I turned in the script two weeks later.
It disappeared into silence.
After two more weeks, my phone rang. “Some of us like it the way it is,” the same staffer said, “and some of us don’t. Can you come in to discuss revisions?”
When I arrived for the notes session, Phil seemed even more distracted and disorganized than before. He’d hurry to make one point then lose it halfway through and flip to another topic, talking fast. Then I noticed that his pupils had been replaced by giant black basketballs.
Oh shit, he’s coked up.*
“Here’s what you need to do with the script,” he said at last. “Reverse the polarity.”
I froze, pen in hand, and glanced around for clarification, but the other staff members were busy trying to find something interesting to look at on the carpet.
“Reverse . . . the polarity?” I asked.
“Yeahyeahyeah, it’s too much what it is,” he said. “And it’s too much a morality play.”
“But isn’t that what The Twilight Zone is supposed to be? A morality play?”
He shook his head, his expression darkening. “No, that’s Rod’s version,” he snapped. “We’re not doing that version. This is edgier. We don’t do morality stories. So you need to take that out, and reverse the polarity.”
I did the best I could to meet the notes I understood, ignored the ones I didn’t, and sent back the revision. Silence. A week passed. Another.
Finally, a staffer called me at home. “There’s a lot of division over the script,” she said. “So those of us who like it are going to make the necessary changes in-house, which we hope will make everyone happy. We’re not sure it can be done, but we’re going to try.”
Over the next month I heard that the script was alive, then dead, then in between. They tried removing the father’s guilt about his behavior toward his son, but the structure fell apart because that was the whole point of the story, so they had to put it back. The drafts bounced back and forth between versions that were radically different, others that were virtually identical to my original script, and some that were edgier but emotionally empty.
I’d no sooner reconciled myself to the idea that my script was never going to be produced when they called to say that they’d ended up with a draft very close to my original script, and it had been put into the production pipeline. The main change, made in deference to Phil, was to remove the father’s discovery that he was doing to his son what had been done to him. The spirit was just there. Having once been the father’s imaginary friend, it tries to fill the same role with his son, drawing him into its world, then releasing him for no other reason than that’s what being a friend is all about. To fit the new resolution, they retitled the episode “What Are Friends For?”
When the episode aired on CBS on October 4, 1986, the consensus was that the episode was just okay. I couldn’t argue the point since much of the reason for telling the story had been obliterated. As it turned out, I wasn’t the only one who preferred the morality tales that were a hallmark of the original Twilight Zone; the audience vanished, the ratings fell, and the show was canceled.
It would’ve been so great if I could’ve kept working on The Twilight Zone, I thought as I stashed away my VHS copy of the episode. But I guess some things just aren’t meant to be.
A few weeks later, in a twist worthy of The Twilight Zone, my aunt called to tell me that she was divorcing Ted after learning that he was having an affair. This was shocking enough, but then she added that my parents—who had been pretending to be married since the annulment in 1952—were about to get married. But there would be no wedding ceremony, no public announcement, and no reception. Stranger still, the new marriage wasn’t just private, it was confidential. Under California law, documents in a confidential marriage are not available in the public record, only through court order or with the permission of the couple in question.
“Why would he keep it a secret?” I asked. “Is he worried that people will discover they weren’t married all those years?”
“I don’t think he gives a shit about what people think. The real question is: Why is he getting married now?”
“He’s getting older, maybe he wants her to have access to his accounts if he gets sick.”
“He doesn’t want anybody putting their hands on his money, let alone your mother. Try again.”
It was a frustrating exchange. My aunt had a lot of dirt on my father, but she had been so thoroughly terrorized by his threats of violence and lawsuits over the years that she was reluctant to say anything that could be traced back to her. This left me in the annoying position of having to figure things out from the few little clues she was comfortable providing. I felt like Bob Woodward in an underground parking lot with Deep Throat, being fed just enough information to guide me to the right conclusions.
Follow the marriage license.
“Is he getting married because a wife can’t be compelled to testify against her husband?”
“That’s part of it. Your father wants to make sure she can’t be legally forced to talk about things she saw or heard about him.”
“But that doesn’t stop her from talking to someone of her own free will.”
“Getting warmer,” she said.
Then it hit me. “He wants her to sign a prenuptial non-disclosure agreement as a condition of the marriage, doesn’t he?”
“Took you long enough. He didn’t tell her that, of course. He said he was marrying her to make sure she’d inherit his money when he dies, but that son of a bitch isn’t going to leave her a dime. It’s just bait to convince her to sign the paperwork. He knows that marrying her will complicate his life later, but if there’s no marriage, there’s no prenup, and if there’s no prenup, then he’s exposed.”
My father had spent decades making sure my mother had no legal standing, no access to his accounts, nothing. For him to suddenly spin the wheel this hard the other way meant that something major must have happened behind the scenes.
“What’s he so afraid of people finding out that he’d go through this much trouble to protect himself?” I asked. “And like you said, why now?”
