Princess Daisy (35 page)

Now, in the fall of 1975, six months after the hairspray commercial had been shot, an important meeting was being held in the conference room. Before the average commercial job, North usually met only with Daisy and Arnie Greene, but today he had insisted that all of his key employees be present for the first planning session of the Coca-Cola Christmas commercial.

By now Daisy knew the people gathered around the table so well that they felt almost like extensions of herself. There was Hubie Troy, the free-lance scenic designer with whom North worked so often that he might just as well have been on staff; Daisy’s two young male production assistants, both recent Princeton graduates who would learn, or try to learn the business, and then go on to something which paid better; Alix Updike, her assistant for wardrobe and casting, a tall, quietly dressed and reserved girl, who used to be the lingerie editor at
Glamour;
and Wingo Sparks, the twenty-nine-year-old, full-time cameraman, in his Ivy League, impressed duck trousers and splotched tennis sweater which was unraveling in six places. Daisy was sure he’d plucked out the threads himself.

Wingo was a Harvard graduate, the son of one top cameraman and the nephew of another. Had it not been for these family connections he wouldn’t have been able to enter the cameraman’s union, as tightly controlled as any medieval guild. He’d served as an assistant cameraman to his uncle for the necessary five years before getting his own union card. North infinitely preferred working with young men because they were receptive to even the wildest of his innovative ideas, and although, as the owner of his own business, he was entitled to operate a camera himself, without a union card, he disliked being responsible for all technical considerations in the heat of filming, while he had to concentrate on the actors and an overview of the entire set.

Daisy’s eyes rested with affection on Arnie Greene, the business manager, who still found it hard to believe that after working most of his life for EUE with its four hundred employees he was now part of a “boutique” operation like North’s. However, many of the top directors in the business preferred to work in small, compact shops, and although Daisy knew that Arnie hated the term
“boutique,” a word that was totally inappropriate for what was a mini-movie studio, it was used by the entire industry.

Finally, Daisy considered the flamboyantly elegant figure of Nick-the-Greek, North’s full time “rep” who worked on commission getting new business. Nick was, to Daisy’s knowledge, the only rep in the city who had found his way into the advertising business via a spitball. In the mid-1960s, when the big advertising agencies were each fielding a baseball team, and competing ferociously against each other, a copy writer at Doyle, Dane Bernbach had heard of a Puerto Rican high-school kid from the Barrio who was the best pitcher north of 125th Street He’d given him a token job at the agency after school just to secure him for the team. But Manuel took one shrewd look at the agency business and liked it a lot better than any possible future in Spanish Harlem. The tall, flashingly handsome teenager baptized himself Nick-the-Greek and here he was now, earning over one hundred thousand dollars a year, wearing seven-hundred-dollar suits and drifting over to “21” for lunch every day, catching top jobs as easily as a lizard catches flies on his tongue. He could handle clients as carefully as any mahout ever handled a royal elephant during a lion hunt in India.

Now, just as North was about to call them all to order, Nick took the floor.

“
Compañeros
all—I have here the results of a new Gallup poll,” he said, taking out a clipping from the
New York Times
and brandishing it at them.

“Can it, Nick,” Arnie begged, knowing that when Nick-the-Greek got started, time got wasted.

“Wait! You don’t understand. This concerns all of us, Arnie. Those of you who suffer from Jewish Guilt or Italian Shame or Wasp Resignation—come to order,
por favor
, and pay close attention. This poll concerns honesty and ethics in various professions as perceived by a cross section of the American people.”

“That has
nothing
to do with Coke, Nick,” said North, impatiently. “So why don’t you just go away and hustle? Haven’t you got some hungry, rich, potentially profitable client to take to lunch?
Vámonos
—we’ve got work to do.”

“Not until I give you good tidings” said Nick, who, like all reps, made it a point of honor to be far more grandiose than the working stiffs for whom they labored. The reps of
New York, a mafia of superslick, ultra-fashionable salesmen, consider themselves to be to the actual commercial makers as Russian wolfhounds are to a pack of mongrels.

