Live... from Television City in Hollywood – 1985

From my first memories, I was a gadget guy.

It started with a Kohner Brothers Busy Box Activity Center, a yellow plastic dashboard thing that hung from my crib and had eleven red and blue knobs and levers to pull, twist, or spin.

As I aged into pajamas without feet, I moved on to real-world detritus – an Emerson record changer on which I performed an unsuccessful autopsy, a grimy Westclox wall clock that I cleaned and kept under my bed, my grandmother’s Kodak Baby Brownie camera, which I examined for hours at a time, clicking the shutter, feeling the Bakelite heft of the cube-shaped body, spinning the take-up spool.

But the gadgets that I loved the most were the old radios that my grandmother crammed between overstuffed piles of books on shelves around her apartment, and which were either parts of an ingeniously randomized fail-safe radio reception system or a tribute to my late grandfather, the radio hobbyist.

To me, they were electronic trawlers of news, sports and music. Three of them were Bakelite Zeniths. The biggest of these was a massive “portable” K725 with a dial that took up the entire front and looked like a ship’s compass. Then there was a similar looking R723 table radio, with a fabric draping that looked like a stage curtain. There was also a Z515 alarm-clock-radio, which was missing knobs, so that you had to set the time with a pair of pliers. Finally, there was a Motorola 77XM22B, which was constructed of wood with fabric wrapped around its mid-section and which looked like something out of a 1948 ad in Harper's Bazaar.

I would click one of the radios on, listen to the electric hum, look through the venting holes, watch as a glow began to burn, and smell ozone when the vacuum tubes warmed and voices arrived through the speaker. Staring through the venting holes in the back was thrillingly salacious, even at my young age – like looking into someone’s bedroom window. Still, I couldn’t help but stare… and wonder what it would be like to crawl into the radio and walk around on the chassis – in a city of tubes, condensers, coils and ballast.

As I aged into polyester houndstooth bell-bottoms, wide-collared paisley shirts and Hush Puppies I dreamt of joining the AV squad--but alas--was never asked. On the social food-chain of elementary school I found myself to be somewhere above krill but somewhere below AV squad. I watched jealously as the boys in the club (or squad, whatever) pranced about all snooty-like with their pocket-protectors and ball-point-pen-marred low-rise PF Flyers over dingy-grey gym socks with unmatched color bands.

Still, I understood the reasoning behind my ostracization. You see, I wasn’t fast enough to pull the spooling lever when a Bolex 16mm projector skipped. I wasn’t quick enough on the beep for the frame advance on a Bell & Howell filmstrip projector. I wasn’t agile enough to maneuver the awkward overhead projector (possibly the most disappointing of all AV squad responsibilities, rivaled only by the severe disillusionment of the opaque projector, which allowed for the projection of textbooks – I mean really, what was the point).

And yet, I felt a stinging jealousy whenever I saw an AV squad member rolling an AC cart down the hall with a Kodak Carousel Ektagraphic slide projector, or a Bolex Multimatic Super 8mm Cartridge Projector, or a Sony black & white 1” reel to reel video tape player. I knew that it should have been my Ektagraphic, my Multimatic, my CV-2100ACE. It was the same visceral jab I took in my solar plexus upon seeing a girl I liked with a skate-boarder enfolded around her. And much the same way that I knew… I mean, I really, really knew… deep down inside of me… that if that girl just got to know me she would dump the skate-boarder for me, I also knew that under the same conditions that Sony CV-2100ACE reel-to-reel video player would dump the AV squad kid to be with me too.

As I aged into glow-in-the-dark iron-on rock-band Spenser’s Gifts black tee-shirts and Wrangler dungarees, the social exclusion shown me by my fellow gadget lovers only increased. I wasn’t asked to join the radio station and spin Minnie Riperton’s “Lovin’ You” on the school’s ROK B12H turntable. I wasn’t asked to join the photography club and shoot arty black and whites of the school lockers with a Yaschicamat D medium format TLR. I wasn’t asked to join the CB club and chant “breaker, breaker channel 15” into the mike of a Radio Shack base station Single Side Band Transceiver with Phase Lock Synthesizer.

And as I aged into WilliWear pleated thick wool pants, Ralph Lauren polo shirts and skinny ties, my love for gadgets remained strong even though I was out of school and in the real world, living in Los Angeles. I was working the floor coverings department of the J.W. Robinson’s in Santa Monica Place, on the downside of a short-lived, anemic and vaguely debilitating carpeting career. Still, I had recently made a large wall-to-wall sale that was being installed that morning and would result in my first decent commission in months. Then the phone rang with an ominous electronic chitah chitah chitah chitah.

“This is Mrs. Peterson, I ordered the Sea Breeze Monsanto carpeting, but they’re installing Periwinkle Dawn.”

“Ah… That’s not good. I’ll take care of it and call you right back.”

I pulled the carbon copy of the ticket from the file and saw in my handwriting the following words scribbled under color, “Periwinkle Dawn.” I knew instinctually that the only thing to do was to admit my mistake and accept the punishment like a man. I took a deep breath, lifted up my head, threw back my shoulders, walked down to the manager’s office with confidence and… well, it turned out that I couldn’t actually bring myself to tell the store manager what happened, so I quickly formulated a plan B and went with that.

I quit.

Two days later I drove into the lot of a mid-century minimalist white, black and red edifice at 7800 Beverly Boulevard while an abstract eye watched me from atop the building. The eye looked female, like it belonged to a woman on an upscale barstool who was determining my value. Somewhere in the recess of my mind the late Johnny Olson announced… “Live... from Television City in Hollywood…”

I got out of the car and stared up at Television City in Hollywood… well, in the Fairfax District actually… but pretty close to Hollywood… you… um… just have to go through West Hollywood up Santa Monica and you’re there… maybe about ten… fifteen minutes?

A friend’s sister worked at CBS and got me per-diem work, ostensibly, to tide me over, but in my mind, to launch my career in television. When I got to the guest services entrance there was a per-diem badge with my name on it. I hung it from a belt loop and walked in through the security door.

First thing that hit me was the heavy taste of the air… An overwhelming aroma filled every nook and cranny. I knew the scent… I knew it like the back of my grandmother’s radios. It was ozone. It was ozone and it was everywhere. I took a deep breath. I wasn’t just inside CBS… I was inside one of the old Zenith radios, standing atop the chassis, about to explore the city of vacuum tubes, condensers, coils and ballast.

Okay, so the analogy would work better if I had spent my early years looking into the back of my grandmother’s television set not radios, smelling that ozone – but I hadn’t, and frankly had I, you wouldn’t even be reading this story because I would have likely electrocuted myself at about five years old – so we just need to go with the forced parallel as it stands, all right?

My first assignment was to remove excessive staples from and then file hand-written 4x6 health-insurance information cards. Frightened and yet thrilled to be within the vaunted halls of Television City, I tried to be as efficient, quiet and unnoticeable as possible – sort of like the first time I got to second base with a girlfriend and having landed there, didn’t want to move my hand another iota in case she noticed and shooed it away. I sat motionless in my chair, concentrating on pulling staples, re-stapling and filing alphabetically in an index card filing cabinet.

Someone mentioned that I should have lunch in the commissary and maybe see the models from The Price is Right or Eric Braeden from The Young and the Restless. The word “commissary” ricocheted in my skull. I couldn’t believe that I, Chuck Freericks, was about to have lunch in a Hollywood commissary (well, Fairfax District commissary). It was as if the girlfriend I had my hand on had suddenly blurted out “that feels nice.”

I finished the first pile of index cards to be filed and asked for more.
“Um… you finished all those?” My boss of the last three hours asked.

“Yes,”

“I’m sorry to tell you this -- that’s all there was. You were so good; you worked yourself out of a job.”

She took my per-diem badge and thanked me for my hard work. I drove home without seeing the commissary, let alone “Barker’s Beauties” or Eric Braeden. I felt as if my hand had been slapped.

For the next few weeks, I sat in my apartment waiting for the phone to ring. The rest of December and most of January went by without a call. I thought about checking in with Robinson’s, but the idea of dealing with the Sea Breeze versus Periwinkle Dawn fiasco did not appeal to me. (As an aside, I had come to the conclusion that the customer actually did order Periwinkle Dawn and was trying to pull a scam of some sort, but it was too late for me to do anything about it.)

Finally, one morning, just as I began to sink into a truly historic level of pathetic malaise, self-revolution and self-pity, the phone rang. It was my boss of three hours.

“You have an unnatural filing talent the likes of which we have never seen before at CBS,” she told me. “We have a three month assignment to clean up our files if you would like it.”

My first day back I filed merrily, right up until lunch time when I was given directions to the commissary that included the words, “… then you pass by the studios…” As I passed by the studios, I saw the colossal black doors that led to Studio 31, Studio 33, Studio 41 and Studio 43. Each wore a 1950s-era “On-Air” warning light that screamed in red incandescence, “Stay Out.”

There was a whiff of wet paint that hung in the air. There was an electronic hum from the stage lights. And of course, there was the ozone. I continued timidly to the commissary, lest someone discover that I was there and throw me out – lest the eye sense where my hand was resting.

My fearful wanderings between the office and the commissary went on for weeks. I was astonished that I had been allowed into the building and I didn’t want to do anything that might risk my being allowed to stay. Then one day, I had to bring some boxes in from an executive’s car and in order to do so, was handed a key to a guard-less entrance. When I carried the last box in, I forgot about the key in my pocket and went home with it that night.

In the days that followed, I kept the key in my pocket, waiting for someone to ask for it… but no one ever did. The key gave me a confidence that I hadn’t had before. Even when just driving by Television City I would think, “I have a key. I can go in whenever I want. I have a key.” Eventually, when I was quite sure the key had become mine through common-law-marriage principles or squatter’s rights; I put it on my key ring, between my house and car keys.

I began to probe deeper and explore further, actually standing at the open doors to Studios 41 and 43 and seeing the cast of The Young and the Restless run through their lines, wandering into Studio 31 during a rehearsal for a variety special and sitting in the audience seats. It was amazing. These were real Hollywood studios (well, real Fairfax District studios), and I was among the elite with access.

Still the crown-jewel of Television City was Studio 33, which was also forbidden territory due to the need to keep the answers secret for each day’s taping of The Price is Right.

Then one day I noticed an unusual quiet. The Price is Right was on hiatus.

I approached the door for Studio 33 slowly; my heart racing, sweat dripping onto my shirt.

I opened the door, taking slow steps in… extremely slow steps -- it must have taken me twenty minutes to walk ten feet. But, even at that pace, I reached the middle of the stage, looked out at the audience seats, looked out at the cameras, looked out at the control room and took a deep breath like my first time in Notre Dame. The smell of ozone was intoxicating.

I had gone far beyond second base and hadn’t been slapped.

