by Ray Succre
Beth was nervous, more so than when they had moved into the house they were now leaving. Things had changed since arriving in Ohio. Money had lifted and lowered them in ever unpredictable surges. They had both grown accustomed to the Cincinnati weather and the lay of the town. They had begun the real start of their marriage here, and become parents. Ohio had fostered all of this, and now they were moving on into a more unknown territory, financially and geographically. Los Angeles was across the country, in the coastal west, and in fact, was just about the farthest west one could go and remain in the lower forty-eight.
Beth spent time talking warmly with her grandmother, who now had come to accept Emery as a good man, a provider beyond his physical lineage (a lineage she had always disliked much). Emery was eager for this attention, and when he wasn’t working over a story in his mind while packing, gave in to slight antics to get all the women laughing. Having his family, both immediate and parental, blood and in-law, together in one place for the benefit of helping him begin this new venture in his career was a magnanimous and heartfelt arrangement. He wanted to pack slower to let this continue as long as possible, yet had to rush through things in order to get back onto the page at hand.
Emery had driven into the meat of the show quickly, before even a single article had been packed, staying up several nights in the previous week typing the pilot and scrounging through his mind for other stories. He revisited older works that had not been purchased, making notes on them about ways in which he might re-tool them for a speculative mood. This self-propelled rush and lack of sleep provided him with much. His output was strong and he was getting the stories down in due order. The half-hour format, while bothersome and a bit degrading to him at this stage in his career, came flooding back with emphasis, and it did make the scripts shorter, which meant he could write more of them in a shorter span of time. He was good at it, and felt comfortable with the devices and breaks inherent to the time-span and form.
Mr. Dozier had received the pilot and backup and accepted them both over the telephone, provided Emery go over them and straighten out a few details. Dozier now wanted a line-up for the sponsors, and quickly. Emery was onto it. He was making the thing happen but his mind was the worse for wear. He needed writers but they needed to be handpicked, and with little time, Emery was simply trying to hold on as long as he could. He wanted to get the program in working order, sustaining itself long enough that he could take the time to review writing samples and hire some relief. His thoughts were in temerity the same weariness that his mother wore on her physical frame. Cayuga in the Summer, a short and blissful time of relent, would be a godsend, though with their relocation to Los Angeles, this Summer vacation would now be a far more expensive trip, and by plane, not a car.
“When will your television go on?” Susa asked her son as they settled books into boxes from the shelves in the living room. Her language brought from him a smile.
“I’m not sure yet,” Emery admitted, “We still have to film the pilot. I’m now incorporated with Asher Productions, which will split the end with CBS. Bernie Dozier, my network producer, hired a guy named Sol Jamison to executive produce, and Bob Keith has signed on to direct the first two episodes. Probably more. I haven’t met Bob, but I’ve seen one of his dramas for Playhouse 90, and I like him, so far. We need writers now, to get the executives off my skull and create a line-up. And we need actors that will take things seriously, despite the speculative bent. And a host. We need a host immediately.”
“Is the host like an emcee?”
“Sure, like that. Introduces and closes each episode. Tour-guide, sort of. He’ll have to look good and have the right voice.”
“You know who has a wonderful voice that I adore hearing?”
“Who’s that?”
“Edward Gaines.”
“Well, that’s a great voice, but have you ever seen him?”
“No, why?”
“He’s ugly as sin and enormous. You can’t put him in front of a camera.”
“Emery, that’s cruel. You shouldn’t think that way.”
“No more cruel than not wanting to be seen in shabby clothes. The look of television is the handsome sort. Pretty and prettier women. Handsome men.”
“Oh, you know who is handsome? Arch Oboler. Remember him? I saw him in Time once. He’s dashing, isn’t he? And his voice is deep, of course. Is he still doing Lights Out, Everybody?”
“One of my favorites. But no, he’s doing movies now. That show went off the air some time ago.”
“Oh? That’s a shame. I liked it.”
“As did I. Arch Oboler and Orson Banry are two of my biggest influences. Both live in southern California, but Oboler’s voice is too deep, really. I do want to try and contract Banry to write for the show, if that’s even possible. Maybe Oboler, too. That would be excellent. But for the host, we need someone personable, handsome, with a strong voice, but someone lesser known than Oboler. A good voice, but sort of mid-range.”
“Well, how about this? You’re handsome. And sometimes you can be personable. And you used your voice on the radio. In college. So, why don’t you be the emcee?”
“Host. It’s not really an emcee sort of job. And that’s appealing, sure, but I have to be a specialist here. I can’t do everything. I do enjoy that you felt the need to use the adverb ‘sometimes’ before ‘personable’.”
“It’s only that you can be a touch off-putting when your head is in the clouds.”
“Beth has explained this to me in great detail, yes. I can’t host, though; I’m too short and I’d feel vain standing in front of a camera. I belong on the page. I haven’t acted since high school, and I was only tolerable. You remember, I’m sure.”
