Now, the good news is that this is actually a fairly discernable thing. In a sea of arbitrariness, good writing is perhaps the one thing that has objectively agreed-upon standards. Whether or not those who are supposed to know and care about these standards actually do is another matter, but the standards are there. TV writing is a highly structured craft. Scripts must be a certain number of pages. Every show has its own specific page count, fifty for a Dawson’s, seventy for an ER. (Gilmore Girls is off the charts.) Act breaks have highly established requirements for each genre and form. Half-hours generally have two acts; one-hour dramas have four. Everything from the inciting incident in the teaser to the way exposition is laid out to the stakes of the climax are all fairly agreed-upon components. So while the story you write is assessed purely subjectively, the storytelling can be judged fairly objectively. This is why, I believe, the best advice I ever got on specs was what Wells told me to do, something I soon learned few writers ever heard: “Just spec a show that you like.” In a world where you never know what anybody else is gonna like, that turned out to be some damn good advice.
Very little is cooler in life than driving up to the front gate of a Hollywood studio and stating your name. The inevitably heavyset guard gives you a nod, a day pass, and a smile that means, “Good luck, kid.” Although I had an internship at Universal, I took the morning off for my pitch meeting with Simon & Simon, took advantage of the pass, and drove directly to a primo parking spot on the lot. Still wearing suit and tie, I made my way to the main TV production office building. But as cool as it was to be going to a real meeting, I felt what would become a familiar pang in my gut.
This was, in fact, my second meeting with the Simon producers. There are essentially two kinds of meetings in Hollywood. Meetings where people want to get a look at you—the “meet ’n’ greet”—and meetings where people want to see what you can actually do. The first kind is easy and often even pleasant. The room is always filled with smiling happy people who are always “big fans.” These people always want to know the same sorts of things, where you’re from, how you like Los Angeles, what you think of the traffic, what you like to watch on television, and so forth. Essentially, the purpose of these meetings is to, as the name suggests, meet you, greet you, and determine, if they were to hire you, if they could be locked in a small room for long periods of time with you. You have been invited to this meeting because someone has read your work and wants to see what you’re like, or because someone has heard good things about you, read the first five pages of something you wrote, and wants to see what you’re like.
The other kind of meeting is where actual work is done. A few days earlier, I had a meet ’n’ greet with the producers, which allowed them to get a look at my carefully chosen shirt, declare that they were big fans, and determine that at least I did not openly display any psychotic behavior. Having passed the requisite assessments, I was then invited back for a second meeting to “pitch” the show. The basic idea of this, the pitch meeting, is to try to sell a story to an existing series, which then, hopefully, becomes a script assignment.
I pitched Simon & Simon when it was in its eighth season. More than 150 episodes had already been produced. Before my pitch meeting, I went to the production office on the lot and borrowed as many tapes as I could. For three days and three nights I watched shoot-outs and boat chases, explosions and fist fights, and men in Ray-Bans and cowboy hats kicking in doors, jumping off roofs, and fearlessly facing all kinds of jeopardy without ever losing their capacity for witty banter. Oh, and more auto-theft rings than I care to remember. I could easily have been watching any of a dozen shows that were still in production at that time, old-school TV shows like MacGyver; Magnum, P.I.; Hunter; Murder, She Wrote; The Equalizer; T. and T.; Matlock. As opposed to quality writer-driven shows, these older series were strictly predictable, well-made plays. Just a year or so earlier, most of the prime-time network schedule was filled with such offerings, many from the massive Universal Studios sausage factory: Hart to Hart; Spenser: for Hire; Houston Knights; Jake and the Fatman; The Law and Harry McGraw; J.J. Starbuck, Private Eye; Ohara; Mike Hammer; Scarecrow and Mrs. King; Hardcastle and McCormick; Crazy Like a Fox; Remington Steele; Riptide; Airwolf; Hawaiian Heat; T.J. Hooker; Stingray; Matt Houston; Partners in Crime; The Dukes of Hazzard; Knight Rider; CHiPs; The A-Team; B.J. and the Bear; MacGruder and Loud; Tenspeed and Brown Shoe; The Fall Guy. The list reads like an embarrassing though kitschy-cool collection of lunchboxes one has squirreled away in his parents’ basement. (Okay, I don’t have all of them.) These shows did not shock or offer insight. Nor were their stories particularly memorable. It’s fair to say that no one gathered around the water cooler to discuss the cutting-edge material on last night’s Manimal. Cocktail parties of the day rarely featured discussions about the riveting and topical dialogue between Jake and “The Fatman” McCabe. In the pre-TiVo world, these were shows that you could fold the laundry to. They provided comfort through the familiar, the better ones in an entertaining way. They were not writer-driven but plot-driven. So while a new kind of quality television was sprouting up around Hollywood, an old kind of show was simultaneously dying off. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was about to become a sort of TV missing link.