I stood where Carol Burnett sang, “I’m so glad we’ve had this time together… just to have a laugh and sing a song…” I stood where Gene Rayburn held his long-stick mike and quizzed, “Johnnie always put butter on his blank.” I stood where George Burns said “say good night, Gracie,” and Gracie Allen responded, “good night, Gracie” I stood where Tony Orlando and Dawn sang “Tie a yellow ribbon ‘round the old oak tree” and Red Skelton played the seagulls Gertrude and Heathcliff by crossing his eyes and shoving his thumbs into his armpits for wings.

Surrounding me were four Hitachi 3 tube, lead-oxide, studio, color TV, SK-110 cameras perched atop massive, three-wheeled EPO pedestals. I sensed that if they got to know me they would want to be mine. I eased myself off the stage and approached the control room. My every move was subtle, as if actually walking on a vacuum tube radio chassis and hoping not to touch any hot connections that would fry me.

Each step I took was into a footprint left by Jack Benny, Groucho Marx, Judy Garland, Art Linkletter, or my grandmother’s favorites, Tom and Dick Smothers.

I reached the control room with its huge panes of glass and snuck inside – it was larger than my apartment. The Grass Valley Group model 300 video production switcher with Mark-II digital video effects was a desk panel full of buttons and levers that would have flummoxed Sulu on Star Trek. The audio board was even more complicated. The front wall held an array of thirty video monitors. There were racks of MacKenzie audio cartridges. There were stacks of ¾ inch U-matic video cartridges. The U-matic tapes were nearly three times the size of a VHS tape and the U-matic decks made a long series of mechanical clicks, clunks, adjustments, re-adjustments and backward somersaults before doing anything else, no matter if you the button that you pushed was play, fast forward, rewind or eject.

I stood there respectfully, taking it all in, and wondering why I didn’t feel as amazed as I thought I should feel.

There were so many buttons, so many levers, so many dials, so many sliders, that I felt my stomach tighten. I found myself thinking of the Jerry’s Deli menu.

Jerry’s Famous Deli is a Los Angeles institution with an 18-page menu printed in small type and crammed chock-full of choices, and choices within the choices, and choices within the choices within the choices (pastrami whole, pastrami half, pastrami lean whole, pastrami lean half, pastramied turkey – rye, pumpernickel, white, sourdough, Kaiser, French roll – what kind of mustard, hon). At some point in time, usually about when reading up on the grilled mushroom and mozzarella Epicure Panini, the whole thing becomes so overwhelming that I realize I’m not hungry anymore. I go in starving. I am overcome by the menu. I lose my appetite. I just want to go home.

That’s what Studio 33’s switcher and audio board and Hitachi SK-110 cameras were to me – the electronic equivalent of the excessive choices available among the sky highs, wraps and Reubens on Jerry’s menu. Not only did I not know how any of it worked, but I didn’t want to know how either. I just didn’t care.

I had spent twenty years scamming, digging and crawling my way into Studio 33, into this AV Squad Valhalla, only to discover that during the same time I had grown up into a Luddite. My heart wasn’t in the gadgets; it was in the words – the words that would be said on this stage and others.

I walked out of Studio 33 and back towards the administrative offices of CBS. There was ozone in the air everywhere I went. I thought to myself, you know, one of these days, they really need to air this old building out.

Jew Boy – 2001

Mary Walker and I probably had the two most goyisha names at New Line Cinema – and yet, we were both M.O.T.

Mary sent me to McCormick Place in Chicago for the 2001 Book Expo. I wound up collecting so many galleys and publishers’ catalogs that I had to make nearly hourly trips over to the Business Center, FedEx-ing box after box after box of pounds and pounds of paper back to my office in Los Angeles.

Like most Book Expo treasure hunts (and the ABA before that), all that paper finally resulted in just a couple of books that I actually pursued for possible television projects. One of them was a coming-of-age memoir by Alan Kaufman, entitled Jew Boy.

When I got back to LA, Mary e-mailed me for a status update on projects that I was tracking. As I’d been playing phone tag with Alan’s agent, I wrote back to Mary – “Left word for the Jew Boy agent.”

I clicked send and then immediately went to my sent folder to re-read what I had just e-mailed. I quickly composed a follow up – “How many time in life do you get to say that and not have it be offensive?”

Mary and I both loved the project and wanted to make a go of it, but in the end, I wasn’t able to attach the kind of feature talent I needed to sell the book at the only two outlets that might have considered it in those days, HBO and Showtime. I had to tell the Jew Boy agent it was a no go.

Too bad – I can still imagine the Variety and Hollywood Reporter headlines –“Jew Boy Telepic in Works,” “Bidding War Erupts Over Jew Boy,” “Toby Maguire is the Jew Boy,” “Halle Berry On-Board to be Jew Boy Love Interest,” “Ang Lee Inks to Helm Jew Boy,“ “Jew Boy Lensing in Gotham, “ “Jew Boy Preems to Boffo Numbers,” and “Jew Boy Exec Inks Longterm Pact with New Line.”

