An Underrated Star-Studded Sitcom From Paul Rudd Was Rejected By HBO

"Are we having fun yet?" Those five simple words haunt the depressed former actor Henry Pollard as he toils away as a caterer in the Starz comedy "Party Down." Hollywood is a town full of strivers trying and (more often than not) failing to get their dreams of stardom off the ground, and "Party Down" is a painfully real send-up of what it's like at the bottom of the fame ladder.

Adam Scott stars as Henry, who has put his acting dreams on ice after an iconic line reading in a beer ad killed his acting career for good, as he joins a ramshackle catering company run by the totally useless Ronald Donald (Ken Marino). The entire cast is full of some of the funniest people in comedy, including Lizzy Caplan as a sardonic comedian, Ryan Hansen as an empty headed pretty boy, Martin Starr as a pretentious science fiction screenwriter, Jane Lynch as an elder actress with bizarre stories of Hollywood's heyday coming out the wazoo, and Megan Mullally as a mother pushing her 13-year-old daughter into showbiz.

Much like its cast of doomed dreamers, "Party Down" never took off, and the show was canceled by Starz after its second season. Against all odds, a third season was eventually commissioned by Starz, which brought the team back with some new faces that managed to stay true to the original run's acidic sense of humor. But "Party Down" almost never existed, because the show was originally pitched to HBO, which rejected it.

For years, co-creators Paul Rudd and writer John Enbom had toyed around with the idea of satirizing the life of a struggling actor, and they eventually got together a pitch for what would become "Party Down." They brought the package to HBO, which producer Rob Thomas calls "one of the strangest pitches [he'd] ever, ever been in:"

"Carolyn Strauss was the head of [HBO] at that time, and she seemed distracted ... I was pitching it and felt like, 'I'm dying. I'm dying.' And then she gets a call. Usually they'll interrupt a pitch to tell the head of the network they got a call, and the assistant buzzed in, 'You've got a call.' She said, 'OK, I've got to take this.' She goes to the phone, and then she sort of points back at us and says, 'Yeah, we're buying this.'"

Despite her seeming indifference, the team could now start writing outlines, but it quickly became clear that the team at HBO had its own idea of what the show should be:

"Our pilot episode was a Sherman Oaks neighborhood homeowners association potluck, far away from entertainment. And the idea that ... Henry shows up and this is the life he would like: He would like a home with a pool and a family, and the homeowner wishes he were a young actor out on the town, having the time of his life. And we thought it really defined the premise of the show nicely, but HBO did not feel similar."

HBO wanted the show to be more of a Hollywood satire, with the Party Down team working industry parties, but for the writers, the humor came from just how far away from Hollywood these losers found themselves. HBO would pass on the project, and so the team found a little time and cash to shoot their own version of the pilot, featuring much of the same cast, which Starz would pick up as they tried to make their break into comedy.

The team at Starz were much bigger fans of the show than anyone at HBO, and they gave the team two seasons and an eventual third. The show would go on to change the course of Adam Scott's career. And hopefully, his new "Severance" fans will dig it up and enjoy this look at what life on the underside of Hollywood really looks like.