Who Stole the Funny? : A Novel of Hollywood (46 page)

He looked up and noticed he had a small audience of onlook-

ers, cheering him on—the same way onlookers cheered on O.J. in

the white Bronco.

“Step away from the phone,” J.T. said comically, his tension relieved. “There is nothing to see here.”

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And then the battered cell phone rang. “Raindrops keep fallin’

on my—” The onlookers laughed.
Now, that’s funny,
J.T. thought.

And gave the cell phone its death stomp.

J.T. high-tailed it on his bike back to Oliver’s, threw his few clothes together, thanked Oliver for agreeing to return his bicycle in the morning, hugged Oliver, called an L.A. cab, waited impatiently for the L.A. cab, rode impatiently in the L.A. cab to the airport, and got himself on a flight that would get him home in time to drive up the mountain to his Natasha and Jeremy before they

went to bed. In theory.

Before J.T. was able to get onto his flight, he heard his name being paged over the airport loudspeaker system.

Oh my God! Why did I stomp my cell phone to death? It’s Jeremy, isn’t it? Jeremy’s sick and I didn’t even get a chance to say—no!

It’s Tasha! She’s been hit by a car and pinned to a tree. Oh my God,
she’s been torn in two and the lower half of her body is attached to
her upper half only by the car, just like in that stupid M. Night Shya-malan movie, keeping her torso together so that I can give her last
rites even though I’m not an Episcopal priest! Noooo!
J.T. thought he thought. He was actually howling “No!” at the top of his lungs, obviously not mentally stable from the past week of work in the sitcom world.

The passengers waiting for their flight to Pensacola, Florida,

watched J.T. as he lunged for the hollow, carpeted cylinder that helped keep the ceiling the ceiling—and also housed the white airport phones.

“Hello?! Please don’t tell me this is Tasha! Is anything wrong

with my wife?! My son?!”

“Is this J.T. Baker?” a nasally voice asked.

“Yes! Of course it is! Why else would I pick up th—”

“Hold for your party, please.”

“Party? My wife could be dead and you’re making party

referen—”

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W H O S T O L E T H E F U N N Y ?

“Dick Beaglebum’s office,
please
hold,” an emotionally disconnected voice demanded sternly.

J.T. might as well have been slapped in the face by the wet,

arctic-cold tail of a walrus.

“Huh?” J.T. appropriately mumbled.
Dick? Why here? Why

now? Oh crap,
he thought, and began to pace, continuing to mumble to himself.

A few of the tense passengers waiting to go to Pensacola, Flor-

ida, began to come to the conclusion that J.T. wasn’t a hijacker-to-be who had lost his nerve but just another nutcase in L.A.

“Mommy, is that man crazy?” a little girl asked her concerned

mother.

“He could be, Amy, so just stay by Mommy,” J.T. overheard as

he tried to gather himself and focus.

“Y’hello?” J.T. tried to cover his worst fears.
What are my worst
fears?
he thought.
Didn’t I just have them? Why do I have to have
them again?

“J.T. Baker?” a female voice asked.

“Yes. Yes! YES!”

“Please hold for Dick Beaglebum.”

Dick Beaglebum,
J.T. thought. Now, every showbiz scenario about being cut in half crossed J.T.’s mind, except for the one that was about to take place.

“You fucking bastard!” Dick said, still managing enthusiasm.

“Beaglebum,” J.T. said, “let me see if I understand what just

happened. I was paged at an airport, I picked up the phone, was asked to hold so that my agent could call me a fucking bastard?

Phone calls don’t work that way outside of Hollywood, Dick. I’m in Inglewood. ‘Ingle,’ not ‘Holly.’ I’m not in
your
world now. I’M

LEAVING. On a jet plane. Going far, far away.”

“You fuck. You snitch. You betrayed me!” Dick Beaglebum was

in a fury.

“I beg your pardon?” J.T. looked out the huge airport picture

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window, watching the ballet of jets coming and going, passing one another on different strata.
If I ever shoot airplanes flying from left
to right of frame simultaneously, I’ve got to remember to do it on at
least a two-hundred-millimeter lens,
J.T. thought.

