One Year of Reality and How It Nearly Killed Me: My Life Behind the Scenes (5 page)

And because it took six weeks to get the visas for India, I was not able to get any “fake” visas for the contestants after all. I wanted to have visas in each contestant passport that would be a rouse so they would not look at their passport and assume they would be going to those countries. Probably smart that I was never able to do that, as I’m sure the countries wouldn’t have appreciated it.

Time was not on my side in getting the visas done for the show.

One problem was getting the visas for China. We would have to pick up the visas for China in India while we were running the race. This was cutting it close. I wasn’t happy that we wouldn’t have them in advance, but I didn’t have a choice. So I had all the visas for the contestants that I needed, except China. It made me nervous. I had to rely on the Producer of the China segment to come through. And I’m never comfortable leaving my job in someone else’s hands.

The pressure was building as we got closer to the first day of shooting; some things were coming together and some were coming apart.

And then a stupid wrench hit me.

I saw the actual budget.

Laura, had done the initial budget for the show through our production company that we had started to create budgets for film and television. She didn’t run the budget by me or even tell me about it; it was all confidential. It was one of the first gigs for our little company. I mostly worked with film people, and she worked with television people. I figured the budget was a lot like a
Wild Things
budget, and I didn’t care to see it. But temptation was left out on Bert’s desk one day…

The funny thing was that I wasn’t even looking at the budget. I was speaking with Bert about visas and updating him on my progress. Bert stepped out of the office for a moment to answer a question. As I sat in front of his desk my eyes swept down for a moment, and I saw the budget, upside down, and I saw a line item. I don’t know why it registered with me, but it had a big impact.

I saw what Philip was getting paid…and it was about thirty percent more than what I was getting paid.

I was stunned. Bert returned and we continued our conversation, but I actually stopped listening
and went on auto-pilot. I wasn’t upset at the time, just stunned and confused. A cold streak ran up my spine.

Now, as I’ve said, Philip was my friend, and I was a big fan of his. One time while we were working on
Wild Things
, he asked me about my salary. At the time I was a production coordinator and he was a production manager, so I figured it wouldn’t be anything close to what he was making. I told him that I didn’t feel comfortable discussing my rate. He told me what he made, and I told him that it was better than what I made, but I had always stuck by my hard and fast rule of not comparing salaries. So as soon as I saw that figure on Bert’s paperwork, I wished I could unsee it.

It bothered me. There were so many emotions I was experiencing, but it boiled down to this—I felt angry, betrayed, and conned. I tried to justify the difference in our salaries. I came up with some ideas: It shouldn’t bother me; after all he was hired first. He had a family, so he needed more money. But then I started thinking, why wasn’t
I
hired first? Why hadn’t I gotten the preferential treatment and higher pay? After all, I was the one who worked for Bert for three years, edging my way up through the ranks. Why was my friend getting more money than
I was after working on
Wild Things
for only half a season? And why should having a family make it okay for him to get paid more than someone who was single? I couldn’t figure out any solid reasons for such a large discrepancy. I was working for two departments, staying later, and doing things that even he told me he couldn’t do. When I was on
Wild Things
, I had done all of this too. I could replace him, but he couldn’t replace me. Didn’t that make me more valuable? And I felt stupid for not fighting more for the money at the outset, but I knew I wouldn’t have gotten the job if I had been insistent. I felt discriminated against. And I really started disliking Bert. I couldn’t even look at him.

I know people get hired because of who they know, and their salaries were settled in the same way. And I understood that Terry knew Philip before he knew me, and he felt confident that he would do a good job. Philip got a better deal because of his connection. But my connection was to the big cheese, top dog, and it apparently hadn’t been enough to garner a prime salary, which seemed a little backwards. But in the back of my mind I knew that Bert needed me more than he liked me. He hadn’t been willing to take a stand for me. I was able to bury what I was feeling, since I knew it was moot. No one cared except for me. I decided that
I would only be there for one season, no more, unless I got more money.

