Still Talking (31 page)

That first night was the wedding. Fox never took me on a honeymoon. The bridegroom walked the next morning when he read the press reviews. They said things like, “No need, Johnny, to lose sleep over the new challenger,” and called the audience “moronic” and “air-

heads.” Tom Shales wrote in The Washington Post, “Maybe Rivers should spend less time at the beauty parlor and more time with her writers. The beauty parlor would appear to be a lost cause for her anyway. “

I think those first newspaper columns did irreparable damage. I think they confirmed Fox’s distrust of my judgment, of my comedy instincts, and the fear and doubts went all the way up to Diller. When you distrust, you begin following your own judgment. So from then on everybody had an opinion, had input.

There was a second reason the groom walked. Ratings. After being promised that .honeymoon, at least a year to find ourselves without worry, the numbers were instantly crucial. They were the fuel for the fire that ultimately consumed Edgar and me. And Fox, either from naivetd or to get the affiliates to the altar, had based the financial arrangements on a guaranteed 6 rating-the number that the Carson show pulled. In fact, a year earlier, when I went to a sales meeting for affiliates in Chicago, I heard Murdoch himself promise a 6. I was amazed-but still believed they knew what they were doing. Later, when stations got 2’s and 3’s, Fox had to make up the difference by reimbursing the stations with free programming. I believe that, disappointed by the reviews and ratings in those early weeks, Barry Diller wanted to get out of the deal. He had promised me and the affiliates more than he was able to comfortably deliver.

Our ratings in the first week, when the show was competing with the World Series, were 3.2 nationally in 98 markets, each point representing 921,000

homes. Carson’s were 6.4 in 202 markets. In the next few weeks, when we began averaging 3.9 in the big cities and 2’s in the small stations, Fox panicked. In the third week the president of Fox Broadcasting, Jamie Kellner, told me he pulled his car over to the side of the road and prayed for good ratings.

It is the nature of show business that everybody panics, even at the highest level. Rarely is there anybody who is saying in the face of bad news, “Ho, ho, ho, everything’s all right.” When the movie doesn’t open big at the box

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office, the reaction is, “Oh, my God,” not “By God, we’ll back this movie till it finds its audience.”

None of the Fox executives, including Diller, ever seemed to understand the realities of their network. At that time it was a conglomeration of ninety-eight affiliates, twelve of them established stations in big cities like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta. The rest were peripheral stations with short radius signals, the weakest sisters in their area. Des Moines had four stations-Fox’s was number four in power; Dayton had fourFox’s was fourth; Chattanooga had four, and Fox’s was fourth, and so on. These stations had channel numbers like 29 in Buffalo and 47 in Toronto. I used to joke, “They’d watch us if they could find us.”

Most of these small stations were relatively new, formed when FCC

regulations eased, allowing more stations. However, as the number of stations increased, the supply of programs stayed the same, and these small stations, unable to afford first-run shows, were broadcasting mainly movies and series reruns. Fox’s strategy was to offer a whole menu of high-quality, first-run shows, affordable because the stations were allotted time for local advertising.

Advertising fees are based on ratings, and these peripheral stations had to live on .8’s and 1’s. Now The Late Show gave them a 2 or even a 3 rating on late night. They were thrilled. They were not only getting more money, but also respectability and recognition and the benefit of the national publicity I received. They were suddenly stations!

Fox never seemed to realize that in the real market world, my numbers were not only respectable, but probably the best they could ever expect. When the ratings did not climb to 6’s, I and the show were blamed-and the fact that the show was a success was never proved to Fox until it was too late.

Moreover, I have since learned an infuriating fact. During all the harassment by Fox, all the arguing about expenses, the show was never losing money. I was told by a Fox executive that the break-even point, no money made

or lost, was a 2 rating, and our lowest dip was 2.1 in January. My source said, “Joan Rivers could be on the air right now earning everybody including Fox a good living. “

Instead, the show suffered a terminal version of the Bickersons-a senseless campaign of executive gamesmanship, cutbacks, penny-pinching, and harassments that must have flowed from the top. Ever since that first meeting about announcing the show, ever since I made that joke about the guards, Barry believed he could not work with Edgar and me. That attitude would then have been picked up by the chain of command, by Kevin Wendle and Ron Vandor, and the story of the next seven months-until I could be moved out-became the struggle by Fox to take control of the show.

