by Ray Succre
“Yeah, yeah. B+, fine. I know all about it. I’ve been through this before, so you can cut out any horseshit. Don’t forget, I had your job, Bob, right here at this network, and I know how all of this works, you hear? It’s because of me that kids like you get to have this job, and you can’t fool us.”
“I suppose that’s also true, Bernie,” Teague said, dry, “I have my position over you because you were incompetent and got yourself fired for Emmy Asher, here. I thank the both of you.”
“You go suck your mother’s tits,” Bernie said.
“All right, one more-”
“I WON’T DO THIS AGAIN,” Bernie shouted, kicking his foot hard against the executive’s desk, which moved several inches. Both Bob Teague and Emery were startled at this outburst.
“Calm down, Bernie. We’re still talking, here,” Emery advised. Teague said nothing. There was a tangible motion of nerves and triggers flaring in all present, synapses snapping up the feed and fingers twitching at the ends of weak arms. Emery was startled by Bernie’s reaction but chose to breathe and not get caught up in explosiveness. Bernie regained himself quickly and re-launched his appeal.
“That was too much, I’m sorry. I’m calm. Bob, just listen. You’re plain wrong about the audience. And I was, too. Let’s be civil, here. Let’s just examine how this all works: It’s Asher, is the thing.” Emery glanced at his producer then, intrigued but angry at being named as the culprit behind the show’s cancellation. Bernie was not going in that direction, however.
“I figured it out late on The Other Side,” he continued, “but we had a good show that brought in more than an acceptable audience. Asher’s not like other writers, right? We know that. He builds and builds, see? It takes shape over time and it only ever gets bigger and better. Once it catches, and it will, I swear you’ll be singin’ praise. I can promise you this. We’ll all make money. Our audience there got its wind in the second and third season and it kept going right up until the end. That’s a fact. Don’t make the mistakes I made; they were old-timer mistakes. You’re the new blood, here. I’m helping you out. And us. Let’s... let’s not be stupid.”
“Look, I’m sorry, guys, but the numbers don’t-”
“Lie. They don’t lie. You can stop right there. Don’t feed me my own spiel, dickhead. They DO lie because we look for the wrong numbers. You have to give it a season’s time. You’ll see it by then. Now call your man and let him know. You gotta see this right, is all.”
“You call me another name like that or act out again and I’ll have you escorted off the lot, you understand, Bernie?”
“Well, if the shoe fits-”
“Oh shut up. Jesus, just shut your mouth for once,” Teague said, annoyed, “Here’s what’s happening: You want me to give you another season to flesh out your show, but your show was supposed to be a hit from the start, all fleshed out and ready, because that’s what we’re paying for, not practice time. You promised us a gem, not a diamond-in-the-rough. The finished product, on the air, making it. That gets a season. What kind of clown would even think otherwise? It’s incredibly simple: You want to sell your better mousetrap, the damn thing better work. Come on, boys, a child could understand this.”
There was a moment of quiet in the room that disguised the animosity between all present. The viewer ratings were proving great, but not yet excellent. This was not the sole trouble between the three men in the meeting, however. Emery was agitated with Bernie for what was inevitably a failure on the producer’s part to keep the network in the loop on various changes to the structure of the show, while Bernie was angry at Teague for the hasty cancellation of the show. As for Teague, he had never liked Emery, found the writer pompous and arrogant, often treating Emery the way a poor kid belittled a rich kid for the simple act of existing the way they were born. This was a hate triangle, and the sickness within it was only resolvable in two ways: Money or termination. The money was not strong enough at this point in The Deserter’s life, and so came the unstoppable call to get rid of all interested parties. The marriage was wondrous but the sex was not perfect, so the groom wanted a divorce.
“One episode,” Bernie said, “Give us one episode into season two. Think of it as a second pilot.”
