Who Stole the Funny? : A Novel of Hollywood (34 page)

Her name is Thor.”

“No.”

“Yeah. Remember? She’s William’s second, stepping up while

your pal competes in his triathalon.”

“No.”

“Oh yeah.”

They both looked at Thor.

“Father wanted a boy, huh?” J.T. deadpanned. The
cruel
was spreading to J.T.

“Shut up.”

2 4 4

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

Thor strode up to shake hands with J.T. “Pleased to meet you,”

she boomed. “I take it you are the director. J.T.?”

“Yes. And you are . . . ?

“Your first A.D. for the day, Thor.”

J.T. had to hear it from her mouth.

“Listen,” Thor began, “before we get started, I’d like to clear the air: I have a lower intestinal problem that I’m gonna have fixed sometime over hiatus. Spasmodic colon. I pass gas a lot. I might as well excuse myself now for all the times I will pass gas today, rather than pretend it’s not me.”

J.T. started to crack a joke, realized she was serious, and

coughed. Ash pretended to have something in his eye.

At least she’s honest,
J.T. thought. Then it dawned on him that he’d be enveloped in a bubble of gas-fog all day long. As if on cue, Thor cut her first slice o’ cheese. As promised, she didn’t apologize.

In turn, J.T. didn’t apologize for holding his nose, either. “Where are the scripts, Thor?” he asked nasally.

“They haven’t arrived from the production office yet,” Thor

said, zipping another one off.

“Well . . . Thor, isn’t that slightly odd?” J.T. managed to get out. “I mean, today is camera-blocking day. I did not receive a script in my mailbox and we have no scripts available to us on the set? I mean, doesn’t someone in the production office realize that we cannot camera-block a scene if we don’t have pages for the scene?”

“That is correct, sir,” Thor said in a military manner. “I’ll look into that at once!”

“Um, Thor?” J.T. stopped his A.D. before she could get away.

“Thor, where are the actors? We begin, supposedly, according to the call sheet,
in five minutes
. Where are all the actors?”

“The actors, sir,” Thor said solemnly, “are on a plane which is scheduled to arrive at the Burbank Airport at niner-fifteen, runway one-zero-eight. They will be escorted immediately from the

airport to the soundstage by transportation, sir!”

R o b b y

B e n s o n

2 4 5

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah.
Oh dear Lord,
J.T. thought as he inhaled a smell exactly like that of a combined paper mill and sardine can-nery.

“Their ETA is approximately ten-oh-five, sir!”

“Well, that blows,” J.T. said.

“Yes, sir. That does blow. I’m going to the production office to reconnoiter with the production assistants in order to gain the information as to why we don’t have our scripts, sir!” And Thor was off, leaving a foul odor in her wake.

The camera crew and everyone else who had to spend the day

on the stage floor (rather than in a booth—or, say, on the beach) were
very
unhappy that William was not present. It seemed that the entire crew knew of Thor’s problem, and even though they felt for her, they did not like the idea of spending an entire day holding their breath as she moved around the stage. And what she’d told J.T. wasn’t true: whenever her problem became severe, she actually would try to make it seem like it was someone else by standing within a group of grips or gaffers. The crew really hated that. But at least it gave them something to talk about all day other than the Pooleys.

Kirk Kelly took the opportunity to come up to J.T. “I, um, J.T., I don’t really know how to say thank you enough for what you did for me,” he said—at a low volume, in case the wrong people were listening.
“They also renegotiated my contract.”

“Hey, man, you did your work; you were blindsided. You

would’ve done the same for me,” J.T. said.

“I would’ve?” Kirk said, caught off guard.

This moment of unadulterated truth has been brought to you

by the new regime of actors and executives in show business,
J.T.

thought. Everyone J.T. knew from the old school would certainly have done the same thing for J.T. But this kid . . . Kirk Kelly was honest enough—or dense enough—to actually wonder if he

would’ve taken a bullet for J.T. had the situation been switched.

“Kirk,” J.T. smiled.

2 4 6

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

“Yeah?”