“A two-hundred-millimeter lens? You rat-pig! I wouldn’t fuck

your mother with a two-hundred-millimeter lens!”

“Whoa . . . Dick, um—”

“You fucking did the absolute worst thing you could’ve ever

done. You went to the Directors Guild! You snitched! ON ME!”

“Now, um, hold on there. Aside from Deb at the network ad-

vising me to go to the DGA, Dick, your very own—what is it,

brother-in-law?—came up to me at David’s bar mitzvah and asked

why he had heard I wasn’t directing the next two episodes,” J.T.

said honestly.

“Yeah! And you fucking
told him the truth
! You snitched! By the way, what did you think of the bar mitzvah? I woulda asked

you then, but it was a fuckin’ bar mitzvah for fuck’s sake! So what did you think of the bar mitzvah? Stellar production, huh?”

J.T. watched a young boy draw airplanes, reminding him so

much of his son.
Why am I talking to this fool? I’ve got to get home
to my family,
he thought.

“Well, Dick, to be quite honest, the bar mitzvah was garish and embarrassing. And, on top of that, you turned a religious ceremony into a moneymaking proposition. Only
you,
” he couldn’t resist adding.

“I knew you would be ungrateful. I comped you for nothing,

you snitch!”

“Will you stop calling me a snitch? Shit, you’re the one who

told me to get a lawyer,” J.T. began to defend himself and take the phone call seriously.

“That’s right. And do you know why? Because I knew after

a few weeks you would give up on the whole thing because the

studio and the network can beat a guy like you in a lawsuit. I’ve 3 3 4

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seen those wars of attrition, and believe me, they were made for schmucks like you. You would’ve crumbled under the paperwork

and bills. But no! You had to go to Daddy. You had to go to the Directors Guild of America!”

J.T. looked at the little girl who was holding her mother tight as they waited to go to Pensacola. “Mommy? Is that man going to blow up the airplane, Mommy?”

J.T. tried to shake his head no and calm the child, but first he had to wipe the froth from his mouth. He decided to just deal with Beaglebum. His voice lowered and got gravelly, like a cross between Mercedes McCambridge in
The Exorcist
and Harvey Fierstein in
Hairspray
. “Okay—so what?
You
made a deal for me that was for three episodes, pay-or-play. I found out from your brother-in-law that you
knew
the rules and still, as
my
representative, told me I should negotiate. That’s . . . that’s
immoral,
Dick!
Grrrrr!
”

The Pensacola-bound little girl screamed. J.T. tried to shake his head, mouthing,
It’s okay, it’s okay,
but the mother pulled her child away and said, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”

I should,
J.T. thought.
I am. How did I end up feeling such
shame?

“That’s showbiz,” Dick fumed. “Grow up. But it’s personal

now, J.T. You fucked me. ME! So now you’ll never get your money for the other two pay-or-play episodes. Never. Do you hear me?

You will never get your fucking money!”

“Well, that’s not what Ron Copper told me,” J.T. said defen-

sively.

“Ron Copper? My brother-in-law, Ron Copper?”

“Yup!
That
Ron Copper!”

“Let me spell it out for you, J.T. According to the deal memo
I
now happen to have,
you were supposed to work
one week and one
week only
. You will be paid for one week and one week only.”

“Dick! You fucking dick!” J.T. blurted. “Beaglebum, that’s a

bald-faced lie! How can you do that to me? I’m your
client
.”

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“Not anymore, you fuck.”

“Dick, why are you being such an asshole? Is it because you

know I’m at the airport and

want to get home so badly

The Hollywood Dictionary

I wouldn’t take the time to

come to your office and—”

DEAL MEMO:
As good (or worth-

“Fuck fuck fuck you!

less) as a binding contract.

You really fucked this one

up, J.T. I coulda got you one

and a half episodes of pay. But
noooooo
—you wanted
pay-or-play
for all three episodes. Well, like I said, this deal memo
now
reads you were only set to direct
one fucking episode
. You had to make it personal. You had to be a snitch, didn’t ya?”

“Dick, I wasn’t a
snitch
. I was
honest
. And this isn’t the playground. This is my life!”