In such a situation I am sure that everybody thought he was working for the good of the show-but the net result was that nobody was truly in charge.

Fox, with a lot of power and no plan, a lot of energy and no knowledge, ended up with a show that was like a man who mounted the horse and rode off in all directions.

The struggle for control started the very first week. I had been guaranteed by contract control of all creative aspects of the show-essentially what happened on camera. But in those first days I discovered that in his mind, Barry Diller had torn up the contract.

We came up with the idea of a mock anniversary show celebrating our first five days on the air-a great spoof because Carson’s anniversary was happening soon. We planned all the cliche schticks-put everybody in gowns and tuxedos, run clips of earlier shows and say how young we all looked, set up each guest to reminisce, “I’ll never forget what you said Tuesday night, Joan. ” We could not wait to do it.

The idea went up the chain of command, and the answer came back down, “You can’t do it. ” In midweek I encountered Barry in the Fox parking lot and for an hour made a last-ditch plea, pointing out that David Letterman, before he came up with stupid pet tricks, tried at least a dozen ideas that did not work. I argued, “I don’t want to

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be Carson. I don’t want to be Letterman. I want to be me, my humor, whatever that turns out to mean”-which I guess meant silly, acerbic, female-oriented, gossipy, trying anything.

Barry, very cool, just kept saying, “No. It’s not funny.”

Barry was paying me $5 million a year because I was funny, and was now overruling my judgment. But I was still trying to get along with him, so I gave up and got in my car. As I started to drive away, he ran over and knocked on the window. I thought he was going to say, “All right. You can do it.” But when I rolled the window down, he said, “You are the strongest woman I have ever met in my life,” then he turned and went back to his car.

I took it as a compliment, but now I am not so sure.

After that night Barry Diller must have thought, Who needs this aggravation? And from that point forward, I could not get him on the phone.

He had Twentieth CenturyFox to oversee and prime-time programming to worry about. He did not have the time or energy to “handle” me, to laugh and say, “Do this and I owe you. Next time, you win. ” I suspect day-to-day control of Edgar and me was turned over to his young lieutenants-the Iago-ettes, who I believe began whispering in his ear that they could do a better show without me. Barry sat back, figuring if the show worked, fine. If it didn’t, we would get what we deserved. So I ended up in a phone booth with a quarter in my hand, and nobody to call-except my lawyer.

I went about my business, followed my bliss, as somebody once said. I did have my Show of Shows, and loved the challenge of pulling it together in one day-the suspense of will it work, will it be on time, will the guests show up? Between 11:00 A.m. and 8:00 P.m. we created an entire hour of entertainment-phones going, people running around-like a bustling newsroom working on deadline. A nightly, live talk show is so immediate, the logistics of it so pressured-the rehearsal, getting guests in and out, making sure they show, what they will say, scripts donenothing waits till tomorrow.

When I arrived, I went first to the writers’ meeting,

where we worked on future ideas and stunts-and that was terrific because when something is good, it’s exciting, and comedy writers are funny. After the meeting a file of jokes for that day’s monologue was waiting on my desk.

I would choose the ones I liked and add my own.

Then I met the segment coordinators, one by one. They would brief me on that night’s guests, and we would agree on a list of questions.

My last stop before going to my dressing room for hair and makeup was the bookers’ office to look at the board of names on the wall. The bookers, Patti Bourgeois and Saundra Zagaria, each with her Rolodex full of names, sat opposite each other in the middle of the room and worked fifteen-hour days.

Edgar was important to Saundra and Patti, their source for intellectual and real-life ideas-Ralph Nader, Eugene McCarthy, Nancy Reagan, and authors culled from Publishers Weekly and The New York Times. He talked to Melissa and her friends about who was hot, whom they listened to, what movies they saw. When Patti and Saundra wondered about the chemistry between me and possible guests, they asked Edgar.

