"Job" Creation

Several years before I launched “Jayson: The Musical,” I considered bringing my comic strip to another medium. For me, television was the most natural fit, as my strip was constructed like a traditional sitcom, with its own couch, door, and fourth wall. But this being the pre–“Will & Grace” era, there was no such thing as an (overtly) gay sitcom on TV. And since I had no experience and no connections in television short of a “Situation Comedy Workshop” I took in New York (more on that someday, I promise), I wasn’t in any position to go pushing on Hollywood’s envelope. Nonetheless, I took a stab at writing a pilot episode for “Jayson: The Sitcom.”

In my pilot script, I introduced two new situations to open up the series. First, I gave Jayson a job – a really shitty job. While the comic strip had always portrayed Jayson as being unable to land or keep a job, my own reality was that I’d always had to work – meaning that I had to take whatever job I was offered. And the worst job I ever had was in telemarketing. So, to depict Jayson’s rapid descent from lofty college perch to hardscrabble reality, I put him in a shitty telemarketing job. With a fucked-up boss lady who had the hots for him. And no way out. (Always write what you know, folks.)

The sitcom obviously never went anywhere, but I save everything I write, and I repurpose it whenever possible. So when I started work on my new graphic novel, I reread that pilot script. Though I found room for improvement, I also found inspiration in the telemarketing scenes. So in the opening chapter of “Jayson Gets a Job,” out-of-work Jayson lands a temporary assignment as a telemarketer for a Lillian Vernon–style catalog merchant called “Lily Rose.” This is hardly the last job Jayson will have in the course of the book, but it’s great way to set the stage for the adventure to come.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you about the other situation from the pilot script that has found its way into the book.