I'm Forever Your Girl - 2000

My earliest clear memory of Paula Abdul is watching her dance in the black & white video of “Forever Your Girl.” She was a toy-sized goddess from Van Nuys wrapped in an oversized leather jacket; henna, mousse and hoop earrings. But unlike the other stars on MTV, Paula was real. Had she missed that Laker Girl tryout, or messed up on Janet Jackson’s choreography, she could have just as easily been working a desk at William Morris like I was; living her life to get invited to parties put together by other agents’ assistants where everyone told each other long stories in exacerbated tones about how hard their jobs were, while actually talking about their bosses’ jobs and pretending that they ever did more than answer the phone. We were a pack of 25-year-olds, each making $365 a week, while being annoyed that Rob Lowe wouldn’t stop calling. As if any of us had ever really said anything more to Rob Lowe other than, “I’ll try him in the car for you, Mr. Lowe.” But in Paula’s case, it wasn’t all made up. We really were almost connected. My roommate, Peter Rothstein, had gone on a blind date with Paula. She was friends with his sister. So in a sense, I knew Paula… we were buddies… sort of… through close association. We traveled in the same circles, our births were months apart. She was fully Jewish, I was sort of Jewish, and really liked Jewish girls, especially ones that could dance. The only difference between us was that she had already made it, and I was still on an agency desk. Hell, I’d even hung out with her once… at Alzado’s in West Hollywood, when I was out with a group of fellow “Did-you-get-a-desk-yet” wannabes. Paula walked off La Cienaga, and through the door right past us. She had an entourage of leather clad friends surrounding her like a strolling rugby scrum. And at the moment that she was just by me, she turned back, looked directly into my eyes, and grinned. She looked me up and down, at my oversized Italian leather jacket, Lambada-ish chinos, and Hawaiian shirt. I smiled back and nodded confidently sharing the moment with her, but she turned away… and in the end, I wasn’t actually sure if she’d ever really been looking at me, or had she been looking at Roxanna Zal, the star of Something About Amelia, who was standing just behind me. The next day, when relating what happened to other agents’ assistants and mailroom hopefuls, I said “Yeah, last night I went to Alzado’s. Paula was there.” I said this in a strong, “I really don’t care that much” tone, as if I might have been saying that my brother was there. When you worked on an agency desk one of the first things you learned was to refer to stars on a first name basis as if they were part of your clique and seeing them was really no big deal whatsoever. But then suddenly ten years flew by and everything changed. Lyle Alzado died, and with him Alzado’s closed. Instead of working a desk at William Morris, I was a Vice President at New Line, where I was admired and respected by the folks upstairs (which at New Line was actually downstairs on the 2nd Floor). Paula essentially vanished after no one bought her third album. Occasionally, I might catch a glimpse of her starring in a TV movie or making a guest appearance on Spin City. Meanwhile, I was living large in a spacious office with two leather chairs, a leather couch, a glass coffee table, and a view of the Pacific Design Center. My job was watching television; I watched dailies, directors’ cuts and final cuts. I watched pilots that my assistant had managed to trade for in the secret society of pilot-tape-traders that would one day run Hollywood themselves. I watched English television shows, for which I was so important that I had a separate English VCR that could play the PAL format. My life was a dream for a kid whose mother had once screamed at him, “What are you going to do with your life? You can’t watch TV for a living.” I also took pitches and general meetings. People appeared at my office with a look of panic in their eyes, like starving omega wolves waiting for the alpha wolf to let them have a taste of gristle. After all, getting a meeting with a New Line Vice President was a coup, a chance of a lifetime. So much so, that writing these words right now, I’m thinking what I wouldn’t do to get a meeting with a New Line Vice President… and I used to be one. Many of these meetings were set up by agents and managers as “favors,” and involved spending a half-an-hour here and fifteen minutes there with the detritus of Hollywood; washed up writers, directors and actors with leather cases full of ideas for TV shows. Sometimes I’d get a truly desperate one, sitting on my leather couch, squeaking the cushions and squeaking his leather bag, forcing himself to smile, holding his legs tightly together and responding to my, “No one’s buying woman-in-jeopardy stories right now…” by yelping out, “Oh, I’ve got a terrific woman-in-jeopardy story that Jaclyn Smith is attached to.” “I love her cologne,” I’d sputter back and then just smile, trying to look like a therapist does when your hour is over. So when Paula Abdul’s name appeared in my Outlook one day, it was both exciting and troublesome. I realized this would be my chance to tell her all about my obsession with her and how I’d come so close to meeting her back when she was famous. I could ask her if she had really looked at me that night at Alazado’s. Then, I thought better of all that. Five minutes before Paula was supposed to arrive, I got up to use the bathroom, as I always did five minutes before any meeting was about to arrive. This was probably a vestige of my parents making me go pee before we got into the car. As I walked towards the men’s room, the elevator opened, and Paula Abdul stepped out, all by herself. She aged well. She looked almost exactly the same, only thinner and more cultured. Now, I had a standing rule that I didn’t talk to my meetings if I passed them on the way to the men’s room, and I decided I should keep to this. I walked past her and did my business. When I came out of the men’s room, I saw Paula, way down at the other end of the hallway, way beyond my office, reading the little signs on each office doorway. She had walked right past the first door after the elevator, my door. Now I was in a quandary. If I yelled out to her, “Paula, it’s down here,” I would lose my New Line Vice President superiority, as it would look like I was some silly obsessed fan searching for her. Or worse, if she had actually noticed me the way I noticed her when she got off the elevator, she would wonder why I hadn’t said anything then, before I let her walk all the way down the hall like an idiot. I did what anyone in my situation would do. I went back into my office suite and waited for her to find it. Two more minutes passed. I went back out into the hallway, and found that Paula had worked her way back towards the elevator, reading all the signs for the offices on the opposite side. “Paula?” I called out, as if not only seeing her for the first time, but also not 100% sure who she was. She looked up; the way stars look up when you call their names, expecting to see a fan asking for an autograph. “I’m Charles Freericks,” I said. She looked at me blank. “Um, your manager Mitch set up a meeting for you to see me?” She nodded, that sounds right, and followed me in. “Mitch will be here in a minute,” she told me. “Great, I responded. “My colleagues Ernie and Roberta will be sitting in too.” When everyone arrived, we began with the requisite pre-pitch chit-chat, all but Paula smiling falsely as we discussed my three-year-old’s ability to count to twelve, and Roberta’s son’s trip to Tokyo, and Mitch’s new offices that was just around the corner from a great dim-sum place. I was quite proud of myself that I didn’t mention once that I’d ever heard of Paula before today, utilizing one the standard ways to disarm a star. Then, again in standard executive behavior, I finally threw her a bone by saying I was honored to meet her, and I enjoyed her music. Now in my mind, I was desperate to buy Paula’s project and work with her on it and have it become a success. I wondered, if I would leave my wife if Paula asked me to. No, no, I was quite sure I wouldn’t… but I would certainly be flattered. It could be the start of wonderful friendship… Thirty years later we’d be having dinner at her house when I’d say, “Oh, do you remember the day you asked me to leave my wife?” “I do, I do… you were so flustered and precious…,” Paula would respond. Then things went bad; really bad. Paula began to talk as if we were all intimately familiar with her video for “Opposites Attract.” She talked about how it was based on Gene Kelly in Anchor’s Aweigh, and how it had been her most popular video. When she mentioned MC Skat Kat, Ernie and Roberta both nodded, indicating that they not only knew the video, but also knew, who, or what, MC Skat Kat was. I was screwed. I was the only person in the room who didn’t know what Paula was talking about. I couldn’t even think what the song sounded like. My mind did what it always does when I’m in trouble. It went somewhere else. I wondered if the dry cleaner would still be open when I drove home. Would it be better to take Pico or the freeway? I thought I might get a BMW for my next car. I liked the five series. Damn, I was a blank. The conversation had received a clear for takeoff and I was still standing at the gate. Mitch, Ernie, Roberta and Paula discussed the intricacies of the “Opposites Attract” video, MC Skat Kat, and how it would all make for a wonderful children’s series, Mr. Rogers meets Boyz In The Hood. Forced to say something so I didn’t look like a complete idiot, I did the playbook move for when you have nothing intelligent to say, I parroted the person’s pitch back to them, “It was inspired by Anchors Aweigh,” I said, as if pulling a kernel of knowledge out of the ether. Paula nodded… and wasn’t it amazing how everyone knows the great scene with Gene Kelly, Tom & Jerry? I didn’t know that scene. I didn’t know what anyone was talking about. I tried another standard executive question from the TV executive playbook. “What do you see happening in episode 22?” This question always floored whoever was pitching and gave me back the power. Paula looked directly at me and said, “MC Skat Kat and Paula break up, and we leave it hanging if they’ll get back together until the next year.” Just as I was about to sink into complete idiot-hood, Paula turned to me and handed me a video tape. It was NTSC, so I put it in my American VCR. Had it been a PAL I could have turned the conversation to why I had two VCRs, but it was no help here. Thank God, however, it was the video for “Opposites Attract.” It began to play and I saw Paula from ten years earlier, standing on a cartoon staircase, as the music began. I immediately recognized it and I immediately knew why it had slipped my mind. I hated that song and I hated the video even more. MC Skat Kat was Paula’s dance and singing partner in the video. He was a cartoon cat, drawn to look like a sinewy street thug hanging out in a junkyard. I hate sinewy. I hate the word and I generally don’t like sinewy people. They’re the ones who even when they’re five five, can still beat the crap out of you. Beyond that, I don’t like cartoons, I don’t like junkyards, and I don’t like rap when it’s bleached and dyed for white people. MC Skat Cat was a sinewy cartoon rapper, doing Caucasian-friendly rapping that my mom could dance to. Everyone in the room smiled at Paula to let her know how great the video was. Paula’s idea was to do a show that took place in the world of the video. It would be a live version of her living in the cartoon world. She opened her incredibly expensive leather portfolio and pulled out painstakingly executed ink drawings of each of the other characters, including MC Skat Cat and his sinewy arms. As an aside, MC Skat Cat wore a wife-beater, which I thought would be nice in a children’s show. As Paula pulled each new drawing out, she cradled it, and then watched nervously as it was passed around, before she protectively took possession of it again and put it back in the portfolio. I glanced over at the television, where the video stood paused… and I realized what bothered me the most about it. It was Paula, all by herself, the only human, in this cartoon world of sinewy junkyard cats. This was a hardened and lonely Paula who liked to make out with a cartoon character. This was not the girl who sang to me… This was a girl I didn’t want any part of. And because of that, I became scared of the real Paula Abdul sitting on my leather chair too. So, I did what any television executive would do in the situation. I said, “I love it. It’s fantastic. I can totally see it. Thank you so much for bringing it to me. I’m going to take it upstairs (which was actually downstairs) as soon as you guys leave.” I felt like a total shit. All throughout this, from when I first saw her in the hall, until she got up and shook my hand goodbye and I asked her if she needed validation, Paula Abdul never once smiled a single smile. I guess I’d already received the only Paula Abdul smile I would get in my life ten years earlier… that, or I’d witnessed Roxanna Zal’s only Paula Abdul smile. I’ll never know. Still, I didn’t really lie to Paula, no matter what you may think. I did take her project upstairs (which at New Line was actually downstairs), but I didn’t get any response. No one cared about Paula Abdul at the time. A few weeks later, I heard from her manager that he’d fired her. No one wanted to buy the MC Skat Kat idea, and he needed to give more time to his other clients, like Don Knotts. And in that moment, I felt horrible… I felt like scum… having somehow helped push Paula down a hill she was already rolling down. My career was soaring. I’d be a Senior VP some day soon and Paula would be forgotten forever. About a year later, a new reality show came on the air. It was called American Idol. For the next few years, my bosses at New Line kept asking me why we didn’t have a show like American Idol. One day in a crowded elevator, one of the top guys actually screamed at me, “Find me an American Idol.” Those aren’t so easy to find, and I never did actually locate one. I never made Senior VP either. After six years, I was “let go” when my contract came up. No matter how hard I tried, I could not find another television job anywhere, because all of my successes were in TV movies and no one was making them anymore. Careers are funny things. In a way, Paula and I were on a seesaw ride, with one of us soaring to the clouds, while the other was hitting the macadam. And like all seesaw rides, this one leaves it up to the person on the bottom to push off to keep things going. The person on the top was helpless. I may push off soon. I just need a project that will let me push off again… that I can sell… and make myself big. What do you guys think of a series based on MC Skat Kat?

