The Ravine (12 page)

So where was I, right, talking about truth-telling. What I’m getting at is that it is sometimes easy to tell the truth, as long as you are operating within a certain circle of humanity. Of humanness. Here’s my
metaphor. The truth, the ugly truth, I represent as a hammertoe. Know what one is? John Hooper has one, his little toe seems to come from someone else’s body, it is tiny and lacks a nail of any significance and plays no part in the day-to-day operation of Hooper’s foot. When he removes his right shoe and sock, this little appendage waves happily, hovering almost a full inch from the floor. And sometimes, at parties, Hooper will denude his foot and demonstrate his odd toe, and everyone is vaguely repulsed for a moment, and then someone, usually a woman, will want to touch the thing, and Hooper will end up in bed with yet another beauty. I’ve mentioned that I hate the man, correct? He slept with Veronica, you know that, despite which, his novel
Baxter
is receiving excellent reviews. Soon they are going to announce the short list for the Giller book prize, and I’ll be surprised if
Baxter
isn’t there. I’ll be surprised if it isn’t there and I’ll kill myself if it is—anyway, the truth is like Hooper’s hammertoe, and it is easy enough to reveal. But me, you know, I have no little hammertoe of a deformity, instead I am like the Elephant Man, shrouded from top to bottom with filthy rags. Any small parting of the cloth and people bolt, howling with fear.
I am not an animal
, I shriek at their disappearing backsides, although as the sound of the footsteps fades away, I fall silent and think,
Oh, who am I trying to kid?

But Rainie van der Glick was with me as I donned the rags, wasn’t she? As blemishes, boils and deformities manifested themselves, there was always a bit of time before I covered them up, a few days when they were exposed. There is no mirror for the soul, after all, one can only judge by the look of revulsion in the eyes of the citizenry. My belaboured point is, Rainie knew all about my failings. And didn’t really seem to mind, kept nodding and shovelling pasta into her mouth, pausing three times during the meal to light cigarettes, smearing the filter-ends with bright red lipstick.

“Phil, Phil, Phil,” she said, “what a mess you’ve made.” She touched my hand, not especially tenderly—she prodded it almost as though testing for life, pressing down and releasing, seeing if blood would return to the clammy flesh.

“We’re out of wine,” I pointed out.

“I have some, um …” Rainie moved her mouth to one side to aid in taking mental inventory, but she quickly released it. “I got booze.”

“Good.”

“Don’t drink too much, though,” she said, rising from the table. “Don’t forget, I am Our Lady of Perpetual Mercy Fucks.”

I bet you want to know what happened, don’t you? Not with Rainie van der Glick, although you no doubt want to know what happened on that front, too, but I bet you want to know what, precisely, my confession entailed, what I did to end up where I am today.

Seven years ago, I created a television series called
Padre.
You may very well have seen it, especially if you’re Canadian, because the series was on the air for a grand total of one hundred and fifty-six hours. You may also have seen the show if you live in either Germany or Japan, where it is something of a hit. It has always struck me as odd that the show is appreciated in those countries, because, as a postwar baby, I tend to view those nations as the Enemy. I have attended a fan-fest in Japan (they hold them annually) where I was confronted by an auditorium full of people, most of them men, most of them dressed in clerical garb and wearing white ten-gallon hats. If you live in the United States of America, it is not likely that you have seen the show, where it ran for a grand total of two episodes on UPN. The second episode actually made the Guinness Book of Records: lowest ratings for a network television show. And I wrote it!

The premise of
Padre
is simple, compelling and totally stolen from
The Bullet and the Cross.
I have never been called on it, because
a) more people saw the second episode in the U.S. than saw
The Bullet and the Cross
and b) I lifted my premise from the B story, that of Father White, the virile clergyman. In
Padre
, Edward Milligan portrays Gabe Quinton, a pastor sent westward by the higher-ups in some church, a Christian denomination characterized largely by the apparency that their ministers have very little actual ministering to do, and therefore have lots of time left over to duke it out with blackguards and ne’er-do-wells. Father Quinton does give the occasional sermon, but they are almost always interrupted by gun-toting desperadoes. If I lived in the fictional Boone City, I wouldn’t attend one of Father Quinton’s gatherings for anything, but in the world I created the little church is always filled to the rafters with wholesome people, fresh-faced farmers and their progeny, chaste-looking women with large breasts.