“If I outlive the little prick, ask me when he’s dead,” she said, ending the conversation.
The appearance of another family mystery reminded me just how much I didn’t want to know any of this. I had neither the time nor the inclination to play twenty questions with my aunt. I understood that secrets were the engine of our family, but if there was something she wanted me to know, then she should just come out and say it. Otherwise why drag me back into the mess in the first place?
Had I known just a little more about my father’s past I would have been able to connect the dots between the confidential marriage and news out of Paterson about a pipe bomb that had exploded a few months earlier, fatally injuring a local resident. But getting that piece of the puzzle would take several more decades.
The Real Ghostbusters finished its first season on ABC with an Emmy nomination for Best Animated Series and a renewal for year two. The show was working, the ratings were huge, it was an unmitigated hit.
So naturally they decided to fix it.
Ever since its debut the show had been attacked by media watchdogs who accused the show of advancing leftist politics and radical feminism on one side, and black magic and Satanism on the other. (Between this show, He-Man, and She-Ra I had apparently been in the employ of Satan for nearly three years without knowing it, so there’s a considerable back-pay issue that needs to be resolved.) Rather than tell these groups to take a hike, the network censors used the complaints to push for changes that would make the show more acceptable to their rarified sensibilities. This led to a meeting at DIC with producers Joe Medjuck and Michael Gross, Ame Simon and Jennie Trias from ABC, some of our writers, and several “experts” from a consulting firm specializing in children’s entertainment.
One of the consultants teed off the meeting by saying “We need to change Jani
ne.” Janine was one of our most popular characters, strong, smart, hip, witty, and independent—attributes the consultants and censors absolutely hated. They felt that her stylish, tough wardrobe made her “harsh and slutty,” an assessment that said more about how they viewed strong women than it did about Janine.
“She needs to be more of a mother to the group,” they said, “warmer and more nurturing. She should be put in softer clothes, dresses rather than skirts, no jewelry, and drop her spiky hair and eyeglasses.”
Her eyeglasses?
“They’re pointed at the ends. Children are frightened by sharp objects, so her glasses should be round and inviting.”
I asked to see the data supporting their thesis that children were scared of pointy glasses. Rather than answer the question they argued that their research could only be properly deciphered by someone with a degree in psychology.
“I have a degree in psychology,” I said, “and I want to see your data.”
Faced with someone who could call them on their bullshit, the consultants became defensive and looked to the network execs and producers for backup, as though I were the one acting inappropriately. It was the return of High Priest logic.
Why don’t you just say you brought someone back from the dead on a small Polynesian island and save us all the ambiguity?
“Let them finish their suggestions and we can come back to the details,” Ame said. I sat back, chewing the inside of my cheek as I conjured up the image of the lead consultant at the receiving end of a LAWS shoulder-mounted rocket.
“There’s also a problem with the main cast because they’re all adults,” they continued. “Children identify with children more than they do with adults. So you need to introduce some recurring characters who are children, and make them Junior Ghostbusters.”
“I absolutely disagree,” I said. Everyone looked away, embarrassed by my determination to point out that the emperor was naked. “Most kids don’t want to be Robin, they want to be Batman, because if they work really hard, there’s a chance they might someday become Batman. But Robin is their own age and can already do things that are impossible for them. Kids can look up to the adult Ghostbusters and aspire to become like them one day. Putting kids in the show and giving them proton packs—essentially unlicensed nuclear reactors—destroys any sense of believability. Besides, while we can put our adult characters into realistic jeopardy, BS&P says we can’t do that with kids, so you’re going to cripple the storytelling.”
They refused to debate the question. After all, they were experts with degrees, and the network supported their work enough to hire them. They knew what they were talking about. I was just the guy who made the show ABC’s highest-rated, Emmy-nominated series.
“In keeping with making the show more child-friendly,” they continued, “we strongly suggest that the character of Slimer be made more important, because he is the child surrogate for the audience. His inability to articulate himself reflects every child who cannot communicate well. The Ghostbusters should therefore be accepting of him, playful but not harsh. He is your audience personified, and should be as much a star as the rest of the cast. Consequently we suggest renaming the show Slimer! and the Real Ghostbusters.”
Slimer was not a child surrogate, he was a dead creature, a foil for the cast; kicking him around was half the fun. But I held my tongue, confident that Ame and the others would realize that there was no way we could make him the center of the show.
There was more. “Children like clarity, they want to know who a character is and how he fits in with the others. But the adult characters aren’t well delineated. So we suggest eliminating Ray Stantz [the Dan Aykroyd character] because he does not appear to serve the benefit of the program.”
“No way that’s gonna happen,” I said, “but keep going.”
They suggested that the role of Winston Zeddemore (our only African American character) was also vague, so to give him a clearly defined position we should make him the driver.
“Let me see if I’ve got this right,” I said. “You want to give all the other characters positive, creative, scientific roles and turn Winston, our only black character, into the driver?”
They nodded, quite pleased with themselves.
“And this doesn’t strike any of you as racist?”
