Dear Diary,

You probably thought we were done, finished. We spent all year leading up to an interview that never appeared in the paper. Well, you can suck it, haters. It just so happens that while you were lamenting the fact that you never actually went to class and learned the material on your exams, we interviewed Carter Bays ’97. Sadly, the last issue of The Argus for the year had already been printed, so we’ve waited until the most opportune time to unleash this fantastical knowledge upon you all. We actually had such a marvelous interview—he was very taken with us, though his publicist was less so. We have two parts for you, one delectable offering today and another next week. You can thank us in sexual favors.

Argus: This is the Wesleyan Argus.

Carter Bays: Hey guys, how’s it going? This is Carter. So, I guess I’ve been appearing in The Argus this year.

A: That’s true! We were assigned the task of tracking you down and try to get an interview with you.

CB: Well, it finally worked. I was just about to call you guys up, and I noticed that you published some of my old stuff from the Ampersand. That just sent me into a tailspin depression that I couldn’t take myself out of. I just can’t read that stuff again.

A: Sorry. That wasn’t our intention.

CB: It’s all right. It just took, you know, a month to recover from.

A: Well, it got positive responses here. People liked it.

CB: That’s good, that’s good. You know, you want to write something that holds up, I guess. Anyway, how’s it going?

A: It’s going well. Since this is an interview, we should probably ask you some questions.

CB: Sure. Alright.

A: We heard you’re developing an idea for a new pilot, can you tell us anything about that?

CB: Yeah. We have been sort of holding off on the idea of developing something new because we basically love our day job and don’t really want to do anything else. But, two of the writers on the show, Joe Kelly and Kourtney Kang, came to us with this sort of area that they wanted to explore as an idea for a new show. We started working with them and then kind of realized it was something we wanted to work on too. So we all turned it into a fun little side project over the course of the year. Every spare moment that we had, we worked on it. We liked the characters and we liked the story, so it became a pilot that we ended up shooting and editing and right now we are trying to decide whether it would be a TV show or not. It’s exciting. There’s a lot of nail biting going on right now…a lot of heavy drinking.

A: We know how that goes. It’s finals week.

CB: YEAH! Honestly. This has kind of felt like finals week, because in addition to editing the final episodes of HIMYM, we had to work on the pilot also. It’s just been kind of feeling like finals, and I’ve been buried under a lot of work lately. Now the drinking starts.

A: So, there’s a lot of famous alumni from Wesleyan, and there’s been a lot of…well…I’m just going to ask this…who’s better, you or Joss Whedon?

CB: I don’t want to start a feud with Joss Whedon. It’s funny…when we were in school, [he] was this up-and-coming screenwriter. Like, we knew his name when we were taking screenwriting classes with Kidd Read our junior year, and this was before “Buffy,” was made. He wrote a bunch of screenplays that never got made—there was one called “Afterlife” that I remember reading and thinking, “Oh my god! This guy went to Wesleyan. This guy’s amazing.” So, yeah, there’s always been a slightly unhealthy amount of hero worship, on our parts, of Joss. Craig and I have to talk with him a little bit and all we want to do is ask him questions about “Angel” and “Serenity” and “Buffy.”

A: I think hero worship of Joss Whedon might be a requirement to get into Wesleyan. I definitely have pictures of him on my wall surrounding Neil Patrick Harris on a Unicorn.

CB: You know my cousin, Sarah, who almost went to Wesleyan, but decided to go to Tufts, heard that we cast Alyson Hannigan, she just went BANANAS. She, like you, had her room covered in posters of every character from “Buffy.” She was definitely excited. As were we! Craig’s wife, Rebecca Olsen, class of 1998—the initial germ of the idea for Ted, Marshall and Lily and that relationship—that was based on me, Craig, and Rebecca. And Rebecca was a little uncomfortable at first asking, “Really? You’re gonna base a character on me?” The only way that she would agree is if we got Willow from “Buffy” to play her.

A: That’s a fair bargain.

CB: Yeah. We worshipped that show to a slightly unhealthy degree.

A: It’s never unhealthy. That’s what I say.

Stay tuned for part two, coming next week!