. So that Marty Short character’s a combo of every acting teacher or director they’ve known. You’ll see in the samples—one’s that Gaga lady's origin story at NYU’s music theatre conservatory, coulda slotted right into your season 3.

These writers tried to start a podcast 10 years ago. They never got past recording, but they understand the impulse the MURDERS guys have. And it's all in the other sample! Would you believe they got a pilot about best friends with a reality TV recap pod who discover the cast have been recruited as Russian spies?!

And get this, Megan lived on the Upper West Side and worked for the Manhattan Borough President, this curmudgeonly broad with a brownstone off Central Park West. She knows the tone of that neighborhood in her bones. And as an apartment kid, Megan would go poking around her prewar building and find secret hiding spots, so she felt very connected to Lucy in season 2 when she shows the guys and Mabel the secret passages behind the walls. And Tom is a gay, so you’re checking that box too!

Look at the samples & call me, alright?

I’m kind of shocked we didn’t put a fake phone number for Jerry at the end, but maybe we’d hit the word limit? And I guess he thinks everyone already has his number! Which is obviously KL5-1234.

We named him Jerry after the Jerry Herman Ring Theatre at the University of Miami. I cannot emphasize enough that our fake agent was not named after Jerry Herman, the person, he was named after the building (that was named after the person)!! Once, during undergrad at UM, we broke into the Ring Theatre in middle of the night to climb up onto its silver domed roof, because it looked like a baked potato and we just wanted to see the world from up there—the ultimate round of Viewpointing (iykyk).

I have nothing but love for the Ring—I learned to use all kinds of fun power tools in the scene shop in the back during a stagecraft lab one semester and had a beautifully easy campus job in the box office there for three years. But the Ring is a shitty old building that always felt like the redheaded stepchild on a campus with gleaming new builds popping up all over. Right next door, the music school had this beautiful, big, modern theatre with comfy seats and ample restrooms—we could literally see how the other half lived from the breezeway you had to walk through to get to the Ring’s bathroom annex. And I think that dichotomy informed fake agent Jerry on some level. He’s scrappy, to the point, and a little rough around the edges. But he gets the job done! Kind of.

Jerry just came up in conversation again last week, and honestly I cannot say enough good things about having a fake agent/assistant/intern to reference amongst friends. It’s a classic bit, and one that repeatedly delivers.

Okay I’ve gotta run and hop on a call with Jerry, ttyl! Downey, out!