The electricians rewired the house for 220; I plugged in a lamp to read by, the cord caught fire, and then the whole dealie exploded! An hour later, it was still glowing red-hot. Does this give you some idea of what fun and glamor show business is? Crusaders in Love hadn't even started yet; first day of principal photography (the day I would get a hernia-making cash bonus) was still three weeks away! I wasn't sure my relationship with Robin would even last that long.
She had warned me and I hadn't listened. Her shrink pointed out that it sort of characterized our dynamic (whatever that means) and although I'd like to cut that sucker, he was right to the extent that I HAD been sort of headstrong. It got so bad one night when we were in the hotel room, I put Soldier of Fortune down, and I just started crying. I thought about the days when my only worry was what scheme to teach that producer's kids, or how I could get the head stunt-gaffer to give me a three-story fall, or how to keep it hard when the donkey was on camera. What the hell was a simple, low-life kid like me doing to a complicated, grown-up place like this?
Robin, saintess thal she was, took me in her arras and sang my favorite song soft in my ear.
"Hush little baby, don't you cry..."
To watch a major TV production start up, especially this one, is to know what God meant when He invented the word "wow."
Casting began to see hundreds of people; Crusaders in Love, even with the cuts, had 90 speaking parts, Assistant directors were hired, production gofers, costamers, sound crews, wranglers, construction guys, honeywagons, Winnebagos, gaffers, stuntmen, grips, historical technical advisors (who got a little bent out of shape when I had Richard cut down on Geoffrey with a Winchester), scenic and matte artists, prop guys-it was like watching your dream turn to water, running down a mountain made of glass. You could almost see it...
And the closer we got, the more nervous and difficult the network got.
Something was wrong. Real wrong. We didn't hear that Devon Converse "had decided, mutually, to leave his position at the network, to explore the opportunities of independent production" until a week after the fact. This means he had been sacked the guy whose idea the whole thing had been! This didn't look like a good omen to either me or Robin. Reed was too busy to mourn. Jimmy just shrugged his shoulders sadly. "It figures," he said, "they'd fire their savior." I had come to like Devon after all we'd been through with the rewrites and the cuts and all. Besides, it turned out that he thought
Buddy Wickwire was a buttface, too. I tried to call Chip Russell's office for four days about it, and he never returned my calls. This, by itself, was not a good omen, either. When I called Wickwire's old office extension, I got some frosty bitch who told me that Wickwire had been promoted to senior vice president. Instead of Chip Russell. Who had quit. Which is why he hadn't called me back. He was probably at the Brentwood market in tennis togs, having espresso; what did he care anymore?
As Lenny Bruce used to say, even though you may be paranoid, that doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
We had fifty million committed for a new series, we had a start date, we had good pull on us, and yet find some reason, we had a network that was acting in the manner of a crazed Doberman in a maternity ward. It looked like the brass was trying to sabotage us, like our own guys didn't want us to succeed. What was going on?
Chip Russell lived in a small, wonderful house in Rustic Canyon. We had taken several story meetings ever there when we first started the major cuts. Lots of wood and glass, and the outside seemed to come right in. From his place on a little cul-de-sac off Lattimer, you couldn't see any other houses.
Jimmy, Robin, and I got out of my beat-up old Rambler. Even though the birds were singing, it seemed unusually quiet. In fact, it was a boss weird moment; a dry, hot wind came from the oak trees, and yet, none of the brown leaves even twittered. It hadn't rained in I couldn't remember how long-since the wreck, maybe. We went to the front door. It was open a crack. We looked at each other. Chip had a dog, one of those awful schnauzers who always barks. It was silent which, to me, was the blow omen of the year.
"Sometimes I wish I was ten years old again, back in Barberton, Ohio, not knowing diddly," said Robin. I knew just what she meant. None of us had a good feeling.
We found him, sitting in his leather Eames chair, reading a book called A Hollywood Education, by some guy named Freeman. It was a prophetic-type dung: Chip Russell, dead as a doornail, had just got his Ph. D., it looked like. He was smiling in spite of the little black .22 hole in the middle of his forehead. Robin went outside to barf. Jimmy found the drugged dog shut in the projection TV drawer. I closed Chip's eyes.
To be honest with you. I'd never, ever seen a dead body before. I've lied a few times and said I had, but I hadn't It gave me the willies, and for a weird reason that I never would have suspected. Chip Russell did not look dead. I mean, it looked like he was just about to laugh at one of my jokes at a script meeting. I wanted to touch him, so I did. The skin was still soft. I pulled one of his arm hairs gently; it made a little hill of skin. I lifted one of his fingers. Up it came. I let it go; plop. I thought to myself, this is a body whose heart is not beating anymore, whose blood is just sitting there.
This is a dead guy. And that's when I almost lost it, Because I wondered what was in this thing that made it go-made it live-made it like Chip Russell that went the thirty years in his life with the friends and hot days and cold beer, and I got real scared because I was thinking that whatever it was, was the same dealie inside of me and Robin and Jimmy, and just as sure as it was there-immeasurable, unprovable - it could be gone forever. Just snuffed out, and I would end up to be like Chip, like this body which was starting to get cold.
"We're in deep shit," said Robin very softly.
"And we're outta here," said Jimmy. "Wipe off anything you might have touched." We booked it.
The last day of rehearsal there was flat-out the most powerful thunderstorm anyone had ever seen. The clouds were damn near purple with rage and lightning, and yet, not a drop of rain fell. Billion-amp blasts split the strange darkness, and all of us sort of creeped around, playing like we thought this was normal or something.
The last tech run-through was a real goon show, People were jumping around like it was the end of the world or something. And in the middle of all the technical madness, there were the director, the writer, and the actors-along with the camera and sound crew trying to block the hard, long dolly shot that would open the show, tomorrow morning at six. Little did any of us know.
Jimmy was mowing his trees, over and over, in the scene with his ministers, William of Longchamp and Hubert Walter. I had written the scene in Latin (more like Pig Latin, actually)-you know how high-toned those meetings go-but it was just a Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers tiling. So I was making on-site changes on my little Epson lap computer, just racking it out, being semi-brilliant, even if I do say so.
Robin had had an uncharacteristic fight with Reed Savage and had gone downstairs to cool off in what used to be Shawn's little apartment. She told me later what'd happened.
She had slipped through the door, not making any noise, and had caught Buddy Wickwire, toying with his platinum Dunhill lighter, talking on the phone to Lefty Armbruster. Even though figuring out a conversation from only hearing one side is not always easy, she got enough. One of Buddy's lines had been, "Don't worry, Lefty, they'll never get the first shot in the can."