Turn of the Century (81 page)

“There was nothing about Clinton,” George says.

“Vernon Jordan,” Vlig explains. His bass croak is startling.

“Manson?” Saddler says.

“Right, the Manson problem,” Welles says. She turns to George. “A majority of people in the Friday night and Saturday morning focus groups thought the Manson story was fictional. Of course, you were warned about that issue in your pre-air BetaWeek testing. Then as the news, and then the confusion over the news, spread during the day Saturday, our groups became angry when they viewed the shows. They blamed your
Real Time
story for
causing
the Manson parole decision.”

Saddler, his lips pursed, is still nodding.

“The highest scores, and they were uniformly low highs, were on the alternative medicine story”—Vlig and Saddler exchange a quick
glance—“and two of your short features, ‘Who Got Rich This Week?’ and ‘America’s Favorite.’ ”

Welles looks back down and flips to a page near the end of her report. “We even tested your completed non-run stories, your bank, and …” She shakes her head. “Test subjects were disappointed by the Farley Lyman story—they assumed that an exposé about a British ‘sir’ would involve Princess Diana. Plus the attack on children’s television was a big turnoff.”

“It is not an ‘attack on children’s television,’ ” George says.

Welles closes the report. Vlig continues to stare at George, as does the lawyer.

“The research firm,” Saddler says, “hasn’t had scores to match these since 1973, they told us, for some
Gilligan’s Island
remake that didn’t even have Gilligan
or
the Skipper!”

“Li’l Gilligan,”
Welles says.

Deep in the bottomless dark, he kicks his feet and waves his arms wildly, which would probably be hilarious if it were a cartoon
.

“Every single demo,” says Saddler, shaking his head again but sounding almost boastful, “…  ix-nay.”

“Not quite,” Welles corrects. “You didn’t do badly in A- and B-county college-grad eighteen—to—thirty-fours. But that’s a tiny slice of a slice.”

“And we’re not MTV,” says Vlig. Vlig leans forward. “George, I want to ask you something. Why did you charge ahead and violate the celebrity-image and paparazzi laws? Didn’t the lawyer warn you specifically about that?”

“She did. But she said it was our call with the satellite imagery. And Timothy gave me a go-ahead.” Welles looks a little disgusted. “Who complained? Gates? Kevin Costner?”

“Bohemian Grove isn’t the problem, George,” Saddler says, glancing at Stan Snyder.

“Not the
legal
problem,” Vlig says, taking his eyes off George for the first time in the last five minutes.

“It’s that darned Manson,” Saddler says. “His lawyers say we violated his right to control his image. He
is
a celebrity.”

It is a cartoon. But not Bugs Bunny or Wile E. Coyote; one of the new cartoons, surreal and scary as well as funny
.

“That’s crazy,” George says, “it’s
news
.”

“You’re entertainment,” Snyder the lawyer says. “And California has a statute against commercial appropriation of a celebrity name and/or image. There are no exemptions for celebrity felons. And speaking of what Mr. Featherstone did or did not authorize you to do, we have his contemporaneous notes dated May thirty in which he describes requesting that you delay the broadcast of the alternative medicine story. Are you challenging the accuracy of those notes?”

“Timothy said he would rather we held off. But so? So what?”

“According to the Content Arbitration provision in your contract,” Snyder explains, “when Mose Media Holdings requests a ‘cooling-off’ period on a story—as you stipulated just now that Timothy Featherstone in fact did—you are obliged to submit the story in question, unless it has a ‘deadline news urgency,’ to the ombudsman’s office. As you know.” George agreed to the provision, but never thought much about it, because of the “deadline news” loophole and because he assumed if Content Arbitration ever came up, the ombudsman, Dan Flood, would be on his side. It never came up. “Was there any deadline urgency to your story on the National Institutes of Health and its Offices of Alternative Medicine and Dietary Supplements?”

George folds his arms, breathes deeply, and does not answer. He feels himself reddening.

“Speaking of medicine, George, and as long as we’re clearing the air
totally
,” Saddler says, “no one here was exactly thrilled when you refused to give MBC News the exclusive on your late father-in-law’s liver transplant.”

“He didn’t have a transplant,” George says. “It was fake. It was a placebo procedure.”

