Many of the scenarios Shelley encounters on her auditions are variations of things that happened in real life to series co-creator Ray Rosales.
Most of the names in the show are based on 18th century poets (Milton, Byron, etc.) or modern NBA players (John Wall, Blake).
The writers chose to make Shelley's big audition for a peace movement movie by Quentin Tarantino because he resides in the series' hometown of Austin, Texas, and he was about to come out with one of his most violent films Django Unchained (2012).
Shelley Buttman's name is a combination of a reference to the writer of the novel "Frankenstein" Mary Shelley and a previous work series co-creator Ray Rosales' acted in where he jokingly created the last name Buttman for his character.