Life Its Ownself (17 page)

We couldn't have missed the suede king who rushed in to join the starlet.

"Sorry I'm late, angel. My daughter got lost. My wife got pissed. Everything's okay now. You look terrific!"

Two deal-makers walked past our table, as one of them was saying:

"There's no downside. I wouldn't give you a downside. Did I ever give you a downside?"

They were followed by two secretaries, one of whom was greatly saddened because:

"They painted his name out of the parking space at noon. He was out of the building by five."

The historian pouring wine for the ingenue intrigued us. He said:

"You didn't know Hitler did coke? It's the entire explanation for World War Two. I can't believe no one's picked up on it."

Two screenwriters brought us up to date on their craft. First, one of them said, "It's in turnaround. Ned says grownups don't do foreign."

And a little later, one of them said: "Bob's the only writer who could have broken the spine of that script. You know how he did it? He made
him
the amnesia victim,
her
the skateboarder, and saved the reveal for the last page!"

Shake and I wrapped up the evening with dinner at Fatburger. I found Barbara Jane asleep when I got back to the hotel.

I gave her a long hug and several kisses, but she was more or less in a coma. "Hi, honey," she stirred. "Glad you're here."

She was exhausted. Show biz was taking its toll on her. Further proof of it lay on the bed beside her in the form of a wadded-up memorandum.

It was the latest "inter-communication" that had come from the story department at ABC. It was for the eyes of everyone involved with
Rita's Limo Stop
; all of the people— performers, writers, directors, producers—who had been slaving on the pilot for weeks, never really knowing how many insecure, terror-stricken executives they were trying to please.

There had been blood spilled on every square foot of the set. One lead had been replaced. Supporting actors had been fired and re-hired. A guest star had been written out. Another guest star had been written in. The network had threatened the director with strangulation. The director had threatened the assistant director with expulsion from the business. The executive producers had filed complaints with every guild in town. The eighth team of writers had been brought in to "punch up" the script, and each page that flew out of a typewriter had made the show less humorous and less charming, if it ever was either of those things in the first place. All this to produce a half-hour of television comedy that would come up to the esthetic standards of
Three's Company
.

The cast would rehearse all day, and then somebody from the network who had once had a writing credit on a
Grizzly Adams
episode and was now a VP in charge of development would drop by and say, "Where are the jokes?"

The writers would pound their machines until dawn, the cast would rehearse all day again, and somebody else from the network who had once written questions for a game show and was now a VP in charge of deli orders would drop by and say, "It seems to lack charm."

And on and on.

All of the efforts to improve the script and turn the principal character into a more sympathetic, more vulnerable person had found "Rita"—Barbara Jane—being switched from a restaurant owner to the proprietor of an antique shop, then to the head of an adoption agency, and then back to a restaurant owner. At one session where everybody "went to the table," as they called it, "Rita's" eye problem had become a spot on the lung.

Hearing all of these reports periodically, I had been fearful that Barbara Jane would purchase a handgun and go prowling through the halls of the ABC building in Century City. Now I wondered how this "inter-communication" had affected her. I wouldn't know until she awakened.

The "inter-communication" had obviously been drafted by a recent graduate of a West Coast film school, but some faceless superior had initialed it, doubtless unread, and it had been circulated.

In its entirety, the memo said:

TO: PRODUCTION STAFF & TALENT

FROM: STORY DEPT./ABC ENT.

SUBJECT: "RITA'S LIMO STOP"

We are very excited about the potential of RITA'S LIMO STOP, and it is our feeling that we are well on our way toward creating a highly original and truly funny female buddy series. In an effort to make the best possible pilot, however, we have a few suggestions which we think will improve the story. Since we are so close to a blockbuster, it seems to us that it would be a shame not to further strengthen and delineate the characters so that the relationship of our principals will be the main focus and driving force of this unique comedy.

CHARACTERS
:

First, we must deepen and enrich Rita and Amanda so that their bond is more realistic and substantial, so that we might attain the hot mix we are all seeking, the magic you would find, for example, if
Hud
were to have a head-on collision with
Chinatown
, or, literarily, if certain segments of
Crime and Punishment
were blended into the fabric of
Death in Venice
. To make this buddy relationship as dimensional as possible, therefore, we might want to consider
not
having Rita and Amanda be friends at the start. Perhaps they don't know each other, or, for that matter, even like each other throughout the 60-second cold opening.

It might be that the street smart Rita regards Amanda as dim-witted, and, conversely, Amanda might not appreciate Rita's pessimistic approach and cynical attitude toward life in general. It is our feeling that a more antagonistic start between Rita and Amanda would provide more texture to their burgeoning friendship.

Second, as their uneasy bond grows into a symbiotic relationship, they should grow and change. Rita should drop her unyielding facade, and Amanda should become more focused and directed as a result of Rita's Pygmalion tutelage.

Third, we
must
emphasize their backstories and personal histories even more. We should really get a sense of
why
life is so difficult for all of us. By establishing this, the audience will be rooting for them even more to succeed as career women. As in any classic buddy relationship, separately they would fail, but collectively they triumph, outlasting the troubled, rocky waters because they have each other as anchors.