Laura Welles looks shocked. At George. “I’m shooting our major MOW for November sweeps as we speak, and you’re telling me that the animal theme is out, the scenes on the pig farm with the rabbis are garbage?” She shakes her head, openmouthed. “When were you planning to tell us about this?”

Snyder makes a note.

“Calm!” Saddler says. “Calmness. And let’s stay on point.”

“George, I don’t know if this helps in your spinning of all this later,” Vlig says, waving a hand, “but we aren’t canceling
Real Time
in a vacuum.
We’re reevaluating the network’s non-comedy nonfiction programming commitments across the board. Including News. Frankly? I’m not entirely comfortable with this company
getting
too much press, and I’m even less comfortable
being
the press. And audience and costs aside, on both counts, your program would just keep …” He waves again.

“Festering,”
Saddler says. “Your MPI, George …” He shakes his head.

Vlig nods. “We just have to lance the boil. Sooner rather than later. Before it gets bigger. Before it becomes infected.”

Still in midair, still sick and disoriented, but the wild pitching and yawing has stopped. He can make out shapes and shadow. How quickly one adjusts to terrifying new physics
.

“Canceling?” George says. “As a matter of fact, I’m afraid you cannot cancel. We have a contract. The contract obliges you to buy at least two shows a week from me for thirty-nine weeks, or through next April, whichever comes first.” He looks at Snyder. “As you know.”

Vlig puts an index finger to his lips and leans back.

Snyder speaks. “Section nine, subsection
B
, Roman numeral four, paragraph
a
,” he says from memory, looking straight at George. “ ‘The Company shall be released from all such obligations to the Producer, however, at any time that the Production Budget of the Show, under the definitions in section six, subsection
D
, above, shall exceed by more than ten percent the Production Budget authorized by the Company, for more than half of the Shows broadcast in the current season.’ You were nineteen percent over budget in preproduction.”

“Which was authorized,” George says.

“And you were twelve percent over your
revised
budget for last week’s three shows. Three out of three for this season is, by any definition, ‘more than half.’ ”

Saddler is nodding again, slowly and sadly.

George vaguely recalls the provision. The lawyering and negotiating part of the business was Emily’s, not his. And he can’t believe they’re trying to fuck him on the basis of a one-week budget overrun. (“Whenever you say ‘I
can’t believe
nightmare X or violation Y’ about this business,” Emily has told him more than once, “I feel like shaking you, George.”)

“Well,” he says. “I guess I should go talk to my lawyer.”

“Lawyer, lawyer, lawyer,” Saddler says. “Don’t go there. Do not go there, my friend. You are part of our MMH family—we’re—we’ll be in business forever, you and us, with our
NARCS
bonds! And Elizabeth is our family. Why, just the other day on this very floor, someone said, ‘You know, George Mactier’s only problem is that he has
too
high a signal-to-noise ratio.’ Which is a compliment! We need you at the MBC, George. You are the future.”

George stares at Saddler, unable to speak.

“As Arnold alluded, we may downsize News significantly, but that doesn’t mean every News
program
will go poof. I know Laura agrees that
Finale
is a definite keeper. And we’re depending on you to produce
Finale
for us, Mr. Show-Runner. Wait! Wait! We also want you to launch
The Supreme Court
for us this fall. You attended law school, didn’t you?”

“Architecture school,” he says, forced into a humiliating moment of civility by the demands of accuracy, “for a month.”

George only knows about
The Supreme Court
because of a dispute between MBC and the federal judiciary over the name of the show. The government has apparently failed to prevent Mose Media Holdings from registering The Supreme Court® as a trademark for entertainment programming and products in all media, including toys.
The Supreme Court
will be the first network fake-trial show in which celebrity lawyers will try celebrities’ “cases.” Sometimes the celebrity plaintiffs and defendants will appear in person (Wayne Newton has agreed to retry his overturned libel case), and sometimes (Mrs. Phil Hartman, President Clinton) the celebrities will be tried in absentia. There is already a 9,700-person waiting list for jurors. Robert Bork has agreed to play the judge.

