The Douglas Kennedy Collection #2

by Douglas Kennedy

  “You know what would be great?” I said. “A long boozy lunch with you. I think I need a martini anesthetic fast.”

  “Darling, you know I’m back off to Seattle this afternoon.”

  “I’d forgotten that.”

  “It’s that new series of ours . . .”

  “Fine, fine.”

  “But I will be back first thing Saturday. And I will call lots.”

  “Good.”

  “It’s going to be okay, David.”

  After the call, I poked my head out of the office. Alison was sitting behind Jennifer’s desk, working the phones. I nodded toward her to come into the office. She finished her call and walked in, closing the door behind her.

  “So how did that go?” she asked me.

  “She was eventually supportive.”

  “That’s something,” she said neutrally.

  “Don’t say it.”

  “Say what?”

  “What you’re thinking about Sally.”

  “I’m thinking nothing about Sally.”

  “Liar.”

  “Guilty as charged. But at least she came around . . . after probably working out that this isn’t going to harm her as well.”

  “Now that’s bitchy,” I said.

  “But completely accurate.”

  “Can we move on?”

  “With pleasure. Because I’ve got some good news. I just spoke to Larry Latouche at SATWA,” she said, using the acronym of the Screen and Television Writers’ Association. “He already knew about the McCall piece.”

  “He did ?”

  “What can I say—it’s a slow week for showbiz gossip. Maybe if we get lucky, in the next forty-eight hours, some hot actor will get caught with an underage illegal Mexican babe, and he’ll deflect some of the heat. For the moment, however, you’re about to become the town’s talking point. And word is spreading fast.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “But the good news is that Latouche is outraged by McCall’s accusations—especially as he himself can cite at least two dozen other examples of a few lines from someone else’s script ending up being innocently used elsewhere. Anyway, he wanted you to know that the Association is fully behind you on this . . . and he’s planning to issue a press release tomorrow morning, confirming this and also damning McCall for turning a trifle into bullshit news.”

  “I’ll call Latouche later to say thanks.”

  “Good idea. We need heavy hitters in your corner right now.”

  There was a knock on the door. Tracy entered, holding a copy of the press release.

  “So here it is. The big suits at Corporate HQ in New York have just approved it.”

  “How have they taken the news?” Alison asked.

  “They’re not pleased—because, they don’t like tsuris. But they’re completely supportive of David and want this whole situation closed down ASAP.”

  Alison then mentioned the Latouche statement. Tracy wasn’t happy.

  “That’s nice to have their support, Alison,” she said, “and I appreciate you organizing this, but I wish you’d cleared it with me first.”

  Alison lit up another Salem.

  “I didn’t realize I worked for you, Tracy,” she said.

  “You know what I’m saying,” Tracy said.

  “Yeah—you’re a control freak.”

  “Alison . . .,” I said.

  “You’re right,” Tracy said. “I am a control freak. And I want to control this situation in such a way that your client’s career isn’t damaged. Does that bother you?”

  “No—but your tone does,” Alison said.

  “And your cigarette’s really bothering control freak me,” Tracy said. “We’re a smoke-free environment.”

  “Then I’m just going to have to fuck off out of here,” Alison said.

  “Alison, Tracy,” I said, “let’s all calm down a bit.”

  “Sure,” Alison said, “and while we’re at it, we can all hug each other and shed a tear, and achieve growth.”

  “I didn’t mean to upset you, Alison,” Tracy said.

  “This whole shitty situation upsets me . . . and yeah, that’s my attempt at an apology too.”

  “You free for dinner tonight?” I asked Alison.

  “Where’s your inamorata?”

  “Checking up on a pilot being filmed in Seattle.”

  “Then the martinis are on me. We need about six apiece. Come by the office around six.”

  After she left, Tracy turned to me and said, “If you don’t mind me saying so, she’s a total piece of work . . . and you’re lucky to have her in your corner. I think she’d just about kill and maim for you.”

