Hi! Welcome to our weekly Fred & Dan newsletter: Why Aren’t You Famous Yet? This week is from Fred on a lookback at our script Mean Streak and why we made it a satire on the sugar babying. Enjoy!

The year is 2017, you’re fresh out of college, and living in the city of your dreams. 

You’ve been up since 5am because staying in shape is not an option in LA, it's the price of admission. You worked your 9-5 where you snuck into the empty office on your lunch break to self tape an acting audition. That’s the same job where you’re told by more than a few coworkers that your direct manager doesn’t like you, but you don’t have time to worry about that because you have to race home to change for your shift bartending at the bar 100 feet from your house. Your dinner for the third day in a row is a protein shake with a shot of espresso and Baileys in it, because payday isn’t until Friday and you haven’t figured out a better way to deal with the overly flirty coke heads on a Wednesday. 

The night goes as smoothly as it can when you get bitched at for running out of both Silver Bullet and PBR on tap in the same night. But because this dive bar is in one of the most expensive cities in the United States, all of the times you refuse to show your feet or the inside of your mouth is still met with good cash tips. To your chagrin, the end of the night arrives not a moment early…two hours after the legal closing time. You finally count your tips. You’ve made $500 in this one night in tips alone. You rejoice, you’ll be able to make rent this month.

The last two bar flies ask you why you’re so excited. You tell them. One of them, eyes half open, asks how much your rent is. At this point you’re too excited to care about the intrusive nature of the question, so you tell him. He says “is that it? Is that all you need?” With an exasperated sigh you inform him that yes, that’s it, but that doesn’t include car payments, student loans, living cost (once again… most expensive city in the US) blah, blah. 

He laughs… Now, you’ve never had a problem with this “nice” patron in the past. He’s a handsome looking mid-40-year old who spends when he comes in and only treads the line of creepy flirting. He’s one of those that makes it clear how rich he is when he’s been drinking and backs it up by paying for everyone around him. I think he liked the nature of this dive bar for the anonymity - or his superiority complex, you choose. He says, “Look, why don’t you let me take you out when I’m in town and in exchange I’ll pay your rent.” 

Just like that you’ve had your first proper proposition. 

Janette and I went to a college that was a departure from our upbringings. Nothing can prepare you for sitting in class with royalty and free valets because we had so many Lamborghini and Tesla owners late for class. Where being a celebrity or child of a celebrity did not shield you from getting kicked out of school and where trying to keep up with the standards were next to impossible. Janette and I would look around and see girls our age with purses that were more than our month’s paycheck, vacationing every weekend to places that you needed flights for, and making “instagramming” their life look effortless. 

I know some people have family money that would make this life second nature, but I also knew some of these girls were financially independent. We Bay Area girls learned quickly that our counterparts in SoCal were scrappy. They weren’t going to let their silly economical situation keep them from the elite social strata. No, no, these girls were college educated boss babes.

They commoditized their time. 

These entrepreneurs would take something they were already doing and make someone pay for them to do it. 

You want me to fill up your club and bring 12 of my beautiful sorority sisters? Take us shopping and buy us dinner before you take us to your pre-paid table, we’ll need a party bus too.  

Need a chill night in with pizza and a movie? That’ll cost you, and don’t even think about any extra “chill.”

Bored of spoiling your bros with free drinks and vacations? My favorite designer is Chanel, and my mani/pedi costs $100 every two weeks.

These are just a few of the many encounters I’ve heard from women in LA. To which I say, get your bag sis.

So when Janette and I were moving out of our amazing townhouse in North Hollywood, slugging the moldy contents of our fridge to the curb after our extremely long days at work, we started to play a game. What would you do to make money? We talked about all the girls we knew making good money for being young and beautiful. How people often demonized these women but no one was doing anything about the fact that the cost of living was astronomical. 

That’s how our script, Mean Streak, became a satire for sugar babying. The amount of stories of ourselves and friends doing very odd jobs to make money, all in the hopes of living up to the “Instagram” standard of living in Los Angeles, are countless. We thought of what the exact opposite of being a sugar baby would be and came up with murdering people for money. Both jobs are frowned upon in society but are both the oldest jobs in history. Just ask the Old Testament.

I know everyone is tired of hearing from Millennials about their woes but this story isn’t just about or for us. It's a cross generational catharsis. This story is a wish answered for everyone who lost part of their 20s due to a financial market crash, a bad job market, or a pandemic. It’s time given back. It’s what we all wish could happen out of a shitty situation inherited and reinforced by a previous generation.

… Back to that Wednesday night in 2017. If you think that man had a God complex to proposition me, he forgot that I was a 23 year old Millennial living off a dream that no man was going to have a part in materializing.