Obviously selling Unicornland to Big Hollywood would have been a dream, but the idea of a fat check to get the band back together was also appealing. It meant more headaches for me to handle (location scouting, dealing with SAG), but sidestepped the migraine of studio mandates and feedback. In any case, besides the pesky fact of only so many hours in a day, it was a no-brainer to shoot for both.
While pitching in Hollywood, I had also been touring the festival circuit with Unicornland. This was a constant source of confidence and joyful shenanigans. The series was nominated for awards, but more thrilling than any accolade was being acknowledged as vanguards of something greater than TV: the explosion of a new, democratized digital storytelling form, and the rise of ethical nonmonogamy.
The usual suspects at festivals were myself, director Nick Leavens, lead actress Laura Ramadei, and co-star Crystal Arnette. Individually and collectively we spoke on panels, schmoozed at luncheons and afterparties, posed on step-and-repeats. I’ll never forget the long, sleepless weekend when all four of us reunited in London–crashing on air mattresses in the house where I grew up. Like any A-Team, each of us had different strengths. When our powers combined, we could really work a room.
Everyone wanted to know about Season 2, and because we’re in the business of giving people what they want, I outlined the season and episode arcs. Annie would pursue a relationship with Katherine and Joshua, the couple from Episode 8, which would take her deeper into the fetish party scene. Their intimate adventures would result in Annie’s realization about the nature–good and bad–of her agency as a unicorn. The projected budget, $100K, accounted for the problematic and expensive need to hire extras for sex party scenes. And, as previously mentioned, this number allowed me a critical first–to pay myself.
Friends in media kept reminding me that $100K was nothing. With the first season as proof-of-concept, and now a treatment and a deck, I should have no trouble securing a keystone investor–an individual or a brand. Nick, Laura, and Crystal would forward me the email addresses of execs and producers to chase up. Many of them, as in generals, were excited about the series and would “keep it top of mind” when speaking to financiers. Others had clearer offerings, such as a newly formed distribution platform (remember blackpills, anyone?) to stream on, but low engagement metrics and an opaque marketing plan made these deals, which were usually exclusive, unappetizing. Still, we were on the right track and getting closer.
In September 2018, I was invited to Germany by a producer and festival curator who could finance if we’d be open to making Season 2 in Berlin. I scored cheap flights, and arranged to stay with a friend.
The meeting spot was a house-boat with an illegal liquor license. The location, a 20 -minute walk from Potsdamer Platz, took me past the graffitied fragments of the Berlin Wall. Earlier that day, after jogging through the Tiergarten, I’d stumbled on the labyrinthine Memorial to Murdered Jews. As the walls grew high around me, I was astonished at how quickly my own lonely echo closed in on itself. On this sunny day in the bustling heart of town, I was suddenly cold and completely alone. Now, stepping through the velvet shadows between each fragment’s spotlight, that sense of sudden, chilling isolation struck again. Berlin, I thought, is full of portals to loneliness.
Inside the bar was bright as day, and only one table—far in the back—was occupied. The producer was a Turkish emigré, huddled up against a waifish platinum blonde in black and red PVC. I ordered myself a Morgans and coke and sat down. Neither looked up. They were fixated on the woman’s phone, and she tilted it towards me as she thumbed through a series of selfies taken in the bathroom, brushing her teeth in head-to-toe fetish gear on mornings after Berghain. This, the producer mused, had viral potential.
“So here’s my idea,” said the producer, dragging his eyes from the phone to me, “Annie’s an airline hostess. She’s horny and hungry for adventure, and you could shoot all over the world. My contact is in the airline industry, and they’ve agreed to check out whatever I send them. It could be like advertising for them.”
That he did not have the money, nor any assurance of the money, but only a soft agreement to review materials was news…and not the kind I’d normally fly to Berlin for. But that point was moot, so we vollied the idea back and forth. The strength of the series, he asserted, lived in the novelty of each new couple. Annie herself was uninteresting. A cypher. In developing a second season, I must avoid the trap of developing Annie’s character—which would drift the series further from hot sex into boring emotions—and instead focus on new places and people and attitudes. New kinds of sex. New locations for sex, like what if she could climb into the baggage compartment and fuck right over passengers’ heads? The woman in PVC was not there by coincidence. She would make, the producer suggested, a fabulous Annie.