  “Yeah, she is pretty feral . . . and insanely loyal.”

  “Then you’re a lucky guy. They expunged ‘loyalty’ from the LA vocabulary long ago.”

  “But I can count on your loyalty, can’t I?”

  “Sure,” she said quickly. “That’s all part of the package.”

  “So what do I do now?”

  “Wait and see how the McCall story plays.”

  By noon the following day, there was a sense that we were winning the public relations war. Though the LA Times ran a small sidebar (in the Arts section) about McCall’s column, the story wasn’t picked up by any of the other major national papers—a sure sign that this item was being regarded as Hollywood tittle-tattle, nothing more. Yes, the Hollywood Reporter ran a largeish page-two story on those four damn lines; it was a balanced story, featuring my apologia (from the press release) and Larry Latouche’s justification of my position. Better yet was Craig Clark’s story in Daily Variety, pointing out that (during the course of our “exclusive interview’) I was completely open about this “accidental plagiarism” and “did not try to make excuses for his inadvertent error.” Then he went on to quote around five different leading television and film writers (whom he’d obviously chased down yesterday), all of whom leaped to my defense. But the real coup de grâce was a comment that Clark gleaned from Justin Wanamaker, a man who (along with William Goldman and Robert Towne) was considered one of the truly eminent screenwriters of the past thirty years. In a prepared statement (which—as Clark revealed—Wanamaker e-mailed exclusively to Variety) he didn’t simply put the knife into Theo McCall’s back. He also twisted it several times:

  “There are serious entertainment journalists, and then there are morally suspect pugilists like Theo McCall, who think nothing of undermining a writer’s career by making suspect allegations of plagiarism, based on the flimsy premise that a borrowed joke constitutes a mortal sin, worthy of the Inquisition. There is something truly despicable about watching a Grub Street hack attacking one of the truly original comic talents in America today.”

  Tracy was thrilled with the Craig Clark story. Ditto Brad and Bob Robison and, of course, Alison.

  “Up until five minutes ago, I always thought Justin Wanamaker was a pompous prick,” she said. “Now I’m going to nominate him for the Nobel Prize. What a great fucking quote. I hope it destroys the little shit’s reputation.”

  Sally also called me from Seattle, delighted with the Variety story.

  “Everyone’s been ringing me all morning, offering solidarity, telling me how horribly you’ve been treated and how elegantly you came across in the Variety interview. I’m so damn proud of you, darling. You’ve handled it brilliantly. We are going to win this one.”

  How nice to know that we were once again “we.” But I couldn’t really blame Sally for her anger yesterday. And now, she was right—we were turning a potentially disastrous situation around . . . to the point where my own voice and e-mail (at home and at the office) became flooded with messages of support from friends and professional associates. Better yet, by Saturday, the tide actually started turning against Theo McCall—with three letters on the LA Times’s editorial pages pointing out other incidents of accidental plagiarism and also lambasting McCall’s brand of smear journalism. Then, in the Sunday edition of the same paper, came
a truly devastating left hook, in the form of a three-hundred-word piece in the Arts Miscellany column, which disclosed that, before he became a Hollywood Legit hack, McCall had spent five years trying to break into television comedy—without any success whatsoever. One NBC producer even went on the record to say that McCall had been briefly employed by him as a writer during the late nineties but had been fired—and how’s this for a vindictive quote—“when it became clear that his meager talent would always remain meager.” It was also pointed out that, shortly after NBC fired his sorry ass, ICM also dropped him as a client.

  “I wish life always worked this way,” Sally said after she read me the LA Times dismembering job on McCall. “They’re really declaring open season on the asshole.”

  “With good reason—because the guy’s made a career out of playing the feared Hollywood attack dog. Now he’s been neutered, so everyone feels it’s safe to kick him.”

  “He deserves no less. And the brilliant thing is you’ve not only been vindicated, you’re also coming out of the entire incident looking like the wronged party . . . and something of a giant-killer to boot.”

