Life Its Ownself (18 page)

The director had laughed. The writers hadn't laughed. The writers had only stared at Barbara Jane as if she had a deformity.

An argument over the line had lasted half a day. Barb had eventually won. She would say something besides
moi
. No one knew what it was going to be, but it wouldn't be
moi
. The writers never spoke to her again.

She said, "It's like they thought they'd written 'late in the summer of that year,' and I'd drawn a grease pencil through it."

"I've read about you temperamental stars."

"Oh, God, I know," she said. "That's the thing. I feel awful when we get into this crap. But it's not like I'm running around the set with a meat cleaver, threatening careers— which are more valuable than lives out here. I'm not Barbra Streisand. I'm not telling some director he'll never work in this town again unless he moves the Renaissance to a more recent century so I can costume it better! I just don't want to say dumb lines."

The show's executive producers, Sheldon Gurtz and Kitty Feldman, should be tortured first, then put to death.

Barb said, "As bad as the writers are, the executive producers are worse. They get to re-write the writers. Sheldon and Kitty couldn't write a bad check. Sheldon wears a ten-gallon cowboy hat. Kitty's about as big as a rodent."

Barbara Jane had asked Sheldon and Kitty why they were permitted to "polish" the scripts.

"Because we're the ones who have to deliver," Kitty had said.

And Sheldon had said, "We know what works, Barbara Jane. We wrote for
Fantasy Island
."

It had been pretty hard to think of a comeback for that.

My wife was dashing around the suite now, gearing up for another day of show biz. She invited me to come along and observe the turmoil. I declined, opting for naps, magazines, movies on TV, and more room service.

"I'd better stay away until the taping," I said. "I don't like violence."

"Things should go smoother from now on," she said.

Tempers had peaked yesterday and the air had been cleared.

Barbara Jane had been rehearsing a scene in which she was supposed to walk across the room and answer the phone.

Sheldon had pushed the director aside and told Barbara Jane to grab a cracker off a table and eat the cracker as she walked toward the phone.

"Nope," Barb had said. "Sorry. No way. Dustin Hoffman eats a cracker when he walks across a room. Robert Redford eats a cracker when he walks across a room. Al Pacino eats a cracker when he walks across a room. I don't eat a cracker when I walk across a room, and neither would Rita."

Sheldon had said, "Please, don't be difficult. We know this character better than you do."

Barbara Jane had turned to the director for support, but Jack Sullivan had only shrugged and practiced his golf swing.

"I'm not going to eat the cracker, Sheldon," Barb had then said.

Kitty had stepped in.

"Barbara Jane, you haven't fleshed this out fully, and we have."

"Dadgumit, you know, I meant to, but I just got busy and forgot," Barbara Jane had laughed.

It was structured into the business that executive producers were given a good deal of authority on a pilot, as much as they could command when an empty suit from the network wasn't around. And they were needed. Somebody would have to "stay with the show" after it got on the air. Live with it, in other words. That would be the executive producers.

The performers would have it easy. They would only have to come in for a run-through, then the tape session. They would have the rest of the week free to play softball, change agents, and complain about Shirley MacLaine getting the part they had been up for in a feature film.

The director wouldn't be overworked, either. He could wander in off the golf course, do a take one and a take two, and leave word with an underling to make sure a cassette was sent to his home.

And the writers could go on to other things. They could grind out the same swill for other dreary pilots, punch up other mindless episodes, discuss burning issues within the Writers' Guild, and maybe complete a page or two on the outline of the novel they'd been working on for the past seventeen years.

But Sheldon Gurtz and Kitty Feldman were the people who would stay with
Rita's Limo Stop
if the network gave it a "go" and "ordered thirteen," which would mean the network had liked the pilot and wasn't going to "pass on it" or "burn it off in four."

It would not only become Sheldon and Kitty's baby, they would suddenly become mogulettes and might even be able to get a table in a Beverly Hills restaurant.

Barbara Jane said, "Can you imagine the mind it takes to want to do that—live with a sitcom? Executive producers aren't talented enough to create anything of their own. Rita was conceived by some poor, starving writer whose name we'll never know...who's probably kicking himself in the ass for ever mentioning the idea to Sheldon and Kitty in the first place. Yesterday they punched up gags, today they're executive producers. As we speak, I assure you Kitty and Sheldon think they're whipping
Hamlet
into shape."

"Do you eat the cracker when you answer the phone?"

Barb's reaction to my question—a hearty laugh—assured me that Sheldon Gurtz and Kitty Feldman had brought out the Texan in her.

Yesterday on the set, Kitty had said to my wife, "Barbara Jane, we just can't have an impasse like this every day. Eating the cracker may not seem important to you, but certain stage business can help develop a character, and in some circles, they call it acting. You've heard of that? You might also try to keep in mind that it is Sheldon and I—not you—who happen to be responsible for making this show homogenous."

"Aw, gee, I didn't know about the homogenous part," Barbara Jane had said. "Homogenize
this
, motherfucker!"

In the week that passed I saw Barbara Jane about as often as she saw the staff in our hotel lobby, but I did get updates on the wounded who were littering the alleys around the studio as the taping of the
Rita
pilot crept nearer. That event was now only twenty-four hours away.

I wasn't worried about the job my wife would do in the leading role. She could play Barbara Jane better than anybody.

And there were other matters to keep me occupied.

October had arrived and I had begun to get a little nervous about my own television career, a career that would be launched in a week's time.

I hadn't gone into television with the idea of winning an Emmy. It had just been something to do—something to keep me from playing in the streets. But like Barb, I didn't want to look foolish on the air, and yet I wasn't sure how I was going to avoid it working with Larry Hoage. Somehow, I had the horrible, sneaking suspicion I would be found guilty of stupidity through association. Was there life after stupidity? There was for Larry Hoage, but there might not be for me.