“Interesting….” I said. In the ensuing lull in conversation, the woman’s phone came back out. I finished my drink, and thanked them for their time.
That night, in the bathroom of my friend’s apartment in Prenzlauer Berg, I took selfies while brushing my teeth. None had viral potential.
By this point, I was acutely concerned that my intentions for Unicornland had been lost to the audience. Art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Its value is in its ability to connect across varying perspectives. Art’s truth is not in telling people that the dress is blue, or white, or brown, but showing them the dress. Plenty of people–friends, viewers, and executives–had acknowledged aspects of the series that were important to me. That was validating. But when money was on the table, the conversations took such violent turns. The idea of Annie sneaking a couple into an airplane bathroom for mile-high hotness was amusing to think about. It even kinda wrote itself. But it wasn’t Unicornland.
I realized with dismay that taking others’ money was hazardous to the health of the project. If the benefit of independent production was creative control, I’d have to buy it myself. For that, I’d need a lot of money. TV EP money. That meant staffing, climbing the ranks, or getting a development deal for something else. I doubled down my Hollywood campaign, sending elaborate pitch decks, spending hours researching and developing writing assignments. To showcase my writing chops and versatility–and have something to invite execs to–I started doing standup and putting on plays. All of this was funded by tutoring (my rates had mercifully been raised to $50 p/h), and loans from my partner to be repaid with ticket sales.
In August of 2019, my political drama Son of a Bitch sold out an extended run at the Hollywood Fringe, was showered with great reviews, and was nominated for the festival’s top award. My rep had been giddy to receive the script that spring: “This,” she said, “is going to get you staffed on Billions!” But after the play closed, she called me with a different request; “I need new samples from you! What are you working on next?”
Over the 2 years we’d worked together, I’d written 8 new “samples”, ie entire TV or film scripts, in addition to the four samples I shared before signing. Nothing had gotten me more than a parking permit, a can of La Croix, and older.
Over dinner at Pizzeria Mozza (paid for by a $200 gift certificate from a student’s famous writer parents), my partner and I reviewed the progress in our LA plan. 40 meetings, a dozen pitches, eight scripts, two shopping agreements, two plays, a handful of standup “tight-five”, and $0. He was 42, I was 34, and we had other goals for our life together. I had no control over when my career would happen. It could take a year, five, fifteen, or never. Were we willing to sacrifice our plans to have a family so I could make a living?
With that question in mind, I rewatched the series.
It was unbearable.
Annie’s journey was the opposite of empowering; it felt like a spiralling nervous breakdown. Each encounter was a new attempt for Annie to anesthetize herself with pleasure until the final wake-up call. Rewatching Unicornland reminded me that the female sexual agency angle had been conceived for the purposes of PR. The real reason I’d made the series was not to romanticize the sex+ world, but to gain clarity on a meaningful life experience. I wanted to share with other women something that I knew to be true but had never seen represented. My encounters in the fetish scene were not sexy adventures. They’d been complicated and often ugly. What was empowering was writing them down in all their messiness, and then committing to that messiness by producing a story of memorably strange moments in the place of happy endings or clear takeaways.
Everything that happened after Unicornland launched had taken me further from my goals, further from authenticity and a direct connection to the audience, and deeper into an abusive relationship with the industry. Hope was the carrot that kept me coming back; I was always given the sense of progress (in what?) and a relationship (with whom?) without any real promises or reciprocity. Any reasons I guessed at for why things weren’t working out; that I was untalented, didn’t work hard enough, took things too personally, made others uncomfortable then dug in my heels as the one who makes others uncomfortable–could and were interpreted as self-sabotage. A personal problem.
It was unrealistic to think creating Unicornland might change the industry. It was enough that it had changed me. Now, I was now bored of talking about sex in meetings; mine or Annie’s. I no longer felt connected to the righteousness of female agency through sexual expression. Edgy sex positive stories were my brand, but the point of art is not branding but growth. In the words of Amanda Palmer; ”we’re artists not art factories”.
Two paths appeared before me. I could plough ahead, meticulously tracking subjective data points in the struggle for creative validation from an aloof industry. Or I could accept the lesson and move on with life. I chose the latter.
In Hollywood, that’s called a Happy Ending.
