I've been on the phone for the last hour. The first call was somewhat horrifying to me - the producer of Totally Hidden Video, a show I labored on for three long years, called me - he's done a sizzle pilot for a new hidden camera show - I'm told these things run from three to five minutes. And he wants me to come in and do it, to put it together with an editor, with the promise of doing the show if it should sell. I have been so out of that world now for a decade that the thought of going back into it makes me nauseous and makes me quiver. He's willing to let me cut it here (the show would shoot in Vegas and elsewhere) but I'm just not sure how I would negotiate all of this, time-wise. I could certainly do this sizzle reel, which would probably take a week sometime in the next two weeks, but there would be little money in it and I just don't think I want to go to that land again. Looking at the bigger picture, while doing a series would be some money (I don't know how much this stuff pays these days, but I don't think it's even as much as I was making twenty-three years ago when I was doing Hidden Video), but we're talking long days and evenings and something that wasn't an issue back then but is now - network interference and involvement. I just would not know how to do that full time and put out CDs and do the other stuff I need to do. I also think I'm twenty-three years older and to commit to that kind of schedule of fourteen to eighteen-hour days - well. I talked to my friend David Wechter, who's still in that world, and he felt like it maybe was not the right thing. I told the producer I'd let him know tomorrow and certainly I'm very flattered to be asked - my instinct is that I will say no, that I can't move things around in time to do it. But I'll leave the door open should it go to series. I think he knew that me doing this sizzle reel was last-minute so I don't think he can be upset if I can't clear things.
