Who Stole the Funny? : A Novel of Hollywood (27 page)

Surely they’d be here any minute now to examine Angelina.

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W H O S T O L E T H E F U N N Y ?

“Mr. Baker?” a small voice asked tentatively. “Mr. Director?”

“Yes, sweetheart?”

Angelina looked confused.
Definitely still in shock,
J.T. thought.

“Do you have a question?” he prompted.

“Yes . . . Do I still have to do my homework?”

J.T. was ready for abstract questions from these young co-

workers. But answering an honest, very sensible query was

beyond his current abilities. Before he could come up with any-

thing that would make sense to a child after she had witnessed

her teacher blow his brains out, Angelina’s mother quickly

answered.

“Of course you still have to do your homework. There’ll be an-

other teacher here tomorrow and you’ll want to show that teach-

er just how smart you really are. And Mr. Baker, don’t you have one bit of worry. She’ll show up tomorrow ready for work, lines memorized, and her attitude will be professional. I can’t speak for the other moms and”—she looked around at the other parents—

“stepmoms, but
my
kid will never use the ‘incident’ this morning as an
excuse
. No excuses, right, Angelina?”

“Right, Mommy. No excuses,” Angelina whispered.

“Just go home and love each other . . .” J.T. said, then turned so the children couldn’t see him as he burst into tears.

“What the hell did you do, child?!” Angelina’s mother said

as they rounded the corner and headed to the parking structure.

“And now look! You made the director cry!”

Wednesday . . . and they weren’t even on the clock yet.

“What a pussy! He just broke down and started crying.” Marcus

Pooley was back in his office, leaning over his speakerphone. He spoke into it the same way trained actors use microphones when

they accept an Academy Award: as if they had never used one be-

fore. He was powwow-wowing with Lance from the studio and

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Debbie from the network. It was eight-thirty. Marcus had had

Thing Three, who’d been promoted to be his new assistant, track both of them down.

“Hey, guys, hold on one sec.” Marcus accepted a fresh cup of

hot cocoa from the puppy-like Thing, who was trying to do everything in his power to please. Marcus stepped away from the speakerphone and whispered, “You’re fired. Now. Go. Scoot.”

“But . . . why . . .”

“It doesn’t matter why. But since you asked, I don’t like Swiss Miss hot cocoa. I like Nestlé’s.”

The assistant cocked his head in confusion. “This
is
Nestlé’s.”

“Oh.” Marcus took a sip of his cocoa. “You’re right. You’re fired anyway.”

The space between the assistant’s bottom lip and his chin sudden-ly became concave. “You . . .
bastard
! You’re a pig! A donkey! A—”

“Here—go to the zoo on me.” Marcus threw a twenty-dollar

bill at Thing Three, who stormed out of the room without taking the money.

“He, like, cried?” Debbie asked. Her sultry voice (not an ac-

quired affectation, but the real result of her constant vomit-fests) filled the mid-range equalization of the speaker.

“Can you believe it? The fucking director? Yeah! He cried!”

Marcus giggled.

Thing Three returned, grabbed the twenty off of the floor,

then disappeared again.

“I think that’s cute that he cried,” Debbie said, purring. It was more of a sexual response than a fully developed, compassionate reaction.

“We have to get back to the subject,” Lance said. “How do we

spin this to our advantage?”

“I’m worried that his stupid death will, like, conflict with our death of Minnesota B. Moose and the birth of Kalamazoo P. Kardinal. That’s a very real concern for the network,” Debbie made clear 1 9 4

W H O S T O L E T H E F U N N Y ?

in her adult voice.

“Debbie—a pedophile was our schoolteacher!” Lance reiter-

ated. “He was under investigation for selling kiddie porn over the Net! We’re fucked!”

“I know!” Marcus Pooley jumped in. “We’ll write an episode,

okay? Stay with me here . . . We’ll write an episode that deals with our kids. And how the kids blindly trust a next-door neighbor!

And before anything can happen, one of the Buddies will come to the rescue! Just like we would in real life!” He was jumping up and down as he was concocting the story.

