by Ray Succre
Beth moved the bowl of the remaining popcorn, which now consisted exclusively of hard kernels that had not popped, to the small stand beside the couch. When there was room, she leaned against his shoulder in a sleepy way.
“Well, probably because she wants to keep it hers. You cast a lot of shadows. She probably doesn’t want something creative of hers to end up being judged by daddy the writer,” Beth said, “If I wrote a story, I wouldn’t want you reading it. I wouldn’t want you anywhere near it.” Emery muddied over this a moment, his brow furrowed in the mystification of family.
“Oh.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
The series of events that led to the fruition of a full-fledged series were arduous yet quick, and some facets of creating a show were often overlooked by even those particular agencies that caused them. The pilot movie had been well-regarded, despite the doubt the movie-theater crowd now held for Emery Asher. It seemed those particular people did not watch much television, and preferred to shout and argue the informal statements made in cinema more than the small screen. This discovery, of the show being granted a season, gave Emery a sense of belonging again, even though the idea of a series was now daunting to him for all the hard work he knew would be required of him. His mood had been quite active in his perception of late, and with a show on the line, he now felt good again. Perhaps television still loved him in a way, and had not turned on him so much as a network had, and possibly the public still wanted what he made, and he had only been treated to the souring of a certain small but loud demographic. Perhaps that had been Hollywood fanaticism and the sort of heckling that only masqueraded as having import on his career.
People, numerically, had been decided still receptive to Emery on the home screen. While there was the chance they were tuning in only to point and denigrate him some more, there was also the hope that he was still regarded as possessing that elusive light of talent for which everyone seemed to be looking. He was a professional, after all.
CUT TO:
INT. ‘THE AFTER HOURS’ MUSEUM SET - NIGHT
The striking scene of exhibits, each brightly spotlit in the very dim gallery. These are the only things visible save for a velvet-rope that surrounds the circular scene.
We watch all but one exhibit dim to black. We push in to a medium shot of that particular painting. A spotlight slams on, showing HOST ASHER, standing in the gallery in a brown suit, his body in frame, somewhat beside the painting. He has snuck up on us from the dark. ASHER motions to the painting and addresses us.
HOST ASHER:
Art is a beautiful shock to one’s sensibilities. The best of it shakes us into the servitude of high praise and historic respect, while the worst of it isn’t worth the barest, disinterested glance. Where the power in a work of art comes from is in its manner, its fashion, in the style of a time or perception, and often in the arousal of story. The work you see behind me tells one such tale, a story of obsession and detail, of odds and conceit. Its subject is one Marcus Riley, a man that seems painted in many ways, depending on what the viewer wishes to see, and a man whose physical appearance is in constant change. Mr. Riley has the peculiar fate of appearing as other people want him to. For better... or much worse. We call this story “Skins Deep”.
SLOW ZOOM to the painting until it fills the frame. This painting establishes a DINER interior, with a MAN speaking to a WAITRESS in a relaxed, Rockwellian scene.
LAP DISSOLVE TO:
INT. MURPHY’S DINER - EVENING
We see the identical, real-life scene outlined in the painting. We have dissolved from the painting to an identical, but real, scene.
MARCUS RILEY, the man, is speaking with the WAITRESS. We notice them as their scene continues.
WAITRESS:
You sure like to eat, mister. You gonna save any room in there for dessert?
MARCUS:
(disinterested)
No, thank you.
WAITRESS:
Well, if you change your mind, let me know.
She begins walking away with the coffee. After a moment, she stops and speaks to MARCUS again.
WAITRESS:
You know, there’s something I’ve been noticing since you came in. I think... thing is, you look familiar to me. Have we met before?
MARCUS:
We’ve never met, no.
WAITRESS:
Wait, yeah, I got it. You... you look a lot like my father when he was younger.
MARCUS:
(rolling his eyes)
You don’t say.
WAITRESS:
Yeah... wow, you’re a spitting image, too. Huh! He uh, he passed a few years back.
MARCUS nods absently and continues eating. The WAITRESS, a little put off, returns the coffee to the machine behind the counter.
CUT TO:
C.U. of MARCUS, who slowly stops eating. He seems troubled for a moment. We see him push his plate away and give a sigh. His eyes seem to have softened a bit, and he now wears a look of slight interest, or even a touch of compassion.
MARCUS:
You must miss him very much.
