Star Time (42 page)

"Some suppliers have five, six hours a week on the networks," Greg replied. "Monumental has half an hour.
Ours.
Nobody's been breaking down the doors to make deals with Monumental."

"Well," Raoul said with a chuckle, "we sure wouldn't have had a prayer of getting
We're Outta Space
. "

"Now that also seems odd to me. Your memo authorizing that commitment never mentioned any project. No writer or producer or star was tied to the commitment. Monumental had carte blanche to put on anything they wanted. A couple of days after that you had the contract amended to commit us to thirteen weeks of this
Space
show." Greg glanced at Marian. "Sound funny to you, too?"

Raoul jumped in before she could answer. "She'd love to smear me."

Greg said, smiling benignly. "Not like your friend Mickey, who wants only the best for you. It says so right here. Remember, Mickey?"

Greg handed over a photocopy of a secret memo Mickey had written.

The round-faced production executive turned ashen.
"Oh, Jesus!"

Mickey started to hand the memo to Raoul.

"I have a lot of copies," Greg assured him, and handed one to Raoul.

Last night had been an eye-opener for Greg in many ways. The tall, somewhat ungainly young woman with frizzy hair and clever brown eyes whom he and Chris had met for drinks showed him two memos. The first was the memo
Clampton
had sent to Business Affairs that authorized the questionable arrangement for
Luba
and a later series for Annette
Valleta
plus thirteen weeks next season of any Monumental half-hour sitcom.

But she also gave Greg the memo he had just passed around, one that a friend at Monumental had slipped to her out of its confidential files. In it Mickey Blinder described the private deal he had just made with Raoul
Clampton
, including his promise to hire
Clampton
if he left the network or was fired.
Out-and-out bribery.
That memo could put both men behind bars.

"As of this moment, you're fired, Raoul," Greg announced. "And FBS's deal with Monumental is canceled. That's just the beginning."

Mickey's brain, always so good at tap dancing him out of trouble, was failing to operate.

"Could I have five minutes to talk to Raoul?" he asked.

"Take ten," Greg offered magnanimously, and strolled with Marian into an adjoining office.

Over dinner last night Greg had admitted to Marian and Chris how disheartened the Programming Department's new projects had made
him. Marian described her frustration that all the new and interesting ideas she had seen had been rejected in favor of clones or recombined versions of current shows that possessed no singular or compelling
concept that could grab the audience. She had expressed her conviction that the only way to come up with breakthrough shows was to be innovative, even daring, in ways an audience could relate to. She was surprised to find Greg as convinced as she; they thought remarkably alike, and he seemed nothing like the ogre Chris had described for a decade.

The cocktail hour had stretched into dinner, but still the discussion continued. Greg and Chris had gone back with Marian to her house and sat on the floor till very late, talking and reading proposals she had kept while they sipped beers and dipped into a huge bowl of microwave popcorn. Without anything being said, it was understood that Marian had been rehired.
And also without anything being said, that the long state of hostility between Chris and Greg had ended.

He
drove
her back to the Beverly Wilshire where both of them were staying. Although in some ways being together seemed natural, both felt the tension humming silently between them.

She
got
off the elevator on the fifth floor. He
almost
follow
her
when s
he halted for an instant, searching in her handbag for her key.
W
as she waiting for him?
he
wondered. But he let the doors close between them, stayed on until the sixth floor, and
went
to his suite.

He phoned Diane, as he did every night when he was away. She had missed him and had a dozen stories about her day to entertain him. But despite the virtue in which he had wrapped himself, he
did not sleep
well.

"I thought I'd have to apply CPR to restart their hearts when you showed them Blinder's secret memo," Marian joked as she and Greg took chairs in the small office next to Blinder's.

"Is there anything we want from Blinder? We have him now where we want him."

"You'd do business with him?" Marian's ethical sense was affronted by the thought.

"A lawsuit gets us a lot of legal costs and dubious publicity, especially when we want to look like good guys to the creative community out here. But the private
threat
of a
lawsuit, that
can be very useful."

She understood.

"We need a new show right now. Any ideas?" he asked.

"Maybe one of those proposals we looked at last night."

The walls were lined with shelves containing scripts and treatments and proposals. Out of habit she skimmed the titles on the spines. One atop a pile on a chair caught her eye, and she jumped at it.

"On second thought!" she said excitedly.

Written brightly on the proposal's cover was its title:
Scum.

A few minutes later, the door opened. Mickey's shirt was soaked in sweat, and he was wiping his forehead with a handkerchief.

"We'd like to know if it's possible to make some kind of a deal with you," he said.

"You know, gentlemen," Greg replied as he and Marian walked back into Mickey's office, "I have a feeling a deal may just be possible."

Mickey could not believe his good fortune. Even when your back is to the wall and the firing squad is taking aim, you've got to keep fighting because you just never know. He would have given
Lyall
the world to get off the hook, but after canceling all the giveaways to
Clampton
, the guy actually bought a pilot from him. Unfortunately, it was that ridiculous project
Scum.

