Any round-heeled old pro reading this will accuse us of smoking funny cigarettes. And he'd be correct, although we usually stuck to scotch and soda. (easy on the soda - too much sodium)
Thursday, April 26, 2012
TOWTRUCK BOOGIE AND THE EATANTER
*****
Chris and I sat in the Black Whale, morosely contemplating the
swordfish mounted above the bar. One shiny glass eye glared back at us
accusingly.
"No matter which way you move your head," Chris observed,
"it keeps staring directly at you. Kind of like the Mona Lisa, but with
scales and a big fucking nose."
"Would you call that a Giaconda kind of look?" I asked.
"Or a grimace of sheer terror?"
Chris rattled the ice in his empty glass to signal the barkeep for more
Scotch. "He looks like I feel," he said. "Like a writer who has
been hammering away at a book with his partner for almost three fucking years,
and now that the end is in sight, they're flat out of god damned money."
"Jesus, guys, I can take the hint," the bartender said as he
swept up our empty glasses. "The House is buying the next round."
"It's a good thing, too," Chris said. "I was afraid we'd
have to go call our agent sober. Another scotch will make him seem like a
little bit less of an asshole."
At this point in the game, we were repped (as Variety would put it) by
the William Morris Agency, a Misadventure I'll save for another time because
Chris and I had bigger problems that day.
"That's a total waste," I said. "They'll just try to
stall by sending us out on cattle calls, then clip us for ten percent when we
finally land our own job with no help from them."
In those days, the Writers Guild was trying to encourage the Free Lance
market for their members by requiring that shows meet with a certain number of
writers every season, whether they bought their stories or not. This quota
system was easily met by cattle calls - scores of writers sent by their agents
to meet with the producers en-masse in studio theaters.
Chris and I avoided them at all cost. Not only was it demeaning and
unlikely to produce work, but there are few things more terrible - or smelly -
than being jammed into a room packed with hungry, fear-soaked writers.
My partner nodded agreement. "The main problem is that we've left
it too late," he said. "We should have seen this coming and hit the
bricks a month ago."
Bottom line: It would likely take several weeks to land a gig. Then it
would be many weeks more before we got paid. Studios were (and are) notorious
late payers. Sure, if they took too long they might be fined by the Guild. But
the fine was so small, no gimlet-eyed Business Affairs Boss worth his cash flow
gave a shit.
Here's how we had (once again) found ourselves mired in the money mess:
As mentioned in these MisAdventures before, our standard MO was to sell the
hell out of scripts, and when we had enough money stashed, we'd take the phone
off the hook and write books. This had worked okay thus far for the Sten Series.
But our Vietnam novel - A Reckoning For Kings - was a different matter.
It was a tough book: for the first time in fiction we were telling the story of
the war from both sides. The idea was to go hey diddle-diddle,
right-down-the-middle and let the readers make up their own minds about the
war. To that end we had over thirty major characters and fully half of them
were Vietnamese.
Chris and I were betting our literary futures on the book. We were
certain that once it was published our professional lives would be changed
forever.
Any round-heeled old pro reading this will accuse us of smoking funny cigarettes. And he'd be correct, although we usually stuck to scotch and soda. (easy on the soda - too much sodium)
Any round-heeled old pro reading this will accuse us of smoking funny cigarettes. And he'd be correct, although we usually stuck to scotch and soda. (easy on the soda - too much sodium)
As it happened, however, young and dumb as we were it played out as
we'd hoped. After Reckoning was published in 1987 - and especially after the
paperback was issued a couple of years later - we were able to start dropping
Hollywood out of the picture and rely on books to make our living. (And Reckoning turned into The Shannon Trilogy.)
But getting there was a hellacious grind. We'd been hard at work on the
novel for nearly three years. When we were about two thirds done we thought we
had enough money to turn off the phones and complete the book. Then we could
turn them on again and sell scripts until Reckoning and Sten rescued us.
Unfortunately, we had fallen short of that goal.
And now we were agonizingly close to the end of the book, while
perching perilously on the edge of financial disaster.
I polished off my drink, handed over my credit card for further
bruising and said, "Well, partner mine, although it pains me terribly to
say this, it's time to put the book aside and get a job Sha-Na-Na."
As we slid off our barstools, Chris said, "Maybe let's skip out
the agent and go directly to the source."
"Might speed things up," I agreed. "We can make a list
of everybody we know and then try our hand at a little telemarketing Hollywood
style."
I was living in Venice Beach, practically across the street from the
Black Whale, and in no time we were hunched over our respective phones, sucker
lists at our elbows, dialing for dollars.
The pitch we chose was nakedly avaricious. If a secretary answered we'd
say, "Hi, (Jeannie, or Crystal or Kimberly) is (Frank, Joe, or Bernie)
anywhere around?"
If he wasn't, we'd say, "Tell him Bunch and Cole called to scream:
'Help Us, Mr. Wizard!!! Save your favorite starving artists from getting kicked
out of their garret.'"
