by Ray Succre
For every event of the world taken into frame, there were other shows, limited and small, that had honest-to-God writers. They were behind the camera and the ten inch screen. Off the playbill. Some were radio writers who were adventurous and trying a new thing. Some were film industry writers tired of that particular sort of grinder into which their stories were fed. These writers were a new breed, but a mongrel one. From his naturalist rostrum, Chayefsky had called the television play “the most perishable item known to man”, and Goldwyn out in Hollywood had said the format “raised writing to a new low”. Emery was attempting to enter that particular sort of arena where bugs were sent to fight: A glass jar with air-holes in the lid, a media captivity where the writers, the belligerents, often went un-named. The medium had no longevity for which it might look upon and use to compare itself to the silver screen or ‘legitimate’ theater. It had only hope and unending attempts at more, while being staffed by people who disagreed on nearly everything about it.
“I think Vivian’s sick; she feels warm and she’s not eating. We need to call Dr. DeGan.”
“Do it. He’d better show up sober this time or he won’t like the way I treat him.”
The traditional stage saw television as a bastardization of natural ability in favor of mass-production, and that a screen removed the métier of the antique stage: That physical bond between performance and audience. Hollywood glanced over its new, inbred cousin in the way a Bauhaus architect might look down on a hairy neandertal trying to drape leaves across the mouth of a damp cave and call it home.
To remedy the feel of insincerity and a separation between production and audience, shots could be used to drive the image close and personal, but beyond this, there were live shows now. Programs with an audience in attendance added to the spectacle, giving the performance the feel of being real, a thing worth watching by real people who sat down in chairs for it, and not simply a toss-off to the screen. That the public in Minnetoga might hear or even see an audience in New York and feel a touch more to be with them was a smart and potent aspect of demographic wizardry. There were bare-bones productions filmed and sent out onto screens with great speed, anthology shows that packed a variety of stories into an hour, and now New York, not just Hollywood, began to find itself the seat of a filmed entertainment industry. Illusions and proximity were created with cameras and the new bag of tricks actors had gained, and behind all of these new abilities and reference points, all of these angles and affectations, were the writers, stealing from theater, stealing from cinema, and inventing their own, intricate form of extravaganza.
“Your mother called. She wants you to talk to your aunt about some sort of used car situation.”
“Did she say what the situation is?”
The programs rode the air with great mortality, however. They aired and then were gone, so quickly and without a hope of longevity. The serials went on, for a time, but the singles did not. They were treated as inconsequent one-offs by the networks, tired acres in which to prop commercials and drill for a little more oil, and so these one-time programs became that more and more, fitting the mold needed to continue being made: Commercial fodder. These shows hit the radar of a viewer with the speed at which they would then vanish. They went on and off the air with so little notice; there was no ovation at the roll of the credits, no mourning once the show was laid down and the dirt shoveled over.
The television system had been born, but now searched for meaning. What was its reason for being? How might its techniques service the producers, the audience, or the world? What might someone like Emery, a prospecting writer, do with that medium and what might television offer in return? Emery kept his ear to the tracks and wrote his scripts, always with his thoughts falling to what television should be capable of, and what it might do with a story that other mediums could not do.
In that first year after leaving WKCR, his good luck had landed him several purchased scripts, though hard won. The first of these had been written before quitting his job at the station. The program was soon after sold to the National Television Network for a presumptive amount of money; nothing to be proud of, but a start. This script fit into an anthology show the network was running entitled The Stars Shine Over America, and was filmed as the 11th episode in the series. Emery had sold them a story called Barton Helms for Office. A hundred dollars for All Rights, and the script was no longer his. The entire exchange happened through mail and in the extent of a single, terse phone call. He neither met anyone involved with the production nor was he required (or invited) to ever set foot in a studio. This production apparently aired, though he was not informed of when, and never saw it. A pleasant thing would have been to see it, and even his name in the crediting, if it had been included, but these things were not to be.
“The idiot nearly hit me, and I had Vivian in the front seat. He’s lucky I didn’t crack his head.”
“Did he at least apologize?”
“Not until I told him to.”
A second show aired later in that year, one he also sold to National, for an episode of The People’s Tales, which was more thespian oriented and shot with two cameras. Emery did get to see this one hit the screen in his home. The production was not choice, but came to fruition in the lowest, B-grade setup he could imagine. Due to money and no way to re-shoot certain portions, several lackluster deliveries and terrible scenes had made it into the final cut. Even the opening shot, which had been faulted due to a camera activated at the wrong time, went to air. This began the program with an extreme close-up of a second cameraman’s ass. It was apparently the only shot they had and they couldn’t go back to do it again, nor did they have time to cut it after making so many other, last-minute alterations. It was also likely that the director/producer simply did not care much. The conception of the series was erroneous and delivered the stink of mishmash, prone to ending without much culmination. The scripts were fair, and the writing existed in hints of a cohesive show, but one that only rarely achieved what the series, doting on itself, claimed to be in its tagline: Television Excellence.
