Thank You and Good Night

by Ray Succre

  “Just look at that. It’s like a real damn sub.”

  “What do you think it’s made of?”

  “Probably wood, metal, some cloth. The right lighting and angles and a lot of paint. Most of it is probably metal though, considering they’ve got actors walking around inside of it and nothing is wobbling. Look at that corrugated floor.”

  “I like the drips.”

  “Yeah, maybe they shot these scenes in a tank or a lake. I can’t tell. Looks damn nice, though. What a producer. Budget must have been tip top.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Ted Miller. He’s an NBC guy. Usually works with a couple other guys, too; I know Byron Carr is one. But this one only credits Miller.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “No, I sent one to Carr once. Remember that rejection that said I was too ‘Ohio’ and not ‘meridian’ enough?”

  “Oh, that damn thing.”

  “Yeah, that was Carr. Or more likely his assistant. I think I’ll try Miller, though. Hope something gets to him. I could send that piece on the governor’s island; much cheaper than a sub.”

  The quality of television’s interrogations with story was occasionally reaching high, and the overall looping of shows into anthologies was raising the tide of writing. The imagination was a bit less hindered, and locations for a scene were becoming more available as programs strayed from New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. The nickel budgets were being stretched with utmost creativity, and writers were beginning to take advantage. The horizon was clearer and easier to see, and techniques were bustling forward like goats at the feed-bin.

  The flexibility of things had increased. The box was growing to be more personal than theater, less grandiose yet more impacting, and without the superfluity and budgeting of the motion picture industry. The advertising revenue in this new medium was escalating to the point that low budgets might not be in the cards for long. The motion pictures were, by their format and nature, less able to accommodate advertisers, but television was ready to hold hands with the ad-man right from the start. Never before had a can of beans been shown to so many people at once. Commercialized television was the pitch of a radio salesman given the image of a billboard or magazine spread. Television combined these forms of advertising, setting them to motion like a film, and then it played this short film within the confines of a person’s home, right there in front of the couch, and better, when people were in the mood to see things, when they were interested, when they might want to know about beans. The advertising world would soon have an ad-man in the living room of everyone who owned a television. There were nearly six million of these consumers, and that number was only growing. The popularity of television might soon give that medium the size of consumer-base radio had long called home. Television could supplant radio, and soon, if the people kept buying. With the effectiveness of the home screen and an ever-growing demographic, the ogre of massive revenue had opened up its eyes and the rumbling of its stomach would soon become a powerful force.

  The increase in television’s economy, and those reliant on it, gave rise to a commercial tractability. This attitude, when peppered with money, began to reanimate the old resolve, however, of sponsorship gaining control over the medium itself. Radio had been strangulated by this phenomenon of business, and the process was all the more steadfast with an encroach into television. Advertisers did not need to learn the medium. They had practiced their approach in radio. They knew to hire television men for television ads. They knew how to get what they wanted, and there was no learning curve for them. Emery had sold many scripts, and now made a fair living, erratic as it was, but even in the throes of this subtle success, the rules of an acceptable story had begun to be swayed by sponsorship.

  CUT TO:

  INT. SUBMARINE - TIME INDISTINGUISHABLE

  Four people in tailored suits sit behind place settings around a metal, oval table, waiting to eat. They’ve already been presented the main course, which sits on the table before them. They now sit in a relaxed fashion, drinking from glasses of water and waiting to eat, staring at the extravagantly sized serving platter and its polished dome. ENTER FRANK GILL, in butler uniform. GILL waddles to the table, reaches over, and hoists the dome to reveal the meal at hand. The meal consists of EMERY ARCHER, nude, evenly browned in an oven, on his elbows and knees with his legs tied and a Red Delicious crammed in his mouth. His eye-sockets are scorched and the eyes are no longer in his skull, leaving vague, black pits.

  FRANK GILL:

  Told ya, kid.

  FRANK then exits the room. The suits lick their lips and each address the immobile, browned writer.

  SUIT #1, WEARING A BOW-TIE:

  Say, you can’t paint the soldiers so scared, Asher. Stebler’s Motor Oil is paying for this production and showing men that scared might come off like the soldiers are cowardly, and that might make the company look un-American. No dice. Cheer it up. Tell a joke or somethin’.

  SUIT #2, WEARING A NECK-TIE:

  That Christmas Murderer you wrote likes murderin’ too much. Kellogg’s doesn’t like those scenes. Take the murderin’ out. Make him a blackmailer.

  SUIT #3, WEARING A HORSE’S REIGN:

  Asher, it’s like this: Imperial Cola doesn’t want those kids in the last act drinkin’ milk. Know what they should drink, instead? Here’s a hint: Who’s payin’ for this? Yeah, there you go. Think things through.

