Still Talking (29 page)

While Edgar was arguing with Fox about production facilities, we were also pushing to find a producer. According to our contract, we had the right to approve all staff. Fox began offering us people to interview, and I was open to all possibilities, but there was nobody we were wild about, no one arriving in a silver Rolls-Royce with a laurel wreath on his brow. Most of them were big names from the past, but now so worn-out and rumpled you wanted to iron them.

One man we liked was on drugs. Another turned us down. Another wanted creative control. One had a ponytail, and we laughed, “Wait till Barry sees him.” And Barry did hate him. I saw at least eighteen people, and we could not find a producer everybody liked, one I could work with who had fresh ideas. And maybe both sides wanted a person who could be “theirs,” somebody they could control.

In mid-May Bruce McKay was hired as the producer. He was Billy Sammeth’s suggestion and the man Barry disliked the least. Considered our man, he was forever tainted. Bruce hired Courtney Conte as an assistant, and with Edgar they assembled a list of necessary staff based on The Tonight Show. When Edgar and Bruce picked candidates for these jobs, Fox vetoed them and tried to put in its own people who cost less.

With nothing settled, Edgar and I left for a week in Europe on business.

While we were still on the Concorde,

Barry Diller was in Bruce’s office asking, “Can’t you produce this show without all these people, without all this space?” And Bruce was saying, “Well, I guess I could do it with less.” Bruce was a fine producer caught between two bosses who were fighting and wanted him to stand up to the other guy, both sides telling him, “You’re too weak.” Bruce wanted to be liked by everybody. His lips had a hard time forming “no. “

When we returned, we were presented with a staff list good for a small daytime show like Hour Magazine, not for what Fox wanted, not for a slick, professional sixty minutes that looked like a long-established network show.

Wielding the power of the purse, Fox made us get permission for each move we made, while never giving us the breakdown of the budget. Courtney Conte, who wrote the checks, was forbidden to discuss the budget with anybody. I never felt I was dealing with just straight, cool businessmen; there was always a mysterious agenda. The struggle for control continued.

We chose Mark Hudson as the orchestra leader. He was the right age and had the right contemporary look. Fox said, “He wants too much money. ” We asked, “Well, who can you suggest? “-and a lot of names came back that made no sense. When we wanted a certain-sized orchestra to give us the same sound as Carson, Fox said, “Too many musicians.” The head booker we chose was “too “Pensive.” The inexperienced Fox executives wanted to give the writers the title of segment producers so the pay would be less. We had to explain that the Writers Guild would notice if members were getting eight hundred dollars a week instead of two thousand.

When we did settle on a staff, Fox could not seem to close the deals-dragging everything out during weeks and weeks of haggling and reneging on promises. We suspected Fox was stalling because the later people started work, the less time they had to be paid. Part of me thought all the fighting came from growing pains, but the insecure me was frightened. I had said good-bye to Carson and ripped up my passport and now they were haggling about

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the staff I had to have. I was no longer certain I could land that boat.

Kevin Wendle once told me in a meeting not to get so upset. “If you want somebody cool and rational,” I told him, “don’t go to a performer, because we are crazy.” That is what makes the work wonderful when it is wonderful.

And if you ruin our creative climates, you destroy us.

I think Barry never had a clue about Edgar, and never understood the dynamics between Edgar and me. Fox did not understand that such loyalty to the team, the one entity I trusted, was the only kind of security I had. Our life had always been us against the world, and if you were not for us, you were against us. Every challenge was personalthe same as it was for Barry Diller. We were the Corsican brothers. One got stabbed, and a hundred miles away the other screamed, “Ouch!”

Disregarding Barry’s instructions that Edgar have nothing to do with the show, Bruce and Courtney continued to consult him. Edgar was the executive producer, and they respected his expertise. In fact, Edgar was coming home happy every night. He was setting up our show and doing it well.