A Tale of Two Bobs – 1996-2004

I was hired to be the Director of Movies and Miniseries at NBC Productions in February of 1996. Two-and-a-half years later, I was hired to be the Vice President of Development and Production at New Line Television. Both NBC and New Line were led by a brilliant CEO named Bob. At NBC, Bob was Wright. At New Line, Bob was Shaye. I learned everything I needed to know about both of them within a minute of my first meeting with each. I met Bob Wright at the Arizona Biltmore in Scottsdale during the Affiliates – the annual convention of general managers (GMs) of network television stations. It was during a welcome barbeque on the lawn. My boss, who had flown in the same day that I had, warned me, “You have to schmooze. You’re being watched and if they don’t see you schmoozing it will bad. “I don’t know anything about local stations. What do I talk to them about?” I wondered aloud. My boss looked at me blankly and then shrugged his shoulders. Finally, he said, “Don’t think about it, just talk. You know how to schmooze. You wouldn’t have gotten this job if you didn’t have the gift of gab.” Of course that was tantamount to being told not to think about breathing. The more I tried not to think about breathing, the more I wondered how I was able to do it, until suddenly; I didn’t know how to breathe anymore and was suffocating. And now, the more I thought about not thinking about what to say, the blanker my mind went on what to say. Half an hour later, the lawn was packed, filled with affiliate general managers in brand-new Aloha shirts, dry-cleaned jeans, and Tommy Hilfiger Cologne, each one tailed by a wife with a “Rachel” haircut, sipping an appletini and nibbling on a teriyaki-chicken skewer. My boss and I stood together in a loose huddle with two other NBC execs, schmoozing with anyone who passed close enough for us to speak with. Two GMs were within earshot when I heard one said to the other, “Last year, I was already sold out of prime-time stock, but this year the buyers aren’t there.” The other one responded “Balking at Friends at eight, right? I’ve got the same issue.” “Exactly – it’s killing me not having that show in an acceptable time slot. Seinfeld, Friends and Frasier are the Honda and Volvo demographic and I can’t afford to lose a one of them.” During this last comment, he spotted a tray of hors d’oeuvres moving towards him and asked the server, “What do you have there?” “Endive boats.” “Say that again.” “Confetti of goat-cheese gorgonzola crumbles and crushed Jalisco pecans, drizzled with French shallot-reduction vinaigrette on a Belgian-endive boat.” “Not for me, thanks… but if you see the girl with the Buffalo wings, tell her where we are, okay?” By this time, he was close enough to talk to without moving in any way, so I introduced myself. When I said I was the Director of Movies and Miniseries for NBC Productions, he told me to move Friends to nine. I explained that I actually had nothing to do with series, but worked in longform. “What’s that?” “Television movies and miniseries” I responded, repeating myself. “Movies-of-the-Week?” he hissed. You people need to stop making those inane pieces of tripe. Sponsors don’t want ’em. Last one –with the woman who met the guy who turned out to be a psycho-murderer, you know, with the girl from Beverly Hills 90210 in it… cost me a butt-load of make-goods.” Having suggested that I implement a change at the network that would eliminate my job; he nodded, satisfied, and said, “Now, let me tell you about my idea for an NBC show – you’re not going to believe no one has done this yet.” He then pitched me Father Knows Best. In the middle of his tale, I looked back into the maelstrom of appletinis and Belgian endive boats and saw a radiant middle-aged man with a well-tanned wife gliding through the crowd like royalty. As they got closer, the pitching GM told me that people didn’t like conflict in their drama – they liked dads who coach their sons’ Little League teams and kids who get in trouble for accidentally leaving the freezer open when getting a steak for their mom and stories that don’t include all this language. He made air quotes as he said “all this language.” “You guys have to clean up the language, by the way. I mean, what’s next? You going to start saying ‘fuck’ on the air?’ It was right about then that the couple reached us. The man shook the pitching GM’s hand while his wife took mine. “I’m Susie Wright,” she said. I had no idea who Susie Wright was. But her poise, linen pant suit, Rolex Ladies Oyster watch, and heavily-diamonded tennis bracelet, were impressive. She’d overheard a snippet of my conversation with the GM and so we talked about the importance of having family friendly television. Being the father of a six-month-old, I told her that I had a baby boy, and we chatted for a moment more about how wonderful it was to have a little one in the house. She smiled and stared intently at me as I spoke. “Wonderful to meet you,” she said to me before moving on to the next person and saying to them “I’m Susie Wright.” Then her husband turned to me and as he grabbed my hand, I suddenly realized who he was. He was Susie Wright’s husband. He was Bob Wright, the Chief Executive Officer of NBC. He was Jack Welch’s golden-boy. Bob Wright had the cleanest, most manicured, most perfect male hand that I had ever held in my life. And as I grasped it, he led us in a handshake like no other handshake I had ever experienced. I felt as I was being guided by an expert ballroom dancer through a flawless foxtrot of our right paws. Bob also had perfect skin, perfect teeth, and perfectly sparkling eyes. “I’m Bob Wright,” he said. It was love at first sight–I fell in love with a middle-aged bald man—but, to my credit, this was no ordinary middle-aged bald man. Bob Wright was the previously unheard of son of Jack Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe. Holding his hand and looking into his eyes, I felt a rush of air coming up through the grass, into the soles of my feet, through my legs, into my stomach, my chest, and my arms, only to swirl in my cranium – as it rinsed and refreshed my brain. He asked what I did. “I’m the Director of Movies and Miniseries for NBC Productions.” “Really?” he responded. “I need to talk to you about something.” He took my arm and turned the both of us to the side to keep our conversation private. I felt safe and secure with my elbow in his perfect hand. But, still, I wondered if he was about to pitch me an idea for a show. “You’re my film expert.” I thought of William Goldman’s famous quote that “no one knows anything,” and I took a deep breath figuring that made me as much of an expert as anyone. “If you were me and you had the chance, would you buy Castle Rock or New Line?” “I’d go for Castle Rock,” I responded. “They’re making upscale movies that the Honda and Volvo demographic go to. They’re a perfect fit with Seinfeld, Friends and Frasier. New Line’s in the horror and House Party business. They don’t really fit with the NBC brand. “How so?” “They’re not Must-See,” I said, referring to the NBC marketing slogan of the time, “Must-See TV.” Bob nodded in agreement. As an aside, as I write these words some 15-years later, Castle Rock hasn’t had a single successful film since; while New Line went on to do the Lord of the Rings trilogy. But back to that moment, Bob Wright listened in a way that made it seem like every word that I spoke was manna from Heaven. We talked for what felt like half-an-hour, although it couldn’t have been more than a couple minutes. Tingles exploded like fireworks on the nape of my neck. These were the tingles that came with great moments of surprise – when great people somehow entered my insular world. I’d felt them three times before, once when I was four and my favorite babysitter went through my toys with me, once when my fourth-grade teacher came over to our house to cook Armenian food with my mom, and once in grad school when this jaw-droppingly beautiful girl at a party looked at me across the floor, smiled, walked over and started to flirt with me. Every answer that I gave Bob would consider, nod at, and purse his lips as if to make sure he would remember. I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite as important as I did when I told Bob Wright to buy Castle Rock. Then he gave me a final JFK-and-Marylyn-Monroe smile, said that we should finish this conversation back in Burbank, shook my hand brilliantly and went back to working the crowd. I watched as his wife and he walked from GM to GM across the lawn. They were like two halogen beams, illuminating the recesses of the party and enlightening the souls of every person they spoke to. I took a gulp of my Stoli and tonic and thought, I have been touched by God. As it turned out, over the next couple of years, I barely ever said much more than “hello” to Bob again. We would pass in the hall and nod to each other, but I don’t think he had a clue who I was. There were a couple of large meetings in which I made suggestions or supplied information to him and he nodded a curt “thanks” in response. The last thing he ever said to me came in company-wide e-mail that read in part “some of you will be transitioning away from NBC today in order to help make the company more successful.” I believe that was the same week that NBC had swept 18 of the top 20 spots in the ratings and GE, its parent company, had announced record profits and growth. I was escorted out of the building by guards who went through my boxes to make sure I wasn’t stealing any NBC property. I had to stop on the drive home a couple of times when my eyes flooded up making it hard to see the road. One month later, I was hired as the Vice President of Development and Production at New Line Television, a part of New Line Cinema. I met their CEO, Bob Shaye at a New Line beach party. I was standing in the sand, talking to some feature execs, when an unshaven, unkempt sixty-year-old man with muddy eyes, curls of gray hair and mutton-chop side burns, walked into my personal space while moving his tongue, jaw and lips as if he was trying to get the last bit of an Oreo cookie off of his teeth. He seemed angry, like he was ready to yell at me for something. He sucked a pint or so of air through his mouth, made a barely perceptual nod, and then growled – “Let’s do shots.” There was no smile. There was no handshake. There was frankly no interest in who I was or why I was there. He walked off without even looking back to see if I had followed. He got to the bar, ordered two shots, handed one back to the random person closest to him, maybe thinking it was me, and picked up the other one for himself. Then the two of them threw the shots back, slammed the glasses on the bar and held up a finger to tell the bartender, “again.” I thought to myself, now this is my kind of CEO. What I had admired about Bob Wright where his Superman qualities. Bob Shaye on the other hand had almost as much power at his fingertips but was strikingly flawed and human. I mean, here was a man worth close to a billion dollars who looked like the guy who checks your car in at the Sears Automotive. This was a man who owned a Gulfstream and yet drove a 1974 Oldsmobile. This was a man who had green lit the unprecedented hit of Lord of the Rings in nearly the same breath that he had thought “a middle-aged sex comedy would be a great idea”—green lighting the abysmal Town & Country, a movie so unsound in concept that it was named after a Chrysler minivan. I forced myself out of my stupor and stumbled towards the bar, where Bob was now surrounded by a compliment of New Line execs, all of them throwing back shots. Bob was telling one of his Borscht-Belt jokes between each slug. “…seventy-year-old guy hires a gorgeous top-shelf hooker and sends her to his dad’s house for the old man’s ninetieth… the father opens the door and sees this stunning sexy girl… he looks up at her and she says ‘hello sir, your son sent me here to give you super sex...’ the old man thinks about it for a minute and then says ‘I’ll take the soup.’” Bob Shaye would keep me around for over six years, while Bob Wright had dropped me before I’d finished three. You didn’t have to work a Bob Shaye party. Bob Shaye threw parties for people to have fun. He would put on his sour expression (which I really think made him happy), slog through the crowd, ignoring most of the people that he passed, until he saw someone he felt like talking to, be it the president of the company or the receptionist. Then, he would stop to have a drink and tell a joke. If that person was me and I said to him, it’s a nice sunny day, he’d talk about melanoma. If I thanked him for the party, he’d sneer and shake his head and say the party sucked. If I mentioned how well one of my projects was going, he’d ask a probing question regarding some potentially catastrophic aspect that I hadn’t yet considered, knee-capping me in front of anyone within earshot. Actually, I think of everything, knee-capping his employees brought Bob Shaye the most joy. In large meetings, out of nowhere, he would suddenly turn to me and ask a detailed question about a topic that had died and gone away six months before, and which I couldn’t possibly give a coherent answer on at that moment. Then, as I stumbled through my best attempts at double-talking my way through, he’d cut me off and growl, “Be ready to explain this to me in our next meeting.” So, I’d come prepared the next meeting, only to have the topic never arise again and Bob cut the meeting short before I got to talk. There was something so real about Bob Shaye that even when he was strafing my knees, I just wanted him to like me. I couldn’t help but want to be his friend. It wasn’t about the power he held. It wasn’t about the Midas touch he had suddenly found again with Lord of the Rings. It was partially that he knew how to complain in a way that made every word out of his mouth pure entertainment. It was partially that when he did speak, he had an extremely rare facet to him that I have almost never witnessed before or since. To put it simply, when Bob Shaye told you something, he was almost always right about whatever it was he was talking about. And I don’t just mean that he had his facts straight; I mean he would also have an astonishing insight to go along with why it was so - some piece of information that had never occurred to me but was spot-on the reason why things were the way that they were in the world. Boling it down even more, Bob Shaye was almost never wrong (Chrysler minivan movie or not). I think I wanted to be Bob’s friend because I knew that when I listened to him, I was being turned into a more intelligent person through osmosis. One of the jokes that Bob told that sticks with me to this day, because it summed him up was this – “So, this woman’s walking on the beach with her two-year-old grandson, when a wave picks the little bugger up and sweeps him out to sea… the woman looks up to the skies and says ‘God, if you just give me back my grandson, I’ll never ask anything of you again, please God, he’s my only reason for living…’ suddenly another wave deposits the grandson completely unhurt right next to her… she looks back up to the skies and says ‘He had a hat.’” Bob Wright and Bob Shaye would both eventually “retire” from their positions in 2008. As I write this, NBC is no longer the dominant number-one network that it had been. In fact, it is the fourth-ranked network in America. New Line is no longer the 400-strong studio pulling in over a billion a year that it once was. It is barely a shell of its former self with maybe a dozen or so employees. From what I knew of the two of Bobs, given their druthers, they would never have left NBC or New Line. Interesting world that we live in, where men like the two Bobs can be retired, where we throw away knowledge and accomplishment in exchange for hipness and ambition. I wonder what would have happened had someone tried to “retire” General Sarnoff or Bill Paley. Maybe I don’t have to wonder. I can see it, because someone retired the two Bobs.