“No episode. No season. Your show isn’t providing, Bernie. In fact, I can show you seven ways from Sunday the very complex and exact ways that your show isn’t providing. Which numbers do you want to see first? The expense versus recoup? The salaries versus hours of work? The fucking cost of film this year? Or we could talk about the show’s intake versus what we think we can get from your replacement? That’s a good one. A real eye-opener. Or, mind you, maybe we could go over the viewer ratings. By week. Hell, by act. Let’s have a talk about your inflated paychecks. Anyone want to talk about that? How’s that hacienda treating you, Asher? You put in a pool, right? You know, while we’re here, I could give you some figures about the cost of ads in the magazines and papers and the radio spots, if that would be helpful. I’ve got it all right here in this cabinet. Or better yet, how about I tell you what’s actually being watched every Saturday night at 9:30 p.m. when your show airs? Because it’s not us. They’re watchin’ that pretty billboard girl on Hollywood Palace over on ABC, right up until we get ‘em back with Gunsmoke at 10:00.”
Bernie looked at Emery then, waiting for whatever it was he expected the writer to do or state. In this instance, the writer, uncertain that anything should be said at all, followed the path of his newest protagonist, and sought to disappear into the west, to be alone for a time and regenerate his exhausted soul. Emery turned and made for the door slowly. Bernie only sighed. Emery grasped the knob, but he did not open the door.
“This is an asylum,” Emery said over his shoulder, “Writers. Producers. Networks. The actors. It’s a mess. I think that’s a reasonable conjecture. These lots are full of mad doctors, mad patients, and the powers on high chase their mad numbers... It’s like a horny wolf tracking the smell of a female’s hindquarters. Everyone is in heat here, even when they’re frigid. I feel sick to my stomach every time I shake someone’s hand, anymore. I’m leaving now. I think I just want to be done with the lot of you.”
“Em, what are you doing? We got him on the ropes, here,” Dozier said, emphatic.
“No, you don’t,” Teague said, “I’m just the messenger.”
“I’m going home,” Emery stated, opening the door. Dozier followed him, upset and full of twitching activity. His steps were heavy and his breathing quick.
“We’ll be back, you underhanded, little shit. You’d better be ready for us,” Dozier called back, shutting the door hard.
“Go fuck yourself, Bernie,” came the simple response through the wood and glass.
Emery had lost many things of value over the past week. He had worked with a particular fever of being, one that had run high-octane the past five, frenetic months, and certain aspects of this had required more of him than he had supposed would be necessary. The long hours and quick pace of the episodes asked for incessant rewrites, and each episode did not see the start of something new, as had happened with The Other Side. The new show had been a serial, and great pains had been taken to control how it unfolded, at the writing level. He had waylaid his sardonic wits in favor of an irony that held more searching. The show had needed a strong, clever balance, and he had struggled with it.
The Deserter had been more of a quest story than a western, but was scalded with the detailing of that time period, to the point it functioned for some as a truer testament to the towns of the old west than previous westerns, those shows and films full of gunfights and cattle rustlers. The critical nature with which the show was viewed and described came under its own scrutiny for this, and the episodes aired had caused critics to turn on one another, creating an ongoing sense of controversy, not with the show itself, but with the manner one watched it. Joseph Barnes, the tyrannical panner of television shows for the monthly Los Angeles Arts rag, had adored the story, calling i
t best new show of 1965, while Clayton Moore from the Times had lambasted the notion of a thinking-man’s western as frivolous and reaching. Then these two giants began sniping at one another in subsequent articles. Up in San Francisco, Graham Powell, the potent theater critic turned television enthusiast, had somehow become involved in the argument as well and now all three were throwing gasoline bombs around. This had gotten other critics to take more notice, critics that mentioned the show in their columns and articles, in whatever light they chose to see it. This had been a wonderful boon to the show, and had many watching. Emery’s approach, using the western format as a marinade with which to soak his conceits and story, had payed off for all but the network, itself.