Fourth, their vulnerabilities must be revealed at least five times in the pilot episode, but we shouldn't let this obscure their durability and self-discovery.

HUMOR:

We would like to eliminate the chaotic situation with the bean sprouts and reroute the humor more specifically toward our main characters and their enslavement in the restaurant. The best comedy comes out of
real
characters, and in line with that, we feel that some of the secondary and supporting players are too broad—the "Evita"-singing drag queen, for instance— and that, additionally, there are times when the dialogue goes too far in terms of bawdier humor. With regard to this, we recommend losing all references to "dykes" and "limp wrists," as well as Rita's quip— ad-libbed in the last rehearsal—about toxic waste being something the United States could export to Puerto Rico.

In short, we would like for the humor to explode from motivational rather than parenthetical origins.

SPECIFIC PAGE NOTES:

Page 1

Rita's power over Amanda
must
be clarified. And as of now, how well do we know Amanda really?

Page 2

We are concerned that Rita is depicted too brazenly when she reminds Ko, the Chinese chef, of his need for cosmetic dentistry.

Page 4

At present, our general feeling is that the relationship between Rita and her ex- husband might be extraneous to the storyline. His motives must be embellished. If he
does
want Rita back, why is he with the teenage fashion model? More backstory here.

Page 9

We like Ron, the 18-year old guru, and plan to build him up in future episodes, but as he now stands, he raises many plot points that are not fully explored. Rethink.

Page 12

The friendship that Rita strikes up with the Columbia professor seems forced. We think that by changing his character to an NBA basketball player, we can less inhibit the humor and achieve more of a
now
flavor overall.

Page 17

Rita cannot be this tough and cynical or the audience will view her as totally unsympathetic.
Why
does she hate the sales personnel at Bloomingdale's so much that she wishes a birth defect on all of their grandchildren? Here again, we are apparently dealing with an ad-lib.

Page 19

In order to explore the predicament of our women more deeply, we should
hear
and
see
the breaking of dishes more frequently. We are
not
saying we want to stick to the structure of farce exclusively, but we
are
suggesting that there may be some very real opportunities for double entendre, which, after all, is at the core of all great comedy.

Page 23

It seems to make more sense to us for Rita, rather than Amanda, to overpower the transvestite who bursts in with the automatic weapon and insists on doing her recital of arias and folk songs.

Page 26

While the 30-second epilogue is very well crafted—an entree spilled in Rita's lap is quite funny and the perfect ender—we would like to suggest one tiny change. Isn't it more likely that the entree would be a beef stew? All of us here agree that curried lamb is rather oblique. Rethink.

GOOD LUCK, AND GOOD SHOW!

"They all have to die," Barbara Jane was saying the next morning as we had breakfast in the room.

"Everybody?"

"Not the actors, they're okay. They don't hear what they're saying, anyhow. It's just words to go with the faces they make and the fists they beat against the walls. You know how Carolyn... 'Amanda'... studies a script. She thumbs through it and says, 'Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, my line. Bullshit, my line, my line, bullshit, bullshit.'"

Barbara Jane was looking around on the room-service table for something other than orange marmalade to spread on her rye toast.

"Has anyone ever eaten orange marmalade?" she asked. "Has anyone ever actually requested orange marmalade? Nobody in the whole world eats orange marmalade! So what happens? Every hotel serves it, every airline serves it, every place you go, there's nothing but orange marmalade! It's like chocolate-chip ice cream. Who eats that? You eat chocolate ice cream. You eat vanilla ice cream. But you don't eat chocolate-chip ice cream—and you don't eat orange fucking marmalade!"

"Here's some boysenberry," I said.

"Thanks!"

It was a tossup whether the director, the writers, or the executive producers should die first.

Barbara Jane said, "My first day on the set, the director seemed like a pretty shrewd guy. He said, 'We're all in this together and no matter what happens, remember one thing: the network is always wrong!' He says this, which I think is kind of neat; then he does every single thing every jerk from the network suggests! If somebody from ABC's mail room came by and mentioned pirates, the director would hand me an eyepatch!"

So far, there had been a total of sixteen writers assigned to the project, most of them working in pairs, none of them lasting more than two or three days, and none of them overburdened with originality.

Barb said, "Here's a sitcom writer's idea of humor. Say, 'I'm tired.'"

"I'm tired," I said.

'"You're tired, what about me?'"

Barbara Jane looked at me vacantly.

"That's a laugh line," she said.

The other day, a new team of writers had come in to "punch up" the script. They had changed the line to "You're tired, what about
moi
?"

"I won't say
moi
," Barbara Jane had told the director, whose name was Jack Sullivan. "At gunpoint, I won't say
moi
."

The director had said, "It'll get a laugh, trust me."

Barb had said, "It's corny. It's dumb. It doesn't improve anything. Why can't I say something like 'You're tired, what about the plumbing?'"