“Here it is—clergymen, you’ll be thrilled to hear, rate highest in the poll. Doctors and engineers come next. Out of twenty professions,
twenty
, the
next to last
rating is given to something called ‘advertising practitioners.’ That means us,
compañeros
, boys and girls included. Forty-three percent of the whole, fucking American public gave us a very low, repeat,
very low
rating for, and I quote, ‘honesty and ethical standards.’ The only people they rate lower than us are
car salesmen!
We even rate lower than state officeholders! Don’t any of you guys feel we should protest? March on Washington, take out ads to say how clean, upstanding, patriotic and plain, down-home good we are? I don’t think we should sit here and let them dump on us. Have you people no pride? Nor moral indignation? Don’t you give at least a little, tiny shit? This can’t be allowed to go unchallenged.” His faultless teeth gleamed in his swarthy face, as he stood there, mockingly listening to the burst of hooting, catcalls and derisive whistles that filled the room.

“Nick, for a man who suffers from Greek Fire, when he’s never been to Athens, you’ll have to muster the indignation for all the rest of us. Out! The headwaiters of the world are waiting eagerly for you,” North said firmly.

As the rep left, Arnie Greene said aggrievedly, “If doctors rate so high, how come there are so many malpractice suits?”

“Nobody pays attention to Gallup polls anyway.” For a second North’s wily grin appeared. “Forget it Arnie. Now that Mr. Wonderful has boogied off, let’s talk advertising for a change. And I’m warning you, anyone who isn’t taking notes will regret it. This is a ninety-second commercial, and the story board makes a Max Rhinehardt production look like batshit. Not only that, Luke Hammerstein is going for humor, and they’re not even going to show the product—which makes the whole thing different from what anyone else is doing.”

“Not show the product?” Arnie Greene asked, in such astonishment that he squeaked.

“Nope—not show it and not
mention
it for one whole incredible
minute and a half!
Then, at the very end, well
hear Helen Hayes saying, ‘No matter how your family spent the night before Christmas, Coca-Cola wishes you wonderful holidays all year round.’ ”

“Did you say humor?” Daisy asked.

“Yup—Luke calls this the ‘Flip Side of Christmas,’ and he is seriously nervous about his idea. Luke talked Coke out of going with a big montage of Christmas dinners all over America, very mixed ethnic, your standard MidAmerican big-yawn time, but Luke managed to sell them this—haven’t I always said he was the best creative director in the world?”

“Yeah—but the two of you don’t usually work together. You fight all the time,” Daisy murmured, still dubious.

“True.” North gave her a disapproving look for her interruption. “Luke
is
my close friend, but he has the conviction, unfortunately shared by most agency people, that the
concept
is what sells the product and that the concept begins and ends with the agency. As far as they’re concerned, all a director does is bring the concept to life. I say it’s both the concept
and
the way I make it make it work—my taste level, if you’ll excuse the expression. That’s why we fight. I want my share of the credit, Luke wants his share, and unfortunately together they add up to a hell of a lot more than a hundred percent. However, this commercial is a clear-cut case. He needs my help. And he knows it! With the story board they’ve got here it’s either going to be a mild giggle or a fucking classic.” The sharp planes and angles of North’s face, his nose which ended so abruptly, even his freckles, all seemed to quiver with eagerness. North could hear the roar of the crowd under the circus tent, he was getting ready for the moment when he’d go into the cage and show the monsters who was boss. Daisy had seen him like this before, many times, but rarely had she seen him so excited by a challenge.

“May one ask what the ‘Flip Side of Christmas’ is?” asked Wingo, in his usual cheeky drawl.

“It’s the shit that really goes down—thirty seconds backstage at a grade-school Nativity play, thirty seconds of a family of eight trying to get into a car meant for five small people, loaded with bulky presents, skis, what-have-you, all on their way to Christmas dinner at grandmother’s, and last, thirty seconds of the sheer, hideous trauma of decorating the goddamned tree and everything that can go wrong—beginning to get the picture? And soft, soft sell—
Coke doesn’t want to be hustling during the CBS Christmas special, so that, Arnie, is why we don’t show the product.”

“Is any of this location?” asked Hubie, who was already sketching rapidly on the pad he always carried.

