Tyrone's Inferno (aka, How To Self-Destruct A Career)

I don't think I've ever posted the above drawings, which are the main character designs for Tyrone's Inferno, a pilot I had all-but sold to the Adult Swim after we made Welcome to Eltingville.

Some of you might remember some mention about Tyrone's Inferno back in the day, most of you will recognize some of the characters, since the show was initially built around the supporting cast from the Eltingville pilot. The pilot development came about because I had sent an e-mail to Keith Crofford at the Adult Swim (who we worked with on Space Ghost Coast to Coast and Eltingville), basically thanking him for the pilot opportunity, expressing my disappointment that things didn't work out, and how I had ideas for the new characters like Jane and Ward that I wished we could have developed. Keith wrote me back and said that something involving those characters sounded interesting, and he talked to Mike Lazzo. And I was offered a another shot at a show. 

This was an instructive lesson (even though I didn't learn from it, as you'll see). I never pitched anything to the Adult Swim. It never occurred to me to try. All my life -- well, up until a few years ago -- I assumed that if someone wanted to work with me, they'd offer me a job. This was not my ego at work. Far from it. It was ignorance of how things worked, to some degree, but mostly fear. The same fear that kept me from applying to jobs as a teenager, going into small record and book shops, from joining clubs in college, and kept me from approaching girls I liked. I was afraid of rejection, of looking stupid, of being laughed at or questioned. I had worked with the Adult Sim for almost a decade and never thought I could pitch them on anything. I only worked on things they asked Sarah and I to write or pitch (like an early version of a Harvey Birdman series). After we started working on the bible for the second pilot, Keith told me something along the lines of, "you know you can always pitch stuff to us, we've worked with you, we know you". 

The second pilot was originally called "Mental Ward", and was built around Ward Willoughby, the chatterbox kid designed for Welcome to Eltingville. The characters that were originally developed for the Eltingville pilot were owned by the Adult Swim, I retained my rights to the actual Eltingville Club and Joe, the shop owner (if I wanted to buy back the pilot and the new characters, I could pay back the production costs, which, is a little beyond my financial ability, to say the least). Long story short, we used Ward, Jane, Ironjaw and Sekowsky (the kid with the eye patch and altering accent seen in the pilot. There was also a new character named Tyrone, a demon from hell accidentally called up from hell by the kids during an occult ritual. The series was a lot less realistic than Eltingville -- basically, it was a horror comedy, with a lot of crazy violence and stuff going on. The Adult Swim was firmly established by this point, we knew we could take things further in terms of language, themes and violence than when Eltingville went into production (the first pilot done for the Swim).

Sarah and I finished up a bible for Mental Ward, which we were very happy with. The Swim folks liked it, but felt that Ward was too passive a character to star in a series by himself. We agreed with them completely. Things happened to Ward, he reacted, he was hapless a patsy and punching bag. Everyone was drawn to Tyrone's stronger character, we had more ideas for him and found Ward harder to write material for, and when the Swim saw him as a better candidate for a series lead we were all for it. 

Mental Ward became Tyrone's Inferno. Refocusing tightened everything up and things fell into place quickly and neatly. The bible was approved. The pilot script was approved. The character designs and colors were approved. Sarah and I would both produce, Sarah would be script editor, I'd relinquish jobs that I over-tasked myself with on Eltingville and concentrate on writing and designing. Things looked really good for the pilot and series. The Swim actually showed some of my designs to audiences at San Diego Comic Con as a soft announcement of the project, I have a photo of the Tyrone slide being shown. The series title got mentioned here and there.

It was all very exciting. It was also very frightening. 

That's when I ruined everything. Over nothing. There was only one thing that had to be addressed before the pilot went into production. We needed a change in the bible. It was a small thing, nothing that pulled cans from under the stack, nothing at all like that. There was another series in development/production at the Swim called Lucy, Daughter of Satan (Edit: I just looked it up, and the series was called Lucy, The Daughter of the Devil). The Swim wanted me to change Tyrone's background as a demon from hell so it wouldn't be similar to Lucy.  No problem. I thought he could be a Cthulhu-like entity from another dimension abandoned on Earth. They were fine with that. I was fine with that.

But I never revised the bible. It would have taken ten minutes. If I wanted to, I could have asked Sarah to do it. Remove a few lines, check the rest of the bible, revise to match. The end. Send it in. Start the pilot up. Make a pilot. Maybe get a series. Maybe have a decent career, and some money, and a better life than I'd ever have in comics. Who knows. Not me, because I froze. I hitched. I fucked up. I never revised the bible. I kept meaning to. I meant to. I was asked to. I was reminded to. But I never did it. And I was given plenty of time to get my act together, until finally Tyrone's Inferno was shelved.

It wasn't the Adult Swim's place to take my hand and gently guide me through my mental and emotional issues. Sarah could have, but it wasn't her job, either. And she had already lived through one emotional breakdown that affected my work (and our lives). It was my job. People tried prodding me. People waited, hoping things would work out. Sometimes we see what's happening to someone, but we don't want to push because you don't know exactly what to do. You don't know how someone will react. You're afraid of making things worse, even if it's not really you making things worse. I ruined the project. I ruined my job, I ruined Sarah's job. I pretty much ruined our relationship with the Adult Swim and the Cartoon Network. I ruined our lives, or something close to it.

Years later Sarah and I talked about it, about what really happened. How I was afraid of going forward with the project because I was afraid of success. Because I was afraid of failure. Afraid of responsibility. And I'll add, now, in hindsight, afraid of "the real world". I wasn't fully aware of it at the time, but I put things off until a decision had to be made by someone else. I wouldn't pull the trigger, I wouldn't make the decision. I let Tyrone's Inferno die of neglect, and that erased a lot of future decisions I was also afraid to make. 

And there's the larger issue of a fear of success, born of a lifetime of self-loathing, with a voice that tells you that you don't deserve success, you don't deserve happiness, you're not worthy, you're no good. 

Tyrone's Inferno is the biggest regret of my career, one of the biggest regrets in my life. It could have been a game changer. Or not. But it was definitely the biggest opportunity I blew because I was afraid. I wasted people's time, money and trust. I let down my wife, and upset the direction of our careers. On top of it all, I think Tyrone would have been a pretty good pilot and series. The script was a lot better than the Eltingville pilot. The characters were stronger. The designs were nicer. It was funnier. It benefited from lessons we learned on Welcome to Eltingville. And a 2004 horror comedy with a pop culture-heavy zombie-attack pilot might have gotten a decent push with Shawn of the Dead and the zombie trend happening around that time. 

Again, I'll never know. Nobody knows unless they do the thing. And I didn't do the thing. And I've been playing catch-up ever since. I'm doing the things, now, but I can't help but feel like it's too late for me. 

But who knows, right? 

Right. 

Try not to listen to the voice. 

Back to work.