  Once again, Sally was spot-on. Over the weekend, I received a call from Jake Dekker, the head of production at Warner’s, to assure me that Breaking and Entering was being fast-tracked toward a green light. Then, around noon on Sunday, Sheldon Fischer—FRT’s chief executive officer—also rang me at home, and told me the following anecdote.

  “About a year ago, I was named Entertainment Executive of the Year by the Orange County B’nai B’rith. At the ceremony, I thanked my wife, Babs, saying—and this is a direct quote—‘She’s always been there at three in the morning, when the rest of the world is asleep.’ Everyone afterward complimented me on the turn of phrase, with the exception of Babs, who pointed out that that was the exact sentence used by that late playwright guy, August Wilson, when thanking his wife during his Tony Award acceptance speech back in the early nineties. And I’d been at those awards. And Wilson’s line lodged in my brain . . . and then, all those years later, out it came again, masquerading as an original Sheldon Fischer comment.

  “My point, David, is that I really felt for you when that poisonous accusation appeared. And, as I know from experience, what happened to you could happen to anyone.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Fischer,” I said. “The support I’ve received from everyone at the network has been extraordinary.”

  “Well, family is family, David. And please, call me Shel . . .”

  Alison nearly coughed on a lungful of Salem smoke when I repeated this conversation to her the next morning.

  “Did you know that your best new friend Shel is so into families that he just decamped from wife number three to take up with—get this—his colonic irrigationist . . . who also happens to be a twenty-eight-year-old Serb with a pair of knockers that would have made the late Jayne Mansfield seem flat-chested?”

  “How the hell did you find out all this arcane gossip?”

  “From Theo McCall’s column, naturally.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “Oh yes it is—since he’s the joke now. This whole business has flattened that sucker. It’s like you’ve kicked the biggest bully on the street right in the crotch . . . and everyone’s delighted.”

  “I didn’t do anything special. I just told the truth.”

  “Yeah—and you deserve a humanitarian award for character and principle, not to mention being such a swell guy.”

  “You’re not being cynical by any chance?”

  “Me cynical? How could you say such a thing. But I’ll tell you this, David: I am very fucking relieved. Because I think you might just have won this one.”

  “We’re not out of the shit yet,” I said.

  But later that morning, Tracy popped into my office, looking confident.

  “I’ve just run a check on all the national and state papers: a mention in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today on McCall’s item about you, and the fact that the LA Times exposed him as a failed writer. The San Francisco Chronicle also ran a small item. Ditto local papers in Santa Barbara, San Diego, and Sacramento. But all the coverage is incredibly biased toward you . . . thanks to Justin Wanamaker. By the way, we should probably send Wanamaker a discreet thank-you gift on your behalf.”

  “Isn’t he really into guns and stuffed rhino heads and all that retro-Hemingway stuff?”

  “Yes, that’s Mr. Wanamaker’s macho shtick. But if you think we’re going to buy him an AK-47 assault rifle . . .”

  “How about a case of good single-malt Scotch? He’s still a serious boozer, right?”

  “Yep, and he also makes a point of lighting up a Lucky Strike whenever he’s being interviewed, just to get the point across that he hates California health Nazis. So I think a case of Scotch would be most welcomed. Any brand in particular?”

  “Just make sure it’s at least fifteen years old.”

  “Done. And what do you want on the card?”

  I thought about this for a moment and said: “How about . . . Thank you.”

  “That just about says it all.”

  “And while we’re on the subject, thank you, Tracy. You played this all brilliantly. And you really saved my ass.”

  Tracy smiled. “All part of the job,” she said.

  “But we’re not totally in the clear yet, are we?”

  “Put it this way: from what I hear from my spies at Hollywood Legit, McCall’s been hobbled by that LA Times story—which has made him look like a despicable, talentless little jerk who uses his column as payback time for his own professional failure. None of the other coverage has attacked you or your position—which, quite simply, means that everyone’s bought your side of the story. But the next couple of days are critical . . . just in case somebody does decide to make further noise about all this. My gut feeling is it’s over. But I want to wait until Friday to say that officially.”

