Love Life (16 page)

One day we played the best team in the league. They were bigger, stronger and faster than us and were led by the champion golfer Fred Couples’s son, who could crush the ball a mile, at will, just like his old man. Going into our game against them, they were undefeated.

By the third inning we were getting our hats handed to us. One of the reasons was the play of their first baseman. The kid was gargantuan, a Sasquatch of a boy. I’m surprised they were able to get a uniform big enough to fit him. Whenever there was a play at first, he would stand in the baseline, forcing our guys to run around him to reach the bag. No one did. In fact, a lot of my boys were so intimidated by this hulk that they just stopped in front of him and were inevitably tagged out.

“Um, hey, it’s illegal for the first baseman to block the base runner,” I reminded the umpire.

“Yeah, I know, but these kids are just learning the rules,” he replied tartly, as if I’d just asked him to toss the kid out of the game.

“I totally get it. But what he’s doing is against the rules; let’s teach him.” The ump grunted and went over to talk to the opposing coach.

When play resumed the same thing happened. This time it was Johnowen at the bat, who hit a ball to the shortstop and headed to first. Once again, the kid stepped in front of Johnowen, who, faced
with a player three times his size, stopped in his tracks. The ball was thrown to first and he was called out where he stood.

I was seething.

“Time!” I called.

I got the team into a huddle.

“All right, guys. Listen up. What that player is doing is illegal. He is trying to stop you from running to first. I’ve told the ump that he needs to get out of the way. If he does it again I want you to run him over.”

The kids looked at me with big eyes.

“Knock him on his ass. He’s trying to scare you with his size.”

The boys nodded, but I could tell they were less than enthusiastic.

The game resumed and for the next few innings there were no plays at first.

Then, Johnowen hit a dribbler to the pitcher. The boy fumbled it as Johnny ran down the line to first. As usual, the human shield moved into his way. The pitcher made the throw; it was going to be close.

Then, my asthma-challenged son, the tiniest kid on the field, lowered his little body and dove headfirst driving his shoulder into the gut of their towering first baseman. The kid flew backward. The ball sailed over his head. Both players went flying to the ground. Johnowen crawled to the base as the ball rolled around the infield.

“Safe!” yelled the umpire.

Our team exploded. Kids were jumping up and down cheering. Johnowen sat on the bag catching his breath. I wanted to run to him, fearing he may have hurt himself, but something told me not to. Instead, I walked over slowly.

“Everyone okay here?” I asked both of them.

“Um, yeah, I’m fine,” said the brute. “He ran me over!”

“Looks like it!” I said, heading toward my son.

“Good play,” I told him, and patted his back as casually as I could.

“Thanks, Dad!” he said, smiling.

We didn’t win that day. But on the ride home, you’d never have known.

That night, it occurred to me that if little Johnny could literally throw himself into the game and through his fear, if my tiny team of boys could remain excited and get pumped for the next game after having lost yet another, I needed to do the same in my own life.

Sheryl and I were both big fans of
Nip
/
Tuck
, a new show on cable that was, at least in its first few seasons, groundbreaking, truly audacious, sexy-smart and wonderfully demented. It was a totally fresh and inspired retrofitting of the classic genre of doctor shows.
Exactly
the kind of show I would have loved to be a part of. A meeting was arranged with the show’s creator, Ryan Murphy. I could tell him how obsessed I was with his show and hopefully we’d find something to do together one day. We met for lunch at Mr. Chow.

He was hilarious, razor-sharp and clearly feeling the glow of becoming one of the industry’s next big things. I am always happy when, after doing this for so many years, a talent can get me feeling like anything is possible.

“I love
Nip
/
Tuck
,” I told him. “In particular I love love love the character of Dr. Christian Troy. It’s such a great part. Funny, sexy, cocky but also clearly broken inside. I love how complicated you’ve written him, the bravado barely covering the self-loathing. It’s the best leading-man part on television.”

