“Turning 31″ is a non-starter. I have nothing to say about it except that I’m pleased to have done it, considering the alternative. This is the last time for years that I’ll be a prime number, and while that’s something, it’s also the most interesting thing about the week. Jesus probably had a pretty interesting 31, but I’m not going to catch up to that.

The quiet gave me an opportunity to put the last shovel of dirt on my Netflix queue’s coffin with the viewing of Project Greenlight: Disc 2. The Project Greenlight discs were, above all others, the discs that I would see at the top of my list and urgently move to the bottom again, saying, “Whew! That was close. They almost sent those movies to my house.” (The other notable offender was Angels in America, suggesting that something about HBO says “Homework, But Obligatory” to me.)

I liked the first season of Project Greenlight back when I had HBO, but reality television has irredeemably soured since then. I actually watched the first season of Survivor in its entirety; I’d have people over and order Chinese and have immediate phone calls from my dishing mother as the credits were rolling. They suckered me, and why not? The appeal couldn’t have been plainer to me. In Survivor, we had drama doing things that scripted drama would not do, would not be allowed to do. A show in which the villain is a manipulative homosexual who walks around naked and makes everyone uncomfortable? Who would write it? Who would air it? What show over which writers and executives have any control would write off the cute girls midseason and hang onto the idiot truck driver and homophobic old man for the finale? Why wouldn’t you watch that when it was all still new?

The ending, that’s why. You like unconventional? How’s this for something a writer wouldn’t do: that obnoxious bastard wins! That was a satisfying sixteen weeks well spent, eh? No comeuppance or catharsis, and everything we learned is bad; won’t get that outta T. G. I. F.! Bad about human nature, bad about television, bad about how easy it is to screw with you after all. Join us back here in six weeks, when we begin season two by kicking and kicking you right in the babymakers. Wait, where are you going?

After that, everybody wanted a piece of that pie, and within two years I’m watching people eat dead roaches in prime time. I try to steer clear of the proverbial water cooler entirely now.

I always did have a soft spot in my heart for Project Greenlight, though. If you weren’t an HBO subscriber or were otherwise occupied with living your life, Project Greenlight was a contest put on by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s production company with Miramax. Writers and directors would submit samples of their work, Ben, Matt & Co. would pick their favorites, and the lucky winners were given an office, a crew, and a million of Miramax’s dollars to make their movie.

You have never seen these movies. I watched the show, and I’ve never seen them. One of them has been on a shelf next to my television for two years.

The reason I’ve never seen the movies is the same reason I watched the show, namely that the show very effectively communicates what a disastrous nightmare the moviemaking experience was. You’re right there with the filmmakers from page to premiere, and like them by the end you just want the stupid movie to get finished and get out of your life forever.

What I realized last night as I listened to the writer complain that she didn’t recognize her story and watched the producer look at the first-time directors as if he might soon be hiding their parts in the crawlspace of his house is that the Project Greenlight rules are almost entirely responsible for the headaches that plague them. They’re ostensibly giving these filmmakers their “shot,” but in a way they end up doing exactly the opposite. They give them a million free dollars, yes, but because they’re first timers the studio keeps them on a ridiculously tight leash to keep them from mucking it up and losing Harvey Weinstein’s money. As a result, they have all the limitations of the studio system and the constraints of independent filmmaking. They have almost no money and they have to complete production in a matter of weeks, having neither the resources to do anything nor the time to learn how to do it. You would think that, given the opportunity to control the variables, they would try to go for the ideal experience, but instead they went for the “real” filmmaking experience. Surprisingly, the movies produced by this alchemy fail even more spectacularly than they were set up to.

But the TV show is great.

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