That second show was at least more preferably elusive than the front-and-center nature of a wrestling match, but while the writing was sharp, it certainly needed more work. Always in the process of practice, and with his radio-writing background and the needs of his family cudgeling him in discipline, he wrote more scripts and sent them out. He focused at first on productivity, until he found himself with an output strong enough to begin the more difficult work of reinforcement, of trying to raise the caliber of his work through numerous revisions that could finally have his focus. His mode was to work until he had the shape of things, and then detail that work to confer with the shape. The night hours aided in this, and he often wrote more than one piece in a night. There was no protection for these works he wrote and sent, and the respect anyone might have for an original piece of television writing was ill-defined, and at best, simply credited. The payment was low, the sets were cheap, and the productions were contained in pauperized budgets and a dearth of materials. He had heard the stories of writers who had been rejected by a studio, only to have their script stolen and filmed under another name, but was lucky in that this had not happened to him. He would have to be careful and keep his eyes out.
“Honey, what do you say we celebrate? Go out and have dinner tonight?”
“Can we afford that?”
“I don’t know if we can or can’t, but I think we should afford it.”
“Call the bank first.”
“No, I’m tired of calling them.”
Like other mediums, television productions had their shills and overworked horses. The slow trickle of money in this form was tastier and hard to pass up in those rare instances it was offered. These writers sat on hand and re-wrote the work of others, double-shifting and scratching with red. They were Maury Aarons in television’s own Red Rooms. The work-for-hire rights of the writing this produced paid steady enough to live in a certain security, and remov
ed the gamble of free-lancing. Emery did not want this, but if the meal was tasty enough, and the material fair, he might concede to a job in this system. This was the ultimate truth of free-lancing, that once a show had been picked up, a writer was, for even a short time, no longer a free-lancer, but a paid specialist. The relative joy of this, when riding the back of an original script one had penned himself, was overwhelming and gave a writer a touch of meaning from the beyond. The slight taste of this made an addict quickly.
A third script was sold to The Nash Television Theatre, which was one of the only hour-long shows to feature drama. The show shot its arrow far and the red eye it hit was one of quality. It did not miss but rarely. This was a place for stories more to Emery’s savor. Working with NTT was simple and all the machinery was in place to create a drama. Emery was then ushered to New York, domestic class, to take part in the workings of the program, though not until the day the show was to air. A writer’s presence was disliked and unwanted until it was too late to hear his upset at a script that had been butchered, or drowned in shoddy re-writes, or outright disregarded in favor of time and the most familiar sort of arc. The last-minute arrival of the writer was a warrant against what was perceived as an intrusion, like a lover showing up after all the flavor had been sapped from the tryst and the other party had moved on, a lover that did not ascertain itself an ex-lover.
“I’d like you to start smoking outside, honey. I’m sorry, but it’s getting so smoky in here and the baby’s eyes are watering.”
“It’s raining outside. I’ll just cut it out for a bit. Is that good?”
That a writer might be invited to the last hour of certain productions was a small demonstration of faith. It was better than nothing. This was usually only offered to those writers whose stories had been transcribed by a camera well. Shows that turned out quite good and that a writer might praise. Emery’s story for NTT had been prepared, shot, and was finished, ready to go out prior to Emery’s arrival. The re-writes were not done by Emery, or any other portion of the production. They had been done by someone invisible and nameless on behalf of the studio, and they had been un-intrusive. Emery watched the show’s screening and had a pleasant meal with the director and a writer that was being courted for another episode, Rudd something-or-other. Emery was a father in a production maternity ward, brought to the moment of viewing his wondrous child, then taken to dinner and told to go home. It was a healthy child, after all. No sense badgering it.
Still, there was more pride in having been picked up by NTT than with others. They understood the province of art, and often performed classic stories from beyond the usual Shakespeare, going further into the rind of great plays, giving air-time to Henrik Ibsen’s controversial Hedda Gabler, a rarely used work for its depiction of the New Woman, and exhibiting John Galsworthy’s For Love of Beasts. Emery had a copy of this author’s book, Tatterdemalion, on his coffee table. In addition to a completion of the scout badge for knot-tying, Emery might now adorn his uniform with a merit badge in scriptwriting. To be included in a billing with those writers long dead but still so loved was a bolsterer of the soul and had imbedded a rather splendid amethyst in his literary dog collar. That these plays of great talents might be put on with an eye toward using authors no longer in the requirement of pay was overlooked by Emery. It was enough, at first, to be in such brilliant company.
