by Ray Succre
I am not in control of a production’s length, degree, or whether anything will function in the way it is designed. I can plan, but most of what a producer does on set is repair and smooth-over trouble, find alternate routes to a particular solution, and answer endless questions while trying to think ahead as much as possible. A head producer has to do it quick. Sol gets it worse than I do; he has to answer the money and staff troubles. I end up with more of the on-set problems. For both of us, the currency by which all our decisions and transactions take place is problematic: The currency is strain, and its value is degraded over time. You expend stress to limit time, or expend time to limit stress. A constant balance that tips either way with little notice, and others can affect it without your knowing. Beth has much time, and wishes only that I could be more a part of it. I’ve been trying to push various hobbies on her, having little else I can do. I am supportive of her to the point she can get frustrated, so I have to cool my motor at times and simply accept that she can be a touch bitchy. She has earned the right to be so, and these last few weeks are one of those times when I weather that particular sort of quiet storm. I do deserve her frustrations, of course.
This show will not last forever, and once it’s gone, we’ll be thankful that we got as much from it as we could while the production lasted. That’s the truth, and I have to keep moving while it lasts, set this branch of the Asher family up for the future, when work may not be so readily available.
More later.
***
Nightfall now. The girls are playing in our hotel room behind me. My legs are sore from the hike. We did not make it to the bottom of the canyon, as carrying Vivian was somewhat of a torture by the quarter mark, and Rebecca is not yet suited for such long walks, much less a descent into something of that depth. The canyon is magnificent, but I’ve learned I am not suited for that sort of descent, either. The hike was fun, at most points, and the soreness we all feel is appropriate and somewhat enlightening. I could barely breathe when we reached the top again. Smoking takes its toll, as do Beth’s eyes when she sees me lighting up while making our way up the trail. Men are foolish, brother. Being winded makes me want to smoke. How ugly. You’re the same way, I remember. You’ll be pleased to know I have cut back somewhat and will continue to do so, a few less each week until I am at an acceptable number. Maybe a pack a week?
Beth has made a run to the local market for various goods and taken the girls with her to pick out treats. We have just returned from a lovely dinner, a true anniversary dinner, and despite the girls, this was still romantic and meaningful beyond having to parent throughout the meal. Both of the girls were so well-behaved. I wonder if Beth said something to them prior. They’ll be back soon, and put to bed. Then Beth and I can have a more relaxing and lovely time with one another.
I heard about your nomination for the Woollcott Award. It’s a shame you did not win it. Always the bridesmaid, eh? I’m sorry to hear you were dodged. I was hoping for a different turnout, of course. You work hard and you’ve earned the right to some recognition beyond your family, your editors, and the various staff-writers by which you are respected. That you’re continually nominated each year does mean something good. I’m sure you’re already aware of that. I know you don’t put much stock in prizes, and I feel somewhat the same way, but being nominated for things sort of puts you in the position of having to care, or else seeming unthankful. It’s a conundrum mainly built by other people and set up around you, but I think you handle it fine. Prizes and awards are sort of like the notion of image I wrote a few pages back. I don’t see how anyone could not feel your articles worthy of award, however. Your talent has always been so impressive. I mean that. I couldn’t write in the journalism world to save my life, and with daily articles… your schedule is just as busy as mine, though the difference is that mine doesn’t have to be that busy, I simply make it that way. You’re busy by demand. That must be a strain, at times. I’ll be honest: Your articles could only be more fetching if you drew bare breasts over the text.
My new writer, Larry Belmont, is sparks on a page. I hired him on two weeks ago and he’s a good kid; knows his way around a scene. You might be aware of him, as he writes for The Gentleman. Sailing articles, mostly. I suspect you’re the sort to have a subscription, brother, though most likely sent to your office, hmm?
Larry’s skill is quite honed for his age and he works fast. I had to drudge through radio and some of early television’s awful programming, those marshier ends to scripts, to train myself on how to do what I do, but these youngsters are jumping into the mix right from the start, going straight for television, and they make swift understudies. I’m somewhat ancient to them, despite my young age. Belmont’s first script is being shot as I type this, and unless something goes badly, we will air it in just over a month. It is a dark and rather frightening story called “Dare, Sweet Eleanor”. His work is far more disturbing than mine, so far, and he has a penchant for horror, but reining him into the show is not difficult, and he takes to the Other Side waters like an Olympian. Based on a test audience viewing of that episode, he has already been contacted with an offer to write a feature script with Pacific. He’s off to a fast start in this business and I’m a touch enamored with watching his name build.
Belmont and I have been talking much lately over prospective script ideas, and I feel close to him. His wife, who shares with your wife the name Helen, is a bit stand-offish, but gets along well enough for a few hours at a time, and Beth is quite fond of her. They came over for cocktails last week, and I think we’re going to make a weekly event of it. The Belmonts are good company and we like them. I need to warm up to the Mrs., but she does seem cordial. There is a good chance she dislikes me inherently, for being a part of the show that lately takes all of her husband's time, just as it takes up my own. Larry could be the first true friend I’ve made out here. I’ll have to wait and see, but I could really use a few friends.