“Well, I’d say it was better than tolerable.”
“You were made delusional by your maternal sense, then. William was the better actor.”
“Say, do you still have that little play the two of you wrote? It was so cute.”
“Oh, he says it’s long gone, but I know the rat has it out there in D.C. He won’t admit to it, but I know. I believe he’ll one day use it for blackmail.”
The evening wore on, and Emery began to cudgel the particular seed his mother had planted in him: Serving as host of his own show. The more he struck at the outer layers of the idea, to pulverize it, the more nutrient he found beneath. He discounted the idea, repeatedly, but like a filching relative, it only came back, each time with a better argument.
The family went out for dinner, somewhat of a celebration at having finished most of the packing. The talk was stilted, but honest, and he felt a sense of uniqueness in being the only male present. He was situated at a round table in the middle of the restaurant, facing his family of women, noting the similarities between family members, regardless of age. Vivian was following Beth’s physical blueprint closely, but Rebecca had begun to look much like his mother, Susa. Emery had never looked like either of his parents, and now his daughters did not resemble him. This was a little isolating, but thoughts on it were easy to push away. They were not important, in the larger scheme.
There was one idea however, that did keep recurring as he sat at the table and ate with his family. The notion of hosting his show would not stay dormant. What a silly idea. He rid himself of it by thinking over a newer script he had in mind. The host dilemma returned. He struck up a conversation with Rebecca, adoring as he was of her. When the short discussion ended, the notion of hosting flooded back into him. It was unshakeable. He could do it, and his voice would work, he supposed. He had a small range of voice experience with radio, but had never acted on a stage as an adult. No, he would be too busy with the writing and producing. There would be no time to sit for a makeup artist and then situate himself before a camera. Someone would be hosting the pilot, and Emery wanted to find that someone soon.
During the family’s pleasant dinner out, with his mother’s idea rattling in his upper matter, he finally allowed himself to pretend being the host for a sho
rt while. He drifted, fantasizing the scenario while his wife and mother talked, while his daughters moved about in the chairs and tried to keep their elbows off the table. He would wear a suit. It would be a clean, well-cut thing that made him look taller. He would slick his hair back.
The food arrived and the conversation was subtle. He returned to a soundstage in his mind. In his suit, with his hair, he practiced orating the introduction to the pilot episode as if the host, to see if he might work in that position. This was a wonderful place to play, and he lost track of conversation. As the Ashers ate, a glowing, silvery cloud settled over Emery’s brows and swallowed his mood into make-believe. He toyed with the notion of memorizing lines, of having his makeup applied, of being the man on camera. Hosting a show, with an audience watching, would somewhat make him a leading man. Emery was being dopey and perhaps swollen. This fancy flight over dinner was enjoyable, however, and playing the host of his television show did seem to work nicely in his mind. Such a conclusion was expected, of course; few men made themselves fools in their imaginations.
He could do the job, though, couldn’t he? The studio had tried several people with the role of host, and none had worked well. The closest had been Warren Benton, but his voice was so deep that it caused the pilot to feel much darker than it needed to be. Benton’s voice could have made an opening shot of Mayberry feel like Sodom. Emery practiced in his mind and, when his family had gone to sleep for the evening, he practiced aloud in his garage. He spoke amidst the smells of grease and metal and old tools, pleasant smells comforted him and made the air seem familiar.
“... a town on the brink of ruin,” he practiced, gesturing a bit and trying to get the feel of things, “a place where the Sun no longer rises, and nothing can function. A broken town. Its name is Marburg, and the quaint, idyllic residents of this town have become its prisoners. Where is this fractured place? It’s out in our American farmlands and scrub, just down the road... on The Other Side. On... The Other Side. A town on the brink of ruin. I’m Emery Asher, and I’m a jackass. Where is this fractured place? A place where... the brink of ruin. A town lost in the folds of reality. A place where the Sun- the Sun- a place where the Sun no longer rises... and nothing can function.” He used a carton of oil on a shelf as his camera, and he practiced performing a monologue to it for nearly an hour before he felt he had it right.
The following morning, he called Bernie Dozier to announce himself as host. Bernie was against it immediately. Emery gave an introduction to the pilot episode he had rehearsed. He narrated and exampled how he would do it.
“Yeah, that’s nice, but you’re not an actor. You’re a writer. And a producer. Asher, our job is to build this car and keep it clean, and we can’t do that if you’re driving it around all day.”
Bernie argued at first, and with good points, but in the end allowed Emery to choose himself as host for the pilot, to see how it went. If it came off bad, they could find an actor to shoot the intro and exit scenes before air-time. It would be an easy edit in post-production. Bernie’s feeling was that a pilot was only that. It needn’t go further if the thing became a mule. The man said as much, giving a worst-case-scenario over the phone. This lack of interest in the overall potential of the show disheartened Emery, but he supposed it came with Dozier’s position.