The only time the discrepancy ever upset me again was when someone else on the staff needed a raise, and they got it without much fuss. The head honchos hadn’t even been willing to give me my measly rate. So my mind went down that negative path again. I had to tuck it away and forget about it for a while, though, because the show was hitting the fan. I also didn’t sign my crew deal memo for that reason.

Normally I would sign a deal memo that outlined my job and the agreed-upon rate, and it would lay out potential raises for additional seasons. I didn’t want to lock myself into a small raise each season, so I only signed the confidentiality agreement that said something about suing me for 40 million dollars if I gave away the ending before the show aired. But nobody ever insisted that I sign my deal. I gladly would have if I had just been getting started, but not when I was making inroads into my career, particularly not when I was getting so much less than the other production manager.

I never blamed Philip. I blamed myself for being taken.

CHAPTER 3

THE BEGINNING OF
A LIFE CHANGING
MOMENT

I
could blame a lot of people and things for what I was about to go through, but whether it was karma, evil spirits, God, or just plain bad luck, it all began with my landlord, a great guy named Rick.

I actually met Rick through a woman whom I met at a ‘tall’ club, a dating club for people over six feet tall. I had gone to an event out of curiosity, because it was where my parents had met. I was pretty amazed that the club where mom had met my
dad was still around. I had just graduated from college, and was looking for an apartment. Though I didn’t meet any interesting men at that particular event, a woman there knew a guy whose mom had just passed away, and he was getting ready to rent out her apartment in Venice Beach. I really wanted to live near the beach, and even though I figured I couldn’t afford it, I took a couple of friends to see it. It was a great apartment with a front and back yard as well as a garage. Aside from the fact that it had pea green carpeting and a matching pea green stove and washer/dryer, it was spacious and much nicer than the dorms and apartments I was used to in college. It needed some work, but I knew I wanted it. The place where I was living at the time was a house that had been rented out, bedroom by bedroom. I had to share a bathroom with my neighbor, which also doubled for the kitchen and dishwashing area. So that apartment in Venice Beach was like a mansion. It was perfect. But it was pretty expensive for just me to rent. I didn’t have enough money for it because I had just started looking for work and didn’t have an income. Still, I had to have the place. I could envision the epic parties I would have and the friends I would entertain there. At the time, that was my barometer for any place I looked at. Was it big enough to entertain friends? It was.

There were three bedrooms, so I immediately got two roommates. I advertised in the local paper, and the first two people who responded were my first two roommates.

I did use that apartment to its fullest for about fifteen years. I had monthly poker parties, and Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter dinners with friends. I even had casino night parties that would kick off the Christmas season. Casino nights were always my friends’ favorite party of the year. I would have blackjack tables, craps, and roulette as well as Pai Gow. Everyone would receive ten thousand dollars of Monopoly money to play with. In the end, there were winners and losers, but everyone walked away with some sort of prize or party favor. I enjoyed doing all the cooking and preparing for these parties. I felt like I was living my poor, urban version of
The Great Gatsby
. I also loved being close to the beach, and would take evening walks to look at the beautiful homes and meet some wonderful people who lived in the neighborhood. I started to make roots and figured that I’d found the place I’d be for the rest of my life. Maybe not in that apartment, but somewhere in Venice Beach.

Rick, my landlord, was a wonderful man. He let me do anything I wanted in my apartment, from painting
to buying new appliances. We didn’t see each other often, but we did have great conversations every now and again for a couple of hours at a time. He would put on a picnic once a year and I would get a chance to visit with him and his friends. He was a school teacher, very funny and just about the most honorable guy you could ever meet. He raised my rent only once in fifteen years, and he didn’t care that I’d had about twenty roommates over that period of time (another story for another time). I paid on time, took care of my place, and made sure he was informed of any problems. He didn’t need to even come down to look at the apartment, because I made sure to take care of everything. I lived in the apartment below, and there was another tenant above me who had been there for a very long time as well. And compared to elsewhere in the neighborhood, our rent was incredibly low. Rick told me that he didn’t care about raising rent; it was more important to him to have good tenants. He also knew that I wasn’t making a lot of money, so he didn’t want to jack up the rates so much that I’d have to move out. He only had three tenants in that duplex in his entire life. I used to joke with him about getting his will done and making sure that I’d get the place when he passed on because I had been there the longest. Well, it was a valiant effort on my part, suffice it to say. He never had a will—or at least not one that could be found.