One of the most distinctive aspects of old-school TV was that much of it was written by freelancers. In the sixties, when a full season was thirty-nine episodes, a writing staff might consist of only one producer and one story editor. They would hear pitches from freelance writers and assign scripts to the stories they liked. But as writers became more involved in producing shows, this would change. By 1997, freelancers wrote only 15 percent of all network television shows.
Toward the end of my meet ’n’ greet, I was told how to prepare a pitch: “Bring in some stories that you like, preferably ones we haven’t done before. Bring in a good jumping off point and act breaks; there’s no need to flesh out the whole story.” This is how much of TV was made at this time. Although I had nodded knowingly during my instruction, I really didn’t know squat about jumping and fleshing. Nevertheless, I figured, if I came up with enough material, surely something would stick. My list of ideas was long, very long.
A secretary named Violet stepped away from her Tetris game and offered me my bottled water while I waited in the producer’s outer office. I noticed that these offices were furnished exactly like the executive suites in the Black Tower. As I waited, I wondered if Lew Wasserman had determined that brass banker’s lamps, dark leather upholstery with nailhead trim, and formally framed pictures of horses were conducive to high levels of creativity. Or maybe, to the contrary, perhaps he wanted all his employees to stay on budget and think like accountants.
As I entered the room, I was warmly greeted by the writer-producers, mostly men, mostly older men, some older than my dad. These were not the lords of television. These guys were not Bochco or Cannell or Spelling. These were the writing proletariat. These guys worked for a living. Consider Rick Mittleman. Looking more like a weathered race-car driver than an erudite scribe, he had worked on everything from McHale’s Navy to Get Smart, from Nanny and the Professor to Bridget Loves Bernie. He had even written for The Flintstones! And these guys were nice. Legs were propped up. Baseball games discussed. Jokes bandied about. The story room felt like a Kiwanis Club meeting. These guys were comfortable, like men who had modest mortgages.
I sat on a sofa in the supervising producer’s office and presented my stories. I pitched ghosts and lottery-ticket winners and twins. I pitched black-market babies and frame-ups and money that falls out of an airplane. I pitched all sorts of dreck that they had heard a million times over the last eight seasons. Although I’m pretty sure they were relieved that I didn’t pitch a story featuring midgets, I could tell from their faces that this was not going so well. But what I didn’t know at the time is that pitching rarely goes well.
The act of telling a story before actually writing it is a skill that some Hollywood writers have turned i
nto a high art, while others break out in a rash even thinking about it. I quickly discovered a real fondness for the meet ’n’ greet, and found that pitching required not just extensive preparation but a good amount of Benadryl.
There is another reason—which I was learning firsthand—that pitching fell out of favor: It’s pretty ridiculous. Look at the process. You’re supposed to come into a room full of writers who spend every waking moment of their lives living and breathing the world of a series and that series’ characters and tell them a story they haven’t thought of before. You have to convince them that you possess a deep empathetic understanding of their beloved characters, which to them sounds like someone they just met at a party telling them what to do with their kids. And even if you really do luck into an area they have not yet thought of, this calls into question why they haven’t yet thought of it. This doesn’t exactly create the most conducive environment in which to work.
