Non-Sexual Fantasy # 342: Fulfilled

Well. It's also nice when you pretend to fulfill one.

Yes, in an ultra-rare event, it is a FadeIn Double Entry day, or, as the Spanish might say Dia de los FadeIn dobles!

It comes every year around this time. Hot chocolate and churros are consumed by all. FadeIn shaped pinatas get the crap smacked out of them.

Anyway, yeah. I just thought I'd post the assignment I mentioned this morning. I know, assignments aren't real entries, but this isn't a boring essay. On the contrary, in this entry I am interviewed by none other than Conan O' Brien himself. Or, rather, I imagine I am.

Either way, it spells fun. It also covers me in case I don't feel like writing in the morning. If I do end up writing tomorrow too, well, than at least it's out here for generations of confused google searchers to find when they're searching for Conan stuff.

I feel good about it, as I think I've captured Conan and his self-deprecating manner pretty well. I also get to expose all of my verbal tics that you never get to read here, such as my unfortunate overuse of the word 'totally,' and the phrase 'you know.'

For some reason, I could not help but insert the 'audience applause' bits, but easily managed to leave out 'laughs.' I cannot explain myself.

Luckily, this assignment was pretty similar to another assignment I did, so I had a basic outline for it. For this one, I had to touch on five past moments that shaped my life, talk about a current moment, and then look to the future. I also had to imagine that Conan O'Brien would have interest in interviewing a complete unknown, but that was the easy part.

(The following is a transcript of Bill B------�s appearance on �Late Night with Conan O�Brien.� Airdate: November 7, 2001)

CONAN: Our first guest tonight is Bill B-----. Currently, a completely unknown writer from the northside of Chicago, who has some big things lined up. Let�s bring him out.

(Bill walks onstage. The band plays �Where the Hell is Bill?� by Camper Van Beethoven.)

CONAN: Hey there, thank you. Thank you very much for coming.

BILL: Thanks for having me, Conan. I�m glad to be here. You can always call on me whenever Tony Randall cancels.

C: Yes, you�ll be our go-to guy when we can�t book our first choice go-to guy.

B: Not a problem.

C: Good, so how are you? What are you up to?

B: I�m good, I�m good. Just finishing up with school, about to graduate�(applause) Thank you. Thinking about making the big move out west.

C: Los Angeles.

B: That�s right. There aren�t too many opportunities for television writers in Chicago, especially now that Bozo has been cancelled, you know.

C: That�s too bad. All those pie gags you wrote, just gone to waste.

B: Oh, I�ll use them. I have a whole pie gag show in the works, all pies.

C: That show will trounce us in the ratings.

B: You just need to incorporate more pies.

C: I�ve been saying that all along. "We need more pies, damn it!" No, seriously, you want to be a television writer, right?

B: Right.

C: Cool. I understand, though, that you started out as something else. Why don�t you tell us a little about that?

B: OK, yeah. I wanted to be an actor at first.

C: Right. And your big break came when you were five?

B: Well�It wasn�t really so much a big break as it was me in a sailor suit standing onstage at church and acting cute.

C: The exact same thing happened to me last Sunday.

B: Yeah, it�s common. Yeah, so that was the first moment that I realized that I loved �the biz," you know? Just being out there and having all those people laugh at me and watch me. It got me really charged up, and that kind of shaped the next couple years of my life. I was really interested in comedy, and making people laugh, and just having a great time with it. I realized that I could have fun with my life and make money doing it.

C: Don�t be so sure. I still haven�t got my first paycheck for this gig. My pay is the bagels from the green room. So, you knew you wanted to do comedy, and you took that to a whole new level, right?

B: Yes, that�s right. Um, when I was in grade school, I got really into writing, directing and acting in home movies. I would always use my brothers as actors, since they were always around, and my friends too. It�s kind of funny, because, over time, with the movies, we noticed that we always seemed to take on the same roles, with my middle brother being cast as the villain, or crazy guy, and my youngest brother was always kind of a sidekick, or a really stupid criminal.

C: And what were you?

B: I was selfish, and the oldest, so I always got to play the lead roles. I thought up most of the plots so I just figured I was entitled. My brothers probably had more fun, though, with their crazier roles. I just wanted to be the hero all the time.

C: What kind of movies did you guys make?

B: Oh, let�s see. There was Robobro, about a guy who builds a robot brother for himself and then it goes crazy.

C: And you were�?

B: I was the robot, and I nobly allowed myself to be killed when I got too dangerous. My brothers and I had just seen Fast Times at Ridgemont High, so, strangely, that influenced us quite a bit.

