“Do you want to read the Epstein Files?”
I blinked. I double checked my Zoom connection. “Do I want to read THE Epstein Files?”
The studio exec nodded. “We have the exclusive adaptation rights.”
“To… the Epstein Files? Sorry. It’s just, I don’t think anyone’s read them.”
“Well, most people haven’t. Because we have the exclusive adaptation rights,” the studio exec repeated, like I was stupid, which I was starting to suspect I was.
The other studio exec unmuted and chimed in. “If you’re interested, we’ll have Beth send the materials to you over Embershot.”
“The materials? The Epstein Files?” I didn’t want to keep repeating myself so I quickly added, “When you say adaptation do you mean, like, docuseries? Or like a dramatization of the events?”
“Oh,” said the studio exec. “There’s actually another writer working on a dramatic miniseries. We’re looking for, like, what could a sitcom take be? Like is there a network version, could it be an animated, like, Adult Swim version, or one thing we’ve talked about is could it be sort of a comedic play on the X-Files…?”
“We’re open,” said the other network exec. “We want you to have fun with it.”
“With the — with the Epstein Files?”
“We’re hearing takes over the next few weeks,” said the other studio exec. “So it’s a bit of a fast turnaround, but if it piques your interest at all...”
“I think I have to think about it?” I said. “But I’m not NOT interested, you know, in at least, like, reading the Epstein Files.”
We ended the call with a good natured callback to our small talk at the beginning of the conversation, and promises to find a project together, “if not this then something”, and then I immediately called my manager.
“They want takes on the Epstein Files,” I said.
“I know,” he said. “I have a few clients up for it so if you’re interested, it’ll be a tight turnaround.”
“I won’t lie, it’ll be competitive IP,” he continued. “Not a lot going right now but obviously this has such big name recognition.”
“Right.” Bailey started pawing at the back door, so I let her out. “I mean, but like, do you think I… should?”
“I mean I guess it depends if you think you have the bandwidth right now. The Google movie is wrapping. You’ve got that Cold Stone Creamery project for Audible, but that’s just development.”
“Yeah. Hey, was there any word on that ramen take I did…?”
“Not yet, but I know Eva Victor was circling-“ Something beeped on his end. “Hey, I have to hop.”
“Yeah, all good.” By the time the call was over, it was sitting in my email. I had to create a new password for Embershot because I forgot my old one. But there they were. It was a lot of material to go through. I mean obviously, I guess. Literal files worth.
“So,” I said over dinner that night, setting down my napkin like a drumroll, “I got asked to pitch a take on the Epstein Files.” Neither Julie nor Cameron had the immediate reaction I wanted. “The, like, actual, Jeffrey Epstein, Epstein Files.”
“Oh yeah,” said Julie. “I’m pitching on that next week. You met with Maura and Matty? They’re great.”
“You’re pitching on it?” I asked.
“I am too, actually,” said Cameron. “On Thursday. I have sort of like a very left of center, postmodern multicam sort of approach that either is gonna really work for them or really won’t.” He shrugged. “I dunno, you miss one hundred percent of the shots you don’t take.”
“But, on like, a moral level—“ The waiter interrupted with our shared plates. After he set down the seventh plate (he thought six would be enough for the three of us but Julie wanted to try the carrots diablo so we got seven), the momentum of the conversation had shifted, and we got on to our favorite topic, our fourth friend, who we all hated.
When I woke up the next morning, I checked instagram for the horrors, and my email for any news about anything. There were lots of horror and no news. So I read the Epstein Files.
It took me most of the day, with only a few TikTok breaks, and admittedly I got a little bored and skimmed a few parts. A lot of names, dates, flight charters, that kind of thing. And obviously it was, you know, upsetting, knowing all of the horrific abuse that had occurred at the hands of these monsters, etc, but in the back of my mind I kind of saw the vision. How if I was going to do this - a big if - I’d want to approach it in a way that was first and foremost empathetic.
My manager set the meeting for the following week. It got moved twice, but the next Monday, I was back on Zoom with Maura, Matty, and someone I’d never met named Dawn, who had her camera off, but said she’d heard great things. I walked them through my take, and they asked all the right questions.
Then they asked, “do you have any questions for us?”
And I said, “yeah. Um, it’s important to me, just with the sensitive nature of the source material, that, you know, we treat this whole thing really…. sensitively.”
They all nodded, except Dawn, who I couldn’t see. “We feel exactly the same way,” they said. “That’s what’s most important to us, too.”
It was another three weeks before I heard anything else, and by that point I’d forgotten I’d pitched on the project at all. So when my manager called, and said that the Epstein Files was going my way, it took a brief moment for me to understand what he was saying.
That night I had a second date with this girl Emily, and I told her I’d won the bid to develop the Epstein Files.
Emily wasn’t a writer. She did something with, I wanna say, plants. And she looked confused.
“Develop the Epstein Files?” She asked.
“It’s big IP,” I said. “And I think my take is really the way to do it. It’s high brow but in an accessible way.”