In turn he took their advice, listened to their criticisms, fought for them, got proper salaries, the right desks, and when he learned one of them had a crush on Tom Cruise moved heaven and earth to book him. That office was the one place where Edgar felt at home and comfortable and appreciated.

Patti and Saundra saved new books for him and teased him, naming a three-foot purple bug-eyed stuffed animal “Edgar.” You walked in, and there would be Edgar in his three-piece suit sitting on the couch next to his namesake, wearing a set of Mickey Mouse ears, or what he called his “thinking cap”-a silver-domed replica of a Hershey’s Kiss. This was the playful side that Edgar showed only when he felt people really liked him-the side that had rarely surfaced since we left New York.

One end of the long couch became Billy Sammeth’s desk. Like Edgar, he had the title of executive producer, but his primary responsibility was the booking board behind the sofa, a square for each night of the month. It was

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wonderful to listen to him, sprawled there all afternoon, calling managers and agents and studio heads to woo the major stars, pouring persuasion into the phone.

Billy was brilliant at this job, and I loved to hear him say, in his special tone of charming challenge, “Pick a day, Mr. Agent. Let me tell you something. If you don’t support Joan, we’ll go on being at the mercy of Carson. If he doesn’t want your client, you’ll have nowhere else to go.

Let’s make two shows work, with two different audiences. Let’s give everybody their six minutes on late night. “

Louie Anderson, God bless him, was the first major comic who defied Carson and did my show. So many in Hollywood are scared of their own shadow. Edgar used to say, “They created this monster. By giving Carson first priority, they gave him a monopoly.” I was finding out who really had courage, which ones were smart and secure and knew they were big and did not have to worry about being blackballed. That Ted Danson would come on the second night, the pride of the NBC family … and Kenny Rogers, who was a Carson guest host ….

Nell Carter, a major NBC star in Gimme a Break, came to see me in my dressing room in Atlantic City and said, “Honey, you got me.” She is warm and generous, smart and funny and a terrific talent. She’s been up, she’s been down, she’s been through it, and she has come out of it. I just love her.

Sometimes Billy would ask me to get on the phone; we were calling in every favor. Lily Tomlin is one of the great guests, so I phoned her and said to her assistant, “I need Lily to come on my show. They’re all saying a woman can’t make a show like this work. I’m sick of hearing that it’s a man’s world. I need help.” She came.

We wanted Roy Orbison, a rock-and-roll name to conjure with, but a man whose manager always refused talk shows, even Carson. Melissa’s former governess, Marcia Tysseling, knew the governess of Roy Orbison’s child.

Through her we bypassed his manager and talked to Roy personally; he was wonderful and said yes.

Michelle Phillips was a guest. She said “tits and ass”

and “shit” and talked about safe sex and how she gave her daughter and her daughter’s friends condoms-kept a basket of them in her living room-“every color you can imagine.” She was a friend of Barry’s, and I think they went out to dinner afterward. I heard Rupert Murdoch was watching that night, too. I had to laugh because Fox was always nervous about my tongue.

Robin Givens, long before she dated Mike Tyson, came on the show. At that time she had done only the pilot for the series she later got. Yet this was not a girl saying, “I hope my career is going to work.” She had a major attitude-“Here I am. I’m Queen of the World.” She also fibbed a bit, told me she had been a medical student, which we now know was untrue.

I had Mike Tyson on another show. He talked about the Lord and showed me a bracelet he never took off, given him by his dead manager and surrogate father, Cus D’Amato. He was very sweet. Eugene McCarthy, another guest, seemed terribly sad to me. He was a fumbler, a mumbler, indecisive, with very little to say. I thought, This is the man we were going to give the leadership of our country? Don King I loved because he and my dog Spike had the same hairdo. Ray Charles was truly an icon-such great joy coming out of his sightless face. Jill Ireland, full of spunk, talked about having only one breast after her operation. She said, “My husband has the best of both.