I Represent Sean Rosen
Read I Represent Sean Rosen Online
Authors: Jeff Baron
This book is dedicated to my various parents, relatives, and friends,
who always encouraged me to be the kid I wanted to be.
A Week With Your Grandparents by Sean Rosen
I
have an incredible idea. Unfortunately, I can't tell you what it is. People have stolen my ideas before. They pretend it was their idea, and then they don't even ask me to be part of it. That's a mistake, because I understand the idea way better than they do, and if I'm not there to explain it, they usually get parts of it wrong. Then it doesn't really work. Or it sort of works, but it could have been a hundred times better. It's a waste of a good idea.
I'm not saying this happened fifty times. Maybe five. They never give me credit, which is fine because the way it turned out, I don't really want credit.
I'm not counting the little things, like I'm in class and I say an answer out loud and someone hears me and raises his hand and gets called on and it's the right answer.
They never thank me, either. I don't mean getting up and saying, “I'd like to thank the Academy, God, and most of all Sean Rosen, who in his own special way, made me look smart today.” I'd settle for a quiet “Thanks, man,” or even a little nod in my direction.
So I have this great idea. I can't tell you what it is, because even if you didn't mean to, you'd end up telling someone, because it's so cool. All I can tell you is that it has something to do with entertainment. In fact, I think it will change the way people think about entertainment.
Like for example, remember when people used to only watch TV shows on TV? Now we watch them on our computers, on our phones . . . anywhere we want. I'm telling you this to prove that the way people think about entertainment can actually change. I'm not saying that putting TV shows on phones was my idea. My idea is actually a little bigger than that.
I know the company I want to be in business with. I'm not going to tell you their name. You know them. They're huge. They're a huge company in the entertainment business. I looked them up online. Their offices are in California and New York. I live in between.
Since this is my first time trying to work with a big company, and since I know which company I want to be in business with, I think I should practice on another company. Just in case I do something wrong.
I learned this from one of my grandmothers. She likes to practice things before she does them. Like say she has a doctor's appointment tomorrow, with a doctor she never saw before, in a place she doesn't really know. Most people would just put the address into their GPS and follow the directions. Or if they didn't have a GPS (my grandmother doesn't), they'd go on MapQuest or Google and print out directions.
Grandma prints out the directions, but instead of just using them to drive to the doctor, first she uses them for what she calls a “trial run.” She drives to the doctor the day before her appointment, just to be sure the directions are right. It makes my dad crazy (she's his mom). “You're not only wasting time, you're wasting gas.” Grandma doesn't care. She likes to know what she's doing.
The website of the trial run company gives you their e-mail address, their telephone number, their regular street address in California, and their fax number.
We don't have a fax machine, but I can send faxes from my computer. I figured it out for my mom. Every time I send a fax for her she gives me two dollars, which is less than the copy place she used to go to. The last time she had to send a fax, I offered to teach her how to do it from her own computer. She said, “No thanks. Do you have change for a five?”
I decided not to send them a fax. If they only have one fax machine for the whole gigantic company, it's probably broken half the time. And if it's not, whoever gets them has to read like a thousand faxes every day. I don't trust that person to get my fax to the right person. I don't trust that person to not be in a bad mood and throw my fax in the garbage. If I had that job, I probably wouldn't do that, but I've never gotten a thousand faxes.
I'm sending them a letter. Like a letter on a piece of paper that you put in an envelope. Hardly anyone ever does that, so the person at the company who opens actual letters might be happy to have something to do.
Dear
_________ (the big entertainment company I'm not so interested in),
I have an idea that I'm pretty sure can make your company millions, if not billions of dollars. All I can tell you right now is that this is an idea relating to entertainment.
Please ask the person at your company who works on new ideas to call me. My number is 555-555-5555
(not my real number).
Any time after 3 would be fine. Believe me, it's a really good idea.
Sincerely,
Sean Rosen
I took a piece of my dad's stationery. I'm not going to use it for the letter. My dad is a plumber. I'm not saying that a plumber would never have a good entertainment idea. I actually never heard of that happening, but it could. I took his stationery to get ideas for
my
stationery. If you're wondering why a plumber has stationery, it's for giving people bills.
I designed my stationery and I put my letter on it. It looks good. I already know how I like to do my signature. I practice a lot during history. I figured out how to print envelopes on our printer.
I rode my bike to the post office because I want to mail it right away. I don't want it to sit in some metal box all day waiting for a truck to come and drive it to the post office. I also want to pick out the right stamp.
I think the Love stamp might be confusing. There's a nice Oklahoma stamp, but I'm not from Oklahoma. I got the Thomas Edison stamp. He also had some good new ideas.
T
he next few days were very, very long. Have you ever waited for a phone call? It might come in the next five minutes or it might never come at all. You keep checking your phone to make sure it's on. And when you have to turn it off, like in school, you keep turning it back on to see if they called while it was off. You want to stop thinking about it, but you can't. You get mad at whoever was supposed to call, and you get mad at yourself, because you're acting crazier and crazier.
I woke up in the middle of the night and realized that I told them to call me after 3, but I forgot to tell them that I don't live in the same time zone as them. Their 3 isn't the same as my 3. And I never said 3
PM
. I just said after 3.
I got out of bed and wrote a second letter telling them that when they call me, it should be after 3
PM
,
my
time. After reading it, I decided not to send it. I just kept my phone near me all the time. Most of the time I held it in my hand. I learned that if you ever have to hold the phone while you're charging it, like when you're sleeping, you don't get electrocuted.
I mailed my letter on a Monday, and when I got home from school on Thursday, there was an envelope from the entertainment company waiting for me. It was kind of thick.
I put my phone down (finally), and thought about where to open the envelope. Maybe this sounds conceited, but I'm thinking about the future. Like when I'm on a talk show, telling the story of where I was when I read the letter that started my career.
Which is funny, because this started out as a trial run. I don't know how it happened, but some time between mailing
my
letter and getting
their
letter, I actually got excited about being in business with my second-choice company.