  And on Friday morning, the official call came from Tracy. I was at home, working on an outline for the opening episode of Selling You’s third season, when the phone rang.

  “Have you seen this morning’s edition of Hollywood Legit?” she asked me.

  “For some reason, I’ve crossed it off my Must Read list. Is that clown shoveling shit in my direction again?”

  “That’s why I’m calling you. His column this week is all about how Jason Wonderly . . .”

  She was talking about this year’s teen heartthrob who got caught shooting up in a toilet on the set of his deeply resistible hit show, Jack the Jock, in which he played a mischievous but clean-living high school quarterback who chases skirt but also has a strong community conscience.

  “ . . . anyway, according to McCall, it seems that Wonderly’s dealer was nabbed trying to sneak little Jason a nickel bag at Betty Ford . . .”

  “But there’s nothing about me or Selling You?”

  “Not a word. Better yet, I had my assistant do a complete check through all the major papers. No follow-ups on the story. In fact, nothing anywhere since Monday. Which basically means that the story is yesterday’s news . . . otherwise known as dead. Congratulations.”

  Later that day, more good news came my way, when Jake Dekker from Warner Brothers called me up to say that Vince Nagel—the hot young director of the month—had finally read the first draft of Breaking and Entering and he’d flipped about it. Though he was going to be in New York next week, he wanted to meet with me the week after . . . to give me some notes and move the project to the second-draft stage.

  “And, by the way,” Jake told me toward the end of the conversation, “I was so happy to see that little creep McCall put in his place over what he tried to do to you. That guy was the journalistic equivalent of the Ebola virus. It’s good to see him snuffed out . . . and, more importantly, to see that you have come through this unnecessary ordeal so well.”

  Jake Dekker was right: it had been one long ordeal of a week. And besides the fact that someone had pointed a
n accusing finger at me in print (never a comfortable experience, believe me), what had unnerved me most was the realization that—had I not won my case in the court of Hollywood public opinion—the outcome might have been . . .

  But let’s not go there. Let’s celebrate the fact that I got through the entire nasty business, virtually unscathed. In fact, as Sally was quick to point out, my position had been intriguingly strengthened by this short, sharp tribulation.

  “Everyone loves a comeback,” Sally said. “Everyone loves someone who fights back and is vindicated.”

  “I still feel like an idiot,” I said, lowering my head onto Sally’s lap.

  “That’s not just dumb, it’s also futile. Anyway, we’ve been through this a hundred times over the past week. It was a subliminal mistake . . . and not an uncommon one. So stop beating yourself up. You were found not guilty. You walked.”

  Maybe Sally was right. Maybe, like someone in a potentially fatal accident, my entire professional life had passed in front of my eyes and, just a week after the initial impact, I was still reeling. So much so that, for most of the weekend, I simply slept late, and lazed around the loft, and read the new Elmore Leonard novel, and tried to put everything else out of my mind.

  In fact, I so enjoyed this indolent weekend that I decided to extend it into the first half of the new week. Though I probably should have been continuing to plan the next season of Selling You, I decided to assume the role of Los Angeles flâneur for a few days: loitering without much intent in West Hollywood cafés, meeting a writing friend for a long schmoozy lunch at a good Mexican joint in Santa Monica, buying far too many CDs, paying an acquisitive visit to my old haunt, Book Soup, ducking in and out of mid-afternoon movies, and generally putting all professional pressures on hold.

  Monday melded into Tuesday, which melded into Wednesday. And late that evening, as I cleared the dishes after an order-in sushi dinner at home, I told Sally, “You know, I really could get used to this indolent life.”

  “You’re only saying that because you’re not indolent. The counter-life always looks better when you have a round-trip ticket back to your own life. Anyway, you know what writers become when they get too indolent?”