I have a friend who has made a terrible mistake.

Things started off well: last month, he wrote and produced a promising, funny television pilot.  A pilot is the first test episode of a proposed series.  If a network likes it – the cast, characters, setting, etc. – then they’ll order more.  

But it’s also a test of the writer, a way of observing him under pressure.  In the television business, for some absurd reason, the writer is in charge, and how he manages the pilot process – and especially the multi-million dollar pilot budget – is a very important indication of how well he might manage the eventual series.

Luckily for my friend, he managed the process of casting, shooting, editing, and delivering the finished project with grace, efficiency, and (mostly) good humor.  Even better, his relationship with the network, which the pilot process tends to fracture and fray, was still collegial and strong.

And then he made his mistake.  We met for a drink late one night to talk about it.

“I did a stupid thing,” he told me.  “I don’t know if I’m ever going to get over it.”

“Come on!” I said.  “You just made a great pilot.  What could you have possibly done? I’m sure you’re over-reacting.”

“I went to the focus group,” he said.  “I watched them test my pilot.”

“You idiot,” I said.  

“I think my career is over.”

“I think it is, too.”

Of course, I didn’t really think his career was over.  But I understood the problem.  For the writer, a focus group experience is a dangerous thing to toy with.  While a demographically precise panel of viewers sits in a small conference room, discussing the product of the past nine months of your life, you pace frantically in the next room, watching the event unfold on the other side of the one-way glass.

“A guy in a ‘Hooters’ t-shirt said he was  bored!  I mean, who is that guy?” my friend shouted.  “And the young woman in the group kept saying ‘I just didn’t get it,’ over and over again.  You should have seen the looks on the faces of the network executives.”

“I thought they liked the pilot,” I said, helpfully.

“They did!” my friend bellowed.  “Right up until it was clear that the only member of the focus group who liked the show was the really fat woman who described herself as a ‘committed Wiccan’ on the questionnaire.”

“Well,” I said, trying to be encouraging and light-hearted, “obese pagans watch TV too.”

My friend stared at me for a moment, deciding whether or not to throw his drink at me.

“The problem,” he said, slowly, “is that I now have these people rattling around inside my head.  I’ve become my own focus group.  I sat down today to work on another script, and all I could hear was ‘boring,’ ‘don’t get it,’ ‘can’t relate’ and ‘more wicca.’”

“Try to think of them as just another set of network executives.  That’s why I do.  I mean, we all get script notes, we all get ridiculous feedback and idiotic suggestions from studio and network executives.  How is this any different?”

“Because,” he said, “because those people behind the glass are real people.  When I get notes from executives, it’s okay because I know them, I know they’re morons.  But those people behind the glass….” His voice got small and baffled.  “I don’t know them,” he whispered.

And there’s the real trouble.  Writers – at least, good writers – are vaguely unbalanced ego maniacs.  They can take any kind of criticism or insult, as long as it’s delivered face-to-face.  But the eavesdropping quality to the focus-group experience gets past even the most arrogant writer’s ego.  It feels like you’re listening to what people might be saying behind your back. 

It feels worse than criticism.  It feels like the truth.

“So I’m totally frozen now,” my friend said.  “I don’t know what to write, or even if I should be writing.  And I’m furious that it was a guy in a ‘Hooters’ t-shirt who basically did this to me.”

I’m not really sure, even now, what advice I could have given to my friend to snap him out of it.  He had been infected with a nasty virus.  Somehow, a focus group had penetrated his immune system, and now he was carrying it around with him.  But I did what I could. 

I told him the stories that we writers tell each other when one of us gets the focus-group virus.  I told him that “Seinfeld” and “Friends” had all received unenthusiastic focus-group responses.  I told him about one of the biggest drama hits of the past five years, which was also trashed by the Hooters t-shirt brigade.  Finally, I told him that it didn’t matter what a dozen-or-so randomly assembled people thought of his show.  What was important was that he thought it was good – that he was proud of his writing and pleased with the production.  

He thought about this.

“You know,” he said finally, “you’re right.”

We clinked glasses.  He smiled.  

“If it makes you feel any better,” I said, “I thought it was kind of slow and hard to get, too.”

Which was when he threw drink at me.  But the truth is, we both had it coming.