In mid-August I was performing for a week at Lake Tahoe without Edgar, who now worried about his heart at that high altitude. The phone rang at my suite at Caesars, and it was Barry Diller. He was calling me, it seemed, to make me his doyenne of taste-but it was Eve and the snake. Would I please go over and look at a house he planned to buy? He wanted my opinion. And, oh, by the way, would I mind asking Edgar to stay away from the show? He was destroying it by causing major problems. The staff was demoralized.

“You’re the only one who can keep Edgar away,” Barry said. “You’ve got to do it.”

On the phone the CEO of Twentieth CenturyFox went on for two hours about his philosophy for the show and how Edgar was being destructive and making everybody unhappy and causing major problems. I kept saying, “I

don’t understand. I’ve got to have examples. What major problems? “

Barry never did give me examples. He would say, “You’ve got to keep Edgar away,” and I would ask, “From where? There are no offices.” I think the “staff” was Kevin Wendle, who was saying, “The son of a bitch is butting in, saying he has to have this and where is suchand-such. “

I tried to make Barry understand the effect of keeping Edgar away, the stress on me if I went home each night to Edgar’s frustration and hurt and anger. I tried to make him understand what Edgar wanted-which was what we all want-to be listened to and be included: “Edgar, I’ve got to save money.

Here’s the budget. What do you suggest?” Diller could have controlled us so easily by giving Edgar a little respect and me some affection.

Barry wanted me to realize that his men had been picked by him for their enthusiasm-“I wanted people who don’t know the word `no.’ ” But what he was really asking us to do was to trust an inexperienced staff. This was impossible. There was simply too much at stake.

I never told Edgar about the phone call.

Nobody there except Edgar had created a show from scratch. Having assembled That Show from scratch in New York, he knew hundreds of tiny cogs taken for granted on The Tonight Show. He was wonderful at all the horrible, boring things that make a show work. Sure, he irritated a lot of people. When Fox tried it later without Edgar, there was nothing but disasters. Do you think Aaron Spelling is Mr. Nice Guy all day long? Is Barry Diller a sweetie pie?

Edgar was our man with the whip. Bruce McKay, who is the nicest guy in the world, was not going to be the house bastard. The role of the producer, says top manager Bernie Brillstein, “is to keep everybody happy.”

Edgar was the one waking up in the night to write himself a note about release forms for the guests to sign-and what about a mirror backstage so guests can make a lastminute check-and be sure Joan has a long cord for a mike-we’ve got to lock in a deal with an airline to fly out guests. We would be at a movie, and Edgar would sud-

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denly say in the darkness, “Nobody’s working on the hotel rooms. “

Those are not the fun things. You want to say, “Let’s paint the set pink,”

not carry on days of negotiations with an airline. Even if Edgar was not the one to do it, he was the one saying, “Did you make the calls? Goddamm it, you were supposed to have it done two weeks ago.” Nobody likes that person. But no matter how petty the detail, he was right.

The minute lawyers become involved in a quarrel, the mess is amplified and accelerated, becomes serious warfare, becomes “We’ve got to build a case, so put it in writing; we’ve got to watch our backs, and check with me before you talk with them.” Throughout the months of forming the show, Edgar won virtually every battle. The Fox people still had to listen to me, and they had to pay attention to our lawyer and the terms of the contract.

From July forward, Edgar and I spoke daily to our lawyer, Peter Dekom, and in the fall two litigation lawyers were added to our forces. During the Fox episode, we spent over $300,000 on lawyers.

In mid-July Peter Dekom began sending lawyer letters. In one of them, Dekom wrote a polite warning to Barry Diller that at some point he would have to trust my judgment on the creative side of the show and support me with the staff I felt I needed. The point never came, and eventually Edgar, much too soon, pulled the gun again. Dekom wrote, “Joan being prepared to start the show in October is, of course, predicated upon having all the requisite elements in place to her satisfaction sufficiently in advance … to permit proper production values.”

In late July Barry came to the house for a meeting. He was not charming. It was the first time I saw the side of him that turned a deaf ear. He said he resented the combative, adversarial letters he was receiving from Peter.

Edgar insisted they were not adversarial and got samples. Barry brushed them aside and angrily lectured us about causing dissension and trouble. He gave a little speech about exercising leadership-you give your staff indepen-

dence. But he didn’t seem to realize the only independent person at Fox was Barry Diller.

