Easy to Like (21 page)

“Funny, you used to have to change your
name from Levitch to Lewis, now it's the other way around.”

“Can I write that down, sir?” asked
Troy.

“No,” said Elliot. “What I'm getting at
is, regardless of all that, you simply have to cast the best actors.”

From the silent glance exchanged
between Troy and Hazel, Elliot judged this was a dramatic departure from
practice.

“But,” said Hazel, “when we have
exhausted the supply of good actors available to a particular
project . . . ?”

Elliot looked away and out his window.
Freezing drizzle made the view gelatinous. A slice of milky lake was visible
beyond the convention centre. He knew from experience that network meddling
never made a television project better. But Hazel was making it clear that if
Elliot were to have his way, he would have to take a hand.

Spring was always so far away in
Canada. At Locura Canyon the cover crop between the vines would be green by now,
the occasional wildflower showing. Walt would be squinting at the canes,
anticipating and worrying about bud break. Hazel was consulting her
BlackBerry.

“Leo Karek is apoplectic.”

“Why?”

“I sent him an email earlier, giving
him the broad strokes of the changes you are proposing —”

“Are you punishing me for what happened
last night?”

Troy looked at his sneakers.

“I had better go see him.” said Hazel.
“Put this fire out.”

“No,” said Elliot, standing. “I'll sort
Leo.”

Leo was waiting for Elliot in
the middle of the television newsroom. It was a vast space, open concept taken
to ridiculous extremes. (There was a report on Elliot's desk detailing how this
workplace design was proving to be a complete failure. The CBC had been warned
it would be, by a number of highly paid consultants. Elliot had asked, in a
widely addressed email, why the Corporation had gone ahead with a plan it knew
would fail. Nobody responded.) By positioning himself in the centre of this
forum, Leo was showing that he desired a public confrontation. Elliot, soured by
Hazel's conduct, was more than happy to give it to him. The asshole was standing
with his hands on his hips and his chest out, like a gunslinger, when Elliot
finally reached him.

“Hazel tells me you're having a
kitten.”

“What the hell do you know about
news!”

“That it's on a lot and is generally a
downer.”

“A ‘downer,' Hollywood? Is Afghanistan
a ‘downer'?”

“And how. Mostly it's a mystery. You
guys certainly can't explain it.”

“I will not have the flagship news
program of the national public broadcaster turned into another A&E
circus.”

Leo was speaking loudly, almost
shouting, and had drawn the attention of the nearby cubicle workers, whose heads
were popping up out of their boxes like prairie dogs.

“Nothing has happened yet. These are
proposals.”

“Move ‘the depressing stuff' to the
back half of the show?” Leo scoffed.

“Why not? What's the urgency, Leo? When
was the last time news broke at ten thirty? Have you heard of the Internet, Leo?
Twitter? BlackBerrys and iPhones?
Cable
news is
obsolete, and you're in network. And as for editorial opinion or analysis, I can
get that, custom-made for my particular bigotry, at any of a number of
blogs.”

“I won't see the news service, which is
at the very heart of this institution, reduced to just another TV show.”

“You've been living with the illusion
that it was ever otherwise?”

“You've got your fist up Rainblatt like
a puppet, don't you.”

“I haven't even bothered to consult
him. Nobody cares anymore, Leo.”

“Bullshit. I care, and I'm taking a
stand on this one.”

“I'm sorry to hear that. You've
contributed so much to this organization. While I'm sorry to see you go, I want
to say I admire your principle.”

Leo looked perplexed and then pained,
as if stricken with a headache of tectonic proportions. Elliot raised his voice
now and spoke to as much of the room as could hear him.

“This may surprise you, but I have
nothing but respect for Leo Karek's view of the role of News at the CBC. If I
didn't have to balance different aspects of the operation at a time when it,
candidly, teeters on bankruptcy, I think I could even share them. Leo has chosen
his own beliefs over professional standing.” Elliot spied Hazel, Troyless,
watching from the distant wall. “Leo has had the integrity to walk away from the
top broadcast news job in the country knowing full well that in the new media
environment and economy, there's likely nothing out there for him better than
sessional work at Ryerson. That takes guts. I'm impressed. And I want to make it
clear that I will understand if many of you now rise in solidarity and follow
him out the door. Not only will you be standing on principle, you will be seeing
to it that fewer of your colleagues will have to be let go in the coming
cuts.”

A few people who had stood in their
cubicles to watch were now discreetly getting back in their chairs. Those in
Elliot's line of sight pretended to get straight back to work, donning their
headphones or clicking with theatrical import on their keyboards. Karek didn't
even bother turning around. Elliot offered Karek his hand.

