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say uncle
Tuesday, March 27, 2001
The more I see about what they're doing with this show, the more I wonder how on earth they managed to come up with it from this book. Was the author involved at all? I suspect not. I mean, the development meetings alone must have been fascinating .....
 - "Hey, I just ran across this book, this 'Say Uncle'. It's about this gay guy who gets custody of his sister's kid when they die in a traffic accident. They die when the brother-in-law gets distracted because his wife was giving him a blowjob in the car while he was driving, with the kid sleeping in the back seat. They die on Christmas Eve, makes for a happy holiday all around. Then when their will is read, and everyone finds out that they gave custody to the gay guy, at first he doesn't want the kid, then he does. Then there's a big court battle and everything. Might make a good four, six hour miniseries."
- "Well, we'd have to kill the blowjob, that's for damn sure. And the kid was in the car? what the hell was she thinking? That's a freakin' weird plot device ... Hey ... would it make a good regular series? We need a gay series now, a comedy, they're taking off everywhere. Look at that Will and Grace. Look at that Showtime thing, that Queer Folk."
- "Queer AS Folk."
- "Yeah, yeah, whatever. So what else has this thing got? Maybe we can make it fly."
- "Are you sure? I mean, CBS has the oldest audience of all the networks, except for Survivor, and our audience may not really feature this whole 'gay guy with kid' thing."
- "So maybe we'll stick it after Survivor, maybe make it a lead-in to CSI. So give with the details already. What else happens?"
- "Well, like I say, he gets custody of his sister's kid after this ugly court fight---"
- "Well, we gotta ax the court fight. You can't make a sitcom out of something that starts like that."
- "I don't know ... it works in the book, and it comes around again at the end---"
- "If it's a successful series, the end is going to be years away. Ax the court fight. What else?"
- "Well, so he raises this kid from a baby and---"
- "No no no. Gotta be older. Middle America ain't gonna feature no gay guy raising a baby. We'll get all the bible thumpers saying that he's going to make the kid gay. And there ought to be more than one. Get that whole sibling rivalry thing going."
- "Well, he raises the kid to adulthood, so that's probably not an issue. Although it is just the one."
- "No no no. Gotta have a sister. Get the whole brother-sister stuff going. Make the girl a little younger, maybe just going through puberty or some such. We can do the whole gay guy getting frantic at teaching a girl about the facts of life and all that."
- "Um ... yeah. Right."
- "So what's this guy do for a living?"
- "Well, he gets fired right off the bat because of the bad publicity from his court case--"
- "NO COURT CASE!"
- "Right. No court case ... so anyway, the kid is loaded, from his father, the guy's brother-in-law, and the uncle winds up being good at investing, and he turns the kid's money into this massive business empire, and that leads to another court fight at the end with the kid against the uncle---yeah, yeah, the end, no court case. I got it. Oh, there's this great scene where this dog they hate dies. It's sick, but funny, and it's wrapped into this big family wedding where the families hate each other."
- "We can't let the guy get fired, or live off the kid's money. They'd eat us alive. Make him something glamorous, but not typical. Maybe a pro athlete? ... Nah, they're never home. Wouldn't work. Maybe ... a local television reporter or maybe like one of those 60 Minutes guys. Maybe ... hey, maybe we can base him on that Steve Kmetko guy, the one that works for that E! cable net. He's gay, right?"
- "Um ... yeah, I think he's dating Greg Louganis."
- "We'll work on it. So ... what about this guy's sex life, the uncle in the book? He date or anything?"
- "Well, except for the very beginning, when he's a baby--yeah, yeah, no baby, I know--it's all done from the kid's viewpoint, but as far as we can tell ... no, he's pretty much a parental eunuch."
- "Good, good, good."
- "Good?"
- "Well, yeah. I mean, first, most kids don't think all that much about their parent's sex lives anyway. And second, that means we don't have to deal with the issue at all, and that'll make those people happy, the ones who don't mind the idea of gay parents except for the actively gay part. If GLAAD and them people get upset about us not showing a 'full, well rounded character', we can always just point 'em at the book and say that's where we got it from."
- "So, basically ... aside from the title and the concept that this guy winds up unexpectedly raising his sister's kids, we're not keeping anything else from the book."
- "Right. You got a problem with that?"
- "No, no. Just checking."
- "Maybe we'll keep the scene where the dog dies. Little sick humor, maybe that's just what we need."
And speaking of Queer as Folk, I would imagine that the little snippet at the end of that article tells everyone what happens to Dr Dave next year.
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