Looking back, I think we all should have taken a week off. In show business fights always seem to become overemotional-“The color of the cloth must be blue, not red. Don’t you understand?” in the arts nobody has anecvr re the decisions are based on emotional reactions. It’s not the Wharton School of Business, where you can say, “The set should be purple because sixty percent of the viewers say purple is the most exciting.” We all were caught up in a foolish game that was petty, not playful, an ego version of Alice in Wonderland. Everybody lost perspective, became disoriented.

There was a stupid struggle over the rights to the theme music, for example; written by me and Mark Hudson. We were told that Carson and Paul Anka shared royalties for The Tonight Show theme 50-50 and NBC got nothing.

Edgar wanted the same split and assumed that big money was involved (in fact, it was only about a thousand a month). Kevin Wendle said okay. Then Fox said, “No way. We get it all.” Edgar decided that we would set a legal precedent if we did not enforce an absolute duplicate of all Carson arrangements. So he called in our lawyer and made this a major cause.

Finally Kevin Wendle flew to Las Vegas, where I was performing, and sat in a chair in my suite and pleaded for the rights. “This means my job,” he said, and burst into tears. I knew this slim blond kid was scared to death.

Suddenly I felt sorry for him. “Let him have the rights,” I told Edgar.

“It’s his job.”

Kevin wiped his eyes with the back of his hands and asked to go into the bedroom to compose himself. After a few minutes I went in to ask if he was okay-only to find him laughing on the phone, saying, “I got it. I got it from her.” That finished Kevin Wendle and me.

On our side, I allowed Edgar to press those buttons that stirred me up-not hard to do when my career was on the line every day. “Those sons of bitches don’t want to pay for a fifth camera,” he would tell me, and I would go to war, upset, hysterical, and screaming, “We need a fifth

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camera!” When Edgar did not like something as insignificant as the food the caterer was serving, I made the protest-and was not even eating at night.

Alone, I could have been friends even with Kevin Wendle and done him a needlepoint pillow. I have wooed the devil before. Pride the Queen of England can have., not me. When I suggested letting things pass, Edgar argued me down. He did not understand “Okay, we know we’re right, but shhhh, now let’s make this work. ” Nobody was advising, “Edgar, let it pass. Sit down with the devil and schmooze, tell him, `This is what we need. Let’s figure it out together.’ “

Most projects in the television business boil down to a succession of minutiae, the daily decisions, few of them crucial but passionately felt out of ambition, ego, pride, fear, or simply caring a lot. During September there were major fights about the number of telephones, about secretaries who could not take shorthand, about catered dinners for the staff. There was a fight about Edgar having a secretary and a big office with the right furniture. Before the heart attack, those symbols would not have mattered.

Now, the more Fox refused to acknowledge Edgar’s demands, the more important they became. When the champ is no longer the champ, every insult becomes a major insult.

Tom Pileggi watched us from afar and felt compelled to write us a letter: As much as it hurts, you must be diplomatic and never, never let the other side know how you really feel. The other side may end up being your closest friend. Unfortunately, the whole world is run by the mouth but should be run by the brain. Think before you say something you will be sorry for later.

But Edgar did not listen. Feeling embattled everywhere, he fought back obsessively to get every detail of our production identical to the Carson show. And I was doing everything I could to build staff morale, create Camp Joan Rivers, to keep Edgar calm, to keep him from having another heart attack.

I could have stopped all the fighting, could have said, “Edgar, you’re out of here. Barry, do what you want.”

But there is no way I could have banished my husband to being at home alone.

I did not realize how seriously we were all crippling the future. There are always birth pains in setting up a new show. I thought that once we were on the air, the trouble would vanish. As it turned out, I was surrounded by men who could never let anything rest.

In September came a development that I now think doomed the show. If there was ever hope that Fox and Edgar and I could make an accommodation, it ended when Kevin Wendle hired Ron Vandor, a local NBC newsman he had earlier backed for producer.