Most Talkative: Stories From the Front Lines of Pop Culture (10 page)

It was a satellite remote, and that morning, Mary Jo told me that she wanted to show Paula Zahn the X-ray of her head live on the air. I thought this was a bad idea and called the control room to ask what they thought. “Sure, let’s do it,” they said. Okay, maybe it was more like, “What kind of fucking idiot are you, Cohen? Where’s your news judgment? Show the X-ray, you moron, and then maybe go get YOUR head X-rayed!” That’s the kind of nurturing, mentoring talk I could always count on from the control room, but of course they were right: Boy, was it ever a memorable moment when Mary Jo whipped out that huge transparent film showing the contents of her skull and then waved it at the camera, yelling about the bullet Amy
Fish
-ah lodged in there. The segment got picked up all over the place.

Seven a.m. in the Buttafuocos’ living room

At the time, I didn’t totally understand the complexities of TV as theater. I thought the introduction of a prop like Mary Jo’s X-ray would complicate things and screw up the interview. Of course, it only made it more dramatic. Nowadays, I almost never say no to a prop. When Danielle Staub wanted to bring a dummy head to the
RHNJ
Season 2 reunion so she could demonstrate how hard her hair was pulled by Jacqueline’s nineteen-year-old daughter, I said, “Please do!”

One of my favorite remotes was when I was sent to Las Vegas—my very first time in that city. CBS sent me with the sole purpose of making sure Buddy Hackett showed up for a live early-morning interview.

When I checked in to the Desert Inn, I watched an awesome and informative video on the in-house TV about Suzanne Somers learning to gamble, then I called Mr. Hackett’s room and left him a message telling him I had arrived and would like to buy him a drink before the interview, and that I would be by his room early the next morning, thinking that buying him a drink would be a good way to make sure he actually went to the interview.

When I showed up at his room at 3 a.m., he smelled of lotion. And though his skin was presumably soft, he was not, and he proceeded to tear me a new asshole. “YOU’RE gonna buy ME a drink? A KID is gonna buy me a drink???” he screamed. “I BUILT this town. I OWN this hotel! Who do you think you ARE, kid?”

Unsure of how to respond, I laughed, and thank God, so did he. He drove us to the location in his banana-yellow 1970 Buick convertible, which happened to be exactly the car I drove in high school. I wanted to find out what else Buddy Hackett and I could possibly have in common, but all too soon, it was time for his live spot. When the interview was done, I expected to send Mr. Hackett off and to find my own way back to the hotel, but when he asked, “You gettin’ in or what?” I did not hesitate for a millisecond. Instead of taking me straight back to my hotel, he gave me an unforgettable sunrise tour of Vegas, telling me firsthand stories of Bugsy Siegel and the Rat Pack.

“Hey, kid, ever seen a million dollars in cash?” he asked. Of course I hadn’t. We were in what used to be downtown Las Vegas, off the strip. “Run inside that casino. They have a million bucks under glass in the lobby. Go look!” he commanded, pulling the Buick to a stop right at the casino’s front door. I felt like a boy with his grandpa—or like I might be Buddy’s little buddy! I ran inside and saw the million dollars and got back in the car. “Isn’t that something, kid?” It was.

Next, Buddy started giving me unsolicited life advice. He told me never to accept offers from people I didn’t trust. He urged me to hold on to my memories. And perhaps by way of illustration, he got a dreamy look in his eyes and reminisced about some of his own misty, watercolor memories. “Every one of these streets reminds me of a different girl I fucked.”

I really liked him. I actually liked the Buttafuocos, too. Many times I would find myself back at my desk in New York months after a remote, longingly fingering the cards in my Rolodex, fighting the urge to call these people up to say hello and that I’d been thinking about them. Did they miss me, too? Probably not. Let’s not be naïve. These people were accustomed to having someone drop into town, see them as they wanted to be seen, and then get out of their hair. And while I may have only ever met one Buddy Hackett or one Mary Jo Buttafuoco in my travels, they’d probably met hundreds of me.

