Writer's Notes - Characters

So, for those who read this blog for exclusive insight into PSB. Come on, someone's reading this, right? Here's a real look into the writer's process. Excerpts of our actual notes for the characters in the new draft of the potential PSB Pilot. This segment focuses on the individual characters.

Jack

Jack is manipulative, first and foremost. Like what Cecelia says to Jack in the web series – “you act like you’re such a sad boy but I know you”. We all have an ulterior motive and Jack sees he can get Larsen now that Larsen has fallen. Jack uses his own vulnerability and niceness to other people to manipulate other people. Jack plays the innocent much more then he is.

Jack is the one who wants to be saved. So he wants to save Larsen so that Larsen can in turn save him. But Jack has to be the one who mans up and just saves Larsen for the sake of saving him, without trying to get something for himself, because that is the selfish way. Jack has to make the mistake of doing that in the first place to then go back and learn from it and have to fix it.

Larsen

Larsen has major issues of masculinity. When I write Jack and Larsen, I write them like a straight couple, because there is no difference between a straight couple and gay. In my opinion, the show Moonlighting was the best description of a two people ever, just about bickering and not being able to communicate. One thing I tend to forget about Jack and Larsen is that they have nothing in common. How can they communicate then and talk to each other without problems and fighting?

Laresn is very much and object of fantasy for everyone else, someone that the other characters project their desires on. He is used to that point and that’s where his brooding and loneliness and confusion comes from. He’s not a manipulator, he’s direct and that's very hot. Why does Larsen love Jack? Because he actually needs to be saved and needs someone to take care of him.

Sometimes, Jack will start a fight just so Larsen has to make up with him. Larsen’s whole persona is to satisfy the people around him, sexually and emotionally, because he’s deftly afraid of being alone...because he is the only actual one who is alone.

In a way, Jack likes the fact that Larsen is hurting so much. Jack and Larsen's complex emotional games stand in for their lack of a sexual relationship. They have a bond but Jack really wants to have sex. Jack needs to find a way to connect with Larsen. If Jack just asked Larsen to have sex with him Larsen probably would just do it right? But would it be the sex that Jack wants?

Edgar

Edgar, despite the fact he is so mean, is one of the best people because he is upfront and honest. What he offers to Jack is sex and a nice relationship, an out relationship. Something real, not something that is skirted around and implied. What Edgar wants is more simple. Edgar is only evil because he is bitchy and because he could be vengeful if someone hurts him.

Gabrielle

The original Gabby is that high school girl who was evil but came off smelling like a rose, but that’s just because you knew people like that in high school and were jealous of people like that. So in Jack’s POV he is jealous of her but Gabby might not actually be all that bad. Really she’s a lot like Jack and they just have different tools to manipulate what they want. Gabby has the feminine tools of manipulation that Jack lacks. Hence they are rivals, having the opposite means of achieving the same goal - validation, specifically in the form of a guy liking them.

Jack and Gabby are the most manipulative – need validation so badly – when they don’t get it they freak out. Both Jack and Gabby are constantly on the verge of crisis in one form or another.

Brandon

Note: Brandon is not a major character in the original web series, but he is brought out as a love interest for Rachel and nemesis for Larsen in some drafts of the pilot.

Brandon he’s not a totally evil person. But he is a misogynist. Why is Brandon Larsen’s nemesis? Brings out he’s insecurities about his masculinity. There is the alpha male craving in Brandon is always pushing out and taking over. Brandon is kind of dumb, and he can get more aware of how dumb he is and this is how much these things bother him. Brandon doesn’t play games the way Edgar or Jack play games.

Which is what bothers Larsen the most, because Brandon can see right through Larsen for not being tough or strong or masculine. Brandon is outwardly physically destructive versus the internal destructiveness of all these other people, and that’s totally foreign to him. He can’t have an internal life the way someone else does. He looks like a Joe Delasandro, the Andy Warhol poster boy. Brandon is a piece of meat and he enjoys being a piece of meat, that’s fine with him, until he sees from Rachel how the other side of things can be.

Rachel

Rachel is the one people like the most. Because she is the most normal. She would be the heroine of another show. Gabby just wants to be validated by sex where Rachel is the type of girl that has fantasies. achel’s big interior thing is that she’s really into sadomasochism. She has an intense sexual desire that she doesn’t show to each people. Rachel is just going after Jack because he’s always around. Rachel is a lot like Pamela Ewing from Dallas. She is a good person and a classy person.

Well, thanks so much for reading. Might be convoluted, but believe it or not, this is how we actually discuss the characters. Keep checking the blog for more updates on the progress of the new PSB pilot and more exclusive behind-the-scenes content as it develops.