“I feel like she’s always going to
be with me,” he explained. And
even now as I’m starting to go over
scripts I’m thinking, ‘Now, what
would Jane tell me to do here?
She would say ‘Stop doing that or
that joke’s too much.’ I think she’s
always going to be in my head.”
In fact, as bad as the situation was,
Van Zandt thought she was going
to beat the cancer. Chemo treatments
eventually wore her down
and her body gave out, but she
never stopped working and didn’t
want to stop. Van Zandt says they
worked one or two days a week
up until she went into the hospital
at the end. They ultimately wrote
three projects while she was sick.
“Until about a week before she
died, I just thought this was a
bump in the road, she’ll beat this,
and we’ll get on to our next thing,”
recalled Van Zandt. “Somebody
asked me why don’t I talk about
her death in the book? I said because
it’s not that kind of a book.
It’s a bunch of funny stories. I
meant it as a beach read.”
And that it is. It’s also a fascinating
look at the world of being a
writer for television. The duo began
in Monmouth County writing
for the theatre. Billy grew up in
Middletown; Jane in nearby Keansburg.
They met in a local high
school acting competition. Years
later when their theater in New
Jersey closed up, they took a review
of their work to heart. The
reviewer wrote, “These people
should be writing for TV.” The
comment was almost certainly
intended as a putdown, but it inspired
them to move to the West
Coast and give it a shot.
“Until about a week before she died, I just thought
this was a bump in the road, she’ll beat this,
and we’ll get on to our next thing”
NJ STAGE - ISSUE 73
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