Interesting. I’m just now realizing he could possibly become the first friend I’ve made since leaving WKCR, not simply moving to Los Angeles. Well, that’s a bit sad. I should remedy that problem. I’d like more friends, I think. If you have ever wondered why I write you such long, confessional letters, think about what I’ve just said, about having friends. I promise to leave you alone once I get a few of those. I do wish there were a way to live closer to you and closer to mother. I don’t know when I’ll get to see her next. At least I know that you and I will get to spend time together in the summer, at the lake. Perhaps I should try to arrange a way for mother to come with us this year? It would be expensive, but I’d be willing to arrange it, if she is interested. Wouldn’t that be fun? I don’t think she’s been back to Cayuga since we were kids. Say, what does Helen think of mother? I don’t think I’ve ever asked.
At any rate, it’s fun talking over stories with Larry, and I’m looking forward to settling my writing team. I need one more writer, possibly two. Soon enough. Of course, having someone that talented beside me is also somewhat daunting. I’ve run out of ways to say “good job” to Larry, and while I’m exceedingly proud of him, I’d be fooling myself if I were to think there wasn’t a smidge of jealousy in me over it. Not the petty sort, just in there, and easily handled. I chalk that up to the notion that I didn’t know anything when I was his age, was running through the jungle in Leyte with a 10-inch bayonet, starving and getting shot at (I have since learned who made those bayonets, my brother: Utica Cutlery. Same that made the silverware we used every night for dinner, as kids. Something upsetting about that).
After I returned from duty, I mainly spent my days trying not to miss my classes, trying not to miss any errant girls, and writing bad shorts for campus radio, wishing women would notice me as much as I noticed them. That Larry’s already married, and on the ball with his scripts so young (or at least a productive course, if that’s your thing), and that he is so eager and driven (things I can say I very much understand) is inspiring, but definitely causes one
to look in the mirror from time to time. A good kid. I’m pleased to go over his work with him and give my weird brand of critique. He thinks of me as an employer, yes, rather than his peer, but for now, a paycheck-inspired loyalty is enough. Being an employer is a role I handle well, thus far.
Of grandiose news is that I’ve signed Banry to script an episode, hopefully to air in the next season. Yes, Orson Banry. I can’t wait to read it and I wonder what he’s planning. It is an honor to get to work with a writer like Banry, as I’m sure you well know. It was your copy of The Sounders that first introduced me to his work, so long ago. His novels have been a strong influence on me over the years. The short stories, too. I can’t believe my luck! I’m quite excited. I’ll get an autograph for you, if you like. Banry runs a funny little writers group out in Los Angeles, through which I met Belmont, as well.
I was sorry to hear you were ill. The flu passes at wondrous speed here on the west, and I have not been good at dodging those particular grenades of cough and hack. I was sick once due to my director, but it passed quickly. The arid climate down here seems to dilute the seasonal ills and we all appear to recover with speed, with the exception of what I had last month, around the same time I first heard you were sick. It sounds as if what you contracted was quite virulent. Maybe pneumonia and they misdiagnosed? Whatever it was, I’m certain I had something similar. It ended about four weeks ago. I had a fever, a few muscle aches (which always accompany any flu I get; it’s my prime symptom), and it felt like somebody kicked apart my kidneys in my sleep. Of the two of us, brother, I may get the kidney stones first.
That illness was horrific, though I wasn’t able to stay out of the studio. It made its way through all of us. Half of the production crew was vomiting intermittently. I felt weaker than I have in years. Moving around the sets required a bit of concentration, which was very new to me. There was one particular night I was frightened to go to sleep. I worried I might not wake up. It comes on very quickly, this illness, and it vanishes just as quickly. About four days total. If you had the same thing I had, the only thing that made me feel any better (maybe just in my head) was direct sunlight. I was merely sick when walking around in the warm day, but stuck on an indoor set, in the dim... I was curling and holding my breath. I didn’t drink any booze while I had it, but I did notice that drinking coffee made me not notice it as much. I could tune the kidney ache out if I was a little busy in the blood. And smoking always helps. Suppresses the symptoms, I’ve noticed. Of course, I was probably damaging my kidneys irrevocably in doing so, and Beth does not enjoy the tiny smoker’s cough I have developed (though I suspect she does enjoy the slight gravel my voice has taken on). None of the cold or flu remedies did anything, by the way.
I’m a bit worried that Beth has not yet returned. It’s been over an hour, now. Also, I am out of cigarettes and things to write in this letter. No matter. Doing this will keep my mind off not having cigarettes. Be patient with me?
