January 29, 2019
For the past 10 years, I have been kicking around an idea for a TV show. The inspiration for the show came when Adult Swim announced they would have open admissions for TV shows. I raced to come up with an idea and ultimately landed on the idea of a show called Tustard League.
Set in the future, Tustard League followed 3 referees as they tried to solve crimes on and off the field. In this world, professional football had taken precedent over all government, so it would make sense that the referees actions had huge ramifications on the world. One aspect of the show is all the referees were living fart clouds, and that Tustard was a synonym for a toot. Like I said, I first wanted to pitch this to Adult Swim so don’t hate.
After writing a pilot episode and parts to some follow up episodes, I came to a sad realization after about 2 years of work - I was pretty bad at character development and my scripts were terrible. I thought that all I needed to do was put this in front of enough people until someone took the idea, told me I was a genius and fixed it up for me so I could make a fortune on it.
It never worked out like that, and months turned to years and the show just sat. Every year or so, I’d kick it back through my mind and think that one day I’d make it.
In 2018, I finally decided I was going to make the show and really try to sell it. Things got weird in 2018 in general, and a lot of the things I had written into the history of the 21st century that led to a world ruled by professional football were seemingly transpiring. Trump announced he wanted to start the Space Force. In the show, part of the history of the world was due to two wars being fought in space - one between US and China, and the other being fought between humans on Earth and Chinese Killbots on Mars. Therefore, it felt like we are being pushed toward this future.
Furthermore, in 2017, Vince McMahon announced he’d be reviving the XFL. In Tustard League, professional football becomes fragmented in the early 21st century, due to a revival of the XFL and other competing leagues. By the mid-21st century, an opportunist combines all the leagues to form the Future Football League, with rules and gameplay that look foreign to any sport we have today.
Anyway, I couldn’t sit by and watch as the world started becoming something I had created in parody. I knew I had to act as quickly as possible. Therefore, after working hard and focused for the past year, I now have what I feel to be a substantial show, completely redesigned from the ground up. Much of the lore and history remains intact, but the characters and conflicts have been reimagined or redefined, or just defined in general. And note that not a single character is a living fart cloud, so win-win for everybody.
In the coming days, I will lay out the characters, some writing samples and even the plot of the pilot as I work on the script for the pilot myself. Hopefully we can all learn something together here.
Stay tuned. And stay steamy.