Star Time (43 page)

"Anything else?"

"We don’t have much in the way of replacement series, so try to develop new product we can schedule during sweeps months—movies, miniseries,
specials
.
Big special events."

Marian looked around the lobby for a moment. "It's all a little unreal

and a little scary."

"It's a
lot
scary. But just keep in mind all the things you said last night you wanted to do. Trust yourself."

"Thank you," she solemnly said, and started to shuffle toward the elevator.

Greg stopped her. "If you want people to treat you as if you're in charge, you'd better look as if you're in charge."

For an instant Marian did not understand, but then she noticed Greg's erect bearing. Her own back stiffened upright. Her shoulders pulled back. She smiled at him and strode decisively into the waiting elevator.

All morning, people cradling cardboard cartons streamed from the building.

Greg and Marian spent lunch, cocktail hour, an early dinner, and a late supper that night in hurriedly arranged meetings to pitch FBS to key creative people in series television.

Several times Marian rejected mediocre show she knew other networks had rightly rejected. She made clear that the advantage of bringing a show to FBS was not that the network was desperate enough to take anything, but
that it had nothing to lose by keeping hands more or less off a show all sides cared a great deal about;
showrunners
would get a lot of creative freedom.

Gus Krieger, for one, derided the pitch. FBS had already destroyed one of his series with its interference, he told them, and he wasn't about to risk another. With a series presently on the air, he did not need FBS and had, in fact, vowed never to go back.

"Sounds like you've got a new series you're pitching somewhere," Marian immediately discerned.

"NBC."

"What's it about?" she asked.

Marian had always been straight with him, Gus reflected, one of the few in programming at FBS who had. No harm is trying it out on her.

"I think it's a funny idea," he began, and described the premise. It was set in a shabby girls' college always on the brink of insolvency that professed a deep Christian commitment. The headmaster, who also owned the school, was a devious, but not very capable con man who was always involved in a new scheme: sometimes to earn the funds to keep the doors open and sometimes to become wildly, exorbitantly rich. Although a few innocents had come to the college to learn, many of the girls were even more cunning and wayward than he and invariably had their own scams going on: sometimes to sneak boys in, sometimes to sneak
themselves
out, sometimes to fleece the headmaster out of what he had just connived to gain. The series and the school were both called
Grimsby College for Pious Young Ladies
. When it was absolutely unavoidable that she appear to parents and other outsiders, the headmaster dressed up as, of course, the nonexistent Miss Grimsby.

Greg and Marian shared a glance. He spoke up.

"We'll give you a hard-and-fast commitment right now for a two-hour movie to serve as the pilot. If that plays well…” He turned to
Marian,
wanting to be sure they were on the same page.

“You’ll get a full year's commitment to do it as a half-hour sitcom," she continued. "FBS will produce it in-house and put up the financing. You'll get the same profit share you would from a studio."

Gus was taken aback. "But first you'll want to see the script, right, and make just one or two 'little' suggestions."

"Probably," Marian offered. "But I won't have the right to veto a thing. You can take my suggestions or ignore them. I trust you to be reasonable. As long as nothing's patently offensive, you can shoot your script. The only approval I really want is on the budget and casting for the continuing characters. That's it."

"This won't be a kids' show. I'd want a nine or nine-thirty time slot."

Marian saw an opening. "NBC is riding high in those time slots. But we can give you one."

"Parents might complain that we're corrupting morals."

"This is entertainment, not a Sunday-school lesson. People know the difference.
Or should."

Greg extended a hand. "We'll give you whatever you asked for at NBC. Do we have a deal?"

"This is crazy," Gus observed with a laugh.

Marian smiled. "We told you this wasn't the old FBS way of doing business."

Gus shook Greg's hand and then Marian's.

The deal memo was signed the next morning.

On Wednesday night, much of Hollywood's creative community gathered at the Beverly Wilshire’s Le Grand
Trianon
room for FBS's party. Its theme was "We're on our way." Chris's appearance provoked loud applause. She and
Hedy
and several other correspondents spoke briefly after the showing of a montage of highlights from recent news broadcasts. Then stars from several FBS current series and a new miniseries just
greenlighted
came on stage to say a few words.

Annette Valletta as
Luba
got the audience laughing with her innocent-seeming, Russian-accented comments. She ended with a couple of sly questions intended to confront with light-hearted humor what had to be on everyone's mind. "How did you happen to get such a good job, Mr.
Lyall
? Maybe you knew somebody?"

"You've got to start somewhere," he answered her. "The top is as good a place as any."

He got a good laugh. She flounced off. And Greg grew serious. Viewers had sampled all of the network's uninspired new shows this
season and found little of interest. FBS wanted to enter next season with more daring, original choices in the lineup and was prepared to go further than the other networks to give suppliers firm deals and creative freedom. He ended with a glowing introduction of Marian that emphasized his full support.

The Marian Marcus who walked briskly to the podium was a tall, eye-catching figure in a flamboyant red dress and a frosted-blond hairdo. For the first time in her life, Marian had not let her physical appearance be dictated by her anxious psyche, but by experts. Makeup, hair, and clothing stylists had been given carte blanche. Her large features would never allow her to be pretty, but she would never again be plain.
Nor taken for granted.
She announced her first deal, a two-hour movie pilot with superstar writer-producer Gus Krieger.