C: What else?

B: Well, there was a movie we called What About Bob? and that was about my youngest brother and I sending the middle brother to a mental institution and then dealing with him when he comes back to kill us.

C: I�m noticing a theme here.

B: Yes, we were very violent boys. There weren�t really any girls around, so I guess we just figured we had nothing to do but kill each other.

C: Understandable, yes. So, once you got into high school, you moved away from movies and started doing some more acting?

B: Yeah, I went to an arts high school in Chicago� (audience screams) and it was there that I really started to get into acting.

C: How did that work? Did they notice you right away, or�?

B: No, no. I started at the bottom of the food chain, like all the other freshman. Once I got older, though, and some of the upperclassmen graduated, I got some really good roles. I was doing really well, you know? Like, I was really just starting to hit my stride.

C: Cool. And I understand that was working really well for you, even professionally.

B: Yeah, totally. I started getting some roles outside of school. A director came and saw me and cast me in a show at the Theater Building on Belmont. I got the lead in a couple of industrial films. I was in an Ameritech commercial, an Illinois Lottery commercial.

C: Commercials, yeah. You�ve gotta love that residual money.

B: Yeah, I was getting paid for that commercial even years after I actually did it, so that was very cool. I was all set, man, I was just on top of the world, ready to go.

C: Then something changed, right?

B: Something changed, yeah. You�re making this sound like an A&E Biography, Conan.

C: Yes, this is the part where you got hooked on smack.

B: The tragic downfall. Yeah, it did kind of change after that. Well, not kind of, it changed in a huge way. I went to study acting at DePaul, and um, basically, they said I sucked.

C: They said you sucked? Seriously?

B: No, well�not in so many words. But I wasn�t doing too well, there, not really well at all, and, uh�that really just shattered my confidence in myself. My entire life had been building up to this point, and I was just not having any luck getting recognized at this school. I mean, here I was, and I was the �actor guy� you know, and everyone knew me that way, and it was like DePaul just kind of looked at my identity and said "This isn�t you, you can�t be this." And at 18, that really hurt, because, you know, I was 18. I didn�t know any better, so I just kind of had this freak out.

C: That�s so sad. That�s terrible. What happened to you after that?

B: Well, you know, in the A&E world, those were my �smack years,� you know? I just got a garden apartment with my pals, and worked in a restaurant, and drank and smoked a lot, and basically just messed around for a time, because I didn�t know what else to do.

C: Well, your life is better now, so how did you get to this point? This show airs at 2 AM, you can help a lot of smack addicts out there.

B: I guess I�m lucky, to an extent, because I just got really sick of it. I didn�t want to live in a garden apartment anymore and be that guy, so I just changed my attitude and decided to make a choice. And I say I�m lucky because I know that there are a lot of people out there who can�t really make that choice, you know, or won�t make it. So I just kind of stumbled on over to Columbia College, and chose to study something that would take a lot of interests from my youth and turn that into something I could do with my life. And that was television, and television writing, specifically.

C: What attracted you to television rather than film?

B: I think I just enjoy the form a little more, especially as a forum for comedy. I also like the idea of developing characters and story lines for them over the course of years, kind of letting them develop a little history. Like, just seeing how they evolve and grow, which I don�t think film lets you do to as great an extent. Not that I�m uninterested in film. I just read this interview with Judd Apatow, the guy who did Freaks & Geeks, and is now doing Undeclared. He said that he�d rather work on twenty four short films a year, you know, a whole television season, rather than one film every two years, and that pretty much sums up how I feel.

C: So Columbia is working out for you?

B: Oh, totally, man. My life is great. Like I said, I�m all set to graduate, I�ve been on the Dean�s list every semester I�ve been here. I feel like I�m getting some good work done. I feel like I�ve learned a lot. I�ve got all of the confidence back that I had when I graduated high school, before I went to Depaul, and I feel even better about my prospects now, so�yeah, my life is very good, and I�m very happy (audience applause).

C: Good. Congratulations. So, what�s up next for you?

B: Well, like I said, I�ve got the move out west to think about. I�m going to try to get myself in on some television show, a really good sitcom, I hope. And I just want to keep doing what I love doing, you know. I want to write more, work on a novel, some screenplays, just take advantage of whatever opportunity comes along. Maybe even see if I can get back into performance, somehow. Basically, I just want my life to be centered around what I have fun doing, and get paid for doing it.

C: Cool. Very cool. Will you come back and see us when you hit the bigtime?

B: Definitely.

C: Bill B----- everyone! (audience applause) Stick around, we�ll be right back with Sarah Silverman!