“So this means like, you… sold a show? What do you mean?”
I laughed. “Oh my god, no. Okay, so there’s this studio that has the exclusive rights to them.”
“And they are bringing me in to develop a pitch based on them.”
“Oh. And they pay you for it?”
“Well, no. So the idea is that then we go out and take that pitch to buyers. Streaming platforms, mostly.”
“And then they make it into a show?”
“Well, if they like it, then they buy the concept, and then we develop it some more.”
“How long does that take?”
“Could be months, or years. And then if we get lucky, they make the pilot.”
“And then that’s what we see?”
“Oh, no. If they like the pilot, then they might pick it up to series. And that used to mean that it would eventually go to air, but not necessarily anymore. So you make the whole season - usually 6 or 8 episodes - and then maybe you get dumped on streaming and hopefully a few hundred thousand people watch it.”
She frowned. “So you’re excited about this? I genuinely can’t tell.”
“Well, yeah,” I said. “Because if all of that happens, then there’s a deadline article announcing it. And I can screenshot it and post it on instagram, where people from high school will see it.”
Emily took a long sip of her whiskey ginger. “Well,” she said. “That’s great. I’m happy for you.”
We went out two more times, and then I told her I wasn’t looking for anything serious.
A few months later, after the deal was signed and everything, we had a notes call. Maura had been laid off, so it was just me and Matty and off-camera Dawn.
“We’re so excited to hop in on this,” said Matty. “Internally, our sort of top line note is just that we want to make sure it’s really funny.”
“The idea itself is very clever,” said Dawn. “But we want to make sure the pitch comes off as like, laugh out loud funny. So we have some ideas.”
“So one thought we had was, have you heard of Mitch Fist?” I had. Mitch Fist was a libertarian podcast host who had recently come under a bit of fire for using a slur so awful it self-censors as it comes out of your mouth.
“I liked his early stuff,” I said, which was true; his stand up bit about milk jugs was an all-timer. “I wonder if he’s maybe a little… controversial?”
“He’s really interested in attaching as a co producer,” said Dawn.
“He’s a big value add,” said Matty. “Think about it.”
After we hung up, I called my manager.
“Oh wow, Mitch Fist is huge right now,” he said.
“Right,” I said. “But don’t you worry that —“
“Hey, listen,” said Keith (my manager’s name is Keith). “I meant to call you this afternoon anyway. I connected with Gina at Audible and she let me know there’s been a huge mandate shift and the Cold Stone content team was let go.”
“It’s a bummer,” said Keith. “But they’re excited to find something else with you.”
After Mitch Fist attached to the Epstein Files project, he had a few notes.
“I don’t like when it gets serious at the end,” he said. “Let’s lose that from the pitch.”
“I’ve just been seeing it as like, the emotional core of the show,” I said.
“It’s ultimately your vision, but just from our end,” Dawn chimed in. “We are on the same page with Mitch.”
“Also,” this was Jordan, Matty’s replacement (Matty got replaced). “A lot of buyers are really excited about physical comedy right now. Think Mr. Bean. Like, is there a more Mr. Bean version of this?”
“I love Mr. Bean,” said Mitch Fist. “Could we get like, a sexy female Mr. Bean in here?”
“I’ll take a look and see what I can do,” I said.
The next day, I went on a hike with Julie and Cameron, who seethed with delicious jealousy as they asked me how the project was going.
“Good,” I said. “You know. Development.” I pulled Bailey back from where she was trying to eat some coyote shit. “What are you guys working on?”
“I’ve been doing a lot of plasma donation,” said Julie, who looked weak. “so that’s been good.”
“I’ve been taking some groundlings classes,” said Cameron, whose last name was Soap, because his great-grandfather invented soap. “But I’m taking myself on sort of a writers retreat to Turks & Caicos in a few weeks to finally finish that mystery musical I was telling you about.”
At the top of Runyon we passed Liev Polk, an SVA classmate of mine who had amassed millions of followers chewing Polly Pocket shoes on Twitch. We made small talk, and when he told me he’d just bought a second home in Joshua Tree, I seethed with horrible jealousy.
I got terrible service in the canyon, but when I got back to my car, I saw a text from my manager, who told me the ramen people wouldn’t be moving forward with my take. “But it’s nothing personal;” he added. “They all died.”
It was decided that Mitch Fist would do the majority of the pitch when we took it to networks because he was, you know, famous. He introduced me first. “This is Josh,” he said. “He’s the best Jew writer around.”
I thought that would have put them off, but everyone laughed good-naturedly.
“And he had this great idea to make the Epstein Files into a hilarious comedy in the vein of Mr. Bean or Family Guy.” I didn’t interrupt that none of that had, in fact, been my idea, or that the Family Guy comp was news to me.
At the end of the pitch, the network execs gushed about how much they loved us, and how brilliant this idea was, and we thanked the network execs profusely, and walked back to our cars.
“Great job, Josh,” said Parker, who had replaced off-camera Dawn. “Seriously, I felt super good about that.”