Numbers. Counts. Averages that arrogated legitimacy and replaced it with the irrefutable. Numbers and polls tended to remove truth and replace it with the unarguable. Most people could not discern the difference. Logical, reasonable numerals and statistics indicated things far beyond their own reach, little machines that chugged away perfectly, never needing oil or fuel, never faltering or diminishing in strength or output. They were too perfect, however. They showed you a thing that was their own. When applying numbers to a work of art, you received a new work of numbers, minus the art. They propagated their own, never the subject they represented. They were important and precise and often crucial, but they also made extragavant claims and were given more power than was reasonable.
Viewers were tuning in to see what Henry Merrill would do next, where he would go, to see if he was ever going to find the faux-villain of the series, known only as Sanderson. People found the drifter protagonist to be rough and charming, but a bit tortured, and they wanted to see him face more torture, to see him react to the idiosyncrasies of the world he had come to inhabit. They wanted to watch him be lost, not in numbers, but in his worth as a man and his deep-reaching self doubt. The audience was made of people, but they were represented with numbers, and given over to equations and time-slot scheming designed to pack them into their couches as if by the accountable measure of movie seats. The network did not want to give any person a thing to watch, if that thing was not also watched by the neighbors. It was all or nothing. Greater than. Greater than. Greater than.
Not half of one season. Eleven episodes had aired, and there were three more already shot and prepared to air, with eighteen more to film, but that would not be. Henry Merrill was indeed lost. He was lost to the dusty, tumbleweed-scratched floor of the television industry, where all the shrimp tails and chicken bones were tossed. An art of dozens had been knocked from the table as garbage by mere prediction. Someone higher up at the network was divining, through handfuls of not-so-connected numbers, that a different show would reach into a few more homes.
This was a common dilemma, an ongoing bonfire, and The Deserter was but one more hunk of wood thrown atop it. The network set their goals incredibly high, always shooting for an amazing turnout with a high interest rate, and if that rate became unrealistic, they canned the show, rather than adjust the rate. They could cancel a program they had banked on as quickly as they could then start another. It was saturation, and there was no shortage of proposed pilots anymore. Show after show, until one stuck and became the big one. They fished an open sea with several sorts of bait, and threw back all they caught but the Swordfish, who rarely ever bit. Emery and his fans had been tossed back, not good enough. The murk welcomed them into irrelevancy. They had been on the line so shortly. Not half of one season.
The Deserter, now burning down, was to be gone by morning and would be buried over quickly. A shallow grave. There was no shame in it. Emery had little guilt over yet another cancellation. No, his particular shame and guilt, quite present in him now, had been furnished by another behavior, one that was now under scrutiny at home. This would be waiting for him when he returned. The trouble would be amplified by each step across his lawn toward the front door. It already echoed within the house like a scream in a damp cavern. He had been up to awful things, with a nice woman, and he was not the only one in his home with knowledge of it. Beth was not insulted, and strangely, she did not seem much hurt. No, she was a touch disgusted with him, and instead of threats or arguments, she had simply begun to think so, so much less of him. This was not a punishment, but fact, and it was the way their marriage would function for an undefined period of time. She had known for nearly three months before letting on. She had acted the role of normality with perfection. The truth was that Emery had become a failure in the one place he had never thought it could infiltrate, and he now felt utterly lost. Beth had no interest, at the moment, of helping to find him, and this was to be the new normal.
The two men made their way from the building with haste. Bernie was swearing under his breath and his head had become a bundled oval of nerves and tight fibers. Being angry looked to shave ten years off his age. They stopped near Emery’s roadster and Bernie kept talking, giving Emery no cordial way to vacate, so Emery decided to stay put a few minutes, let the producer shake his rattle at the mobile. Each had a cigarette, mulling over the cancellation and the dismay of being deported together, again. The vow for a comeback was staunch in Bernie. He uttered ‘This won’t stand’ more than a few times, which became a sort of catch-phrase. Emery tried to placate the man and cool him off, but there was no calming Bernie Dozier just then. The aged producer wanted to be angry and was going to have it out. Emery also wanted to be angry, but discovered he could not find it. There was simply no anger in him to summon.