The show was popular (at least in the unlikely axis of Canada, Germany and Japan) largely because of Edward Milligan. Milligan was a stupefyingly handsome man, and his perfect features were laid out in such a manner as to suggest a purity no amount of evil could sully. I point to his features because he surely lacked the acting ability to portray this innocence, which was in violent opposition to his true nature.

The last credit in the title sequence read:
CREATED BY PHILIP MCQUIGGE
. The card immediately preceding this one identified me as the Executive Producer. Those of you unfamiliar with the television industry may wonder what, exactly, that position entails, so by way of explanation, I will describe a typical day. Actually, if I describe a day that occurred in the last six months of the show’s production, you may get a pretty good idea of what went wrong.

I enter the production facilities at about nine-thirty in the morning; shooting doesn’t start until two-thirty, because it has been pushed an
hour. Production went late the night before, and the unions are very strict about turnarounds, so although the boards announce a call-time of eight o’clock for six consecutive days, we are now starting in the afternoon. And, I’ll point out, one doesn’t get to this point without spending thousands of extra dollars on overtime, so I enter the building with a dour expression pasted firmly on my face.

I choose the door that is closest to my office, but that still forces me to walk down thirty-five yards of corridor. I have considered having a door built so that I could enter my office directly, but there is no money for anything like that; the budget barely covers production costs, and there are always overages, particularly when Jimmy Yu is directing, which is the case on this day.

So I walk the thirty-five yards, and people descend upon me. “Phil!” “Phil!”

Willy Props comes at me toting a cumbersome machine, a typewriter so antiquated that it looks almost postmodern, the keys ovular, the striking pegs thin and bent like spider’s legs. “Check it out,” commands Willy, who is perpetually drug-addled. “For 607.” I have to stop to think: we are filming 605, this is the last day of pre-production for 606, so this is for, um, right, Barker’s script, which is in pre-pre. I vaguely remember the plot twist that necessitated an ancient typewriting machine, but I thought I told him to deep-six it.

“Look,” says Willy, “this baby is a hundred and sixteen years old.”

“Where did you get it?”

Willy Props has to think about that. He remembers. “Oh, yeah. There’s a typewriter museum in, what, like, Canton, Ohio. We’re renting this baby.”

“For …?”

“Two thou. American.”

“Too steep. Send it back.”

“But—”

“See, the thing is, Willy, there is
magic
in television. But no one around here ever trusts the stuff. We don’t need to get an actual hundred-and-sixteen-year-old typewriter. We could shoot a dishwasher and just
say
it’s a hundred-and-sixteen-year-old typewriter, and everyone—everyone except Ernst Kibble—would believe us. Send it back.”

Ernst Kibble, in case you are wondering, is a man who lives in, I don’t know, a rabbit warren in Northern Ontario. He watches
Padre
faithfully, but has no interest in the show other than the spotting and reporting of historical inaccuracies. He’s the supreme bullet-counter. You know what I mean, right? For example, in the crowd at the Galaxy Odeon there were at least four kids who, upon commencement of any gunfight in the Old West, would start counting aloud the bullets fired. If there was ever a seventh bullet discharged from a six-shooter these little creatures would howl derisively. Bullet-counters grow up to be accountants, for the most part, although Ernst Kibble has the syndrome too profoundly to function in society. He once pointed out to us—via an email, a godsend to the insane—that the stars in the night sky were in an alignment that belied our stated time of year. “That is simply not a November vistage!”

At any rate, Willy turns around dolefully. I make a short bolt toward my office, but I am confronted by Dirk Mayhew, the production manager. “He’s insane!”

“I know he’s insane. He’s also a genius.” No, we’re not discussing Mr. Kibble, rather Jimmy Yu, the director.

“Fire him!”

“I can’t fire him,” I sigh wearily, “there’s only two days left in the shoot.”

“You have to fire him …” I don’t have to record all of this conversation, which actually went on for close to ten minutes, these
sentences and minor variations deftly lobbed back and forth. It ends when something explodes inside Dirk Mayhew’s jacket. He pulls out a walkie-talkie and barks into it. A huge gust of static is returned. I can hear nothing that even resembles the human voice, but apparently Dirk can, because he wheels about and charges away. There are only about ten yards to the door to my office (at least, the door to the productorial bullpen) and my sanctuary.

