They Went Another Way
A Hollywood Memoir
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
A darkly comic memoir about being a working creative person in a world that is growing ever more dysfunctional, by acclaimed New Yorker cartoonist and television writer Bruce Eric Kaplan.
In January 2022, Bruce Eric Kaplan found himself confused and upset by the state of the world and the state of his life as a television writer in Los Angeles. He started a journal to keep from going mad, which eventually became They Went Another Way.
The book’s through line traces his attempt to get a television project set up in the increasingly Byzantine world of Hollywood. But as he details the project’s ups and downs, Kaplan finds himself ruminating not only on show business but also on today’s political and social issues, on old movies and TV shows and music, on his family, on his friends, on his past, on his failing heating system, and on all the dead birds that keep showing up in his backyard.
This hilarious and surprisingly moving book is about life—about art, about love, about alienation, about connection, about ugliness and beauty, about disappointment, wonder, and hope. In short, it is about everything.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Screenwriter and cartoonist Kaplan (I Was a Child) captures the agonizing uncertainty of trying to get a TV series greenlit in this plangently funny memoir. Through a series of diary entries, Kaplan catalogs his monthslong efforts in 2022 to sell a pilot script about a divorcée who finds romance with a man almost 50 years her junior, with actor Glenn Close and comedian Pete Davidson attached as leads. After anxious afternoons waiting for calls from network executives and choked-back fury over creative differences ("This book should now be named I Don't Enjoy Glenn Close"), Kaplan received a Showtime offer—just before Davidson bailed, killing the project for good. Kaplan supplements the main narrative thread with lamentations about other irons in his fire, including a dreaded writing berth on Hulu's Life and Beth, and settles his nerves by doing chores, drawing cartoons for the New Yorker, and shepherding his family towards a move to New York City. With a balance of sharpness ("As I meditated, I occasionally paused to text") and pathos ("This journal definitely might turn into a long suicide note"), the results offer a revealing look at the demoralizing effects of gig work. This mordantly entertaining account buffs the shine off Tinseltown. Correction: A previous version of this review misstated the year during which the author attempted to sell the pilot script.