The following day, Keith called to tell me they’d regretfully passed, because they had something else in development “in that space”.
But hope was not lost. We had seven more pitches: four to streamers, two to broadcast networks, and one to an appliance company that was thinking of getting into content to have something to watch on your microwave while you waited for your baked potato or whatever. I was told the broadcast networks hadn’t bought anything in eighteen years, but who knows, and that three of the streamers were about to merge into one.
Every pitch went better than the last. The execs were slapping their knees at the jokes, nodding appreciatively as i explained my thoughtful approach, and gushing about what a perfect fit for them we would be.
Every pass went better than the last, too, as each network relayed, through Parker and Louis (Jordan’s replacement) how much they loved this project, and wished they could take it on, but it just wasn’t the right fit for them.
Six months passed, and Keith called. “I just had an interesting talk with Mitch Fist’s parole officer,” said Keith. “What do you think about re-tooling the pitch for Garbage Broth?”
“Hmm,” I said. Garbage Broth was a state-run micro-content platform, specializing in fascist propaganda and videos of shark attacks. “Is it WGA?” I asked.
That night, I ran into that girl Emily at a party. She asked me what I was up to, and I didn’t want to say, “questioning my choices”, so I said, “we’re gonna make the Epstein Files for Garbage Broth. Mitch Fist is attached.”
“Did someone put a gun to your head?” She asked. “Why are you doing that?”
“Everyone is really excited,” I said.
I must have manifested it, because I got a call from Keith, who already had Mitch Fist, Louis, Sandy (Parker’s replacement), and Zh’thurinthal the Infernal (SVP of Garbage Broth) on the line. They were going to be making an offer, and kept saying how excited they were to get into it.
They told us, “we have a sponsor already lined up!”
“It’s Jeffrey Epstein!” They said.
“Jeffrey Epstein?” I said. “Is this… a coincidentally and unfortunately named but unrelated Jeffrey Epstein?”
“He’s very excited,” chimed in Zh’thurinthal the Infernal.
“And not afraid to poke fun at himself!” Said Sandy.
“Hmm,” I said. “I think,” I told Keith later. “This might not be a great idea.”
“Oh wow,” said Keith. “They just sent the contract over now, literally while we’re talking.”
“Is it a good offer?” I asked.
“It’s fair,” said Keith. “But we can probably get them up to twenty FIVE dollars.”
When I brought this whole thing up to Cameron (Julie had moved home, which we agreed made her a quitter), he frowned. “I’m sorry. I just don’t think I can truly be happy for you. I pitched on the Jonestown Tapes AI musical for PornFarm and just found out they went with that newly discovered Hadid instead.”
I asked what else he was working on. He excused himself to the bathroom and didn’t come back.
The development process with Garbage Broth wasn’t that painful, all things considered. I mean, there were network notes. Like, they thought the show would be better if it was ten to twelve seconds an episode. And they asked if there could be more explosions. I told them I could try but I wasn’t sure if that was really the vision I had for the show. They dumped honey on my face and forced me into a bear trap until I relented. Oh, also Jeffrey Epstein decided he didn’t really think we should call it, “the Epstein Files”. He liked the name, “Sharthole”. They were good collaborators.
I asked Keith, “When do you think Deadline might post about it?”
Keith said, “Never, Josh. Deadline was purchased by the Duchy of Luxembourg as a shell company for some mild off-shore laundering. They do AI-generated shopping lists now.”
“Then how will my high school classmates find me impressive?”
Sharthole sat on the shelf for sixty-five years. In that time, Garbage Broth was sold to Raytheon+. Raytheon+ merged with Auntie Anne’s, like from the mall. They became RayAnne GO, and later just RAGO, and then back to just RayAnne. I got back together with Emily. We had children and grandchildren, and we watched them grow, but we kept it chill because I wasn’t really looking for anything serious. RayAnne collapsed and its assets were sold to a guy named Tim from Kentucky.
Tim from Kentucky projected the entirety of Sharthole against the wall of the CitiBank between the hours of 2 and 3:17 AM. I actually didn’t know about it when it was airing, but pretty quickly I started getting some very angry DMs.
“This is disgusting,” one said. “So different to the source material.”
And another: “You tell yourself a story that you’re an artist, but you’re a coward. You seek the approval of systems above the guidance of any sort of muse. You’re a propagandist with no real convictions. You have betrayed yourself and created nothing more than a damp wood in which the moral rot can fester.”
And a third: “you has no idea what they were doing 🙄 [sic]”
I called Keith’s widow and asked if she thought she could get Tim from Kentucky to respond to that last one. “Because, I mean, I didn’t really make these decisions. They sort of made me do it this way.”
“Well,” Keith’s widow said. “You could have said no.”
“But… I wanted to write.”
“Is that all? Was anyone stopping you?”
Taped to the fridge was a portrait of our family that my then-three-year-old grandson Thibault had drawn in crayon. In it we were smiling blobs, holding clumpy hands under a be-sunglassed sun. The burgeoning talent is apparent; and so much joy in the act of creation.
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