“Like it?” Eddie Ivarone said. “We are it.”
They all laughed at that one and then walked over to Eddie’s primered 1971 Dodge Super Bee.
“Hop in the trusty chariot,” Eddie said. “Cause this is the way we roll.”
The pizza place was exactly as Johnny had imagined it, dark, wooden booths, pitchers of beer, and mediocre pizza. There was a pool table and a jukebox, and a small bar with five stools. In short, a dump, the kind of place Johnny had hung out in when he was a kid in Baltimore. The kind of a place he’d wanted to escape from. But today, saved from the agonies of solitude, Johnny decided to embrace Eddie and Stenz, and have a good old-fashioned drinking session, with pitchers of beer and discussions of old-time TV shows, and after a few rounds, a little singing along with the jukebox. It was all great fun, and soon Eddie’s girl came by, an attractive, if slightly sluttish woman named Connie. She had short blond hair, and a long, sexy body which she poured into tight jeans and an Oakland Raiders T-shirt.
She was a waitress at a nearby Denny’s, and when she smiled she showed a little too much gum, but she was fun, warm, and liked Johnny right away. He could tell because when he got around to mentioning what he did for a living, the two men were impressed: a TV producer.
“Whoa, Eddie, do you know what we have here? A real Hollywood celebrity. Man, are we lucky or what?” she teased.
Eddie and Stenz looked at Johnny to see how he would respond to her baiting, and when he laughed and wagged a finger at her, they were relieved, and began doing their little Hollywood routine too.
“Oh, I’ll have the café con leche jamba juice with the cappuccino latte,” Eddie said.
“Yeah, and I’ll have the profiterole with a side of endive gooseberry... whatever,” Stenz added, not quite able to pull off the joke.
“You got me,” Johnny said. “Guilty as charged. Just the other day I ate a fig tart for breakfast.”
“Gag me,” Connie said.
“With a pomegranate smoothie chaser,” Johnny said.
They all laughed again, and Johnny could see that they were pleased by his good sportsmanship.
“That must be great to be a producer on TV,” Eddie said. “But what the heck does a producer do anyway?”
“He gets all the money together, silly,” Connie said.
Johnny laughed but shook his head. “No, no, no. That’s what a movie producer does. But in TV, the networks and the studios put up the money. In TV, the producer is really a writer. All those names you see at the end of the show, Story Editor, Co-Producer, Co — Executive Producer, and Executive Producer, all those guys are really the show’s writers.”
“Ohhh,” Connie said. “So that’s what you are? A writer?”
“Yep,” Johnny replied, taking another sip of beer.
Connie nodded like she got it, but Eddie shook his head.
“Gee, I read in the paper that TV producers make a ton of money. But I never knew they were just writers.”
There was a long silence after that.
Johnny, who had heard this before, and from people much better educated than his current crew, just smiled.
“All that for just knowing words,” Stenz said.
“Yeah, that’s kinda weird,” Eddie said.
“For God’s sake, you guys,” Connie said, starting to feel embarrassed, “you are being so rude.”
“No, it’s fine,” Johnny said. “I think the guys here don’t quite understand. How do you think a script gets done?”
“Well, I never thought about it that much,” Eddie answered. “But I guess like they set up a situation for the actors, who kind of make up the dialogue to fit, you know... that situation.”
“Yeah, they improvise the dialogue,” Stenz said. “Right?”
“Wrong,” Johnny said. “Every word that is spoken on 99 percent of all TV shows is written in the script, and the actors have no freedom to improvise.”
“Yeah, but I seen actors come on Leno and say they wrote their scenes,” Eddie said.
“Yeah, they say it sometimes,” Johnny said. “But that’s not true. They say it because they want the audience to think they do everything. But trust me, most actors couldn’t write a decent scene much less a whole script.”
“Huh,” Eddie said. “So the word guy is the boss, then?”
“Yep,” Johnny said. “But we don’t make a big deal out of it. The audience likes to think the whole thing is real, so we don’t go running around telling them that we did it all.”
“I’ll be damned. And so all the stories and stuff, that’s the writers too?”
“Yep, all that stuff.”
“Hmmmm,” Eddie said. He looked as though he was having a hard time believing it.
“Well, here’s to the word man,” Connie said, toasting Johnny.
Eddie and Stenz joined in but they didn’t look all that happy about it.
Soon the talk drifted to other subjects, though, like who was the sexiest actress on TV, and they laughed and ate pizza and drank beer. By the end of the night Johnny was almost feeling like they could become friends. What the hell, it was only going to be for a week or so anyway.
During the next three days Johnny worked up a routine. First thing in the morning, a brisk walk on the beach, then get back and drink his second cup of coffee and work on his new idea... an idea he had gotten talking to Eddie and the rest for the past few days. It was called Hometown, and it was about a guy who comes back to his working-class hometown, after living in a flashy place like L.A., and once there finds himself getting involved with the kind of working-class people he thought he’d left behind. He even had the log line for it. They say you can’t go home again, but what if home is the only place left go to?
Oh yeah, the networks would love that. It would be a hit... he could feel it. A show with heart, and a lot of the heart would be from Eddie and Stenz and Con. He’d owe them and he wouldn’t forget them when the show made it either. He’d find a way to make them participants in the profits. Not a lot of money, obviously, but not a trifle either. He’d be a mensch and take care of them. Though he hadn’t told them any of this yet. No use starting a feeding frenzy for something that might take awhile to happen.
But happen it would.
Even though he’d been kicked off of Boys in Blue, he’d still created the number three show in the nation. Yeah, he’d have clout for Hometown, and someday (maybe even sooner than later) he’d get it on the air.
Every day after working on his characters, and the pilot outline for the show, Johnny headed down to play ball with his new pals. Since the three of them had become hot as a team, new challengers began showing up at the park to take them on. There were three financial guys from Long Beach, whom they demolished 15-4, and there were three restaurateurs from Newport, rich ballplayers, whom Eddie destroyed almost singlehandedly.
After that game they headed out to Minelli’s and had two or three extra pitchers of beer, and threw in a pretty decent lasagna with the pepperoni and garlic pizza.
It was a hell of a day, and a hell of a good time.
Right up to the moment it wasn’t anymore.
Even after it happened, Johnny couldn’t really remember how it had gone bad.
Maybe Eddie had downed a few too many beers, and maybe it was the Vicodin he had admitted he took just to give the booze a little extra kick. Or maybe it was just one of those days... but somewhere along the third hour of partying, Eddie got a little morose.
They were all still partying, and then Eddie said it, the thing that had been there all along in the back of his mind: “Here’s to our Hollywood buddy. May he remember us when he heads back to la-la land and starts hanging with the big shots again.”