Ryan cocked his head and gave me a look that clearly said, “Are you
crazy
?” A little thrown, I rattled on.

“Seriously, the dialogue you give him! My wife and I were watching last week and I told her, ‘Now
that’s
the kind of role I should do! Where is my version of Dr. Christian Troy?!’ ”

Ryan went pale. I wondered if he’d had a bad piece of fish. He was staring at me like I was an alien.

“Um, Rob, you
do
know that I wrote Christian Troy for you, right?” he asked.

“Wh-what?!”

“I wrote the part for you. I had your picture on my computer while I did it. It’s no surprise to me that it spoke to you. I designed it for you.”

I was stunned. How could this be? One of the few brilliantly written leading-man parts around and I never knew about it, read it or knew that it was written for me?

We finally figured out what had happened, and it is vintage television business 101. Comparing notes, we learned that Ryan had turned the script in to our mutual agents and told them he wanted me. My agents (doing their job) were on the lookout for only the best and biggest next step after
The West Wing
. And pre-
Nip
/
Tuck
Ryan was just one of many midlevel guys hoping to get a shot with their own show.

“I suppose there’s no way your agents would let you work for a tiny cable network and its low budget coming off a monster like
The West Wing
,” he said, and I knew he was right.

“But you’d think they’d at least give me the script!” I said, even though I knew this kind of thing happened every day.

“Yes, but you’re forgetting one thing,” he replied. “I wasn’t Ryan Murphy yet!”

Why is it that we always think the unpleasant things that happen to so many will never happen to us but expect the good things that happen to so few will
absolutely
happen for us?

It’s not like I didn’t have experience with this phenomenon. Yet
I still thought the politics of show business would never ding me. Conversely, I also thought that if I were in the same position as others upon whom fortune smiled I would be rewarded in kind.

I remember one day on
The West Wing
, standing with my pal the late John Spencer, who played Leo. The previous week, the show had won a then-unprecedented number of Emmys in its first season and was exploding in the zeitgeist. The entire cast and crew had been summoned together for “an announcement and presentation” by the corporate brass. It was unheard-of to shut down shooting for such a thing, and with our Emmys and cultural domination in full flower, both John and I assumed we were in for something special.

As we crammed into the Roosevelt Room set waiting for the executives to arrive, everyone buzzed about what this “presentation” would be. Recently Paramount had given Tom Cruise a Porsche for some movie that performed well for them. The “Friends” were all being paid crazy money, and the cast of
Will and Grace
(on our same network) had all been given matching black Porsches. Our
West Wing
producer John Wells had famously given a number of actors and some of the crew on
ER
, which he also produced, each a check for a million dollars. Even midlevel shows were rewarding successes. Just that month, the star of another NBC show called
Providence
, Melina Kanakaredes, had been presented with a brand-new Range Rover. It was an era of show-business excess and was completely outrageous, but if it was happening to shows much less successful than
The West Wing
, both John and I thought, why not us!

After waiting for quite a while, eating up valuable shooting time, the actors, producers and crew were getting antsy. Mercifully, I overheard a mysterious young man in a suit and a Secret Service–type headset say, “Traveling! They are traveling!” as a fleet of junior executives made ready for the honchos’ imminent arrival.

“Whaddaya think we’re getting?” said John with that beautiful,
mirthful twinkle that I miss so much. “Ya think it’s a car? I heard the ‘Friends’ all got cars!”

“How cool would
that
be!” I replied.

We looked at each other and giggled both in excitement and at the absurdity of it all.

Then a hush fell over the room as the top executive made his entrance.

“Thank you all so much for taking time off from shooting today. You, the cast and crew of
The West Wing
, last week won more Emmys than any television show in its first season in history. This show is the best example in our long corporate history of who we are as a company. Your excellence, your intelligence, your humor and your wide and growing audience make all of us, and our shareholders, unspeakably proud. We only thought it fitting that we present you with a token of our gratitude and a physical acknowledgment of each of your exemplary work.”

