This writer has finally forgiven Glenn Close; whether Glenn Close cares is another story

Bruce Eric Kaplan, circa 2015, at the Paley Center. Photo by Getty Images October 22, 2024 They Went Another Way By Bruce Eric Kaplan Henry Holt, 272 pages, $29 Bruce Eric Kaplan’s wryly comic, decidedly low-key memoir calls to mind David Yazbek’s lyrics for the song “Waiting” in the Broadway musical The Band’s Visit : Waiting, what’s new here, Free morning newsletter You’re waiting, I’m waiting, ’ Cause that’s what we do here, Same as we do every day, For something, I don’t know, To happen…. A New Yorker cartoonist and a writer for such television classics as Seinfeld, Six Feet Under and Girls, Kaplan does at least have a discernible goal. He is hoping finally to get a series of his own greenlit by a network or streaming service. They Went Another Way – a title that telegraphs the outcome — shows how desperately inefficient and frustrating that process can be. Any writer dependent on gig work and responses from inundated or oblivious editors will certainly feel Kaplan’s pain. The drip-drip-drip of Kaplan’s waiting is expressed in daily journal entries running from January to July 2022. Two afterwords update the story. The short takes make the memoir easy to read and involves readers in Kaplan’s purgatorial ordeal. But the lack of progress he encounters inevitably makes the memoir itself seem static; the reader, too, is waiting for something to happen. And, in the end, beyond some mild satire of both Hollywood stars and their entourages, the book’s narrative payoff is slight. For all his writing credits, Kaplan’s track record as a showrunner appears to be nonexistent. But as a veteran of numerous failed pitches, he knows how the system works. With a pilot script in hand, he focuses on selling a series with a premise derivative of the 1971 film Harold and Maude , a black comedy about an intergenerational love affair. The Tony Award-winning actress Glenn Close, alternately helpful and critical, is on board to play the older woman. Saturday Night Live alumnus Pete Davidson, Close’s choice, seems poised to portray her much younger love interest – […]

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