In the late eighties, as the quality of television got better, it became more and more difficult to nail a good story, especially on your own, especially as an outsider. And shows began to learn that just because someone was good at pitching, it didn’t mean that he or she would be good at writing. In fact, pitching is essentially a sales skill set and is in many ways antithetical to the process of writing. Although the WGA implemented rules that force staffs to buy two freelance scripts a season, presumably to give new writers a shot, shows began to get around this by simply assigning scripts to assistants as a form of compensation. And many shows started “auditioning” new writers for their staffs by finding someone whose work they already liked and then simply giving him a staff-developed story to write as a freelance script. That is precisely what Simon & Simon did for me.
The head writer, Rick Okie, a Yale graduate and former CBS executive, took me under his wing. We worked out a story together. I was given a contract for “story and teleplay,” meaning I was guaranteed $18,750 to deliver a story, a first draft, and a second draft—a complete script.
There are countless ways that writers go about the initial story-development process. Some work alone, some with one other person, some with entire rooms full of people. Some jot down scene ideas on note cards. Some work on dry-erase boards. Some just shoot the shit for hours on end and have assistants construct a story line from the stream of consciousness. When I first heard this process described—“breaking story,” everyone calls it—I thought this seemed like a rather violent way to reference what I imagined to be a fairly cerebral process. But after doing it, I understood that the name made perfect sense. When you work on a story, you basically spit out whatever comes to mind and then rip it all apart. Then you examine the pieces that are left, get rid of the junk, take the good stuff, and construct a story. Stories aren’t carefully baked or lovingly hatched. Good TV stories are cracked like eggs, snapped apart like fortune cookies, smashed into tiny pieces with the ruthless wrecking ball of absolute impartiality and then custom-built from the ground up. Breaking story is in fact an aggressive task, not, I quickly discovered, for the faint of heart.
I spent several days breaking story for my episode with Rick. He taught me how to subdivide a story into acts, four of them, with a climax at the end of the first three, and then into individual scenes, five or six per act, represented by a one-line active description that we wrote onto note cards. My episode was about Rick Simon’s (the protagonist’s) long-lost son showing up. So my note cards featured lines like, “Rick meets son,” “A.J. fabricates excuse to keep kid around,” “Kid snatched,” “Major Action/Pursuit: Rick saves kid from jeopardy,” “Mom shows up for heart-to-heart,” and “Bitter-sweet parting—it’s not his kid but wishes it was.” Armed with my twenty or so cards, which could be shuffled as the need arose, I then fleshed out the story into a four-page prose document, my official story outline. Although the script form of an episode is highly standardized, story documents can and do take any form, from thirty-page narratives to a few sentences scribbled on a Baja Fresh napkin. Even the WGA dares not offer a minimum definition of what constitutes a story, let alone the official delivery form of one. Ten years later, I would work for Joe Dougherty, an Emmy-winning writer who offered me the best definition I’ve yet to hear about constructing a television story: “A story outline is like a map. It should be detailed enough so that you know where you’re going, but vague enough so that you can make discoveries along the way.”
On Friday, September 2, 1988, I got the go-ahead and started writing. It was Labor Day weekend and it was unholy hot. I wrote the first two acts in two days and two nights to the sounds of West Hollywood’s nonstop party, which rode the Santa Anas into my open windows. When my neighbor, a typically pleasant-natured but unbearably gregarious-when-intoxicated 250-pound bearded transvestite, brought a little piece of the party into our courtyard right under my window, I drove to my office on the Universal lot, where I finished the last two acts.
On Tuesday, September 6, I handed Violet my first draft. She didn’t understand. She thought it was a more developed story. When I explained it was my first draft, she looked at me warily, then shrugged and took it. I got a call from Rick a few hours later. He was very enthusiastic and especially appreciated how fast I got it in. However, when I passed this news on to my agent, she proceeded to chew me out: “So you can write fast, that’s great. But no one needs to know that! Next time you can sit on it for a week and work on something else! And I hope you’re not wearing that tie to these meetings!”