If the guy was in, we'd say, "It's like this, (Frank, Joe, or
Bernie)we are weeks away from finishing our Vietnam book and we are flat,
fucking out of money. Buy something from us so we can finish the book. It'll be
your contribution to World Peace and American Literature. And we promise you'll
be remembered in the acknowledgements."
You might be surprised to learn that cynical old Hollywood was
overwhelmingly positive. Really. Of course, some people weren't in the position
to buy. We were very late in the season and most shows were scripted up. But we
were promised back up scripts when that time came around. Others were in the
process of pitching new series to the Networks and said if the Network bought,
so would they.
So, there was promised money. And there was promised promised money.
But no promised promised promised money. (Three promises equaled Cha-Ching!)
Finally, we came to Al Godfrey, our self-appointed producer/mentor. We
both talked to him via the speaker phone. Unfortunately, Al was between jobs,
but he had this to offer. "Have you tried Freilich?"
"The EatAnter?" Chris said. (He'd dubbed Jeff Freilich The
EatAnter after the character in the BC comic strip for reasons previously
explained.)
Godfrey laughed. He thought Jeff was an EatAnter too. Then he said,
"He and Stu Sheslow have some sort of development deal in the works at
Fox. (This was 20th Century Fox before the Rupert Murdoch era.) And I hear
they're having script trouble."
"Trouble as in pay us immediate money to get out of,
trouble?" Chris asked. "Or, just the usual EatAnter dithering chaos
trouble?"
"Oh, there's money there," Godfrey said. "Go get it
boys."
We called The EatAnter and sonofabitch if he didn't sound glad to hear
from us. "Hey, guys," he said in that cheery EatAnter's voice of his,
"I was just thinking about you two."
"Well, marriage is definitely out," Chris said. "But we
might consider a brief affair."
The EatAnter laughed, but I knew him to be an overly sensitive soul who
might not really be finding Chris funny. So, quick like a bunny rabbit I jumped
in and gave him our "Contribution to American Literature" pitch.
"No shit," Freilich said. "You guys are really close to
being done?"
"All we need is one decent, quick-paying gig," I said.
"And your name will be writ large in the Acknowledgements."
"As a matter of fact," Freilich said, "I've got a
two-hour pilot rewrite that has to be done right away."
"How right away?" Chris asked.
"Yesterday," Freilich said.
"We can do that," I said.
Chris said, "How much does it pay?"
Without hesitation, Jeff said, "Thirty five thousand
dollars."
Chris said, "We'll do it."
Jeff said, "Don't you want to know what it's called."
"Not particularly," Chris said.
"Well, I'll tell you anyway," Freilich said. "It's
called Towtruck Boogie."
There was a long silence from our end. We could tell from the way he
said it that he wasn't shitting us. It really did carry the gut-clenching, no
class at all, title of "Towtruck Boogie." Chris and I looked at each
other. What should we do? Say fuck off and die? Or, close our eyes and think of
Literature?
"Guys?" The EatAnter pressed. "Guys?"
Chris said, "We'll do it anyway."
And we did.
And yeah, William Morris got its ten percent.
* * *
Postscript: Towtruck Boogie proved to be
a proposed TV series "inspired" by the hit cult movie, Repo Man. So
they took out all the sex, drugs, rock and roll and the aliens, then told us to
go write the sucker. When we were done, Greg Mayday, head of TV development at
Fox said it was the best pilot script of a shitty idea that he had ever seen.
Thumbs down for the series, thumbs up for further work from Mayday and Fox for
Bunch & Cole
NEXT: LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE 'S' WORD
THE COMPLETE MISADVENTURES: IT'S A BOOK!
THE VITAL LINKS:
The MisAdventures began humbly enough - with about 2,000 readers. When it rose to over 50,000 (we're now knocking at the door of 115,000) I started listening to those of you who urged me to collect the stories into a book. Starting at the beginning, I went back and rewrote the essays, adding new detail and events as they came to mind. This book is the result of that effort. However, I'm mindful of the fact, Gentle Reader, that you also enjoy having these little offerings posted every Friday to put a smile on your face for the weekend. So I'll continue running them until it reaches the final Fade Out. Meanwhile, it would please the heart of this ink-stained wretch - as well as tickle whatever that hard black thing is in my banker's chest - if you bought the book. It will make a great gift, don't you think? And if you'd like a personally autographed copy you can get it directly through my (ahem) Merchant's Link at Amazon.com. Click here. Buy the book and I will sign it and ship it to you. Break a leg!
THE STEN COOKBOOK & KILGOUR JOKEBOOK
Two new companion editions to the international best-selling Sten series. In the first, learn the Emperor's most closely held cooking secrets. In the other, Sten unleashes his shaggy-dog joke cracking sidekick, Alex Kilgour. Both available as trade paperbacks or in all major e-book flavors. Click here to tickle your funny bone or sizzle your palate.
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