One remote pressed every voyeuristic button I’ve got, and it was so memorable that I kept a souvenir from the encounter for almost a decade. In 1994, I went to Palm Springs to produce the first joint interview Tammy Faye Bakker had agreed to since marrying her new husband, Roe Messner, a business partner of Jim Bakker’s, who’d designed Heritage USA, the 2,300-acre Christian theme park and residential complex, before everything went to hell in a multi-million-dollar handbasket. Roe, as you may or may not remember, had reportedly handled payoffs to Bakker’s mistress, Jessica Hahn. Jim ended up spending some time behind bars, but not before Tammy divorced him and married Roe. It was all very 1980s, back when big shoulder pads and thieving adulterous televangelists were the rage. When the scandal broke, Tammy Faye cried through her unfathomably heavy mascara (think tarantulas mating) and managed to emerge from the whole mess a slightly streaky pop-culture icon. You had to love her for the way she stood her ground even as she was being mocked by every drag queen and comedian (Jan Hooks was my fave) in America. I did, anyway. I tried booking her for a few years. When I got her, I convinced everyone in New York that landing Tammy and her new man was kind of a big deal. Because, by the way, it kind of was.

I was stoked to spend time with Tammy Faye and see her spidery eye makeup up close and, better yet, see the habitat in which she lived. But there was another kind of insane aspect to my Palm Springs jaunt; I’d done something I bet not too many people would think of if they came to town to interview the former cohost of
The PTL Club
: I booked myself into an all-male clothing-optional “resort.” The resort was simultaneously kind of disgusting and kind of awesome. Of course, no one on West Fifty-seventh Street knew where I was staying—the place wasn’t exactly on the “Approved Hotels” list provided by the network’s travel department. But then again, it was certainly not my problem that they hadn’t thought to provide a “Disapproved” list as well. Still, I allowed myself to feel a tiny bit righteous because it was cheaper—in every sense of the word—than anywhere CBS would’ve put me. I was a company man; I was being fiscally responsible! Fine, that wasn’t the only reason. There were waterfalls and grottoes and—well, the whole place looked like a low-rent version of the Playboy mansion. For me, it felt like the perfect opportunity to make up for lost time. My friends had all been to strip bars and every trashy place under the sun, and, by comparison, I was a mere babe in the woods—or desert. I had some serious catching up to do. At that time, though, my sense of adventure was still pretty Midwestern, and I could never have imagined checking in to this place under any usual circumstance—as a vacation destination, or with a friend—but as long as I was in the neighborhood on assignment to produce a story on a figure from the religious right, it seemed like a perfectly genius idea.

My first morning in Palm Springs, I cruised over to Tammy Faye’s house so we could get to know each other and discuss the interview. I love seeing the inside of strangers’ houses. It’s usually the little things that excite me the most, like seeing what magazines they have in the bathroom. Tammy’s home was in a gated community, and she had her very own fake lake in her backyard. As soon as she opened the door, I was greeted by a full frontal assault on my nose. Flowery perfume, scented candles, potpourri in every flavor, gusts of Glade, and I have no clue what else, all combined in a sweet and savory fight to the death. I’m a sensitive Jewish boy with delicate sinuses and contact lenses who is more than mildly obsessed with the smells of people’s homes—every house has a special stink, and this one was un-mildly unique. My eyes started watering instantly, but through my veil of tears I could see that Tammy Faye had many, many, many figurines, miniatures, mirrors, collectibles, photos (of herself), and framed gold records adorning every nook and cranny of the house. There was a copy of
Lears
magazine in the bathroom, in case you need to know. And to complete the effect, a yippety yappety dog called Tuppins, who flew around our knees in hysterics.