  SUITE #4, WEARING A NOOSE:

  Buddy, you’re essentially calling half the damn country vultures to their faces. And just because they might be, in some sort of weird rhetoric, doesn’t make it so you can just tell ‘em that. Knobfield wants out unless you drop this ending, and word is, Airlines Pacific are gonna have a big problem with those people being on a cruise at the start.

  EMERY mumbles from behind the apple and the suits reach for their forks and knives.

  DISSOLVE TO:

  Actors and actresses. These unique creatures had taken to the cathode ray tube and were now starting to give it their full capacity. When combined with a director that knew how to use them, to escalate them, the effect of good acting could mesmerize. Their trial had been won, and these individuals started to know the tell-tale climb in popularity that renown insists upon. Without the Hollywood system surrounding them, or the incessant spatter of radio producers in their ears, these performers had started into the television recognition game. All the programming began to glow with an even burn, particularly the episodic shows, the anthologies and serials. Families at home knew the names, looked forward to the next episode, the next show. Small-screen celebrity had begun, hot flames rising from the bare coals by which television had come to gain its access. People began to recognize the names of the actors, at times directors, and in rare instances, even a writer. An award was created for the medium, the Emmy, and that award was going out in a variety of modes each year.

  FADE OUT

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  FADE IN

  The sets were multiple. No longer was a writer trapped with a stage-play setup, but could branch a story onto more than two sets and have as many actors as required, though the use of but a few was preferred. The tabloid presence of the dramatic dialogue was over, and now crowds could exist, arguments for eight, or even a scene showing the entire crew of a navy ship from a tall shot off the tower. A writer worked for one or more cameras that could aim any which way. The feel of dress in a program no longer had to feel like a few people in costumes, but an entire production in cohesive wardrobe. The
characters gained depth and the scenes bolstered character. Like Hollywood, a producer didn’t just hang a man into a set and have another man speak to him, but the right two men, in the right setting, and all with an eye toward a theme. Plots were becoming pregnant with significance, and their styles highly variable. Work was being put into everything, from the sorts of film one might use, to the look of a set and how to change it mid-scene, how to do more off-camera to enhance what was in frame. This may have been a gimcrack byproduct of other forms, but having come together with such force, and with such revenue raining down from advertisers, the television had usurped a place among the older mediums as a true, executable art.

  Chicago and New York were darlings for their creation and the manner they had nourished it. Every hint of lust to a fade-out, every lasso, every gunshot, was a vivid butterfly flitting up from their hand in a period where gray neglect and cold doubt seemed to be usual modes.

  CUT TO:

  INT. ASHER HOUSE - DAY

  EMERY stands with his back against the kitchen sink. His hair is sticking up from having just risen from bed. He sips from a cup of coffee and opens several envelopes, reading over each, one at a time, quickly to himself.

  V.O. (VOICE OF BETH ASHER):

  “Dear Mr. Asher, we would like to accept your script Whirlpools for our program. If you would kindly…”

  V.O. (VOICE OF PAIGE GIRDWOOD):

  “Mr. Asher, All the System is exactly the sort of work we want on a regular basis. Let’s move along to…”

  V.O. (VOICE OF WILLIAM ASHER):

  “Sir, this is an unfair and wholly non-descript story. The boys in the Pacific went through much trouble and great harm to secure what we have today, and you ought not question what you clearly know so little about.”

  Through this process, we see EMERY go through two smiles before ending in a frown. He sets the letters on the kitchen counter.

  EMERY:

  Well, what do you know, anyway?

  C.U.— We see EMERY’S face split up the middle and jaggedly tear apart to reveal a young Japanese man scrunching his eyes in pain.

  DISSOLVE TO:

  Cayuga Lake. The summer. A full week. This was his first time returning since childhood. A portion of him had thought this place would never hold up to his memory and its penchant for imaginary flight. He was so pleased to be wrong. The weather was splendid and he played with his daughters, splashing them the way he had splashed his brother, William, so long ago. Beth sunbathed beautifully and the family hiked the trails of Taughannock (one little girl in her father’s arms), and Emery decided to make the trip to Cayuga an annual event, just as it had been when he was a child. The quick stays in New York for various shows he had written were eclipsed by the excruciating commute back and forth from Ohio. This drive was lonely and long, and he found himself missing his family much. Cayuga was a wondrous lull in the business of life.

  “I think I’ll take a look at that piece, tonight. About the carnival hanging. It’s in the bag with my tackle. Maybe see if I can set it straight again,” he rambled to himself, bored. Beth shook her head and gave him the upbraided look of a sudden change in mood.

  “How nice,” she said, her voice stern. He smiled and acquiesced.

  “Okay. Understood. When we get back, then.”

  “When we get back.” Vacation. He had promised, after all.

