Life Its Ownself

by Dan Jenkins

  "Shit, Rodney, you're out of all my faves," said Shake.

  "We've been extremely busy, as you can see."

  "Tell you what," Shake said. "Just bring me two more J&Bs and a cup of coffee on the side."

  "Me, too," I said.

  Rodney performed an indignant pirouette and evaporated from our sight. But then Burrell came up to our table.

  Enjolie's was one of those places that double-teamed you with Bad Witch, Good Witch.

  "Has anyone taken your order?" Burrell said in a heartfelt tone with an apologetic look.

  "Rodney's right on top of it," Shake said.

  "Wonderful!"

  "No joke intended," Shake said.

  We drank another hour at Enjolie's. We might have left sooner if we hadn't become enthralled with the conversations at the tables around us.

  Shake started writing on napkins when we heard a sport jacket say to a crewneck:

  "Sidney's got the biggest balls in this town. Becket's ripe for a re-make. He'll get Pryor and Murphy both in it."

  We couldn't have missed the suede king who rushed in to join the starlet.

  "Sorry I'm late, angel. My daughter got lost. My wife got pissed. Everything's okay now. You look terrific!"

  Two deal-makers walked past our table, as one of them was saying:

  "There's no downside. I wouldn't give you a downside. Did I ever give you a downside?"

  They were followed by two secretaries, one of whom was greatly saddened because:

  "They painted his name out of the parking space at noon. He was out of the building by five."

  The historian pouring wine for the ingenue intrigued us. He said:

  "You didn't know Hitler did coke? It's the entire explanation for World War Two. I can't believe no one's picked up on it."

  Two screenwriters brought us up to date on their craft. First, one of them said, "It's in turnaround. Ned says grownups don't do foreign."

  And a little later, one of them said: "Bob's the only writer who could have broken the spine of that script. You know how he did it? He made him the amnesia victim, her the skateboarder, and saved the reveal for the last page!"

  Shake and I wrapped up the evening with dinner at Fatburger. I found Barbara Jane asleep when I got back to the hotel.

  I gave her a long hug and several kisses, but she was more or less in a coma. "Hi, honey," she stirred. "Glad you're here."

  She was exhausted. Show biz was taking its toll on her. Further proof of it lay on the bed beside her in the form of a wadded-up memorandum.

  It was the latest "inter-communication" that had come from the story department at ABC. It was for the eyes of everyone involved with Rita's Limo Stop; all of the people— performers, writers, directors, producers—who had been slaving on the pilot for weeks, never really knowing how many insecure, terror-stricken executives they were trying to please.

  There had been blood spilled on every square foot of the set. One lead had been replaced. Supporting actors had been fired and re-hired. A guest star had been written out. Another guest star had been written in. The network had threatened the director with strangulation. The director had threatened the assistant director with expulsion from the business. The executive producers had filed complaints with every guild in town. The eighth team of writers had been brought in to "punch up" the script, and each page that flew out of a typewriter had made the show less humorous and less charming, if it ever was either of those things in the first place. All this to produce a half-hour of television comedy that would come up to the esthetic standards of Three's Company.

  The cast would rehearse all day, and then somebody from the network who had once had a writing credit on a Grizzly Adams episode and was now a VP in charge of development would drop by and say, "Where are the jokes?"

  The writers would pound their machines until dawn, the cast would rehearse all day again, and somebody else from the network who had once written questions for a game show and was now a VP in charge of deli orders would drop by and say, "It seems to lack charm."

  And on and on.

  All of the efforts to improve the script and turn the principal character into a more sympathetic, more vulnerable person had found "Rita"—Barbara Jane—being switched from a restaurant owner to the proprietor of an antique shop, then to the head of an adoption agency, and then back to a restaurant owner. At one session where everybody "went to the table," as they called it, "Rita's" eye problem had become a spot on the lung.

  Hearing all of these reports periodically, I had been fearful that Barbara Jane would purchase a handgun and go prowling through the halls of the ABC building in Century City. Now I wondered how this "inter-communication" had affected her. I wouldn't know until she awakened.

  The "inter-communication" had obviously been drafted by a recent graduate of a West Coast film school, but some faceless superior had initialed it, doubtless unread, and it had been circulated.

  In its entirety, the memo said:

  TO: PRODUCTION STAFF & TALENT

  FROM: STORY DEPT./ABC ENT.

  SUBJECT: "RITA'S LIMO STOP"

  We are very excited about the potential of RITA'S LIMO STOP, and it is our feeling that we are well on our way toward creating a highly original and truly funny female buddy series. In an effort to make the best possible pilot, however, we have a few suggestions which we think will improve the story. Since we are so close to a blockbuster, it seems to us that it would be a shame not to further strengthen and delineate the characters so that the relationship of our principals will be the main focus and driving force of this unique comedy.

  CHARACTERS:

  First, we must deepen and enrich Rita and Amanda so that their bond is more realistic and substantial, so that we might attain the hot mix we are all seeking, the magic you would find, for example, if Hud were to have a head-on collision with Chinatown, or, literarily, if certain segments of Crime and Punishment were blended into the fabric of Death in Venice. To make this buddy relationship as dimensional as possible, therefore, we might want to consider not having Rita and Amanda be friends at the start. Perhaps they don't know each other, or, for that matter, even like each other throughout the 60-second cold opening.