The consultants went batshit at the suggestion that their notes were fueled by prejudice (much as I considered their suggestions about Janine to be party-line sexism at its worst). There were intimations of complaints to vast, implacable Superiors for the poor way they were being treated. To calm the situation Ame, Jennie, and the producers made soft soothing sounds and eventually the consultants left the room.
“You can’t do this,” I said. “If you make these changes, you’ll destroy the show. You’ve got the highest-rated animated series on television right now, why would you want to kill it?”
“Their opinions have been very useful to us before,” Ame said, though I could see that even she knew what was being shoved down our throats was dubious at best.
“We’re all here for the same reason,” Jennie said, “we want to improve the show.”
“Improve it how? You’re in the number one spot, there’s nothing higher than that. Getting the show to this point was a careful, delicate dance. If you go along with this, you’ll destroy the infrastructure that allowed it to become a hit.”
They wouldn’t listen. Even the producers were willing to go along with the changes, which surprised and unmanned me. I was all alone. They were going to implement these changes whether I liked it or not.
“Then I can’t be a part of it,” I said, “especially the changes to Janine. She’s a strong, smart female character, one of the few on Saturday morning television, and I refuse to turn her into one more cliché mommy character. There are plenty of those out there; we need at least one female character who is witty, independent, and cool. That’s how she was in the movie, how she is in the series, and I’m not going to destroy that.”
“So what are you saying?” Ame asked.
“I’m saying that if you do this, I’m off the show.”
“Joe, c’mon, calm down,” Michael Gross said, “you’re not going to walk off a number one network animated series.”
“Watch me,” I said.
My agent was furious when I told her I was leaving the show. “You can’t piss off the network like that,” she said. “If you quit, you’ll never work for them again. And don’t forget, you walked off She-Ra; if you walk off another show, you’ll get a reputation for being difficult. Once you get that rep, it doesn’t come off. No one will want to work with you.”
God knows I didn’t want to quit: I’d fought hard to make the show a success, and there weren’t a lot of open berths on other shows. It was the same choice I faced back in Community: betray what I knew to be true, or walk away. In both cases my conscience said go, so the next day I packed up my office and left The Real Ghostbusters behind.
The blatantly sexist manner in which the consultants interfered in the show galvanized fans and critics alike. The sexism was so egregious that the Los Angeles Times ran a story about the contretemps on September 3, 1987. Neither the consultants nor ABC wanted copies of their internal reports to appear in the article because it would confirm the misogyny behind their notes. But somehow excerpts and illustrations taken directly from the reports ended up in the piece.
How this happened I have no idea.
ABC would launch the retitled Slimer! and the Real Ghostbusters a year later, featuring the Junior Ghostbusters, a softer Janine, and a Winston who drove the car while everybody else did the cool stuff. As predicted, the ratings plummeted like a cartoon piano: adult fans despised the sappy changes, kids hated the Junior Ghostbusters, both sides rejected the softer, more mommy-ish Janine, and Slimer became the most annoying thing about the show.
The Real Ghostbusters was the best job I’d ever had. But I’ve always believed that as long as we hold fast to what we believe is
true and honest and just, things generally work out in the end.
But that knowledge was cold comfort as I started once again looking for work.
Chapter 22
Captain, My Captain
Shortly after leaving The Real Ghostbusters, my agent arranged for a meeting with producers Doug Netter, John Copeland, and Gary Goddard, who were putting together a new science fiction series called Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future.* As with He-Man and She-Ra, the show was tied to a toy line from Mattel, but this was a live-action series. They needed a story editor with at least one live-action credit and a history of working with toy-based shows. Thanks to He-Man and the timing of my one Twilight Zone script I fit the bill, and they hired me at once.
The point was not lost on me that if I had surrendered to corporate stupidity and stayed with The Real Ghostbusters, I would’ve been contractually unable to work on Captain Power. But I’d followed my conscience, and in return the universe opened the door to the live-action TV gig that I’d been chasing for the past two years.
I don’t believe in God. But I do believe in dramatic irony.
Captain Power was set in a post-apocalyptic world where machines hunted humans, a concept that owed much to James Cameron’s Terminator.* There were some key differences—our protagonists wore nanotech uniforms that could transform into battle armor, and there was no time travel involved—but I was still uncomfortable with some of the parallels, so I set about moving the concept as far from The Terminator as possible. I changed the emphasis from machines killing humans as an act of war to the idea that our antagonist is digitizing humans in order to save them from all the diseases and weaknesses to which flesh is heir until the day when they can be transferred permanently into perfect robotic forms.
It’s a not-unreasonable argument, as demonstrated later by Ray Kurzweil’s work on the synthesis of man and machine. Given the choice between living in a flesh shell that will one day die, or a bioengineered form that would live forever, there are many who would opt for the latter, and that’s where our antagonist lands. Where he crosses the line is by deciding to digitize the world’s population whether they want him to or not. Our heroes, the aforementioned Soldiers of the Future, are trying to stop him and end the war.
Becoming Superman Page 24