“Whatever! You fucking betrayed
me
! Betrayed! You fuck-

ing turncoat! You Eggs Benedict Arnold! You Jewy Judah!” Dick

screamed, enthusiastically.

“I did what was right. How can you and the Pooleys and the

studio and the network suddenly be the victims here? I was the

one who got
fucked
.”

Dick Beaglebum’s voice was distorting out of the receiver. “You think you got fucked? Not only are you
not
getting your money, but let’s see how many times the production company can lose the check for your one episode. This oughta be fun.”

“With all the money you make, Dick, with all of the success

you have, how can you be taking so much petty pleasure in screwing me out of my paychecks? My DGA minimum? My
insurance
.

The insurance
you know I need
?”

“What have I been saying all this time? BECAUSE IT’S PER-

SONAL! We all knew that negotiating with you was against your

DGA contract. Everyone knew
but you,
you dumb fuck. You were more interested in the fucking
camera angles
and some
retard
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W H O S T O L E T H E F U N N Y ?

actor
than knowing the ropes of the business. By turning us in, you could’ve really fucked up a lot of people’s careers. Mine included.

ME! So good luck with your life in Bum-fuck Wherever, and never call me again. I’m making a special mark on my calendar to call you every three weeks to piss all over you! Every three weeks to remind you you’re not getting a fucking penny! Every three weeks just to make sure your piddly little check got lost again! And again!

I win. You lose,
you schmuck.”

And Dick hung up, leaving J.T. with the warm sickness of an

iodine flush.

Another Phone Call

When J.T. finally arrived home, he was greeted by a family threeway hug that lasted a lot longer than the usual three-way hugs because no one wanted to let go. Tasha whispered the same question she always asked J.T., the one she’d asked the day they married:

“So, you love me or what?” The same words in the same order, over two decades old, yet the delivery was never stale, and the intent always honest and loving. By now Jeremy knew the husband-wife

script so he answered back in sync with his dad, “If you were a vegetable, I’d become a vegetarian.”

About three weeks passed and the weather in the Smoky

Mountains became fickle. One day snow and a wicked wind; then

a day of fog, followed by a taunting day of almost springlike headi-ness; then snow again, settling in for good.

Jeremy loved the snow. Snow meant snow days, which meant

no school. Whenever a public school bus couldn’t get to every single stop on its route, school was called off, and Jeremy was ecstatic.

They never had anything like that in New York when J.T. was a

kid.

J.T. took lots of walks with Tasha and talked about . . . anything and everything. J.T. was mesmerized by Tasha’s startling silver-gray hair; he wondered why he hadn’t noticed it as much before

he went to L.A.

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“Gray is the new blonde,” Tasha said proudly, happy to just be

the woman she was. Definitely not Hollywood material.

Sometimes the discussion would veer toward the sitcom work.

J.T. had been afraid to tell Tasha what a fool he was for adding the

“ . . .
in a dream
” lines in the script, but of course he had. He never kept anything from Tasha. “I’ve left myself open to scrutiny,” he told her, hashing over the same ground yet again as they took a walk in the snow. “I’m supposed to be on higher ground. Now I’m a few feet below sea level.”

“Look, J.T.,” Tasha said, her breath fogging as she spoke, “you fixed their show. You shot a show that was unshootable. Stop beat-ing yourself up.”

“I committed the cardinal sin: I fucked with the words. It’s not my job to ever fuck with the words. I was just trying to take care of—”

“Darling, it’s your job to take care of you. Take care of us. Stop whining about how it’s your job to take care of those frigging, spoiled strangers.”

She walked ahead and soon disappeared in the darkness of

white.

J.T had fixed, by himself, the tractor-thingamajiggy with a drink holder
.
Actually, he now knew that it was a seven-year-old used L3400 gear-driven Kubota tractor with 37.5 PTO (power takeoff)

horsepower that made for a good clean cut with his old Bush Hog mower. (
I hate dilettantes! From now on, I’m doin’ this right. Oh
man, I do love this ol’ tractor. I think I’ll try and paint it a shiny orange. Maybe red. No, blue!
)