Reviewed

Book Club received a bad review.

(It took me three shots of vodka to be able to write that sentence.)

Some of you may have heard me talk about, promote, Facebook, email, Tweet, shout from the window of my Yaris to the homeless man picking through the garbage, to WATCH BOOK CLUB!

(You can watch it here on Hulu!)

I’ve been obsessed with getting people to watch and (hopefully) love it.


Well, somebody didn’t.

(More vodka!)

This person was a stranger with access to a small blog about ‘true bibliophiles’ (something Book Club, according to her, is not.)

Noah found it last night when I was at work. Between serving beef carpaccio to millionaires I would sneak back into the coatroom and read snippets of her blog in which this random woman tears my little show apart.

At first I was angry. (Just ask table twelve when they asked for more cheese.)

How dare she!? Does she not know that I worked for THREE YEARS on this?? That this project kept me from leaving Los Angeles, that I spent thousands of dollars of my own money, countless days of my life, and put my heart and soul into this project. Does she not realize how amazing our cast and crew was to work with? How many people gave up so much of their time???

And then I realized it.

No. Of course she doesn’t.

And she shouldn’t be expected to.

Because it doesn’t matter.

We were brave enough to create something. Put something out there, and welcome anyone’s feelings about it, good or bad.

When Book Club was first in my head it was safe. It was protected from the world and its opinions. It would have been easy to keep it like that, never forcing it out and exposing it to people who might hate it.

But that’s not who we are. We are much braver than that.

And as much as I hate to say this, she is welcome to her opinion.

But I am welcome to mine too.

And I think Book Club is fabulous.

FABULOUS.

A large part of me would like to attack this person personally to see if I can make her feel like I did when I first read it. But that’s not who I am.

(But if it was, I would suggest to her that if you are going to write a bad review about something, you should get the name of the main character right. It’s MARLO not Harlo.)

The more I read the review, and re-read it, and then printed it out and wallpapered my walls with it, I started to realize something.

I don’t agree with her. In fact, I think she missed the whole point entirely.

And my opinion matters just as much.

She seemed to have wanted Book Club to be more about characters just sitting around reading. She wanted elitist bibliophiles in a real book club talking about the ‘right’ books. (Even the fact that she calls certain books the ‘right’ books tells me we are not on the same page.)

From the moment she criticized the ‘creatives behind the show’ for choosing a book (Ulysses) that no one would ever read in a ‘real’ book club because of its length, I knew she didn’t understand the show.

We tried to make a fun, silly, quirky, comedy. We wanted people to laugh, be engaged, and want to watch more.

We wanted everyone from non-readers to avid book lovers to love the show.

She’s right. This show is not just for elitist bibliophiles.

This is a comedy. It’s not going to be reality. That’s not what we wanted for it.

And I think she was looking for a serious show, which makes it obvious why she was so disappointed.

Because that’s not what it is.

And thank God because that show sounds boring.

In this business you have to have a tough skin.

I’ve never taken criticism that well. I think we all remember this incident.

But after reading the review for the twenty-second time I started to notice I was feeling something other than indignant.

I was relieved.

Because someone hated Book Club.

And miracle of all miracles I did not implode.

In fact, I’m still incredibly proud of it.

Her words don’t change the fact that my partners and I had an idea that we turned into a living breathing series on the biggest online network available.

And love it or hate it, you can’t take that away from us.

So I’ll tear down the words of her review that have been lining my heart all night and throw them away.

Because it doesn’t matter.

It’s inconsequential.

Now excuse me while I go find out where she lives.

Calloused

On my right hand I have a callus that reminds me of third grade.

That year, I had watched the Summer Olympics religiously and decided I wanted to be a gymnast. But more than that, I knew what gymnastic move I wanted to do more than any other. It was simple really. No flips, no crazy kicks, no acts of balance.

I wanted to fly.

Let go of the bars completely, and float through the air catching the other bar just in the nick of time.

I’d seen gymnasts do it all summer. How hard could it be?

When I returned to school in the fall I was ready.

Ready to become the Shannon Miller of my third grade class.

I practiced all through recess and at the end of the day I figured it was time. After all, I had practiced an ENTIRE RECESS.

In my eight-year-old head that seemed like most of my life.

I rubbed sand on my hands to get rid of unwanted palm sweat– something I’d seen Shannon do before she attempted the uneven bars. I ignored that she was actually rubbing special chalk on her hands while I was grinding sharp pebbles into mine.

Minor details.

I surveyed the bars.

There was a problem. The skinny ones I had been practicing on seemed too close together. 

I would not get any air, any real sense of flying, if I let go in between those two bars.

Then I had a brilliant idea.

I would use the thick outside bars (the ones used to keep the skinny ones together.)

Never mind the fact that those two bars were so big I could hardly get my little hands around them. 

Again, minor details.

I jumped up, gripped the thick metal as well as I could and started to swing my legs.

The faster I swung, the better chance I knew I had of catching the bar. (The bar that suddenly seemed really far away.)

I swung harder.

When I swung back for the fourth time and was almost parallel to the ground I knew it was now or never.

I let go.

I was doing it! I was flying towards that other bar just like the gymnasts!

I stretched my arms as far as they could go. The bar got closer and I could feel my fingertips brush the cool metal.

But that was all they did.

Brush the metal.


Despite my diligent and focused twenty minute practice, as my body (still parallel to the ground) headed for the hard sharp sand below I had the sinking feeling that maybe I should have given it one more recess.

I hit the ground like a plank, my arms still reaching for that elusive metal bar.

The wind instantly left my little body and my teeth bit down hard into my lip as my chin hit the sand.

I lay there for a moment – shocked that I was not as talented as Shannon Miller.

And then the tears started, not so much for my bleeding lip or my inability to catch my breath, but for the frustration that twenty minutes of practice had not been enough.

This was going to be harder than I thought.

Twenty years later, it’s the same here in Los Angeles.

Success in this town is harder than I thought.

Which brings me to something else that was harder than I thought.

Season 1 of Book Club is going to premiere on Hulu!

Finally.

Finally all of our (and many other peoples’) hard work is paying off.

It could not have come at a better time.


Lately, I’d been moping around getting bitter that things weren’t happening faster.

That I wasn’t getting any younger and that my apartment wasn't getting any bigger or closer to the ocean.

But although it was difficult, I would not have had this success any other way.

Just like falling on my face taught me in third grade that if I wanted something, I needed to work at it.

That year, I practiced so much that the inside of my palms started to resemble an eighty-year-old farmer’s. My calluses were large, thick and a point of pride. I would wave them around when people doubted my dedication or abilities.


They were my battle scars.

I hadn’t minded the calluses in third grade, when I was working towards being the monkey bar champion so why should I mind them now, when I’m working towards the life I want to live?

Instead of feeling bitter that things aren’t happening faster, I should be proud of the work I am doing. The calluses I am building up that are making me stronger.

Even though I never tried to attempt the flying leap again, I got really good at the monkey bars.

And years later, after building up some serious calluses in Hollywood, I got something even better than ultimate success on the monkey bars.


I got one callus closer to my dream.