“Kirk, this woman walking toward us—the smaller, heftier

woman, not one of the babes—is Thor, our first A.D. for today. I’d like you to follow her around and get a taste of what she has to go through. It’s always good for an actor to have invaluable knowledge of the other skilled personnel who help to make a show
be
a show. It’s a respect ‘thang.’”

“Um, okay.”

Thor came marching back onto the set with two more gor-

geous new Things—Ten and Eleven?—who must have been hired

first thing this morning. J.T. saw that they were carrying boxes of scripts.

“Merry Christmas,” Thor said in her deep voice.

“What’s this?” J.T. asked.

“This—these—are today’s rewrites,” Thor said as she and the

two stunning Things plopped the heavy boxes of scripts down on

a foldout table. Every camera operator, soundman, electrician, and grip could not take his (or her) eyes off the new production assistants. J.T. just grabbed a script and quickly leafed through it, looking for asterisks. An asterisk was used to indicate that a line had been changed.

There wasn’t a single line that did
not
have its own private asterisk.

J.T. was aghast. A page-one rewrite on camera-blocking day?

He looked at the goldenrod pages and saw in the “Director’s

Notes”:

The
best ever explosion
has been cut.

“What?!” J.T. said, but it came out of his mouth as an odd ani-

mal sound. Suddenly J.T. had new pages, no cast, and the clock was ticking on a day when the plug would be pulled twelve hours from the production call—which had been 7 a.m. for the crew.

With a ridiculously long,
new
script, everyone on both sides of R o b b y

B e n s o n

2 4 7

the camera would be learning new information at the same time

with only twenty-four hours before the show was to be performed in front of a live audience. How could J.T. be expected to orchestrate this miracle of all miracles with a brand-new script (new

“A” story!) that even he hadn’t read and a cast that wasn’t on the ground yet and a crew that was taking direction from a lame-duck guest director?

J.T. was flabbergasted.

The Hollywood Dictionary

He walked over to Mick Mc-

GOLDENROD SCRIPTS:
A new

Coy. “Mick,” he said, “I don’t

color is used for every rewrite

want to sound desperate,

day of the week. When delivered

but—”

on camera-blocking day as a page-

“J.T., they did this last

one rewrite, a goldenrod script is

week, too. They have no

equivalent to a golden shower.

clue. And the worst part is

that everyone will eventual-

ly come through and they’ll

get their show in the can, and then they’ll think they can get away with this bullshit
every week
. We’re screwed. It’s happening on every show. All over town. Every lot.”

“Mick—what about that ridiculous explosion that we shot

and took seriously and also spent half the day on? What was the word back from the lab? Was it at least a good piece of work?” J.T.

suddenly felt very vulnerable talking to his old buddy; way too vulnerable for a good director.

“J.T., look, you and I go way back—these fuckers wouldn’t al-

low the lab to process the film. They must’ve known they didn’t want to use it, so they thought they were saving money by just

telling the lab not to process it. I’m sorry. As stupid as the concept was—it was a damn good piece of film. I’m sorry, man. Really.”

Mick kept apologizing. J.T. could think of nothing to do, so . . . he hugged Mick.

2 4 8

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

J.T. took the new script out into the sunlight and began to

force his eyes to speed through it. There was a new story line. The best ever Christmas had to do with the Buddies’ compassion in

bringing in the lesbian next-door neighbor, who was a stand-up

comedienne (and who couldn’t get a gig), into their home for a

big Christmas dinner scene.
A new “A” story about inviting a stand-up comic to Christmas dinner makes this the best ever Christmas? I
don’t know what to think anymore,
he thought.

J.T. wrote quick little notes and diagrams next to the dialogue on each page. But as he speed-read, he noticed something very disturbing. The episode had the lesbian comic doing nothing but old Borscht Belt comedy, tarted up with gay themes. The only jokes in this very unfunny episode were by the lesbian comedienne who

lived next door. And those jokes were old and stolen. Not one original thought was on pages one through sixty-five.

Stunned, J.T. paused. Then he started reading the old, stolen

jokes out loud—one, it seemed, for practically every page.