Tammy was dressed exactly as I’d envisioned her: in head-to-toe winter whites. (Jews don’t really do winter whites, and Palm Springs doesn’t really do winter, but stay with me.) Tammy was kind of a miniature of her photographed self but loud and fun and full of life and love. At the same time, she seemed really fragile. She gave me a tour of her home and introduced me to Roe, who, I quickly learned, was half deaf. Tammy prattled on about how most of her furniture had been on TV before, from the set of
The PTL Club
and
Tammy’s House Party
. How could that be? Shouldn’t it have been in some government warehouse with other seized loveseats and disgraced ottomans?

The plan was to film Tammy live from her living room, with Harry Smith interviewing her from our New York studio. Tammy was still licking her wounds from that tough interview—also by satellite—that Ted Koppel had done with her a few years earlier, and it was part of my job to reassure her that Harry planned to proceed with a much lighter touch. We fell in love with each other in no time (well, I fell in love with her, and I think she was fond-ish of me), and I was able to reassure her of my intentions, which really were pure—I wanted her to have a fair shot at telling her story. I gave her a hug and told her I’d be back the next day for the site survey with the crew, and then we’d go live in thirty-six hours. Which, by my calculations, would give me a few hours of quality resort time.

Back at the hotel, I was surprised to find a camera crew shooting a naked aerobics video in the common area outside my window. Surprised, but not necessarily delighted. I sat in my room (fully clothed) watching something that I might’ve considered hot at one point, but up close was ultimately pretty gross. I began to wonder if it really even was an aerobics video, given the poor slimnastics skills of the dancing twinks in front of me, or if this was just the poorly written exposition of a scene that was about to turn hard-core at any moment. The boys were unsynchronized and un–my type, so I crossed my fingers, hoping that things were not heading in that direction. That’s when my deep thoughts were interrupted by the dreaded noise:

“BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.”

On a LONG list of pet peeves and “hates,” my beeper was at the top (others included know-it-all cabbies, waiting in line, and carrots). It was one square plastic pain in the ass and essentially my ball-and-chain for most of the nineties, beeping furiously with bad news at every turn. To this day, I’m sure that its seemingly innocuous beeping was actually Morse code for “GET OFF YOUR ASS RIGHT NOW AND PREPARE FOR YOUR DAY TO BE RUINED.” Without fail, the second I relaxed and forgot it was there, it would come to life, bidding me to call the office right away where someone at the assignment desk was ready to shout me out of my peaceful state, which was often a deep sleep. The orders were always urgent. “Sinatra died, get in here!” or “You’re booked on the last flight out to New Orleans—we need you to be there when Hurricane Andrew hits tonight!”

My response was usually some form of incredulous disbelief. “Wait—you want me to fly INTO the hurricane?” (They did! I did. I got very wet, it sucked, but I got to see Dan Rather hanging on to a pole during gale-force winds.) When that beeper went off, it was never to let me know something fantastic had happened. I started to form a negative mental association between that sound and tragedy—like one of Pavlov’s dogs if it suffered from PTSD. I’d take a breath and wait a couple minutes before calling back, hoping the breaking news would somehow un-break in the interim. I also didn’t want to seem too available. I’M BUSY! I’ve got like eighteen balls in the air!

In Palm Springs, I finally called the CBS newsdesk and was put through to Jim Murphy, senior broadcast producer on the show. “Dude, there’s a massive storm near Petaluma, California,” he informed me. “Millions of dollars in damage and flooding. You gotta go there and get us some guests for the top of the show.”

“I can’t!” I pleaded. “You have to find someone else!” I mean, I was in a paradise of my own making and there was no way I was leaving. They were not taking me away from the weird, naked aerobicizers, whose weird, naked aerobics had taken on a mesmerizing quality, like something out of a David Lynch film. And, more importantly, they certainly weren’t taking me away from my new best friend, Tammy Faye.

Back and forth we went, with me arguing vehemently that this Tammy Faye Messner exclusive was HUGE, and she would go right to
Good Morning America
if we didn’t proceed with the interview as planned. I guess I was convincing. Jim said he would call me back.