A week or so later, on a Saturday afternoon, Delbert and I were hanging out in my sublet trying to scrape together enough money to get something to eat. Delbert had pawned his nineteen-inch television the prior week. I had a few bucks coming every week from my internship, but that barely paid the sublet and utilities. Every month was a struggle. As we considered an ad in L.A. Weekly that offered to pay cash for plasma, the mail arrived. I noticed a letter from Beth Uffner & Associates, which I ripped open. Inside was a check for more than $5,000, for the story part of my script deal. I had never seen a number this big on a check before, and neither had Delbert. Though I am loathe to admit this, yes, there was yelling. High fives were exchanged. My bearded neighbor came running to make sure everything was all right. I knew money was coming, but I think because of the amount I heard being bandied about, it didn’t seem real until the check actually arrived. Needless to say, there’s nowhere to cash a check for five grand on a Saturday afternoon, but that didn’t keep us from trying. In the end, we ducked into Canter’s and threw down the American Express card I got when I worked for Ogilvy & Mather. We then proceeded to get properly intoxicated on Wild Turkey at the Formosa Cafe, the chosen site of such rituals for many decades.
I got some minor notes and did a second draft. Rick also took a pass at the script but the vast majority of what I wrote stayed. Watching my episode film was thrilling. From the minute I walked onto that soundstage, it was immediately apparent to me how powerful the pen was in television. I had written “They sit on a red sofa” and sure enough there on the set was a red sofa. A simple choice between the words “DAY” or “NIGHT” in a script have a power one typically associates only with a deity. On the other hand, if you’re a baby writer, like I was, when you show up on the set, people eye you wearily. And if you’re a freelancer, it goes like this:
Security Guard: Can I help you?
Me: Oh, hi, I’m Jeffrey Stepakoff.
Security Guard: (What the fuck do you want?)
Hi, can I help you?
Me: I’m the writer.
Security Guard: Your name’s not on the call sheet.
Me: I’m a freelancer. Rick Okie told me I could come to the set.
Security Guard (recognizing the name of the executive producer and changing his tone): Go see Larry, the Second AD.
Me (to Larry): Hi, I’m Jeffrey Stepakoff.
Larry: Shhhh…we’re blocking.
Me (turning red and whispering): Sorry.
Larry: (What the fuck do you w
ant?) What do you need?
Me: I wrote the episode.
Larry (looks at the script he’s holding, reads my name, looks at me, looks at the script, finally makes a decision): Wait here.
Larry goes to the first AD, points to me, and points to my name on the script. The first AD sees me watching, nods at me, smiles broadly, and can be seen asking Larry, “What the fuck does he want?” Larry shrugs. Finally, the first AD gives Larry an order. Larry quickly grabs a director’s chair, jogs back to me, opens the chair, and hustles me into it.
Nothing quite changes the tone of a set like having the writer present, even a baby freelancer. The crew doesn’t know if you’re a peon or management. But they do know the power of the pen, and even baby writers can wield that.
On November 19, 1988, barely two months after I got my first TV writing assignment, my first episode aired. There were articles in local papers about me that day. In the Pittsburgh Press, under a photograph of me looking like a deer caught in the headlights, were the words “Like a dream come true,” which I must have uttered in a phone interview. My agent and Hollywood producers were quoted as saying all sorts of embarrassing things about me. Emmys were referenced. Ridiculous dollar figures were quoted. A well-known producer said I was “the best writer to come down the pike in five years.” My entire future was predicted and priced, even though my very first episode hadn’t even aired yet. I tried so hard not to believe my own press, but I am ashamed to admit, it was not easy. I was dizzy.
At 6:02 P.M. Pacific Standard Time (9:02 P.M. Eastern Standard Time), my name flashed on the television screen for exactly three seconds: “Written by Jeffrey Stepakoff.” Fifty-five minutes later, the phone started to ring and it did not stop. I turned on the answering machine. At 7:57 P.M., when the show concluded its broadcast in the Central time zone, my phone went crazy again. At 9:02 P.M. in L.A., along with about twenty writer-friends all crammed into my new 600-square-foot apartment, I got to see it for myself. About 15 million people saw what I wrote that night. About 15 million people saw my name and knew that I was a Writer. After about thirty-five phone calls, the tape in my machine ran out. (I saved that tape for years.) My friends and I went up on the roof of my new apartment just off Sunset and drank Jim Beam by the search lights from the police choppers until dawn. I did it. I really did it. From this day forth, for me and my friends, I was now living, breathing testament that it could be done. What else can I say? It was one of the greatest days of my life.
Billion-Dollar Kiss Page 8