Emery had been on the receiving end of the numbers-gun for too long, so far back as his radio days, and perhaps even as distant as his military service. This was an unavoidable devastation, and as much as a man could become accustomed to tragedy, to accept the always-near state of being failed, Emery was riled strongly inside. Where could he put it? What might he do with this fear and sense of loss? Nothing. He simply breathed. He looked to get past this newest, occupational trouble as quickly as he could. In this way, tragedy became setback, the rupture of a dream became business-as-usual, and even failure, itself, could become but the tawdry stuff of the daily soul. His work was most assuredly at home, and it would not be easy.
“I’m sorry about your company,” Emery said, getting into his car. Dozier frowned before running his hand through his slicked hair, of which there was little. He had put much of his new company, Fairway Productions, into The Deserter, hoping the show would become his own whale he might put on the network hook. With the cancellation, Fairway might get rid of him. This would be a complete loss to Bernie. He would be unemployed, yes, but the worst sort: Unemployable. Bernie examined his hand then for traces of grease.
“Em, here’s the thing,” he said, “This is no big deal. Would you be willing to try another show with Fairway? Different network, for sure, but give us another shot? I know I can talk ‘em into it.”
“Bernie, I just don’t...”
“You have doubts, sure. Of course you do. Who wouldn’t?”
“Right, I just-”
“Listen, I- I’m full of fire here, you gotta know I am. I mean, look at me. And I have no doubts about you. Not before, not now. If we get the right show, and I know you’ve got the right show in your head, I know you do, it’ll take us somewhere big. We’ve got all the cards for it. Every last one.”
“I’m sorry, Bernie. I don’t… I don’t feel very good out here anymore.”
“Please. I’m sayin’ please, here, Emery. Just think about it. I can make this right. You know I will because it’s all I have. All my time, everything, it’s ready to go. There’s nothing else I can do, so you know you’re gonna get my all.”
“You should call Calvin Moffat. He still doesn’t have anything regular lined up. Lots of ideas and he’d work hard for you.”
There was a pause as Bernie slowly accustomed to the rejection. Then he gave a short nod and began to peer out over the parking lot as if waiting for someone to arrive. He was antsy, his adrenalin and ideas petering out and leaving him
atop the crutches of the unknown. He stepped forward and gave Emery a pat against the shoulder then.
“So that’s that?”
“Yeah.”
“All right, then. I’ll get all this settled in the next few weeks. I give it ten-to-one they try to fuck us on the three ghosts. I’ll fix that, though. We’ll get paid.”
“I’m sure of it. Let me know if there’s anything you need.”
“Well, I need some damn shows. But look, for whatever it’s worth, thanks for giving me a shot, Em. Two of ‘em now. It’s too bad they don’t get it. It’s a real shame.”
“No, Bernie. Thank you.”
CUT TO:
EXT. A RESIDENTIAL streeT - DAY
A nice neighborhood with large houses and Los Angeles haciendas in the distance. There are a many children about, and mothers, as well as several old men.
We see Emery’s Roadster 6 in a long shot, moving down the street at a comfortable pace. We cut to Emery behind the wheel as he drives. We hear the voice of Lieutenant Merrill from the backseat. We cut back and forth between them as the conversation unfolds.
MERRILL:
A nice street. All these children. Curious that there are no younger men about.
EMERY:
It’s the middle of the day. And a Tuesday. The only men on this street right now are sick in bed or old. And me.
MERRILL:
Are you sick, my boy? Or old?
EMERY:
(eyes glazed over)
No, I’m something else.
MERRILL:
You go for walks, soldier, on your eight little legs, and get lost in that head of yours and have to call for help. You’re no killer.