The Cover Girl Murders – 1993

The early to mid-1990s for me were a period of rapid career growth, horrific career stumbles, and much personal introspection. It was a time of figuring out just who it was that I was in order to try and distinguish myself from the rest of the fresh-faced-young Hollywood execs all around me. Without a roadmap or internal compass, I went on to make some pretty questionable choices, going down some dead-end paths that in retrospect were a bit more arrogant, irritable, and Mercurial than I should have chosen. This time of supercilious self-importance is still known to the world as Freericks’ Douche Period. Whether I was dealing with an agent, a writer, or a boss, I was, to use the technical term, a big douche bag. Had you met me during this unfortunate time you would have felt an overriding desire to smack the overconfidence off of my face like Michael Douglas smacked the gang bangers in Falling Down. The pinnacle of my douche-dum came about the time I was shooting The Cover Girl Murders in Mexico. Production was on a remote beach where wild horses ran through the brush like squirrels… well, huge, frightening squirrels. I was walking on the beach near our set with my boss, who was dressed in a Clorox-white tee-shirt and baggy black shorts. He turned to me and said like a travel-show host, “Come join me, will you, for a little bikini watching.” He punctuated his words with a tight laugh. He had a cup of coffee in one hand and a camera in the other. On the hill above us, two policemen, one with a Luger pistol and one with a Fusil Automatique Léger assault rifle, stood by their beater VW Beetle squad car. One of the officers perched a ratty jack-booted foot on the running board while the other snagged a hard-boiled egg from craft services. At the shoreline below us, a photographer shot the bikini-clad Bobbie Phillips in one sexy pose after another. “Nothing like a little coffee and bikinis,” my boss went on, going nasal on the vowels and changing pitch from word to word due to his Beverly Hills High accent. He led me under the Panama-rubber trees to where crystal water shattered into foam. Bobbie Phillips’ leggy legs wobbled while she searched for a safe landing on the sharp rocks. Her thick, long, blond hair, bangs brushed forward, created a Lady Godiva meets the oldest daughter on Full House effect that I could not stop staring at. “On location for a fashion shoot… the Minolta Freedom Zoom 110… if you know what I mean,” my boss said, holding up his camera. I actually didn’t know what he meant. “Zoom” sounded like a double-entendre, but he stressed the 110 part, which just meant… yeah, I had nothing. Still, I was on the clock and his direct report, so I laughed. Bobbie lay on the packed sand as the waves splashed over her calves. Everything about Bobbie was perfect, including the gravelly tenor of her voice. I thought about taking her home and seeing if my fiancée would let me keep her. “This is all I need… gorgeous woman, beach, rock, and water,” my boss said, tilting the bounce board that he had volunteered to hold, directing sunlight onto Bobbie, and making her glow. It was as if we were shooting a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, not just faking it for a USA Network cable movie. And in that moment, with the golden sun reflecting off of Bobbi, the sound of SLR mirror slapping up and down like a Duran Duran song, and the gulls floating above us, the world was perfect. What made it so utterly perfect wasn’t the pristine beach, the gorgeous ingénue, or the stunning weather. What made it so utterly perfect was that I was being paid to be there. Standing on this beach, looking at this beautiful actress in a bikini was my freaking job. A zephyr from Banderas Bay tickled the Avon Skin So Soft on my arms and I sat back and wondered, yet once more, why my boss was the VP when I was only a Director. I had studied dramatic structure at SC, and was the author of twenty-minute play on the life of Alexander Hamilton that had been noted by my professor as the best piece in the Spring of 1986’s Twenty Minute Play Festival. It just wasn’t fair. Man was I a douche. Truth is that the Director position wasn’t even supposed to have been mine. Had things gone according to plan, instead of a morning of coffee and bikinis, I should have been on my couch at home watching CNN loop. What am I talking about? A few weeks after I started at Wilshire Court, my boss mentioned that I had been hired because of my brilliant cover letter. Said cover letter talked about growing up watching the thrillers of Hitchcock, Frankenheimer, and De Palma in the basement den of a suburban home with my high school girlfriend. It went on to describe snuggling under a hand-knit blanket, sipping sangria from a deerskin bag, and eating Jiffy Pop while the movies thrilled. My boss thought the last sentence showed an attention to detail that demonstrated a superior intelligence. Unfortunately, I didn’t write that cover letter. The one that I wrote said that I was highly-motivated team player excited about a future in basic cable television movie development, and had worked on My Boyfriend’s Back starring Sandy Duncan, providing me valuable on-set experience. But someone had mixed up who wrote which letter. Soon after, they narrowed the selection down to two people; me and the guy who actually wrote the letter. As we were seen as fairly comparable choices, the deciding factor became the letter, but because they thought I wrote it, they gave me the job. My career was on a trajectory – the trajectory of a Roomba, bouncing around the floor randomly. And I was a giraffe trying to ride it. Shortly after I learned about the letter, the head of Wilshire Court took me aside and told me that I was his script-note bulldog. Both insanely overconfident and pathetical self-doubting, I wanted to please, and thought the path to success was to become a notes meeting douche. This should be easy, because everyone who worked in television, I thought, must be utterly incompetent or they would be doing features (of course they weren’t, but I was a douche). That feeling turned into anger that someone of my clear and obvious talent had been relegated to television, and one day without warning, instead of just being obstinate and unwilling to compromise, I wigged out. Our director wanted to turn a script about a robot trying to kill a woman into Beauty and the Beast. I would hear none of it, and kept telling him that wasn’t the story we hired him to make. When he asked in a pleading voice, “can I just take five minutes to explain my vision,” I said, “not this late in the game, no.” He tried to explain anyway. With my boss and boss’ boss watching, I channeled my inner Scott Rudin and Joel Silver, yelling, pounding the couch, and shaking my head in disgust. I threw out invectives, expletives, and pure disdain. When I was through, the director looked like the dog in a Skinner box. After the meeting was over, I was worried that I’d gone too far, but no one said anything. Not only that, but the director agreed to shoot the movie we wanted because I yelled. This was my new modus operandi. Soon I was going postal as often as a middle-aged man goes to the men’s room; belittling a writer, over whether a character would say “what are you up to, Alan” or “watcha doin’, Al,” blaring at a director, who said “piano-piano” to me (which I thought meant “the world’s smallest violin is playing for you,” but actually meant “go through life softly and easily ”), spitting bullets at a wet-behind-the-ears agent for not returning my phone call on the same day I called. As an aside, there’s nothing much dumber than making an enemy out of an agent who might one day go on to become a partner at UTA, let me rephrase that, who did go on to become a partner at UTA. In the middle of my douche phase, I was made responsible for a roster of projects that included Who’s Killing the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Models. When the title didn’t clear, we renamed it The Cover Girl Murders. My job was to read each draft and create a detailed document called a “notes memo.” In layman’s terms, this meant that I was expected to pee on the writer’s hard work. Lower-level execs like me justified our existence through the notes memo, which highlighted and exemplified not necessarily how to fix a script, but rather how much smarter we were then everyone else involved in the project. What’s worse, the notes memo was but one small cog in the Hollywood machine known as Development Hell. If you’ve ever been through Development Hell, you’ve experienced countless notes memos, countless disappointing drafts, countless “re-thinks,” and countless months locked in an office, eating yet one more order of take-out chopped salad (hold the salami), while grinding out yet one more idea to try and salvage that which should never have been undertaken in the first place. Under this stress, what eventually happens is that you lose all perspective and start to cobble together ineffective plot ideas that you believe are brilliant. Brilliant, Hell, by the time you get to this point in the process, you probably think that your idea is good enough to solve world hunger. Development Hell for The Cover Girl Murders lasted for more than two years. It seemed like the movie would never get done, so it was a pleasant surprise when one day, out of nowhere, after yet another draft, I found myself checking in to the production hotel in Mexico to shoot it. (Another aspect of Development Hell, is that a lot of times scripts get ordered to production simply because another script that was going to fill a production slot has slipped due to the damage cause it be Development Hell.) The production hotel was the Marriott Casa Magna, a beguiling cross between a classic Mayan temple and a Marriott. The ocean breeze wafted through the corridors at all times, filling my head with thoughts of fluffy towels, daiquiris, henna, baby oil, tan lines, white limousines, and dance clubs full of tight sparkly dresses. Two days before first shot, the cast, director, producers, and studio execs had a night on the town. After filling ourselves on some amazing Mexican food (turns out it’s pretty good in Mexico), we went to a disco, where the cast danced with abandon… while I stood to the side talking to Fawna MacLaren, the 35th Anniversary Playboy Playmate of the Year. The light show pounded in my head and in my viscera. I was nauseous. Tag Team blasted through the speakers. Sweat beaded on my forehead. I didn’t want to be there anymore. I just wanted to go to bed. I announced that I was heading back to the hotel. Fawna asked if we could share a taxi. Sweat beaded on her forehead too. Tag Team rapped loudly, “Whoomp, There It Is,” as I walked out the door with real-life Playboy centerfold and found a little Nissan taxi. Now, if you’ve ever been to Puerto Vallarta, you know that the roads there are a little… I think the scientific term is… “bumpy” – sort of like the entire town is built from the rest of the world’s old speed bumps. Those rattling thumps didn’t help, as I was frankly already jumpy about sharing a pitch-dark cab with a Playboy Centerfold doused