  It might be that the street smart Rita regards Amanda as dim-witted, and, conversely, Amanda might not appreciate Rita's pessimistic approach and cynical attitude toward life in general. It is our feeling that a more antagonistic start between Rita and Amanda would provide more texture to their burgeoning friendship.

  Second, as their uneasy bond grows into a symbiotic relationship, they should grow and change. Rita should drop her unyielding facade, and Amanda should become more focused and directed as a result of Rita's Pygmalion tutelage.

  Third, we must emphasize their backstories and personal histories even more. We should really get a sense of why life is so difficult for all of us. By establishing this, the audience will be rooting for them even more to succeed as career women. As in any classic buddy relationship, separately they would fail, but collectively they triumph, outlasting the troubled, rocky waters because they have each other as anchors.

  Fourth, their vulnerabilities must be revealed at least five times in the pilot episode, but we shouldn't let this obscure their durability and self-discovery.

  HUMOR:

  We would like to eliminate the chaotic situation with the bean sprouts and reroute the humor more specifically toward our main characters and their enslavement in the restaurant. The best comedy comes out of real characters, and in line with that, we feel that some of the secondary and supporting players are too broad—the "Evita"-singing drag queen, for instance— and that, additionally, there are times when the dialogue goes too far in terms of bawdier humor. With regard to this, we recommend losing all references to "dykes" and "limp wrists," as well as Rita's quip— ad-libbed in the last rehearsal—about toxic waste being something the United States could export to Puerto Rico.

  In short, we would like for the humor to explode from
motivational rather than parenthetical origins.

  SPECIFIC PAGE NOTES:

  Page 1

  Rita's power over Amanda must be clarified. And as of now, how well do we know Amanda really?

  Page 2

  We are concerned that Rita is depicted too brazenly when she reminds Ko, the Chinese chef, of his need for cosmetic dentistry.

  Page 4

  At present, our general feeling is that the relationship between Rita and her ex- husband might be extraneous to the storyline. His motives must be embellished. If he does want Rita back, why is he with the teenage fashion model? More backstory here.

  Page 9

  We like Ron, the 18-year old guru, and plan to build him up in future episodes, but as he now stands, he raises many plot points that are not fully explored. Rethink.

  Page 12

  The friendship that Rita strikes up with the Columbia professor seems forced. We think that by changing his character to an NBA basketball player, we can less inhibit the humor and achieve more of a now flavor overall.

  Page 17

  Rita cannot be this tough and cynical or the audience will view her as totally unsympathetic. Why does she hate the sales personnel at Bloomingdale's so much that she wishes a birth defect on all of their grandchildren? Here again, we are apparently dealing with an ad-lib.

  Page 19

  In order to explore the predicament of our women more deeply, we should hear and see the breaking of dishes more frequently. We are not saying we want to stick to the structure of farce exclusively, but we are suggesting that there may be some very real opportunities for double entendre, which, after all, is at the core of all great comedy.

  Page 23

  It seems to make more sense to us for Rita, rather than Amanda, to overpower the transvestite who bursts in with the automatic weapon and insists on doing her recital of arias and folk songs.

  Page 26

  While the 30-second epilogue is very well crafted—an entree spilled in Rita's lap is quite funny and the perfect ender—we would like to suggest one tiny change. Isn't it more likely that the entree would be a beef stew? All of us here agree that curried lamb is rather oblique. Rethink.

  GOOD LUCK, AND GOOD SHOW!

  "They all have to die," Barbara Jane was saying the next morning as we had breakfast in the room.

  "Everybody?"

  "Not the actors, they're okay. They don't hear what they're saying, anyhow. It's just words to go with the faces they make and the fists they beat against the walls. You know how Carolyn... 'Amanda'... studies a script. She thumbs through it and says, 'Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, my line. Bullshit, my line, my line, bullshit, bullshit.'"

  Barbara Jane was looking around on the room-service table for something other than orange marmalade to spread on her rye toast.

  "Has anyone ever eaten orange marmalade?" she asked. "Has anyone ever actually requested orange marmalade? Nobody in the whole world eats orange marmalade! So what happens? Every hotel serves it, every airline serves it, every place you go, there's nothing but orange marmalade! It's like chocolate-chip ice cream. Who eats that? You eat chocolate ice cream. You eat vanilla ice cream. But you don't eat chocolate-chip ice cream—and you don't eat orange fucking marmalade!"

  "Here's some boysenberry," I said.

  "Thanks!"

  It was a tossup whether the director, the writers, or the executive producers should die first.

  Barbara Jane said, "My first day on the set, the director seemed like a pretty shrewd guy. He said, 'We're all in this together and no matter what happens, remember one thing: the network is always wrong!' He says this, which I think is kind of neat; then he does every single thing every jerk from the network suggests! If somebody from ABC's mail room came by and mentioned pirates, the director would hand me an eyepatch!"