“I heard today that the Nash Theater is putting on The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”
“The poem? I wonder how they’re planning on doing that.”
“Beats me, but whatever they do, I want to know all about it.”
He had never felt in his life to be at ease with a page, in the sense that he had never written without squaring off against the constant presence of compromise. His new approach contained less of the pander, less of that begrudged catering to the whims of some ill-conceived demographic. The new work was less contaminated, more natural. He was in these new scripts, twisting the stories. He might, if he continued growing in skill, present for the American people the people themselves, allow them to shake hands, and in so doing, conjoin his work to a greater good that he might have, until recent days, dismissed as an implausible artistry for the few chosen princes of letters. His luck was not there, it seemed, but he could try. His love of writing tales only grew with each acceptance or rejection.
Beth’s appreciation of his free-lancing grew with the pass of months, and her worries dulled. Her husband had found ways to make do, and he seemed to know the routes of his shaky profession enough to make sure something was coming in for the many things that went out. The scripts left his hands in an earnest joy and that hardship of creativity that afflicted so many. The typewriter accepted him and he wrote as he could, trying to better himself in whatever ways he was lucky enough to spot, and hoping that those places for which his words were weak might show themselves to him soon enough. They often did.
“You are, in fact, my shiksa goddess, and I believe, firmly, that my mother is beginning to grow fond of you.”
“That’s a lark. Susa grinds her teeth when I speak.”
He began making money, yes, though barely enough to support a family of four. Beth had given birth in autumn, and Emery had found himself the proud father of two daughters. He was surrounded by girls, a certain form of excellence to him. With his two daughters available and both parents home each day, it was difficult finding a regimen to complete his work in his home, difficult to get time alone, yet somehow the presence of these two little ones, even sleeping, and Beth’s belief in him, bolstered his urge to create. He became a night-owl, an oil-burner, the morning’s “you’re-still-awake?” sort. The struggle invigorated him. Emery’s heart had learned a surefire openness that would follow him ever on: What luck, to barely make it, when his family was nearby to support and distinguish him. What great, wondrous luck. Or an unwittingly long con.
There were worse ways to spend a brain and heart. While the nightmares came to him with diligence, straight from the war’s past and en route to his occasional sleep, he was alive and his fear in them was only temporary. The phantasms of those events he had witnessed, upon waking, would haunt him through his shower and search for coffee, but then be gone. Then he had time with his girls. While his knee at times felt the change in barometric pressure Ohio was so prone to, it was steady and accountable, and like his mind, was certain in its use. He was healthy, loved being a father, surrounded by his beautiful girls, holding his daughters in one way, and his wife in another. Love over all, it seemed. To Emery’s reckoning, there were indeed far worse ways to have out a life, but so few better.
“Do you think we can afford to go to Cayuga this summer? Take the girls and maybe meet up with the other Ashers? I think William and Helen would enjoy a vacation.”
“Not unless a big check has come in that you haven’t told me about. Has one?”
“No. Not even a lying promise of one, lately.”
He wrote his shows and kept his eye clean, typing away the hours and moments of summer, then autumn, on into winter and that prolific stream of works only reached by a strong precept of industriousness, a professional work ethic coupled with the passage of time. He was not doing well, but his head was above the unpredictable surface and he seemed able to keep it there, for the time being. Television divided its actions up into seasons, really, and free-lance was most-assuredly seasonal, but there was no true account of these divisions, or how many might fall in a year.
As the shows were chosen, or denied, and as the checks arrived, or did not, his name itself began to elevate into something tangible to him, a thing he might prosper beyond his self. The page at hand was almost as if a place, and not an act. He went there, where the lessons and truths of life could be free from the cold constructions of the old mediums, even if he was unable to accomplish this most days. The writing of these dramas and morality plays was a strange and universal place where the unexpected could hold court over the usual, an unclear place where people became
the subjects of his whims, ethereally treated to their own hubris. This took place not in the night and day of production, smith for a paycheck, but in his thoughts and through scenarios, in a sort of supernal twilight all his own.
Chapter Nine
That the set-builders had constructed a set containing twelve tons of water and a mock-up submarine on a budget of crumbs was pioneering, and an assault against the lesser productions of late. Emery sat in his chair with a beer in his hand and watched the show. The cigarette returned to his lips until depleted, at which point he lit another, relaxing in his living room with Beth and watching the television. Anymore, his mind fell to synopsis and work when watching television. He was caught by whatever new stage-schemes he saw. Lately, there had been a mountain of them.
“Remind me to send this guy something,” he said aloud. Beth nodded from the couch.
“It’s absorbing.”