“But . . . none of us have any kids in real life,” Lance coun-

tered.

“So? What the fuck does real life have to do with anything?”

Marcus shot back.

“I, like, like it,” Debbie said.

“The moral of the story will be: Don’t trust anyone!”

“Hey—yeah, what’s to sweat?” Lance said, finally catching on.

“It’s like Marcus said, none of us need to have families to make family television. That’s our
family
.” He put his feet up on his desk.

“You know,” he said, “it’s like George Bernard Shaw once said . . .

um . . .” He sat back up and grabbed the book of quotations he

kept in the top drawer. He frantically flipped to a dog-eared page and gulped before he read, “‘If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.’”

“I love it!” Marcus said. Then, “Wait. Huh? Yeah! Dance! Damn

you, Lance. How do you do that? You’re like a fountain of knowledge!”

“Hey, man, somebody’s gotta know his shit around here.”

“Guys,” Debbie interrupted, “stop, like, patting each other on

the butt and sum this up for me. And what about Kalamazoo P.

Kardinal?”

“Debbie, we’ll feature the new icon in some PR stunt this

week,” Lance smoothly assuaged. “You cool with that?”

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“Like . . . like, okay.”

Marcus wasn’t finished. He was on a roll. “What I’m saying

is: You don’t need to be dead to write about death. No one on my writing staff has any kids and this is a family show with kids. So the way I look at it, we’re doing our viewers a favor. We’re helping them with real-life family problems. We’re helping them solve family questions. Catch my drift? We’re giving them a family on television that they can relate to, so they can say, ‘Maybe we oughta try and be more like them. They love each other. They love their Urban Buddies.’ I think we’re performing a great civic service. That is, unless you wanna go back to my pitch about the eight o’clock Thursday shoo-in blockbuster,
Pervs!
”

Lance had long since forgotten to be cautious about what he

said in his own office, even though he taped the conversations. He said in a rush, “We’re not only right, Debbie, but we are going to be proactive about this! Marcus’ll write an episode about ‘The Pedophile Next Door,’ but in this case, our ‘A’ story will have a happy ending. We’ve gotta move fast on this so we’re all saying the same thing to the media. There are helicopters hovering over the studio right now.”

“There are?” Marcus got up and ran to his window, looking

up. “Cool.”

“Okay. I guess, like, whatever,” Debbie finally agreed.

“Great. Just backdate the title page on the episode so that no

one thinks we’re covering our asses,” Lance told Marcus.

“Will do,” Marcus Pooley said. “It’ll read like I wrote it a month ago.”

“Okay,” Lance said quickly. “I think we’re done. We handled

this well. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” agreed Debbie. “I think I’m gonna lose my sig—”

“Agreed,” agreed Marcus.

“Um, Marcus, I believe Debbie has lost her signal . . . Mar-

cus?”

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W H O S T O L E T H E F U N N Y ?

Marcus was already on his way out of the production office,

feeling swell. Problem solved! Now all he had to do was to make sure that the suicide of the schoolteacher didn’t delay today’s filming. They had the best ever explosion to shoot! He jumped into

his private marcus pooley
only
golf cart and headed back to the stage.

On the stage, J.T. had composed himself and was setting the shot for the best ever explosion with his crew and Mick McCoy. They

went through the steps slowly, a beat at a time, so everyone knew their cues and responsibilities. Mick knew that J.T. had been badly rattled by what he had just witnessed. He hoped that by keeping J.T. busy, he could keep him

sane for the time being. So

they worked.

The Hollywood Dictionary

J.T. called out for the

MR. KITE:
The person who ought

stand-in for Janice to walk

to be listening to the directions

back over to the car to fetch

but who might not be, who

her purse on the front seat.

ought to know what he should

He began the litany of cues

be doing but might forget to do

something as simple as plug

he would call out, speak-

an element into an electrical

ing louder than necessary

socket.

for the benefit of “Mr. Kite.”

Mr. Kite, a television set’s Mr.