They had chosen Everything is Broken for the pilot, which was an understandably more polished piece and, after being re-designed for the half-hour length, worked somewhat well. The studio had an army of cameramen and various personnel, from which Emery could study and choose his team, in so much as one could choose from a smaller pool of those selected for him, but there was one sort of player that proved difficult in all realms of production: The actors. There was a pressing need to know who might play what at this point in the production, but on-air talent was tricky. Actors were wild-cards. Emery knew many, and his coming-up in the television world had introduced him to the running mill of New York talent. He could ask any number of them to take part, and most would likely agree to a role in his program, given his reputation, but Emery did not want to drink from that pool of New York blood. Hollywood was chock full of actors and using his New York comrades so early might keep him from using the new actors he wanted to meet and hire. He needed to imbed himself in Los Angeles, in the network and the new pond with the new fish. He needed to get comfortable with the scene before branching out.
Bernie had been right, of course. The anthology programs were dying, and people most certainly wanted to see familiar faces in a show, to lean on them and get the delivery from a comforting, yokefellow character. Emery had exhausted his thought on this matter, and concluded what he felt to be a nice work-around for his situation. Every episode would be different in construction, and this included the actors hired. This might cause the program to lose its identity in the eyes of an audience, as Dozier had explained, feeling that would be a supreme negative. Repetition was crucial, but Emery had other ideas on how to give this. If a man changed his personality again and again, could it be ever said that you really knew him? No. There was much in character. A person relied on repetition, on base traits, when gauging another. This was obvious, but a good actor knew how to change the face just right, pseudo-emotion and the way of fetching an audience, bringing them in close. To make an anthology show work, the host would need to be static, with his presence on varied sets, in each episode. The host would serve as the familiar face, the friend you could trust, but something else would need to occur. There needed to be more than a constant host where public recognition was to be fostered.
The answer for Emery was simple: Talented celebrity. Episodes lightly peppered with the occasional large name to bridge that trouble of the unfamiliar for his audience. Bringing in recognizable celebrity, with a static host, could function to draw the audience that now favored regularity and repetition. America was intimate with her actors, and if he were to use familiar faces such as these in his teleplays, if he could catch them, then the stories would gain some of the potency that hour dramas called, while still working for the crowd that enjoyed the serialized, character-driven, episodic shows. The host would be the ever-present character, and the actors would be the drama. As long as he didn’t re-use the same actors repeatedly, he might have enough familiarity in his strangers to make them feel trustworthy, and thus, believable. Of course, under the front porch of Hollywood lurked a special sort of talent, a particular species of personality: The star. America loved every facet of these well-lit and scrutinized creatures.
There was a problem in large-scale actors, however. This breed made the motion pictures. That was their pedigree, and television was viewed by many as a successful fad, but certainly no substitute for cinema. Landing one of those starlit fish wouldn’t be easy and might take time, as well as more money than could feasibly be spent. That was the conundrum. He would have trouble trying to get Hollywood on board, as the motion picture industry was more lucrative and time-consuming, but he did not want to rely on the New York system that had shouldered him to the particular rung at which he now grasped. What could he do? In the end, Emery concluded that he would call on his New York friends in time. The Other Side would be a better show for them by the time he offered it, a wondrous machine built from his sweat and foraging in Hollywood. For now, his focus on the pilot would necessarily need to consume him, and the casting of local actors for it could not wait.
Revisions on potential scripts for future episodes required time, and they were needed with immediacy. He typed through the nights, slept little, and always burned the cigarette to the filter. While he had a small library and study in one of the rooms of the new home, the late hours still called him to type at the kitchen table.
CUT TO:
INT. SOL JAMISON’s OFFICE - LATE AFTERNOON
An office of meager display. SOL JAMISON, Executive Producer, sits behind his desk. The office door is open.
JAMISON stands up as EMERY enters. It is just the two of them. They shake hands.
<
br /> JAMISON:
Mr. Asher. I’m glad you could make it; I thought his would be a good time to meet and get to know one another. Bernie Dozier has had some nice things to say about you, and I was hoping we could discuss the pilot. I know I called on short notice, but I feel we need to settle a few early things.
EMERY:
(with a smile)
No trouble at all. And it’s good to meet you. Just call me Emery.
JAMISON:
Will do. I’m Sol. Listen, there’s a small problem with the pilot.
EMERY:
Oh?
JAMISON:
A group of people going into a neighboring town to destroy them and take their land. That’s the problem. See, it kind of reeks of Germany right around fifteen years back or so, if you get my meaning. People are going to think we’re hinting at the Nazis.
EMERY:
Well, I suppose we could be talking about a Nazis, but... no, we are not. The invading town ends up destroyed, inhabited by ghosts with no direction, a broken place. There’s a parallel in there, sure, but it’s not a conscious point. It’s not about Nazis. It’s about greed and penance. It’s about loving thy neighbor.
JAMISON:
No parallel. We don’t want it. There’s not a sponsor in all of America that would market with a piece that has anything to do with sympathy for Nazis. Ghosts or not.