“No, thank God, we’re doing it all in the studio. Hubie, you’ve got not one, not two, but three—count them—
three-walled
sets to build. Nobody’s seen three-walled sets used in a year, so get lost, you know what you have to do—here’s a Xerox of the story board. I want everything middle-class but nice, and authentic, so fucking authentic you can smell the Christmas tree, smell the kids backstage, even smell that car with too many people in it.”

As Hubie left, North fixed what was left of his audience with a stern eye and continued. “Daisy, you and Alix pay attention. Casting is of major, major importance in this—you know what the Coke commercials usually look like—everybody totally all-American, too many teeth, so much blond hair you could repopulate half of Scandinavia with the models—I don’t want that. This is going to be different—we’re not selling Coke to make you popular or happy, we’re selling all that funny-awful crap that happens at Christmas, and telling everybody that maybe they should just laugh at it So don’t cast all-American Prom Queen. Most people get depressed enough at Christmas just seeing too much gorgeousness. For the kids’ Nativity-play scene, I don’t want little Jamie from Ivory soap or little Rusty from Crest toothpaste, I want real kids, nearsighted, fat, pimply, snot-nosed—cast sideways, not straight ahead, cast
bent
, as bent as you can get. Don’t give me those looks. You think I don’t know how much harder it’s going to make the job? Shit, ladies, if a kid can’t sit still, concentrate and follow directions, it’s home-movie time. That’s a chance I’m willing to take because this has to look like a real Christmas play in a real place—not TV-commercial heaven.”

“North,” Daisy asked suspiciously, “is this
all
in the story board—you’re sure the client wants bent kids? Coke
always
goes for more-beautiful-than-life people.”

“Daisy, just do me one small favor? Stop trying to second-guess me,” he snapped, thoroughly annoyed. “This story board calls for a dozen kids, good mix, three black, five white, all colors of hair, two Oriental and two Chicano. On the other thirty-second scenes you need nine people for the tree-trimming episode and eight for the family in
the car, plus a dog, a really big, awful-looking one—a crummy, slobbery, hairy dog … not a cute one … also a baby, nine months old. Get me the quietest babies in the world—remember we can’t keep them under lights for long, so we may need a dozen in reserve. Check it out. But bring me just one familiar face and I’ll tear your heads off! This is going to be the Dickens
Christmas Carol
of Christmas commercials.”

Arnie Greene rolled his eyes to heaven. He knew what could happen when North got really excited about a job. No matter how he insisted that he was in advertising, not show business, they might go over budget to get just exactly what he wanted and he wouldn’t be satisfied with a millimeter less. He didn’t know what the words “good enough” meant. Well, he owned the business and this year they’d net enough so he was entitled to play a little.

“Wingo,” North turned to the young cameraman. “There’re three Hollywood studios in town now shooting movies. You may have trouble getting the crew we want, so get off your ass and start phoning. Tell ’em it’s four days work, starting ten days from today.”

“Four days—since when can’t we do ninety seconds in three?” Wingo objected.

“With kids and dogs and babies? We’ll run over—it’s inevitable. And if you say three days they might have other jobs on the fourth—how’d you like to lose your crew before you finish?”

“The thought,” said Wingo, “is not attractive.”

“So why are you still here?”

“Excellent question,” he said cheerfully, rising from his seat. “It all sounds easier than it’s going to be, North, but at least Luke didn’t ask us for the ‘Robert Altman look’—not, of course, that you couldn’t give it to him.”

Before Wingo reached the door, North caught him with a last goad. “Wingo, young man, I hear from my secretaries that that lady of yours named Maureen has been calling you every ten minutes. Why don’t you just throw it into her and get her off our back?”

“Sorry, but no time for social chatter this morning, boss,” said Wingo, closing the door quietly behind him.

“That boy will go far,” North said in satisfaction. “I like his fucking nerve.”

Sure you do, Daisy thought balefully, in a man. But let a woman try it and you wouldn’t merely threaten to tear her head off, you’d cut her heart out and eat it for breakfast.

“Daisy,” North said, “tomorrow, we go to the agency for a meeting with Luke and his people. Do you think you could try to look like a lady, or at least a female?” He shot an unmistakable glance of disapproval at Daisy’s habitual working costume.