Even when J.T. would single

Anybody, represents the variable

someone out by gesturing or

that could cause failure.

looking in their direction, he

would yell loudly enough for

everyone to hear—and be hoarse by the end of the day.

J.T. pointed to Charley, the projectionist, and hollered, “The

projection of the explosion from the public-domain footage

should
begin to roll as soon as Janice’s head is inside the car.” Then he put his hand on Kevin, the assistant camera operator—who

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flinched slightly. Kevin was a Vietnam veteran, and a little jumpy.

“Then we’ll rack focus to Janice so the projected explosion footage is soft in the frame but the fiery detonation looks very powerful in the reflection of the front windshield of the car. Then there will be a cue to shatter the candy glass. It’ll sound something like this: SHATTER THE CANDY GLASS!”

Mick guffawed, but the others just looked confused. J.T. sighed ruefully, and continued to walk the rehearsal. “ . . . And then and
only
then will I cue the E-fans to blow debris onto the set, which will sound something like this: E-FANS! E-FANS! E-FANS!” This

time, Kevin laughed. The big vet thought that was funny.

“And . . .” J.T. was beginning to fade. His voice had less vol-

ume with every direction.

“And . . . a simultaneous cue

The Hollywood Dictionary

will be given to Skip to go hi-

speed/slo-mo and push in on

E-FANS:
Quiet electric fans that

can give the impression of wind,

the Steadicam toward Janice,

can help smoke dissipate for an

to give the feeling of chaos

illusion of depth and diffused

and the concussion of a large

light, and are never, ever quiet—

explosion.”

thus their nickname,
F-fans
.

“I’m there for ya,” Skip

waved, not looking up from

h i s h o w - t o - b u i l d - y o u r-

dream-log-cabin book.

“Finally, if we’re lucky, when the explosion and the debris die down, the camera speed will ramp back down to normal and Janice will brilliantly convey the realization that she is
the luckiest ever
woman,
and it was not her
time,
thus making this—everyone say it with me—
the Best Ever Christmas
!” Mick, Skip, and Kevin joined in. Not exactly everyone, but it was progress.

This is so fucked
, J.T. thought. It didn’t really matter that the crew members, and particularly Mick, seemed impressed. Theory was always an easy sell for enthusiastic creative types like him, but it didn’t 1 9 8

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mean he’d sold himself. J.T. feared that his scheme wouldn’t look as good on film as it did in his mind. No matter. There was nothing left to do except execute this plan with conviction.

J.T. and the crew orchestrated the scene and rehearsed it over

and over for timing, reflections, and basically Murphy’s Law until they were all satisfied that it would not only work, but actually look spectacular. They even felt proud and pleased—sensations

that had become increasingly unfamiliar to them of late.

“Great job. I mean it. Take a break,” J.T. said.
What more could
anyone ask from their crew?
he thought as he looked around at them.
They really pulled this one out of their asses.

Then Marcus Pooley walked onto the stage. He looked at the

jerry-rigged setup and demanded, “What the hell is this?”

“This is your best ever explosion, Mr. Pooley,” J.T. explained

quickly, immediately deflated.

“This looks like amateur time in Dixie! We’re in Hollywood!

Where’s the special effects man? Where are the stunt guys? What’s with this set?!” Marcus was working himself into another tantrum.

He actually began to stomp his feet.

J.T., already emotionally spent, made the mistake of sighing.

“Look, if you’ll let me explain—and we’ll run this step by step for you, and you can look through the lens of the camera—you’ll understand what we’re trying to accomplish.”

“So you feel like you have to run it
step by step
for me? Because what—I’m stupid?”

“I didn’t mean it
that
way—it’s just easier to explain what’s going on visually, that’s all,” J.T. said.
Breathe, breathe.
“I’m just trying to help you.”

“Help me.” Marcus began to limp around the set. “Oh, Tiny

Timmy Marcus needs help. Will you help me please?” he held out

his hands as if he were begging for alms.

J.T. tried one more time. “Marcus, my intention is only to be

of service.”