“Do we have an understanding, Mr. Mactier?” Snyder says, pushing a document across the table. Scanning the first page, George sees they want him to forfeit all
Real Time
claims in return for a one-year contract as producer of two embarrassing infotainment pieces of shit. On the second page, he sees they want him also specifically to disclaim any right to sue under the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Is this a solid surface? Is he upright? Has he landed? He is alive
.

George says, “No, we don’t have an understanding. What we have is
a deal to produce thirty-eight more weeks of
Real Time
. If you don’t want to air those shows, I guess you won’t. But I expect to be paid for them.”

Saddler stands and shakes his head more energetically. He touches Welles’s shoulder, who jumps out of her chair. Both of them leave the room.

“Mr. Mactier,” Snyder says, “in addition to your other contractual breaches that I’ve outlined, there is in your contract a standard ‘termination for cause’ clause. Conviction of a crime, moral turpitude, gross violation of MBC policy, et cetera.” He pulls out a document, points it in George’s direction and recites it. “Intermittently from January seventeenth to June third of this year, a Ms. Sandra Cushman Bemis, variously doing business as Wow-Wow Partners, Heavy Petting Seminars, and Sniff! Incorporated, occupied a suite at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. That suite, as well as a rented Mazda Miata, were charged to the travel and entertainment budget of
NARCS
, a program in which Mose Media Holdings owns fifty percent and of which you were then executive producer.”

“Sandi Bemis is Timothy Featherstone’s girlfriend! She was. I didn’t know she’d kept on staying in that room on our dime.” He pulls over the photocopied hotel bills. “Timothy asked me to put that first January weekend on our T-and-E, it was NATPE, but—this is his problem. This is the network’s problem. I had no idea.”

“You signed the original credit authorization, Mr. Mactier, not Mr. Featherstone. We have an affidavit from your former assistant stating that you instructed her to persuade Angela Janeway to accept a Wow-Wow animal therapy class worth eleven hundred dollars. And we have a copy of your e-mail to Barry Stengel strongly suggesting that he, quote, ‘somehow plug Sandi Bemis’s pet-therapy bullshit,’ unquote, on one or more MBC News programs. I assume you’re aware of the MBC’s regulations governing so-called plugola? And I assume you would agree with me that promoting a commercial venture on the news in exchange for an eleven-hundred-dollar gift, even if that eleven hundred dollars is ‘laundered’ through two separate network divisions, would violate the spirit and possibly the letter of those regulations? Not to mention the
appearance
issues.”

“What?” George says.

“Your appearance of impropriety. You improperly paid twenty-seven
thousand dollars for a Las Vegas hotel suite for a woman whose … services you improperly sought to promote on MBC News.”

Plummeting once more, terrified all over again, trapdoors within trapdoors, vicious new g-forces at each depth
.

“She was Featherstone’s girlfriend! This is such bullshit, do you know that? I find it very hard to believe that Harold Mose is aware of what you’re trying to pull here.”

Snyder picks up a remote control.

“In fact, George,” Vlig says, “you’re right; Harold is not aware of most of these details. He accepted Laura’s decision to cancel
Real Time
, of course. But these other matters are between us. As I expect you’ll wish them to remain.”

Snyder punches a button. To George’s left, a monitor in the wall flashes on with the vertical rainbow and electronic monotone whistle—bars and tone, the five or fifteen seconds at the top of every tape in television. Beneath the bars it says
e!
²
mar
6 2000. The picture appears, mid-pan, with ambient crowd chatter. It’s a party scene, handheld but professionally shot. Find a pair of young blond women in ball gowns limbo-ing, cut to Bucky Lopez shaking hands with a busboy. It’s Ben Gould’s BarbieWorld after-party in Las Vegas. Cut to William Shatner standing with the magician Penn Jillette. Cut to a close-up of a giggling young woman with brown pigtails leaning forward on a white leather couch, pull back to reveal a disheveled, middle-aged man grinning stupidly as the pigtailed giggler inserts his whole arm down into her low-cut top, between her breasts.

Snyder pushes the freeze-frame button. “In April,” he says, “while you were still technically executive producer of
NARCS
, Shawna Switzer worked for three days as an extra on the show.”

George has his mouth clenched tight. He’s shaking his head.

“Frankly?” Vlig says. “It’s not any single one of these unfortunate incidents that disturbs us. It’s the overall
pattern
.”