“Best of luck with your future
endeavours, Leo. You'll understand why, given how this has ended, I won't, as
much as I would like to, be able to recommend you.”

Elliot was on the elevator returning to
his office when Hazel appeared before its closing doors.

“Leo's still just standing there,” she
said, as the doors closed.

HAZEL MADE A
last-minute decision
to take a ski holiday with her sister and a large flock of nieces and nephews,
who were on March break, in Zermatt.

When she returned to work, Hazel's
organizational skills were such that finding plausible reasons to avoid Elliot
was child's play. Elliot guessed that his personal secretary, Stella, was
conspiring in it, sharing his schedule with her longtime ally. Hazel was only
ever in Elliot's presence with human shields. She was there for the endless
meetings with the innumerable “heads” of this and that. She was in the room to
witness the easy capitulation of the creative team of
501
Penn
. She was there when Elliot expressed his disappointment to the
group at the result of their revisions. She was there when script after script
failed to live up to its pitch, when compromises about casting and location and
story were discussed. She was never there by herself.

Moreover, whenever they did have a
conversation — with Hazel using Troy as her ventriloquist's doll, or Stella as
chaperone — they seemed always at odds.

Why was he beating himself up over what
shows he, they, programmed? It was Canadian television: if they produced a bum
season, it wasn't like the citizenry didn't have something else to watch. The
dial was flooded with options. Why did it matter if Hazel put on a bunch of
well-intentioned efforts that nobody in the frozen expanse watched? It would be,
in essence, a government project that hadn't worked. A season of television on
the CBC was just a community wharf. There was no audience — they were all
watching American crap on the Canadian privates — and there would be no uproar.
Besides, Elliot had no intention of staying on at CBC; he had no personal stake
in the coming season. He'd been too generous, was giving too much of himself to
the job, to Canada, a country he'd quit. Why should it be his burden alone?

His financial situation had improved.
His plan was to return to California as soon as he could safely lay claim to a
severance package, likely the end of the first season with himself at the helm.
He'd shake up News to save the Corporation a few dollars, see a couple of decent
new shows onto the air, and then split. Back home he'd sell his house in Los
Angeles and move up to the vineyard, dedicate himself full-time to the effort.
He might have to make compromises, sell some Zin, downsize, but with more modest
needs he could make a boutique operation work. The programming meant so much
more to Hazel, why shouldn't she have a greater say? She wanted to carry some of
the load, let her.

He called Hazel and got Troy.

“Ms. Osler is in a meeting.”

“Fuck off, Troy.”

“Are you harassing me, Mr. Jonson?”

“No, I'd do that with a stick. Tell
Hazel she can have the fucking season she wants but she has to come up here and
talk about it with me in private.”

“‘. . . fucking
season . . .' — I'm writing that down.”

“If it shows up as the title of your
memoir, I want a thank-you.”

“If I ever write a memoir, Mr. Jonson,
you are sure to be mentioned.”

Within the hour Stella told him that he
had a three-o'clock with Ms. Olser.

“But don't take from this that
I'll necessarily have sex with you again.”

“As long as the ‘necessarily' is there.
Just so intimacy is not excluded as a remote possibility.”

“I was drunk.”

“And that could happen again.”

“I hope not.”

“I enjoy being with you, Hazel.”

“Don't say any more than that.”

“I will do my best.”

“So we're going with
Reason
?”

“Despite having seen photos of the
host, this Dr. Palme, I defer to your judgement.”

“What about
501
Penn
?”

“The pilot sucked. I'm sending them
back to remake it as a comedy.”

“It was a comedy.”

“So they said. They'll work on it for
another year and then you can tell them it doesn't fit with whatever new
direction we are taking next season.”

“
Les
Les
?”

“Christian wingdings from Alberta are
going to say we are encouraging homosexuality.”

“Imagine if we could encourage
anything.”

“Dealing with that noise will be your
responsibility.”

“Done.”

“I'm going to have to undertake some
radical changes in News. Do you keep giving Leo Karek my cell numbers?”

“Just gave it to him once. There a
problem?”

“Teary, pleading calls begging for his
job back one night and then drunken railing the next. I gotta get a bag of new
phones.”

“‘A bag of new phones'?”

“It's a Hollywood thing. Also, you
personally will contact all the projects that aren't going to move ahead and say
it was your call to kill them.”

“This is how you're trying to get into
my pants?”

“You're the one getting her kicks from
being steward of the public trust. It comes with a cost.”

“Agreed, with reluctance.”

“And leave the late-night problem to
me. I think I have a solution.”

To stop himself from pitching
forward and tumbling, Elliot zigzagged, tree to tree, grasping low branches. He
let the momentum aid, not rule, him on this descent. He was almost swinging,
with orangutan style and pace, down the incline.