in Dolce & Gabbana, wearing a sexy summer dress, and donning huge earrings that clacked with each and every unplumbed paving stone. I’ll be the first to admit that I get nervous when I share a Mexican taxi with a Playboy Centerfold on a drive that is loosening my molars with each crack of the cab’s under frame. Let me be clear however, up to that night, I had never, ever, ever cheated on my fiancée. Since that night, I have never, ever, ever cheated on my fiancée or wife (same person). And on that night I never, ever, ever cheated on my fiancée either, but I must come clean and admit that the… shall we call it the… um… concept of cheating did enter my mind… in a purely holy-crap-this-might-actually-happen kind of way. Now, the truth was and remains that Fawna was safer with me than she would have been with Mother Teresa… heck she was safer with me than she would have been with Paul Lynde. But still, I found myself imagining Fawna saying things like – “Have you ever done it in the back of a taxi?” When in reality she said – “Does it look like the taxi’s going the right way? It’s really dark out there.” In my mind she said – “I’ll have room-service send a bottle of wine and some hot oil to my room.” She actually said – “I am exhausted and queasy and this drive isn’t helping.” As we reached the Marriott Casa Magna, I pulled a wad of pesos from my wallet – miscalculating and giving the driver a 500% tip. In my mind, Fawna said – “Would you mind coming up to my room? I need someone to help me out of this dress.” In reality she said – “Thanks for getting me back safe. See you at the table read.” I was both disappointed and relived. The recently engaged part of me was glad that there wouldn’t be anything awkward between Fawna and me, but the douche-bag part of me was upset that my long unfulfilled dream of spending a night with a woman who other men only saw in magazines that they held up in one hand, would remain unattained. As we were about to go our separate ways, I wondered if I should kiss Fawna on the cheek goodnight or shake her hand? I put out my hand to shake, which brought out a smile on her face and we said goodnight the way too colleagues on any business trip might say goodnight. Back in my room, I turned on the radio and Mariah serenaded me to sleep with “Dreamlover.” The next day at the table read. My boss and I kept looking at each other and flinching at the clunky lines and the weak plot twists. “We have to fix it,” I said after the table read was done. My boss nodded yes, and then said, “After dinner – we’re eating with Bobbie, Vanessa, and some others.” We tried to find a restaurant by simply walking from the hotel towards what looked like a small commercial area. But as we got closer, the buildings were either under construction or being torn down (I really couldn’t figure out which). We kept going towards the Marina Vallarta, assuming we’d find something there, but it was under construction (or being torn down, again not sure), so we ended up heading back to the hotel, where we were seated at a faux Benihana. After a few bottles of Mexican Saki and a few rolls of Mexican spicy salmon, we were all feeling kind of giddy. I looked at Bobbie and Vanessa and thought, this is kind of like being out to a nice dinner with the high school cheerleaders, or the pretties girls at college – except these women were model beautiful in a way that made me wonder whose life was this that I was living? Next thing I knew a food fight broke out… Bobbie grabbed a handful of rice and shoved it down the back of my shirt. Oh, I was back in college, hanging with the popular girls, having a food fight, being popular myself. I grabbed some rice and aimed at Bobbie, but a little voice inside my head stopped me, saying – don’t go any further with this or they’ll discover that you don’t belong, that you’re not one of them, that you’re just some shmoe from New jersey. So I put down the rice and just chuckled along with the others as they wrapped up their culinary battle. Still, during the rest of my time in Mexico I would walk up to Bobbie every once in a while and say, “We still have unsettled business.” She would give me a smile and a quick, “I know. I know it’s coming…” After dinner, and with the beginnings of a hangover doing the backstroke in my stomach and the butterfly-stroke in my head, my boss and I settled in his room to spend the rest of the night, “fixing the script.” We went through the dialog, line by line, rewriting anything that didn’t sound right. We added humor, coming up with brilliant jokes on the fly, and dropping them in where we thought they would add to the tension. We cut. We pasted. We edited. We added. Once we were done, I took the marked up script pages down to the front desk and had them faxed to Warner Brother’s Script Typing Service in Burbank. My boss and I congratulated each other on our excellent work and went to bed secure in the knowledge that we had “fixed” the script -- that we had elevated it to the level of one of the lesser Hitchcock classic (like Frenzy or Family Plot). The following morning, we picked up the fax of our new script pages and had them Xeroxed on yellow paper (there were already blue and pink changes in the script). The first day of shooting began and we watched with unbridled joy as our words came to life. Wild horses pranced like huge squirrels in the woods behind us. Police in a VW protected us. A photographer peeled Bobbie off from the rest of the cast to do a photo-shoot. My boss and I followed, enamored with the idea of coffees and bikinis for breakfast. When we all trudged back to the main set from the shoot, helping Bobbie who had hurt her feet on the rocks, the show’s star, Lee Majors arrived. My boss and I set up two chairs with Lee (we were the only ones important enough to sit with him, I figured). He told us stories about Hollywood in the 1970s and working with the head of Wilshire Court way back when they were both young. He gave us the inside poop. I looked out at the rest of the cast and crew and thought, we’re the elites here in our little troika. We’re the star and the two studio execs. (Remember, this was my douche period.) Suddenly, Lee looked at my USA Network baseball cap and snatched it from my head. “This is mine,” he said. The Six Million Dollar Man stole my hat. He handed me his hat, from Planet Hollywood, where he’d been hanging with his buddies, Willis, Stalone, and Schwarzenegger. My high school friends and I used to snatch each other’s clothes the same way, wearing our buddies’ things as a sign of friendship. Somehow, the hat made me part of the Majors, Willis, Stalone, and Schwarzenegger social circle in my diluted mind (again, this was my douche period). When Lee walked away I covertly made the noise effect “a-dwa-dwa-dwa-dwa-dwa-dwa,” the way one kid goofs on another kid that he’s pals with. I was sad to leave my friends when the time came to depart. Later, on the airplane home, my boss and I tried to come up with series ideas we could attach members of the cast on so that we would get to work with them again. The one idea I remember was that Bobbie Phillips would be the daughter of a murdered judge. Driven by revenge, she bought a skip-tracer business, and kept on the old owner because he reminded her of her late dad (we saw Brian Keith in this role). Hey, it could have worked… seriously… it could have. Back in the states, I was the king of the shit in my mind. The only bone in the burrito was that I was pretty much a complete and total douche bag causing my self-righteous wigging out to get more and more out of control. I had actually convinced myself that having a hair-trigger was the key to my success. Meanwhile, one day, completely unbeknownst to me, my boss was told by the head of the company that he had to lay off one Director of the three he had working for him. As far as I know, he liked all three of us, but had pretty much pin-pointed one of my colleagues to get the axe (because someone had to). It was at this point in time, prior to him identifying the odd-man out, that in front of the entire department he said to me, “Go the Women in Film luncheon tomorrow and don’t just get some food and leave. I need a full, detailed report back that lets me know you paid attention and schmoozed.” I’m not honestly 100% clear why this ticked me off so. I think it may have been that with his interstitial laugh and Beverly Hills High accent, the whole thing came off sounding as if I was his minion, his peon, his serf, something less than him who had to take on the grunt work of going to the beautiful Beverly Hills hotel, having the incredible and expensive lunch, hobnobbing with the elite of the elite, and reporting back. “I’m not a three-year-old. All you have to do is to tell me where to go,” I responded. Even as the words came flowing out of my mouth, Even as the words came flowing out of my mouth, I wasn't certain if I should be angry or not, but I'd committed to arguing and thought I'd look worse if I just stopped, apologized, and agreed to go the fancy hoity-toity event where I'd get to eat a crème brûlée that was out of this world and have face time with network presidents. My boss was under pressure, knowing he was about to lay off my colleague and something snapped in him too. He screamed back at me that he’s the boss and I’m not to question him. We got into a shouting match that was just ugly. I was yelling, pounding the couch, and shaking my head in disgust. I threw out invectives, expletives, and pure disdain. When I was through, the man who had quite recently taken me with him to Mexico for coffee and bikinis and palling around with Lee Majors looked like the dog in a Skinner box. The next day my boss asked me to have drinks with him after work. After the waiter took our order, my boss told me that I was being laid-off. In that one moment my life went from discothèquing with Playboy centerfolds, food fights with stunning ingénues, and swapping hats with The Six Million Dollar Man to watching CNN loop while I sat on my couch in my apartment. Weeks without a job turned into months without a job turned into a year without a job, all, if you looked at it one way, because I’d picked the wrong day to pick a fight, or if you looked at it the other way, because I was a douche. One day, after watching CNN loop twice; I walked down to the Venice Pier and stood where the final frames of the movie Falling Down had been filmed. In that scene, Robert Duvall played a police officer trying to get Michael Douglas to surrender. Douglas was a good guy who had wigged out and gone postal. ”Let's meet a couple of police officers. They are all good guys.” Duvall said. “I'm the bad guy?” Douglas suddenly realized for the first time. “Yeah.” Duvall told him. “How did that happen? “ Douglas wondered. A few nights later, I caught The Cover Girl Murders playing, and I sat down to watch. I listened for the script changes that my boss and I had made and I blanched. We had written some of the worst and dorkiest lines I think I’ve ever put down on paper. We had fixed nothing. We had been two big douches, peeing on someone else’s work. Oh Hell, we were studio execs. That’s what we were supposed to do.