Proudly, he gestured to an aide, who stepped outside and returned wheeling what looked to be a room service cart with a sheet over it.

“I don’t think it’s a car,” said John under his breath.

“So, from all of us, to all of you . . . Congratulations,
West Wing
!” said the boss as he whipped the sheet off with a flourish. “Enjoy!”

Sitting on the tray was a single-serving espresso maker.

At first we all thought it was a gag. It wasn’t. The room stared in disbelief. The brass filed out as if they had delivered gold bullion.

“Do . . . do we all get one of those?” a crew member said finally.

“No, this is for everyone, we will place it on the food table where everyone can enjoy it!” said the Secret Service suit.

And that’s exactly what happened until a week later, when it broke. When we looked to return it we discovered it was rented.

The truth is there is no perfect industry. There are great people and great opportunities for all of us in whatever line we are in. Also, I love the entertainment business. In many ways, it’s all I’ve ever known, and originally, it was all I ever wanted. The trick is to keep looking forward. You have a hit, you move on, you have a flop, you move on even faster.

One day I received a phone call from Les Moonves, the president of CBS. Les is the king of network presidents. There is no one more successful and I’d always hoped to be in business with him.

“Rob, those guys at NBC should
never
have pulled
Lyon’s Den
. It was really good and getting better
and
they should have been thrilled with those numbers,” he told me.

“Thanks, Les, that means a lot coming from you,” I said, and it was true.

“Anyway, I’m sending you a show we’d love you to star in. It could be great and we’d love to have you in the CBS family.”

I was flattered; CBS, under Les, was the biggest network around. His dramas, like the
CSI
franchises,
NCIS
and
Without a Trace
, were huge moneymakers and huge hits. Maybe this was the opportunity I had been looking for.

The show in question was called
Dr. Vegas
. In spite of the fact that I hated the title and with Les’s words ringing in my ears, I told my agents and managers I was interested. Although it wasn’t “on the page,” as they say, buried within the concept I saw an opportunity to make something much more edgy and raw. The setup was this: I would play an in-house Vegas casino doctor. He’d work for a larger-than-life casino mogul and battle a bad gambling habit. On any given week he would tend to a litany of interesting characters that inhabited the flashy/glitzy/high-stakes/sad/desperate and wild world that is modern Las Vegas. As I write this now, that still sounds like a promising world for storytelling!

I wanted to steer the tone away from the cheesy, old-school Vegas tropes. No showgirls and mob guys. I hoped to do stories about kids on ecstasy and the (then-new) explosion of cool nightclubs and big-name promoters. Sure, we would do traditional stories about boxers and ringside medical high jinks, but I also wanted to explore the
real
Vegas of average folk who live totally outside the neon, who get paid to work in the bedlam of the Strip but never actually go out there themselves. Or, if we were to do a story about a call girl, instead of setting it in some hotel penthouse, make it about her daily life living in a condo way off the Strip. I wanted a Vegas we hadn’t seen before. I wanted it to be
real.

I wanted to do to the genre what
Nip
/
Tuck
did to doctors. Probably still smarting from that missed opportunity, I wanted to make this my
Nip
/
Tuck
on the Strip, with all of its black humor and edge protruding through the sex, fun and glamour.

After a week of negotiating, my deal was done, although not yet signed. It was then that I got an urgent phone call from the producers of a potential new show for ABC called
Grey’s Anatomy
.

In spite of having a deal in principle on
Dr. Vegas
, I agreed to meet the people making
Grey’s Anatomy
. I had read it and loved it—the writing was crisp, real and very entertaining—and it’s always a good idea to hear out talented people.

“We would be thrilled if you would play Dr. Derek Shepherd,” they said right off the bat.

I told them about my negotiations on
Dr. Vegas
. “I’m pretty far down the line with them,” I said.