At the bottom of the cut it was dark
enough that the funk of the rotting leaves and the rising damp from the thawing
earth were his primary sensation. Smelled like a right-bank Bordeaux passing its
best days. His eyes adjusted and he saw enough to advance. He feared that
calling out for Benny Malka would alert other ravine dwellers to his presence
and Elliot might end up bitten, bashed, or raped by something. But the ravines
ran for miles. And so, once he started closing in on the general vicinity of
Rainblatt's house, Elliot felt he had no choice and bellowed, “Bennnnnnnny!”

He had done so only thrice before
getting a response.

“Who the fuck wants to know?”

The voice came from above and to his
right. Elliot looked up. There was Benny, hairier and maybe filthier than Elliot
had last seen him, perched on a moss-covered log, reading the
Post and Leader
.

“It's me, Elliot Jonson, we met here
before . . .”

“The fresh fuck from the Corpse. Which
rich bastard's house you fall out of this time?”

“I came looking for you.”

“I'm reading this article here, by
Paddy O'Mara . . . Your numbers are fucked.”

“They aren't mine. The current season
was scheduled and in production by the time I got here.”

“So the worse they do, the better your
slate will look next season?”

“I don't have the resources to promote
them. And you know what? That paper is three days old.”

“So?”

“So the two people who would bother to
read a newspaper column about TV have already forgotten.”

“Why are you really here?”

“I want you back.”

“Is this like an intervention? Did my
wife put you up to this? Was it my sponsor?”

“The current late-night guy, he was
supposed to attract a younger, hipper demographic and,
well . . . he's getting old and his act even older.”

“How long can anyone play the ingenue
or the young turk? Entertainers should never paint themselves into that
corner.”

“You know the way out of that jam?”
asked Elliot.

“I think James Dean took a Porsche
Spyder to Cholame, California.”

“No, you keep going, you keep
driving . . . on and into the desert for a few years and
come back to do character work.”

“Yeah,
sure . . . absofuckinglutely fascinating. You got any more
vino?”

“What do you think?”

“About what?”

“Coming back to do a late-night
show.”

Benny threw down the newspaper. He gave
his head a violent shake, flapping his lips the way Cheeta, the chimpanzee on
Tarzan
, would do when frustrated. “If you keep
insisting on tormenting me, I'll come down there and fuck you up.”

“I'm making a genuine offer.”

“Then you're an
idiot . . . Oh wait, right, you're the vice president of
English services. ‘Idiocy' in the job description.”

“I'm serious.”

“I live in the ravines. I haven't had a
haircut or a shower in over a year. My last show was one of the most
embarrassing bombs in the history of Canadian television. Surely you can get
someone more qualified, even if it is a scale gig.”

“Since you came down here, Benny, shame
has died. It doesn't exist anymore.”

“You
are
serious.”

“The comeback is at least an angle to
get some press attention, more ink than I could possibly afford. Think of
Entertainment
Television
 . . . it'll be the best story of their
year. Cleaning you up, delousing and shaving you, it's the ultimate makeover.
Nobody can do worse in that time slot than now
and . . . yes, I had assumed, given your current
circumstances, where you're indigent and your last show was a bust, it would be
a scale gig.”

Benny jumped from his tree and scurried
with surprising speed to Elliot. His piss stink was strong enough to precede
him.

“No fuckery from any amateurs or
dabblers at the network.”

“Done.”

“Small cadre of showbiz pros.”

“It will have to be modest, given the
budget.”

“No monkey costume, just a jacket and
tie, no trying to be hip, no world music, a small, tight house band, a jazz
trio. No nice writers, no writers that people at the network like. I want
bitter, lonely old bachelors and fat chicks, or the new young guys with the
talent and energy that scare the hacks shitless — real comedy writers. Anybody
who's taken a drink with the head of Comedy Development at the Banff Television
Festival — immediately disqualified.”

“Old unemployable writers are good, and
young guys with no credits or agents . . . as long as they
are few.”

“Simple
set . . . Get Elwood Glover's desk out of storage.”

“We're on the same page.”

Benny scratched himself and smelled his
fingers. “I
have
lost weight,” he said. “And the
beam is lower . . . not in terms of quality — how could it
be? — but the sort of numbers a show needs to survive.”

“Five hundred thousand is the new
million.”

“It's nice in the ravine.” Benny
shivered.

“Is it?”

“Yes . . . but
everyone wants to be on television.” Benny turned and strode into the shadows as
if he were practising an exit from the stage. Elliot hauled himself up toward
the lambency bleeding from Avenue Road. He'd go to that liquor store at
Summerhill and score a decent bottle of wine.

Cholame, where Jimmy Dean bought it,
wasn't twenty-five miles from Elliot's vines.