HELL’S KITCHEN — When writing partners Mark Sam Rosenthal and Brian Sloan set out to create a television drama about 40-something gay men living in Hell’s Kitchen, they kept coming up short.
“We went through a couple of iterations and… they never really stuck with us,” said Rosenthal, 42, a neighborhood resident of seven years.
But after a night playing a game of “Celebrity” at Rosenthal’s “Valentine’s Lonely Hearts” night last February, they realized they’d been approaching the show from the wrong angle.
“We just had such a good time, all these single gay guys in Hell’s Kitchen, in some range of their 40s,” he said. “We were talking the next day and we were like, ‘You know what’s wrong about our show idea? It’s supposed to be a comedy. It’s not supposed to be a drama.’”
This summer, Rosenthal and Sloan plan to shoot the pilot episode of “West 40s” — a “coming-of-middle-age comedy” they’ve written about a group of five gay friends navigating life, dating and relationships after the age of 40.
Welcome to "West 40s"--Kickstarter Video from Brian Sloan on Vimeo.
“We couldn’t do four [friends], because then it would be a 'Sex and the City' comparison,” joked Sloan, a “somewhere in [his] 40s” writer and director who has worked in film and television for more than two decades.
The show “deals with mid-life angst, but not in an angsty way,” said Rosenthal, a Comedy Central staff writer and producer who’s performed with the Upright Citizens Brigade.
“It’s often like, ‘My life is over, I’m depressed,’" Sloan added. "We wanted it to reflect our lives where we don’t feel that way."
One of the show’s characters has recently been dumped for a younger man by his partner of nearly two decades.
“He’s kind of now back in this dating field so it’s… like, how does this person deal with dating at his age?” asked Rosenthal, who will play one of the show’s five friends.
The series also examines online dating, open relationships and the pitfalls of aging.
“There are certainly challenges — there’s the reading glasses, getting up the stairs is harder,” Sloan said. “[But] in my experience, there’s been a lot of humor and a lot of laughter around it. You have to laugh at it, in a way.”
Hell’s Kitchen residents will recognize neighborhood landmarks when they watch the show, Rosenthal noted.
“The neighborhood is really a character in the series, because… it is such a gay neighborhood now… and it’s become a lot younger, as well. It’s sort of… holding up a mirror to [the characters] and saying, 'Hm, where do I fit in now, in this scheme?'” he said.
“They’re not going to go on a 17-bar bar crawl through Hell’s Kitchen in their 40s… so it’s like, 'What exactly are we doing now that we’re here in the gayest neighborhood in the world, probably?'” Sloan added.
The writers have been friends since they met at an “Amateur Strip Night” at the Stonewall Inn back in 2001, though they made it clear that neither was a contestant.
They’ve already written the six-episode first season of "West 40s," and recently launched a Kickstarter page raising money to shoot the pilot. As of Friday, it had raised $1,855 of its $12,500 goal.
“People have responded so strongly to the concept, because it’s something that’s just not out there,” Sloan said. “We’ve actually gotten a lot of messages from people in Hell’s Kitchen who are like, ‘This show sounds like my life — I need to watch it now.’”
He and Rosenthal hope the series proves that turning 40 isn’t the end of the world.
“Actually, it’s kind of the beginning of something,” Sloan said. “Yes, it’s not going to be the same as your 20s, or your 30s. But it’s also going to be joyful, and it’s going to be funny.
“There’s going to be challenges, definitely, but life doesn’t end with the big 4-0.”