Then she and Greg and her staff began to work the room, cultivating top producers, stroking top stars. And just as eagerly, the room worked them.

Danny Vickers had brought Sally Foster, but rushed off to assault Marian with his bag of projects. To his consternation Marian knew them all and politely declined them all, the one starring Sally Foster for the third time. Its premise was trite and the writers mediocre.

Danny suddenly remembered. "I've got this great young black writer working on this fabulous action-suspense series for me. It's about a white cop—he's the main honcho—and a black guy. They disguise themselves to solve a different big case every week. It's
Lethal Weapon.
It's
48 Hours.
It's . . ." He could not come up with another movie model that he hoped would excite her. "The working title is
Lowe and High
."

Marian thought the project worth a further look. The title, though, would have to go.

"I've got it," Danny tried brightly, "
Danger, Stranger!
"

Marian shook her head. "Let's meet with the writer next week. My assistant will set it up."

A high-level FBS West Coast executive, a bushy-haired, jowly man in his fifties, descended on Marian.

"What kind of a car?"

"What?" she asked.

"What kind of car did they give you?"

"I don't know.
Dark blue."

"You don't know?"

She shook her head. The car came with the job. She now left her own at home.

"What number?" he pressed her.

She was equally confused. He grew exasperated.

"What number parking place did they give you?"

Again, she shook her head. Yesterday, she had found her name on a parking spot close to the office building's front entrance and had simply parked there.

"Number five!" the man barked. "That's what number they gave you! Number five! And the first four spots are reserved for East Coasters who are never here." He counted them off in order on his fingers.
"Roderick,
Lyall
, Carver, and Jorgenson.
I've been a senior vice president eight years. Eight years! And all that time I've never gotten lower than number six. Some kid gets made a senior vice president, and just like that she's number five. Who the fuck do you know?"

He stomped away.

Ev
Carver had also been pondering the significance of Marian's promotion. He had acted quickly to contain the damage at Monumental. Mickey Blinder had phoned him in desperation when Greg and Marian went into the adjoining room.
Ev
told Blinder to come up with something valuable to offer FBS in a settlement, on whatever terms Greg offered. Blinder was then to hire
Clampton
in order to insure that the story not get out.

That solution also disposed of
Ev's
little personal problem: the gifts Mickey had given him from time to time.
Ev
had always made sure never to give Blinder anything in return—no deals, nothing. Just goodwill, friendly gestures, Monumental treated a little more solicitously than the others. But appearances could have hurt him.

Ev
glanced over at the tall young woman Greg had selected to replace
Clampton
. Everything he had learned about Marian Marcus indicated that she was a guppy swimming in a tank of piranhas and was certain to get eaten alive in the programming job. The slick operators out here would set her head spinning and sell her crap shows. Because she was Greg
Lyall's
personal choice for the job, the two would both go down in flames.

Why the hell had
Lyall
picked her? Was he sleeping with her? The woman had a kind of flair, but she was certainly on the homely side and
Lyall
had a lot to lose if he was caught dipping his wick away from home. You could never tell, though, about a guy's compulsions or his taste. What if Greg
was
sleeping with her?
Ev
conjectured.
If he could somehow find that out, Jesus, but wouldn't that give him great ammunition to shoot down Barnett Roderick's son-in-law.

Hedy
had already left for New Orleans to cover a story there in the morning, so
Ev
sought out other company for later in the evening. Toward the end of the party, he managed to find a moment when Sally Foster was alone. He was conversing with her near the dessert and coffee table when he noticed Greg, a few feet away, walk up to Chris.
Ev
remembered that he used to think the two had something going.

"Seems like old times,"
Ev
quipped to them.

Laughing at what he hoped was their
embarrassment,
Ev
drew Sally away to chat in a more private area. Danny quickly moved across the room to intercept them.

"What it really seems like," Greg privately commented to Chris, "is a bad case of déjà vu. Remember Danny Vickers's party?
Ev
was also with Sally back then and also making lecherous comments."

"It must be the smog out here that has that effect on people."

Greg's gaze locked on hers. "Does it have that effect on you?"

She did not answer right away. She was staring into Greg's eyes and trying to remember the scars he had gouged along her heart and ignore the singing in her flesh. Her compulsion for honesty won out—and her anger at recognizing a truth she had tried hard to deny.

"Unfortunately," she admitted, despite her better
judgement
, "where you're concerned, my body seems to have a mind of its own."

A man's voice sounded behind them.
"You two again?"

They turned, expecting once more to find
Ev
. Arnold Mandel was smiling at them.

"I know, I know," he said. "You're just close friends."

Greg emitted an abashed little laugh. "How are you, Arnold? It's been a long while."

"I don't see either of you for ten years, and when I do, you're still together and still look like you can't wait to rip each other's clothes off. But you're always just good friends. Everybody should be so lucky to have such friends."

Greg quickly shifted to another subject. "Marian says you have an hour pilot that's getting the runaround at one of the other networks. Can we see it?"