  So far, there had been a total of sixteen writers assigned to the project, most of them working in pairs, none of them lasting more than two or three days, and none of them overburdened with originality.

  Barb said, "Here's a sitcom writer's idea of humor. Say, 'I'm tired.'"

  "I'm tired," I said.

  '"You're tired, what about me?'"

  Barbara Jane looked at me vacantly.

  "That's a laugh line," she said.

  The other day, a new team of writers had come in to "punch up" the script. They had changed the line to "You're tired, what about moi?"

  "I won't say moi," Barbara Jane had told the director, whose name was Jack Sullivan. "At gunpoint, I won't say moi."

  The director had said, "It'll get a laugh, trust me."

  Barb had said, "It's corny. It's dumb. It doesn't improve anything. Why can't I say something like 'You're tired, what about the plumbing?'"

  The director had laughed. The writers hadn't laughed. The writers had only stared at Barbara Jane as if she had a deformity.

  An argument over the line had lasted half a day. Barb had eventually won. She would say something besides moi. No one knew what it was going to be, but it wouldn't be moi. The writers never spoke to her again.

  She said, "It's like they thought they'd written 'late in the summer of that year,' and I'd drawn a grease pencil through it."

  "I've read about you temperamental stars."

  "Oh, God, I know," she said. "That's the thing. I feel awful when we get into this crap. But it's not like I'm running around the set with a meat cleaver, threatening careers— which are more valuable than lives out here. I'm not Barbra Streisand. I'm not telling some director he'll never work in this town again unless he moves the Renaissance to a more recent century so I can costume it better! I just don't want to say dumb lines."

  The show's executive producers, Sheldon Gurtz and Kitty Feldman, should be tortured first, then put to death.

  Barb said, "As bad as the writers are, the executive producers are worse. They get to re-write the writers. Sheldon and Kitty couldn't write a bad check. Sheldon wears a ten-gallon cowboy hat. Kitty's about as big as a rodent."

  Barbara Jane had asked Sheldon and Kitty why they were permitted to "polish" the scripts.

  "Because we're the ones who have to deliver," Kitty had said.

  And Sheldon had said, "We know what works, Barbara Jane. We wrote for Fantasy Island."

  It had been pretty hard to think of a comeback for that.

  My wife was dashing around the suite now, gearing up for another day of show biz. She invited me to come along and observe the turmoil. I declined, opting for naps, magazines, movies on TV, and more room service.

  "I'd better stay away until the taping," I said. "I don't like violence."

  "Things should go smoother from now on," she said.

  Tempers had peaked yesterday and the air had been cleared.

  Barbara Jane had been rehearsing a scene in which she was supposed to walk across the room and answer the phone.

  Sheldon had pushed the director aside and told Barbara Jane to grab a cracker off a table and eat the cracker as she walked toward the phone.

  "Nope," Barb had said. "Sorry. No way. Dustin Hoffman eats a cracker when he walks across a room. Robert Redford eats a cracker when he walks across a room. Al Pacino eats a cracker when he walks across a room. I don't eat a cracker when I walk across a room, and neither would Rita."

  Sheldon had said, "Please, don't be difficult. We know this character better than you do."

  Barbara Jane had turned to the director for support, but Jack Sullivan had only shrugged and practiced his golf swing.

  "I'm not going to eat the cracker, Sheldon," Barb had then said.

  Kitty had stepped in.

  "Barbara Jane, you haven't fleshed this out fully, and we have."

  "Dadgumit, you know, I meant to, but I just got busy and forgot," Barbara Jane had laughed.

  It was structured into the business that executive producers were given a good deal of authority on a pilot, as much as they could command when an empty suit from the network wasn't around. And they were needed. Somebody wou
ld have to "stay with the show" after it got on the air. Live with it, in other words. That would be the executive producers.

  The performers would have it easy. They would only have to come in for a run-through, then the tape session. They would have the rest of the week free to play softball, change agents, and complain about Shirley MacLaine getting the part they had been up for in a feature film.

  The director wouldn't be overworked, either. He could wander in off the golf course, do a take one and a take two, and leave word with an underling to make sure a cassette was sent to his home.

  And the writers could go on to other things. They could grind out the same swill for other dreary pilots, punch up other mindless episodes, discuss burning issues within the Writers' Guild, and maybe complete a page or two on the outline of the novel they'd been working on for the past seventeen years.

  But Sheldon Gurtz and Kitty Feldman were the people who would stay with Rita's Limo Stop if the network gave it a "go" and "ordered thirteen," which would mean the network had liked the pilot and wasn't going to "pass on it" or "burn it off in four."

  It would not only become Sheldon and Kitty's baby, they would suddenly become mogulettes and might even be able to get a table in a Beverly Hills restaurant.

  Barbara Jane said, "Can you imagine the mind it takes to want to do that—live with a sitcom? Executive producers aren't talented enough to create anything of their own. Rita was conceived by some poor, starving writer whose name we'll never know...who's probably kicking himself in the ass for ever mentioning the idea to Sheldon and Kitty in the first place. Yesterday they punched up gags, today they're executive producers. As we speak, I assure you Kitty and Sheldon think they're whipping Hamlet into shape."