A Poke in the Eye - 1991

My relationship with CBS was not unlike my relationship with my college girlfriend. One moment I was the greatest thing in the world. The next moment I just wasn’t really working out. Then in a third moment, I would get a call asking if I wanted to try again. Like an idiot, I would say “yes,” only to be fired once more. No matter how many times I went through this, when I got another call, the joy of knowing that I was wanted filled my veins like a shot of morphine, forcing one word to fall from my lips again and again, “yes,” “yes,” “yes,” “yes.” This personally debasing affiliation with the Tiffany Network lasted for five years; beginning at a Shell Station in Orange, California, where I met an older woman of twenty-nine, who said that she, could get me temp work at CBS and that I had a nice ass. It ended with a Brooks-Brother-clad, Kool-Aid drinking, Mercedes Benz 450SL driving, CBS Executive Vice President telling me, and I quote, “You are one of the smartest and hardest working people on this floor, but that’s not what I need right now.” To the credit of the woman who complimented my posterior, she thought that I was gay and would take it as a girl to girl compliment. And to the credit of the EVP that fired me, he talked my next employer into hiring me at a substantial raise. But still, to this day, when I drive down Beverly Boulevard and see the 1950s facade of Television City, I feel as if I’m driving by an ex-girlfriend’s house, stalking her while she sleeps. Most of the times that I found myself out of work during my on-again, off-again CBS affair were really the ends of temporary assignments (or per-diem jobs), although some of those per-diem jobs had been open-ended, so it still stung when I found myself out of work yet again, back in my apartment, waiting for the mailman to come and eating bologna sandwiches over the sink. So by the time I was actually fired from a real job at CBS, I'd already been fired from a half a dozen per-diem ones. I was working per-diem on the desk of the Director of Dramatic Specials, who was interviewing candidates for a permanent assistant. My contact in Human Resources felt that all I had to do was do a good job and I would be offered the position. On day one, I catalogued the Director of Dramatic Specials’ videos, arranging them alphabetically, with Dymo Label Maker labels on each one. When the Director of Dramatic Specials saw what I had done, she called other executives into her office to see how all the tapes were perfectly arranged, and labeled, with different color tape for different television seasons. For the next three months I continued to be Mister Efficiency, jumping on every issue, rooting and solving problems, and arranging everything neatly. The Director of Dramatic Specials soon offered me the job. After nearly two years of temping, I was finally a real CBS employee, no longer a per-diem monkey. To prove it, on my first official day, I sat through orientation which included a welcome video by CEO Tom Wyman, and a number of HR folk briefing us on what health insurance to sign up for, how much to put in a 401k, how to open a credit union account, and who to make your beneficiary on the life insurance. I had my picture taken for my ID badge and went back to my desk feeling giddy with accomplishment. I may not have had a girlfriend, but I had a job that would get me a girlfriend. Not only that, but my ex girlfriend’s parents were in town and were going to take me out to dinner that night. I was planning on how I was going to wow them so that they called their daughter to say, “You idiot, that boy is a rising star at CBS… take him back or we will disown you.” But I was interrupted from my daydreams of romantic revenge when Gerta, a Czech-German administrative Assistant with a pure Sudetenland accent and an Elke Summer bob came to my desk and said in her very Czech/German/Sudetenland kind of sexy way, “Matthew wants to see you.” Gerta’s Arian eyes were awash in tears, belying her smile. Her boss, Matthew Addelman, was the Senior Vice President of Daytime and, as Gerta and I both knew, would have absolutely no reason to talk to me, the brand new administrative assistant in Dramatic Specials unless it was something bad. I went over to Matthew’s office and took a seat. He introduced himself and said that this was really kind of uncomfortable, but although we’d never met, he’d been asked to let me go. I wondered if he realized that I didn’t want to go. I took a deep breath and tried to listen more carefully. After all, I was being laid off on the very day I had taken my orientation. Why had I been hired only to be fired? I couldn’t have done anything wrong yet. I hadn’t even been at my desk yet that day. Matthew told me I’d get severance, based on my length of service, which was four hours. When my final check came, there were two extra weeks pay in it. On a percentage basis, it was probably the best severance ever in the history of CBS. Three years passed, when I got a call from a friend that there was a job I’d be right for at CBS. I figured it would be okay to try there again as the entire Dramatic Specials department was no more, and Matthew Addelman and his assistant Gerta had both been let go in the interim. I was interviewed by three execs, finally ending up in the office of CBS President, Ed Wright, who was known for nixing candidates because they were not a star. Apparently I was, as I was offered the job a few days after that. I was Manager of CBS Entertainment Productions. I had my own office, and that office was on the Third Floor, the executive floor, of Television City. Sure, I didn’t have a window and the area outside my door was used to store thirty years worth of TV Guide… but I was doing better than a million other people who wanted my job. I was watching TV and reading scripts for a living. Every day was a lazy rainy Sunday in March. I had five bosses, which was daunting at first, but turned out to actually give me an advantage. Each one of them assumed that I was being kept busy by the others. Don’t get me wrong, I worked, I worked pretty hard, reading scripts, giving detailed notes, trawling junior agents for material, reading five or six newspapers or magazines a day in search of true stories, scouring through American Lit syllabi and then scanning through the books (trying to find the next Sarah, Plain and Tall), but… I also realized it wasn’t just about the work; it was actually an awful lot about appearances. The rules were simple. Always have something that I “just read” to talk about. Always have a list of writers that I carried with me in case someone asked about writers. Always have a pile of scripts in my hands when heading home. Then, one day a new in-house president was hired to be everyone in my department’s über boss. The brother of an infamously malevolent producer, he introduced himself saying, “I’m Kevin, the nice brother.” I should have started looking for a new job right when Kevin said he was the nice brother, but I didn’t. It’s hard to say why… I think being at CBS was still, even with all the firings, a magical place to me. I walked past The Price is Right sets outside the Studio 33 and could spin the wheel whenever I felt like it. There was literally electricity in the air everywhere I went. You could smell it. The ghosts of William Paley and Desi Arnaz strolled past me in the halls - cigarettes dangling from their manicured fingers, spats gleaming at their feet, the scent of gin and vermouth wafting along in their path. Crap, when people asked where I worked and I said, CBS, they would light up and immediately adjust their opinion of me in a good way. And when they asked, doing what, and I said, developing new shows and television movies, they looked like dogs that just realized they’re about to get a biscuit. Meanwhile, the new head of in-house hired, as a new assistant. It was Gerta, the Czech/German who had called me in to my CBS beheading three years before. Upon seeing me, Gerta shouted out with glee, “We’re both back.” Things were going great, or so I thought. Kevin was grooming me. He'd tell me to use the stairs instead of the elevator so I could be fit like him; to have lunch with my colleagues and get the inside dirt on their departments; and to learn to read upside down, so I could find out what was on other people's desks while chatting with them. When I wasn’t there, he told a colleague that I was a "college professor picking crumbs out of my beard.” After a few months Gerta, who never once came over to my desk, came over to my desk. She said, in her very Czech/German/Sudetenland kind of sexy way, “Kevin wants to see you.” Gerta’s Arian eyes were teary, belying her smile. It was an odd moment… a sort of slow motion tragedy, in which both of us were only players… players very aware that we had played this scene before. In that instant, Gerta knew that I was being fired and I knew that I was being fired, and yet, I still jokingly said to her, “This isn’t for me to get fired again, is it?” She smiled, and tilted her head like she’d just heard a sound she didn’t understand. Next thing I knew, I was sitting in the head-of-in-house’s office. “Charles, I wanted to meet with you before I left for Hawaii and another two weeks went by. It’s time for you to start looking for another job.” Kevin said, nervously. I just sat there, unsure what to say. “You can be fired or resign, it‘s up to you, depending on if you need the unemployment or not,” he went on. I still just sat there, which exacerbated him – he was totally unsure how to deal with me or how to keep me from crying. Then he said to me, “You didn’t really want to be a television executive anyway, did you?” You ever have someone push you to give them the answer that they want – and even though you know it’s the wrong thing to do, you give them their answer to be nice, whether or not it has anything to do with reality? “No, I guess I didn’t want to be a television executive,” I lied, trying to make this man who was firing me like me. He nodded, knowingly. “What do you want to do?” he asked. I told him I wanted to write. “Go drive a truck, chop down trees or clean dishes at some dive in Iowa,” he said… "Get some real life dirty experiences that you can write about." Well… if I wasn’t crying before, I have to admit the “clean dishes” line sort of pushed me over the edge. When I looked up, there were tears in his eyes too. “Look," he said, touching my knee to let me know he cared, "I wanted to play basketball once. I was on the best college team in all of America, keeping their bench warm and cheering all the star players when they came in off the court. I’ve got three NCAA rings, but not because I deserved to be there, only because I was good enough to be the worst guy on the best team in America." A shiver ran through him as he held back a sob. "I'm the worst guy on the best team," I sort of sputtered. His face clouded with mawkish malaise and he nodded yes. He was firing me, specifically on this day so that the thought of having to get ride of me wouldn’t be hanging over his during his two weeks in Kapalua Maui, and he was the one crying! “I’m sorry about this, "he said, "but I need someone who wants to stab me in the back… a guy who will play tennis with me in the morning and then rifle through my office in the afternoon if I forget to lock my door.” “Huh?” I finally managed. “Look,” he blurted out, “you are one of the smartest and hardest working people on this floor, but that’s not what I need right now.” I took a deep breath. “You remind me of me in college… good enough to get on the best team in the world… but not good enough to be anything more than the worst guy on that team. You’re sitting on the bench, while the rest of us are being stars. Don’t take this personally. Anyplace else in the world but CBS, you'd be a starter... a star, but this is CBS and here you're nothing. “I’m doing you a favor letting you go. I know what it’s like… I sat on that bench, looking at all those great players and knowing that even though I was wearing the same jersey as them, I wasn’t one of them. I’ve been there.” He turned away so I wouldn’t see a tear that had fallen to his cheek. I waited a moment more, expecting him to deliver the coup de grace… you know, something like “It’s not you, it’s me…” or “CBS still loves you, we’re just not in love with you anymore…” but the final line never came. I got up and left, knowing that I’d chosen to be fired. I’d done this by pursuing a career in which the only guarantee you have is that you will be fired from every job you ever get. And although I was done with CBS, I had many more firings to go. All of us in development do. In fact, I have something in common with every person who ever fired me from CBS. Every single one of them was fired by CBS too.

An Incident at Madame Wu's - 1988

It was a twenty-sixth birthday bash for an agent I was friends with. His wife put together a shindig at Madame Wu’s Garden, the most famous Chinese restaurant in all of America. It was a Santa Monica hang out to the stars; a block-long Wilshire Boulevard palace of Mandarin-Cantonese fusion with a 1950s Googies meets traditional Chinese architecture that made it look like a Chinese-themed Best Western Inn.
I had come to the party alone, ostensibly because I hadn’t been invited with a guest, but in reality because the girl I thought I was dating had just a week earlier put a temporary hold on our relationship. Well the truth be told, she hadn’t actually said that in so many words… what she really said was, “Chuck, this is my boyfriend, Trevor.”
Unfortunately, I was not Trevor.
Now, it was one Saturday later. Rick Astley was singing Caucasian-Motown-fusion over the speakers, letting everyone know he was “Never Going To Give You Up,” while I nibbled Madame Wu’s Chinese Chicken Salad, Madame Wu’s Barbecued Spare Ribs, and Madame Wu’s Sweet And Sour Shrimp from a row of surface-of-the-Sun-hot chafing dishes. I plopped a sour shrimp into my mouth hoping to get my mind off the verbal bayonetting I had taken the previous weekend.
I looked around the restaurant to see if there was any possibility to find a replacement girlfriend, but while it was a nice crowd (maybe a hundred people); it consisted of couples. (Note to self – when invited to a party by someone who is an active member of a couple, expect his friends to be couples).
Still, it was a good party. The men were in suits while most of the women wore floral cotton print wrap dresses. With the chances of meeting a single female seeming low, I walked around the restaurant making conversation with acquaintances I saw here and there. I downed a glass of wine every time I lucked out to have another wine tray pass by within reach.
During all of this, I was noticing one couple standing in the back, near a wall. The boyfriend, or husband looked extremely familiar to me… and every time he spoke, he broke into a big smile that I knew that I knew from somewhere… but no matter how much a tried, I just couldn’t place him.
Bobby McFerrin sang over the speakers, "Don't Worry, Be Happy."
I didn’t want to say hello until I remembered who he was and how I knew him. Egos get bruised when you don’t recall where you know someone from. So I just kept sneaking peaks, thinking ,William Morris desk? No. CBS Research? No. KCBS-TV? No. CBS Radio Sales? No. I took a breath and plumbed deeper into my memory, USC? No. GW? No. Paramus High? Wait a minute… that seemed like it might be right – Eastbrook Junior High for sure.
I knew it. I knew that smile from my childhood. I just couldn’t think of his name, but it was right there on the tip of my tongue.
I walked over with purpose assuming he would break into that huge smile again and either give me the heartiest of hearty handshakes or a big Madame Wu’s hug. I wondered what he was doing in the Chinese restaurant to the stars, let alone at my agent friend's birthday party. He must have been in television and movies just like us. He must have been another young Turk.
He looked up as I approached.
“We know each other,” I said. He smiled with uncertainty.
“We do?”
“High school,” I said smugly.
He cocked his head slightly. That wasn’t ringing a bell for him.
“I don’t think so,” he responded.
“Sure… I’m Chuck Freericks.”
“Sorry… no…” he said, still smiling.
“Wait… wait… wait…” I said, desperate to prove to him that we went to high school together.
“Your name is on the tip of my tongue… It’s Peter right? You’re Peter Brady…”
And as his name tumbled from my lips, I realized the depth of my stupidity. He continued to smile; even nodding to let me off the hook with a tacit “It’s okay. It happens.”
I smiled back like the idiot that I was and walked away to leave him and his wife alone. I tried to find some wine while UB40 sang above me “Red, Red Wine.” The parade of wine trays though had come to an end.
When I looked back, Christopher Knight still stood there, in the same spot he had been standing when I first laid eyes on him. He still smiled at everyone who spoke to him. He still looked like the character he had played in The Brady Bunch, the character I watched every day in junior high and even sometimes in high school. The character I grew up thinking was my friend, even though he had never known I existed… until now.