"I've just made a fabulous deal for you," Mickey phrased it when he summoned Susan
Glendon
and her partner to his office to meet with "the top people from FBS."

Scum
goes right to pilot," he told her. "No waiting for FBS's script approval. Am I out there fighting for you, or what?"

Seeing Marian Marcus and not Raoul
Clampton
as she entered the room, Susan understood immediately why FBS's interest in
Scum
had been re-kindled. Greg was astounded to see Stew
Graushner
entering just behind her. He was the "S.
Graushner
" named on the proposal's cover as co-writer and co-producer. Greg was delighted. He had not seen or heard anything since Stew left KFBS.

Greg joked, "Afraid your creditors might find you if you used your full name?"

Stew's coughing fit covered the awkward moment quite nicely.

After Marian and Greg departed, Mickey informed the writer-producer team that the FBS deal had one little wrinkle he had forgotten to mention amid all the excitement. Raoul
Clampton
was now executive producer of the series. FBS had insisted on it, Mickey claimed.

Susan correctly guessed that the arrangement had been the price of some deal Mickey had made with
Clampton
for his own reasons, possibly to buy his silence. She shot back that she would refuse to do the series if
Clampton's
name was on the screen or if his salary was in their budget or anything came out of her and Stew’s profit share or if he came within a hundred yards of the set or the production office or if he even dared to speak to her.

"Hey, I've got no problem with any of that," Mickey assured her. "Which sound stage do you want?"

"E," she said, and departed with Stew.

Mickey ordered his assistant to inform Raoul
Clampton
of the arrangement and rushed upstairs. He had one last task to attend to. He used his key to slip into the locked file room and yank every copy of his incriminating memo.

An ebullient Susan, on the walk back to her their office, was discussing ideas for the pilot script when it finally struck Stew that lady luck had suddenly, improbably kissed him square on the lips.

He interrupted her. "Excuse me, but how much do I have coming to me at this very moment?"

She calculated quickly. "We share equally, so your share is about a hundred thousand dollars and when—"

"A hundred thousand!" he breathed.

"—
we
deliver the pilot, another hundred thousand."

"Another hundred thousand!"

"If the network picks up the show and we write all the episodes, I think it’s about ninety thousand apiece.”

“We each get ninety thousand a year just for doing some writing and producing?”

“An episode.
For twenty episodes if we end up getting the full order.
Just under a million dollars a year."

"A million dollars!"

"And of course, half the profits in syndication.
That's the big money."

"We wouldn’t want to do without the big money!"

"Are you all right?"

"I have to use a bathroom. I'll be right back."

He must have to go badly, Susan thought, watching him sprint to the Administration Building.

Stew knew
Monumental's
checks were issued there.

A few days later, the new executive producer of
Scum
—at least that was what it would say on Raoul's weekly paychecks—was observed climbing the catwalk ladder up to a cubicle just beneath the roof of sound stage A, at the other end of the Monumental lot from where that show's pilot would be shot. That was the office Mickey had found for him. Within days the strange, silent figure would become known to the lot's wisecracking regulars as the Phantom of the Upper A.

Marian drove her car behind Greg's from the Monumental lot to FBS. She had no idea what sort of job he had in mind for her. She guessed as some kind of advisor to him, maybe advising on scripts and pilots when they came in. She needed an office somewhere.

"Where do I go?" she asked when they were inside the lobby.

Greg had weighed his options for Programming during the drive back. Finding and then hiring away a top programmer from one of the other networks would take weeks he didn’t have. His ready alternative was Marian. She had wide programming experience. Not at the top, but she had certainly dealt with many of the town's leading television
creators. She also had the advantage of knowing the projects that had already come into FBS. The downside was she had never had ultimate responsibility for picking and shaping the shows to go on the air. Furthermore, he had
no idea whether that mousy front hid an iron will that would emerge when given command or one that would break under the strain. He would be risking the company's fortunes on her untried taste and skill. Yet, he had seen that Marian's instincts matched his own—and that she was willing to trust them.

"
Clampton’s
office," he answered her.

"He’s not there anymore."

He laughed. "It’s yours.
The department.
Programming.
Scheduling.
New series development, whatever it takes."

"You're kidding." She was stunned.

"Keep whoever you think is good. Fire the others and hire people whose
judgement
you trust. And do it fast. Do we need all those people who supervise current shows?"

"Not all of them. Some just spend their time trying to prove they're smarter than the producers. My money's on the producers. Whom do I report to?"

"Nominally,
Ev
Carver because he oversees Programming and the
Entertainment Division as part of his Broadcast Group. Treat him as if he's your boss. But that's just for form's sake."

"Everybody says he's a killer."

"That's only his better nature. Watch your back."

"In this town that's the side we wear our bulletproof vests on."

"I'll be on the phone with you every day talking things over, and out here as much as I need to be."

"People here have to know you're solidly behind me."

"I'll make that clear on Wednesday night at the party. The party’s now your baby, too. You'll probably want people their
Clampton
ignored. Invite them personally. We want the creative community to know we're serious about giving them a lot more leeway and a lot fewer handcuffs."