I launch down the narrow hallway. Michelangelo Barker stands there, a mug of tea in his hand. Michelangelo is so large that his finger can’t fit through the cup’s handle; he pinches it tightly between thumb and index. All colour has drained away from the skin. Given how pale Barker is anyway, this means that his digits virtually glow. It is my intention to ignore him—I’ll throw him a nod, flicker the edges of my mouth briefly—but he bristles as I pass by. He bristles so forcefully that I am tossed into the opposite wall.

“Is there a problem, Mr. Barker?”

“Ah, no, no.
Yes.”

“And that would be…?”

“You have taken out Padre’s dialogue with the dying old woman.”

“Dialogue? It was a
speech.
The old woman says nothing.”

“She is too weak to enunciate. But human intercourse doesn’t always rely on words. Hmmm.”

“It does on the wonderbox, Michelangelo.”

“All right. I’ll ignore science and give the old woman some lines, even though her lungs are clogged and useless.”

“Okay, but that’s not really the problem. The problem is with what Padre says, this
You were always like a mother to me.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Well, he hardly knew the woman. She’s only in this episode. She’s a fucking plot device, Michelangelo.”

“Yes, but we know that Padre’s mother was killed by desperadoes, therefore this shadow taints his relationship with women.”

“Who says Padre’s mother was killed by desperadoes?”

Michelangelo’s eyebrows knit momentarily with confusion. “You did. It’s in the Bible. He was a baby in a bodega …”

“On television,” I interrupt, “relationships can’t be
tainted.
The audience can’t understand a tainted relationship. The medium is not designed to convey
taints.”

“Hmm. Really.” It is all there in Barker’s attitude, in the slight stirring of his body. He looks down upon me; his eyebrows ripple across the top of his tiny spectacles. And he might as well speak it aloud:
It is not the medium that can’t convey taints—subtleties—it’s you.

“Besides,” I barge on, “the scene went on too long. It went on for three pages. Too much. Get to the action. Always remember that.
Character is action.”
I often offer up little dicta of this nature, to emphasize the fact that I am experienced, crafty and, more to the point, his boss. Barker backs away into his office, the former broom closet. I run at the door that says executive producers and hurl myself through.

“Good fucking morning.” Dora Worsley is looming over Cassie’s desk, a sheaf of contracts in her hands. Dora is the Producer. In the land of television, there are various sorts and levels of producers, and you may not care who’s who and what’s what, but just in case you do, here’s how things break down. I am the Executive Producer, having created the show. There is also a Supervising Producer. In the case of
Padre
, it is an earnest young man named Stevie Medjuck. There is also a Co-Producer, who often (and in this case) is simply a writer with a good agent. And there’s a plain old producer Producer, who does all the work. And that is Dora Worsley, a woman who always looks as though—if she doesn’t get something to eat damn soon—she’s going to die.

There is something in Dora’s tone that suggests all is not as it should be. (The expletive inserted between
good
and
morning
means nothing, Dora’s speech is peppered with obscenities. Dora was abandoned as an infant in a truck stop, subsequently raised to adulthood by the drivers and waitresses. At least, that’s my theory.) But I am in no mood to deal with problems. I never am, for one thing, but also there is work to do, so I simply nod a greeting at Worsley and extend my hand toward Cassie Elliot, who stuffs it with slips of paper, my telephone messages. At last I achieve my own office, and I slam the door shut behind me.

I have eleven messages; seven are from Carla Dowbiggin, who is the network executive assigned to our show. One is from my brother, Jay, because, on the day I am describing, he is still willing to talk to me. However, I am not talking to him, exactly; I crumple up the piece of paper with his name on it, toss it into the wastebasket. What else do I have here? A message from Ian George. Who the hell is Ian George? Into the trash with that one. There is a request to call from Pamela Anderson, no, not that one, this Pamela Anderson is a journalist from
Canada Screen
, an industry organ. The industry, as you may know, is dead, and the writers from
Canada Screen
are desperate for copy, so I often have a message from one of them, usually Pamela Anderson. Occasionally I call her back, but … not today. Into the bin. And the final message is from Ronnie, but there is nothing noted in the little box marked time. I don’t know if this message is fresh or stale. She may have left it yesterday, after I’d left for the day. Or she may have left it this morning, in which case there is likely some small bit of kid-related logistics to work out, which Ronnie will discuss with frosty hauteur. She is angry with me, although she has no reason to be.