“I was so ugly—How ugly were you?—I was so ugly when I was

born, my doctor slapped my mother. I was so ugly that once when I
was making out with a girl and I asked her if she was going to hate
herself in the morning, she said, I hate myself now! I was so ugly, I
met the surgeon general and he offered me a cigarette. I was so ugly
that my girlfriend asked me to join her bridge club. Then she begged
me to jump off.

J.T. stopped reading. He couldn’t believe that there were abso-

lutely no funny situations in this situation comedy, but also it was now full of jokes that had seen more days on this earth than most of the writers’ ages,
combined
. And they had a powerful and talented comedienne in Helena. Why would they put her in the position of busting her own comedy chops with Borscht Belt oldies?

“J.T. Baker, sir!” Thor said, startling the shit out of J.T.

“Yes, Thor?”

“I have some difficult news to report, sir,” Thor said.

R o b b y

B e n s o n

2 4 9

“Go ahead. I’m ready for anything.”

“Well, sir, the plane has not left Las Vegas yet and Helena is in her trailer and is refusing to come out, sir!”

J.T. didn’t even bother to say thank you. He walked at a quick

pace toward Helena’s trailer.
Here we go again.

“Is Marcus Pooley in the office yet?” J.T. asked as he was walking away from Thor. Thor passed gas, ran her fingers through her Thor-like hair, and said, “Marcus Pooley is in. Stephanie is with the others in Las Vegas, but available by phone.”

“Please ask Marcus Pooley to meet me at Helena’s trailer,” J.T.

said.

“Yes, sir! Will do, sir!”

J.T. knocked on Helena’s trailer door.

“Go the fuck away!”

J.T. knocked again. The door flew open.

“May I come in?” he asked.

Helena’s face was swollen from crying. Her pale skin was

blotchy and had patches of hives breaking out, even down her

neck. She wore an old-fashioned man’s undershirt—the kind that

was sometimes referred to as a
wife beater,
but J.T. hated that expression, so he just thought of it as something his Russian grand-father might have worn under his newly pressed suit.

“Have you seen this crap?!” Helena spat. “Have you seen what

they’ve given me to say?!
One time I went to a hotel. I asked the bellman
to handle my bag. He felt up my girlfriend!
Can you believe this?!”

Helena was furious. She didn’t know whether to cry or to break

something. So she cried and then she broke something.

“Helena, I really don’t know what to say at the moment. You

and I are probably neck and neck in the reading process. I just got this a few minutes ago. I’m as . . . astonished as you are,” J.T. said, trying to calm Helena down with his demeanor.

2 5 0

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

“My girlfriend was never nice. After our last date I asked if I
could give her a kiss on the cheek—she bent over!
What the fuck?!

Am I playing the Catskills? J.T., what is happening here?”

J.T. tried to say something, but Helena kept turning the pages

and reading her lines like a madwoman.

“The Christmas season makes me think about suicide. So my

psychiatrist wants me to pay in advance!
Hello?!
All I’ve ever known
my entire life was rejection. You know how it feels to be the only lesbian in third grade? Even my yo-yo refused to come back!
Shoot me now!” Helena dropped the new script and buckled onto her trailer couch. “J.T., this is the ‘A’ story. My character is pathetic to such an extent they invite me over for the
best ever
Christmas dinner. This isn’t about a few quick fixes. I’m fucked!”

“Helena,” J.T. said very softly, “my dad was a comedy writer

from the late fifties into the seventies. He was a big deal. Decades of work. Remarkably talented. Every single one of these jokes lives in my subconscious somewhere. They were good jokes at the time.

As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if my dad wrote a few that are now in the script. That really isn’t the point. The point is, who is your character? I thought she was a very hip stand-up comic. Not Henny Youngman or Rodney Dangerfield. I don’t understand these bits, either. And I’m guessing from your . . . distaste for the material, you don’t understand why your character is saying this stuff, either.”

“Once I caught a Peeping Tom booing me
? J.T., the last sitcom I did, I made over a quarter of a million dollars an episode. Now, this?!”