The Story That Might Get Me Sued - 1988

I was working at Lightyear on the Vice President of Development’s desk when my grad school advisor invited me to come back to USC to see Steven Bochco speak to the Masters of Professional Writing students. I couldn’t have been more psyched. You see, I loved the cheese.
No, I’m not making a comment on Bochco’s writing. I literally mean the cheese. Back when I had been a grad student at USC I had discovered that every MPW department event included trays of cheese cubes that I could easily make a full dinner out of, with cubes of Swiss as my protein, cubes of Munster as my dairy, cubes of Monterey Jack as my vegetable, cubes of Pepper Jack as my starch, and cubes of Cheddar as my dessert. I ate so much cheese that the “Cheese, Glorious Cheese” commercial jingle become stuck in my head.
“Cheese, Glorious Cheese, Cheese mighty inviting, Cheese, Glorious Cheese, it’s so tantalizing…”
As psyched as I was about the cheese, I was also pretty stoked about the ego recharge that going back to the USC would give me. Even though I was just an administrative assistant at Lightyear answering phones and making Xerox copies – when I was among the SC grad students, I was the guy who was making it big in the Industry.
And… I was also very into seeing Bochco. He created Hill Street Blues, Bay City Blues (yes, I was the one who watched it), and L.A. Law. He had just signed an unprecedented deal to produce 10 new shows for ABC for $10 million (which was real money in those days). But what was just amazing about the deal was that Bochco would own all the shows he produced. Networks never, ever, ever gave away ownership. ABC had made this incredible concession in order to lure Bochco away from a competing offer to become the president of CBS. At that moment in time there was no man more powerful in the world of TV and I was going to share a room with him and about fifty or so grad students.
But if I’m going to be honest the truth of the matter was that I wasn’t going there to hear Bochco speak as much as I was going there to have Bochco hear me speak. My plan was to wait for Q&A and then hit him with a question so poignant and thought provoking and insightful that it would cause him to run out into the audience, grab me in a hug, and make me his apprentice on the spot.
I was a little late getting out of work as I had been busy looking through old trades to prepare my question for Bochco. I had come up with one on writing to the demographics of NBC versus writing to the demographics of ABC and how he planned to deal with the subtle but important differences.
Suddenly late, I headed east from Beverly Hills to downtown, which is essentially impossible during rush hour. When I finally got to campus I parked and ran to the seminar, which had started already. My intent was to sneak into the room unnoticed, but as I opened the door, Bochco stopped speaking and looked directly at me. Most of the audience turned and looked at me too. After a moment that seemed like an hour, Bochco went back to talking and audience all turned back to him noisily.
I took a deep breath to regroup and listened for another few moments at the door. Now this may sound odd, but I was taken aback by how much Bochco looked like… well, Steven Bochco. After all, up until that moment, I’d only seen him in the pages of Daily Variety, Hollywood Reporter, and TV Guide. Somehow I had thought that the real Steven Bochco would be different, sort of the way Clark Kent looked different that Superman. But no, this was him exactly, wire rim glasses, long oval face, white hair, dimples, and penetrating stare.
The few remaining empty seats that I could see were in the middle of the middle rows. Crap. I gave some tacit looks of excuse me and pardon me as folks who really needed to get up to let me pass swung their knees to the left or right instead. Finally, while Bochco spoke about his early experiences studying play writing, I managed to get into a very uncomfortable chair next to a heavy-set person to the right of me and a heavier-set person to the left of me.
The talk was fascinating and Bochco regaled us with tales from the front lines of television. He told us about the importance of a unique character, the value of a unique idea, and the how we needed to pull from ourselves to write. Then he joked that if we did that, we should contact him because, and I quote, “I’ve got to come up with 10 new shows for ABC.”
Then he spoke more about the deal and how it was really a burden. “Poor guy,” I thought. He said that coming up with shows that were unique and contained characters that you would want to stay with was brutal.
"Realistically, I can't come up with 10 shows on my own," he went on. "I would like to create some of them, but even then I don’t want to be stuck sitting in rooms writing scripts, writing stories, reworking stories, having story meetings any more. It’s time for me to make some time for myself."
Finally, he was done speaking and I got ready for Q&A, but instead of opening the room up for questions, he said. “I’m here to help you guys. Why don’t you tell me about the characters that you are working on?” Okay, my well researched question about writing to the demographics of NBC versus writing to the demographics of ABC and how he planned to deal with the subtle but important differences was toast. I had to come up with a character that I was working on instead.
As the overly eager in the audience raised their hands, I thought deeply about all Bochco had told us. I thought about reaching inside of myself and revealing something about me that would make for a great character… a great and unique character. But what?
I’d just finished my first full-length play, The Fourth Chair, a comedic look at stillbirth, suicide, and mortification. I could have used this opportunity to tell Bochco about the play, but I’d already used the same play to try and impress previous USC speakers Edward Albee, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Philip DeGuere, and the axe-throwing Ames Brother, Ed Ames, and I thought it was time to come up with something else. But what?
As one grad student after another described yet one character after another who was a struggling writer in grad school (I know we’re supposed to write about ourselves people, but seriously?), I looked into myself for a character that would thrill Steven Bochco.
Ah, I thought of one… but no… I didn’t want to say that out loud. There were girls in the room I might want to ask on a date one day. There were guys in the room who were jealous of me having made it big in Hollywood, answering phones and making Xerox copies at Lightyear Entertainment.
Then I thought about an incident just a couple days earlier, when I’d told some friends a previously secret story about peeing my pants in kindergarten. They’d laughed and told me I had to write it down. If I could admit that to them, I could admit this even bigger secret to a room of graduate students spending thousands of dollars that they didn't have to get their Master’s in writing. I raised my hand.
Bochco looked directly at me and nodded. I took a deep breath, but the words stuck in my throat. I was trying to admit something to him that only my college girlfriend knew (although others suspected), something that had plagued me for six years and for which I still had no solution, something that would make me a lesser human being in the eyes of everyone in that room, and yet hopefully make me a real writer in the eyes of Steven Bochco. But with Bochco looking at me and the words not coming out, a sense of dread and panic washed over me.
Suddenly my entire dating life began to flash before my eyes. And what I saw was not pretty. In fact, it was gross. I saw vomit. My secret was that I got so nervous on dates that I puked in the middle of them. Every single time that I went out with a girl I liked, I would have to run to the bushes and empty my digestive system orally. It was not only not pleasant, it was downright horrific. It was hard enough asking a girl out, getting my hair to look good, figuring out a nice place to go that wouldn’t bankrupt me, and finding enough interesting things to talk about while on the date. Adding to that the roll of Rolaids and little spray Binaca that I had to carry with me at all times and then the horror of feeling it happening anyway, excusing myself, and running, running, running to someplace hidden almost made dating seem to be not worth it.
I remembered the first time I got nauseous when I was near a girl I liked. I was riding an elevator with a friend of said girl, going up to see the object of my affection when I sensed that I was about to toss my cookies on the friend.
I jumped ahead a year and saw my first date with the girl whom I would see most of my senior year of college. I ran to the bushes near the Madison Bank on G Street and expelled my lunch and breakfast. And yet, inexplicably, we went on to have a wonderful and magical date, at the conclusion of which, she told me that she couldn’t kiss me because I smelled, but would have had I not gotten sick.
I saw myself a couple of year after that, taking a pretty Armenian girl from UCLA out on our first date and hiding in the men’s room for nearly twenty minutes, getting to know the toilet a bit too well. I saw myself one more year later with a young actress I had a massive crush on. I asked her to come with me to a friend’s party, but had to pull over on the drive to pick her up in order to lose about a week’s worth of nutrition at the corner of Fourth and Colorado in downtown Santa Monica.
This personal failing only abated when I dated a girl enough times to no longer be absolutely terrified of her (and finding a girl who was willing to go on a fourth date when I had puked on the first three often proved difficult). It got to the point that I wouldn’t eat for twelve hours before a date. But even then, I would get so nervous that I would dry-heave. The one silver-lining to all of this was that I did manage to keep my weight down during that time.
As the flashback continued, I remembered going on dates with girls I wasn’t interested in so that I could have dinner and see a movie like a normal person without getting sick. I saw myself still getting sick anyway when the date somehow started to turn out well.
My recollection of all this must have only lasted a nanosecond because when I became aware again, Bochco was still looking at me and waiting. Somehow my voice began to work and I said, “I’m writing about a character who gets nervous… so nervous in fact that when he’s with a girl he likes, he vomits. He’s tried to control it for year, but nothing has helped. He picks up a girl for a date and within a few minutes he has to excuse himself and throw up.”
Bochco sized me up as I spoke and it seemed like he was deciding how to deal with my special needs situation. “That was a good try, Charles… here’s your trophy…”
But when I finished speaking he said, “Now that’s a great character. That’s a character I would want to know more about. This is what I am telling all of you. You need to find the unique and interesting character like, what’s your name?”
“Charles.”
“…like Charles did.”
I was Yertle the Turtle. I couldn’t believe it. The heavy-set person on side of me and the heavier-set person on the other both turned and looked at me with jealous contempt. Students in the front rows looked back at me with envy. I soaked it all in. I was the one person in that room who was going to be a writer. And Steven Bochco knew it, and the other students knew it, and my advisor, standing against a side wall up front, knew it.
Bochco was polite and went on to discuss other people’s characters instead of immediately running out in the audience to hug me and hire me. In fact, as it turned out, he left without ever running out into the audience and hugging me and hiring me. Still, I was aglow with my brief moment of glory. I drove home that night basking in my brilliance… with a napkin full of cheese cubes sitting beside me on my passenger seat.
A year later, the first show out of Bochco’s deal premiered. It was called Doogie Howser, MD and was a really nice program about a teenage prodigy who was a practicing surgeon, but with teenage angst and teenage friends. I watched the show fairly religiously for the first year and remained blown away by Bochco’s talent.
The second show that came out of Bochco’s deal was called Cop Rock. It was a gritty cop show with musical numbers, sort of like NYPD Blue met Glee. It didn’t make it half a season before being cancelled. There were stories that Bochco was devastated, but I have zero first-hand information to back that up.
Meanwhile, I kept watching Doogie Howser, which as I said, was really nicely done. Imagine my surprise, when one night, Doogie’s best friend, Vinnie Delpino, went on a date and so nervous that he had to run from the car to vomit in a bush. This new “character trait” for Vinnie lasted at least a couple episodes. I’m not really sure how many though because I stopped watching the show at that point in time.
I felt funny… I was angry, but I also actually wondered “Who am I to question Steven Bochco?” I tried to alleviate what it seemed he had done, thinking, a couple years have passed. He probably didn’t remember our conversation… maybe it was like when George Harrison didn’t realize he was stealing from The Chiffons, turning “He’s So Fine” into “My Sweet Lord.” I’d even done the same sort of innocent plagiarism once myself, when I added a couple lines to the Fourth Chair only to later realize that I had lifted them straight out of a friend’s poem. So, I know from firsthand experience that these things do happen and aren’t always intentional. We forget where we heard something and in a moment of creative need, we think we probably came up with it ourselves.
Besides that, there may and probably are, many other facets to this story that I don’t know. I mean who knows if he was even the one who wrote those scenes for Vinnie? He had a staff of writers. He had told us up front he was going to be sitting around writing scripts anymore. It’s possible he didn’t even know about Vinnie puking on dates. As it turns out the same character trait had already been used in Roxanne. Years later it would show up in South Park too.
The thing that stung me the most however was that my moment of being singled-out by Steven Bochco, which I thought I would have as a special memory for the rest of my life, was suddenly sullied and ruined. “Yertle, the King of all Sala-ma-Sond, fell off his high throne and fell Plunk!”
I still don’t know if my character was stolen. Honesty, I really don’t. Why in the world would Steven Bochco take an idea from a schmoe like Charles Freericks? I only know that I told him it and then it appeared in his show. If my putting these memories down on paper make Mr. Bochco feel the need to sue me for libel, let me just add that I have nothing for him to win. I don’t even have a script to put a date vomiting character into. I just have my memories of how the real guy survived being a date vomiter and eventually beat it. And in the end, for me, that was a lot more important than doing a story on that character.