Rebecca has been very understanding and caring with her little sister. They will be so close over the years; I can see it forming already. Aside from this, Rebecca is becoming exorbitantly difficult. On us, I mean. She challenges everything Beth and I say and do. At seven. Her teenage years are going to be unwieldy and torturous for me. If I tell her that the dinosaurs long ago went extinct, and no longer exist in our own time beyond fossils and alligators, and imagination, she’ll tell me I’m wrong, and when I try to refute this, she’ll become quite angry and wave her hand at me as if to say “Just shut up. I’m done with you,” before walking out of the room, or worse, sitting near me and glowering. She has my smarts but also my stubbornness, and most certainly Beth’s mother’s temper. That will be much of a trial in the decades to come. She also has her mother’s beautiful, boy-fetching eyes, which, now that I give it some thought, might prove to be more of a trial in the years to come than her temper. Raising her is tough, but enlightening. She’s an entirely different person than Vivian, and she takes to information in a much different way. Beth and I tell her things, of course, but we are not instructors. No. We have a mild approach to teaching Rebecca things, based on the child’s interests, at this point.
I’m the disciplinarian of the house, so that could be a part of the trouble. It’s tough when Beth goes soft on Rebecca when I’m not around. They’re getting along wondrously right now, but Rebecca tends to see her mother as water, and her father as brick, and she prefers to ignore brick. This upsets me greatly, but I know it’s quite natural, and I do understand it. Maybe better than most. It is still problematic.
We received the hurricane postcard you sent from Maine. It looks fearsome. At least you and Helen weren’t there when one struck. The trees break and careen through houses, I hear.
I should end this letter. It’s easier on the phone. I can’t hear you on a page. On paper, everything is stretched greatly and the reality of what a person thinks can be so easily distorted, or undiscovered. Perhaps that’s a reason I’m so fond of it. I could have called you a few nights ago, or any night since, but I felt like writing a letter, and it is the only sort of writing Beth will let me do here. This is family time and you are included in that arrangement. No work for me. I feel as if I’ve signed a contract to it. I have a difficulty being myself when I go for too long without writing, however. More than a few days without getting my mind to a page, and I begin to feel very lonely. Many things simply stop making sense to me. I don’t quite understand that. It’s like going without a cigarette for too long, but far worse.
You’re right, of course, in that phone call last month when you explained that something doesn’t make it into a letter, and that they are too easily misconstrued. Text distorts the voice, you know. An element is added to text, but several human elements are taken away. I think it would be gesture; the gesture of what you mean is taken away. It’s like seeing facts on paper but not quite knowing what they actually represent, in the greater whole, or gauging a co-worker merely by gossip or a passing glance. Much is lost through the broken-telephone game. The glints are gone. For some, that’s heavenly.
I think that is the sound of the Roadster. Yes, definitely. Huzzah! Beth has returned to the hotel from her run to the store, and I see now that she has returned with a nice, glimmering bottle of Old Forester. This is a wonderful surprise. Happy Anniversary, indeed. The girls will be asleep soon, and I must end this letter. She says hello to you. I believe I have now addressed myself uniformly, or have typed from my head and walked within proximity of the explanation of myself. There. Nine pages of chin music. I’ll likely give you a call soon. I’d like to hear how you are doing, and I don’t expect you to sit down and write a novel of a letter. I’ll be in touch after I’ve settled into the routine of the show again. Beth also would like you to say hello to Helen for her. Do the same for me, would you?
Your blathering brother and psychotherapy patient,
Em
Chapter Sixteen
Sitting in the collapsible chair in his makeshift, on-set office, flitting his fingers over the keys and clattering the handwritten changes of the day into the newly finalized shooting script, he was reminded of Maury Aaron. This was Emery’s private Red Room, and though it was adjacent to the set, and temporary for the current episode, he felt just as distanced from the activity of a show as he had in Cincinnati, entombed in the basement of WKCR, red-lining and re-writing scripts for radio. Things took place at specific times; at that moment, Emery was the red-liner and re-writer. He would be the producer later, or tomorrow. Then the actor. Then the husband and father. Then the writer. Then the red-liner again. His active mind had never been multifarious, and he could only work in one of his modes at a time. His vision was singular until he turned his head. Right then, he was Maury Aaron. He would be Ward Cleaver, family man at home, in an hour or so.
The day’s changes were tertiary, not very important, or far-reaching, but they had been made, some shot, and now they needed to be added into the functioning script. The term ‘final
’, when referring to a script on set, was laughable. There was nothing final about it and the home stretch, for a script, only lengthened the more you ran it. The simplest things required re-writes, changes in location, re-detailing whenever a grandfather clock could not be found on schedule, or an actor couldn’t say ‘circumnavigate’ due to simply not liking the word. A perfectionist, Emery needed to make sure any change that happened was reflected in the ongoing script. Any improvisation needed to be added into the shooting record afterward. To others, this was not so important, as it occurred after the fact, but to Emery, that record of evolution and ongoing transformation was the final script.
Emery did not mind re-writing for actors. There was a certain regale to being involved with them, and while he would not concede that he could be star-struck, as the tabloids called the trait of adoring celebrity, there was a certain delicacy to being in the company of those most noticed by an entertained society. William in D.C. had met with senators, congressmen, and various political faces, and had even found himself in large rooms with presidents, two of them now, from time to time while writing his articles and being one with which other journalists might consult. William was lax in considering this a facet of his occupation, and nothing to be thought over much. Emery was more easily dazzled, though this sense of interest never lasted long.