I was relieved of some of the worry after Richard Marks came to town. The head of CBS Sports called from the Bel Air Hotel to say he was on the Coast for a few days to "doll up an affiliate." He wanted to have a drink at my convenience. We discussed his crowded business calendar and worked out a time at his convenience.

He came by the Marquis late one afternoon. We sat in the lounge at one of those round tables where he could see into the lobby and not miss Willie Nelson, Mick Jagger, John Denver, Jack Nicklaus, or any other celeb who might arrive to check in.

In the first five minutes of our meeting, Richard Marks complained about the food he'd eaten at Chasen's the night before, the food he'd tried to eat at The Palm at lunch, and the fact that he had only been able to hire a stretched white limo. He had preferred something smaller.

He only stayed long enough to have a Perrier and lime, sign a few papers in his briefcase, and let drop the news that he had fired Don Avery, the color man who had been working with Larry Hoage.

"I had to cut him loose" was the way he put it.

For a disturbing moment, I was fearful Don Avery had been fired to make room for me, but that wasn't the case.

"He made two very tasteless comments on the air," said Richard Marks. "Did you catch the Redskins-Rams game a week ago?"

Only the fourth quarter, I said.

"You must have heard them, then."

Not that I recalled.

"First, he said there had been a lot of 'mistakes' in the game. Then he said it was an 'off day' for Washington. Larry Hoage's enthusiasm counterbalanced it. Larry has drawbacks, but he's a positive guy. He gave the Rams the credit they deserved. Bob Cameron called me at home before the telecast was even over. I can tell you the Commissioner wasn't very happy. He reminded me that NFL teams don't have off days, their opponents have good days. He wasn't pleased that the number of penalties was mentioned, either, but I reminded him that we're broadcast journalists. We have a job to do."

I was beginning to wonder if I would last fifteen minutes as a color man.

"Was it all that bad?" I asked. "What Don Avery said?"

"It's a question of credibility," Richard Marks revealed, checking the time of day on his 400-pound Rolex. "You, for instance, can say what you please."

"I can?"

"You're Billy Clyde Puckett. You've had a marvelous career. Viewers have been programmed to accept you as an authority. Who's Don Avery, anyhow? He was a journeyman linebacker at best."

"I can say somebody fucked up? The zebras blew it?"

"If that's how you see the game. I'll back you up on your content every step of the way. I would hope you'll watch your language."

"I'm not Alistair Cooke."

"Clean is all I meant."

"I can do clean."

My first game would be in Green Bay. The Packers against the Redskins. Richard Marks had assigned me to a Washington game on purpose. He wanted me to conduct a thoughtful, incisive interview with Dreamer Tatum, the man who had put me in television.

"It'll make a fantastic insert," he said. "Now, that is broadcast journalism!"

An insert was one of those pre-recorded interviews a network liked to put on the air in the middle of a touchdown drive. Instead of getting to see a 30-yard pass completion, you got to watch Phyllis George talk to a rotund lineman about his off-season interest in needlepoint.

Shake wandered down to the Marquis lounge after Richard Marks left. For a week, Shake had hardly been out of his room. He was finishing up his
Playboy
piece on the wonderful sport of pro football. He was nearing his deadline. The magazine wanted to publish the article in its January issue, which would be on the newsstands in December when the NFL playoffs would be starting.

Perfect timing. The public's interest in pro football would be at a fever pitch while Shake would be telling America the game was a fraud.

I passed along elements of my conversation with Richard Marks to Shake as we turned our backs to others in the room, mostly agents watching their clients have sneezing fits.

"You've got it made," Shake said. "You know why he fired Don Avery? Because he didn't hire Don Avery. His predecessor did. He has to back you up on everything you say on the air or admit he's made a tragic error in judgment. You know the likelihood of a network mogul admitting a mistake? You're golden, man."

T.J. Lambert put us on a conference call. It was later that night and T. J. wanted to speak to Shake and me at the same time. We picked up separate phones in Shake's room and heard the joyous news. TCU was going to win a national championship next season. Not the conference championship, the national championship, the one that puts a coach in a class with "all them Darrell Royals." The Horned Frogs were going to be No. 1 in so many polls, the mascot might have to be changed to a Trojan or a Cornhusker.

T. J. was a little drunk, but he said he had good reason to be. And he just wanted to share this happy moment with a couple of old friends and stalwart Horned Frogs.

He said, "It looks like I'm gonna have me a Tonsillitis Johnson and a Artis Toothis in the same backfield!"

T.J. coughed, then belched. We heard him holler at Donna, his wife, "Damn, honey, I done cheated my ass out of a fart!"

Now he came back to us on the phone to explain how this recruiting miracle was going to happen.

"I got Tonsillitis in my pocket," he said. "Ain't no question about that. Big Ed Bookman gimme a blank check and said, 'Here, T.J., throw a net over that nigger and haul him in.' I done laid a Datsun 280 on his ass, and six charge cards. My coaches has talked to our sororities. Tonsillitis has got so much white pussy waitin' for him in Fort Worth, he's gonna have to get Riddell to make him a wooden dick!"

Artis Toothis was another story, a bit more complicated. Artis Toothis, the speedster from the Big Thicket, last year's most-wanted blue-chipper, had wound up at SMU all right, but he had dropped out of school. His explanation to the press was that he had been lonely and unhappy in Dallas, which was to say that he had been forced to enroll in a freshman English class, and he had heard a rumor that his meal allowance of $3,000 a month was far below the figure a running back at the University of Texas was getting.