The last year that Rick was alive we had only a handful of conversations. But each time we spoke he would talk about a nagging ear infection that was, I believe, ultimately part of the cause of his death. It was a shock because he wasn’t much older than I was, and I’d had no idea that his condition could be fatal. He probably hadn’t even known. One of his dearest friends called me to let me know that they had found his body. But they couldn’t find a will of any kind in his home. I didn’t even think about what that might mean for me. I was too shocked and saddened by the sudden death of a good friend. The impact of this tragic news was interrupted by a more immediate issue.

My car blew up.

I was driving to see Laura, on a sunny Saturday afternoon. I had just purchased a new cell phone, had a new job working on
Amazing Race
, and was feeling pretty good about finally making some financial inroads in my life. I was in the fast lane in my imagination, but I was also in the fast lane on the 405 freeway going about 75 miles per hour, listening to some jazz and enjoying the nice weather. Laura lived pretty far away, so I didn’t drive out there often. I only went on weekends because I didn’t want to worry about rushing to get home on a work night.
I was in a pretty great mood, when all of a sudden I heard a big bang.

I thought someone had shot at me, and my first reaction was to duck. Then I pushed on the accelerator, but nothing happened except that smoke was starting to pour out of the hood of my car. It didn’t even occur to me that the car might’ve caught on fire. All I could do was coast and hopefully get off the freeway. But there is a cardinal rule of driving in Southern California. If someone is in distress in the fast lane, don’t let that person over, but pass them as soon as possible so as not to get stuck behind them. It was very difficult to get four lanes over to get to an exit, but I knew the worst thing that could happen was getting stuck in one of the middle lanes. I had this vision of cars swerving around me on both sides, the drivers flipping me the finger.

I got lucky.

I got all the way over, but I didn’t have much speed left. Then I got on the exit, and it was all downhill from there. I breathed a sigh of relief. All I could do was push on the wheel of my car, as if that might help it over the edge. I ended up getting safely off the freeway. A special thanks to St. Michael for that one. Wanting to keep my glass half-full, there were
two positive things I could come up with about my car blowing up. One: It was time for another car, as this one was clearly dying. Two: I might just be able to afford said car.

I called Laura after my car blew up and told her that it looked like I wasn’t going to be coming over. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. In her usual generous spirit, she suggested that I borrow her Ford Explorer while her husband recuperated from his recent brain tumor surgery. He wasn’t supposed to drive for six months or so to make sure he didn’t have any seizures. I don’t know where I’d be without the help of my friends.

Laura’s Explorer had problems.

I had a bit of bad car karma. Thankfully my mechanic bought my clunker of a car for a thousand dollars. It probably wasn’t worth that much, but he wanted to fix it up for himself. That was fine; I just wanted to get rid of it. After all, Laura had offered me the use of the Explorer for a couple of months. Well, every time I would use that car, which was mostly for driving to dealerships to look for a new car, it would not start. I always had to call a tow service to get it started. No one could figure out what the problem was because it seemed as though every time a tow
person would come, they could start the car without a problem. I also had to replace the tires because around that time there was a recall of Firestone tires. The tires were looking a little ragged and starting to peel, so I got that fixed right away. But the car not starting was a problem. Finally, after a few weeks, a mechanic figured out that the issue was a defective lock on the starter. So, with my friend’s permission, I had the thing pulled out of the car. At around that time, her husband was cleared for driving, and I returned the Explorer. I didn’t have a car yet, but I felt like I was close.