  New York was always a night or so. There were times when the city only seemed to exist for this brief span, as if the mere act of exiting caused the city to vanish until he might return. He knew the city little, yet intruded upon it so often. When stepping into a studio, he often found his mood was out of place, a potato-scrounging rube in coveralls trying to fit in with a Wall Street cousin. While the visits were short, and all business, the travel was exhausting, and he did not want these ventures into New York to be as frequent as they were. There had to be another way. He had not reached a point where moving to New York was the better idea, yet hadn’t enough clout to simply work from Cincinnati. Something would have to give way and he knew it would not be New York.

  The drive grew only more tedious and numbing. There were about six-hundred and fifty miles between his home and the downtown area of New York City, which was too long to drive in a day, not while one maintained any sort of vitality or composure, but did require being driven in that amount of time. Including a stop to eat, his two, hard-won breaks for use of a public restroom, and most aggravating, the authority with which traffic could besiege his schedule, the drive took nearly twelve hours.

  He would walk the sets, when allowed, only vaguely present, and get his dazed feel for the construction, for how his words were manifest into filmable reality. This loose information served him, built itself into the design of new stories, contributed to his ever-growing impression of what could be done on a set, while helping to disembarrass him of his previous, flawed notions. There were many of those in him, he found, and it was tough to remove them. He supposed this was how one learned a thing, a way of function, how one foraged in a business or trade, all the small bits becoming system.

  The trips to New York gave his stories a more knowing construction, and thus an edge in acceptability. This felt to be pandering, however, and irritated him. There was no way around it; much of a script needed to be written for the producer and his interests, both creatively and marketably, not simply written for the public. A producer had different notions of the public than the writer, as was profitable and necessary. This eye toward the Big Man, while writing, only increased Emery’s exhaustion. He had to work hard to maintain a semblance of integrity while still giving the little emperors their dainties. He had a role to fulfill, but he wanted to get as much of his own sense of good into it as he could.

  If a story was strong, the author still played odds. If a story was good but also came off as being easy to shoot, if it seemed minimal from a production standpoint, it had points over others. Anything that caused a municipal, commercial, or national spark of pride, anything that made viewers seem smarter or provided some sort of proof that these entities were as deserving as they felt they were... that was a network script. That was a trifle of writing with a much greater chance of being purchased. A decent script was still a decent work, but the odds were condemning. There were many decent scripts. Emery knew that a good story and a solid construction were not enough, unless one was hoping on the lottery style of making it, which did happen from time to time. No, a good script with a touch of catering was better. The odds of an informed script being picked up by a studio were much higher when all the i’s were dotted from the start and when the script had potential money as a forethought. Emery just needed to keep his ears open, push what discipline he had, and with enough coffee, not fall asleep at the wheel between cities.

  The stories came from his mind and were at times granted a physical life, and he didn’t even have to build one single item for a set. This was a given for a writer, but it still seemed a strange thing and Emery marvelled over it at times. When a script was accepted, and with any luck, a show produced, other people gave the story a physical reality. He could write a scene with a child in a tree-fort, and in the months to come, someone might build that tree-fort out of various materials, and then Emery would be there, invited onto the set, find himself sitting in the fort, interacting with something he had thought up, but not built himself. In this way, he could actually touch something, through time delay, from his own imagination, a detail taken from his mind and built in the physical. These brief moments granted him things he had never thought he would possess: A small amount of power and a certain importance, even minor. Some people were actually willing to manufacture the stuff of his mind. He could not help but cherish this, a bit.

  The simple lines he typed in his small, Ohio kitchen were mattering, ever so briefly, in the productions of New York. This was a long way from the Boy Scouts or a Skytrain, his junior high presidency or experimental parachute testing, yet somehow not far off at all. He felt som
ehow to have returned in slight to those days of telling Paige Girdwood his little adventure stories, and his pursuits in New York felt wholly mission-based. He was making maneuvers into television. He could squat down for a moment on set, in tree-houses or airy towers, in castle libraries or jungles, and admire the work of so many hands. They were professional hands that were paid to collaborate on something he had written near his Westinghouse oven at three in the morning some random Thursday. They were hands of people he would never meet beyond simple hellos muttered in passing during short stays in a city that was not his own. He even appeared in credits, on occasion, when some of the hands did not.

  CUT TO:

  EXT. ‘ALL THE SYSTEM’ SET, STUDIO ONE - AFTERNOON

  We see EMERY and TED MILLER smoking cigarettes near a side-gate for staff parking, just off to the side of a prepared set, one designed to show a public official speaking outdoors to a crowd. TED spots an individual in a nice suit heading toward the smaller studio building.

  TED:

  Hey, see that guy? Over there, by the side exit?

  EMERY:

  Guy with the razor-burn or the bald fellow?