FADE TO:
Good numbers. The first actual episode of The After Hours, as a new anthology show, had hit well enough, and now that fan mail had become staple in the television world, it began to trickle in with immediacy. The story had involved many cosmetic appliances for Gary Carr, the actor who played Marcus, and the network had at first dragged its feet over this. The trouble was not so much the money, as makeup departments had gotten better at working with the format, especially since all shows had transformed into the arena of color, but that the network was wary of beginning the show with a piece that risked a makeup effect as a major element. These ran a risk of backfiring. A bad cosmetic in a launch episode could lose crucial viewers for good. Emery had convinced the producer, Ed Baird, along with the director of the episode, Andy Ricard, that the special effects would be minimal and to the point, and would look fine.
Emery remembered it had taken almost a full year before getting his first piece of fan mail for The Other Side, but things were quicker now. The times in general had more of a frenetic pace. Things were more polarized than they had been, and even the route to how the television world functioned was not so long and confounded as it had once been. The measure of but a few years could cause this. The After Hours had been given a full season on which to gauge the nature of its wings, and Emery had given up creative control of the show at the outset. He was a writer only, with occasional stops at the studio to shoot his introductions and closers, just as he had done for The Other Side, but without all the troubles of producing.
By the launch of the new year, many of the episodes had already been shot. The workday was strong for him, and simple enough that he had time for other projects. He was a man who wrote for a show, not a man enveloped and suffocated by one. Things were more streamlined this time around, not only for him, but for all concerned.
A new decade had begun, and the fan-base for The After Hours was odd. These fans were neither the bread-and-butter housewife sort, not the well-read, curious sort. Those fans had propelled him in the past, but The After Hours had an entirely different breed of viewer, and these seemed to prefer anything with a hint at the outlandish. He had lost some of his own self-esteem in taking on the speculative show. While his foray into these genres, and his literary ambition for them, had been a side-project come to life in the fashion of Frankenstein’s monster, lording over his career and haunting it, those few people who still took his work seriously felt let down that he was moving right back into speculation and the other-worldly. Those who only mildly liked his work, however, felt it would have been silly not to return to that particular mode. Who to please? This question was his own, and weighed heavily in his thoughts. The answer was that he could only please whoever a network contracted him to please. Many people felt he was copying his past feats, a child repeating the same joke again and again, unaware that the attention he was getting wa
s more annoyance than legitimate interest. Reviews for The After Hours had begun their rounds, and unlike The Other Side, or The Deserter, and especially his older work before those shows, these reviews were disinterested. It seemed the public was fond of the show, but the critics were somewhat agitated by what they perceived a lackluster attempt at re-igniting a particularly dated fire that had died out years ago. After years of trouble with the viewers and praise from the gaugers, it seemed the critics and the public had now changed places in how they viewed him. The last few years had been difficult, but he would lift above those troubles.
As a writer responsible for scripting a contractual 50% of the show’s episodes, there was room for another writer, possibly two. The network wanted four, which Emery fought against, but having given up creative control of the show, and not being a producer, he had no real say in the matter. Two other writers were hired by the network, with one further position given for Emery to fill with the writer of his choice. This was the network’s way of compromise, and it was both heavy-handed and troublesome. The writers NBC had placed beside him were young and fresh from school. They had ideas, and a few big ones, but their idea of writing involved more shock than substance. They wanted mummies and werewolves and slashers, without much dramatic storytelling around these things. They wanted to end the episodes with an element of horror, a wicked cackle for the eyes, maybe a bit of gore, but not with any sort of thoughtfulness. The scripts they wrote turned Emery off completely, and seemed better suited to B-grade horror flicks than actual drama.
The producer was an overweight, bearded man with a great many ideas. Some of these were brilliant, and others were awful. Despite what sort of idea he was summarizing, Ed Baird did things fast and in a strange, hidden way. The producer had taken creative control of the show, and he did not like people. Baird was no curmudgeon, but rather an intense and creative man who had trouble talking to others unless he was in a position of control. Many thought Baird a sort of reclusive genius, though some of that behavior was certainly acting, Emery thought. The scenario that bothered Emery most was that this hippie version of Sol Jamison was also a writer, and having creative control, had placed himself in charge of the rewrites. The executive producer, the money man, was now the editor and creative consultant. This could have been an ominous signpost of spartan trouble ahead.
Therein was the first of his large-scale problems with the show: He was a writer of drama that enjoyed employing a mask of the surreal, using speculative jaunts and fable-like morals, but the producer and the other writers did not seem to want this. They wanted the mask only. They wanted the vampire, and they wanted it sucking blood, and they did not want its religious, familial, or ethical qualms. Their preference was to skip the come-uppance and jam a stake in a monster’s heart so everyone gets a scream at the end. They certainly did not want a moral in their own stories. They wanted more of the Brothers Grimm than Aesop, and they wanted it, at the behest of Baird, formatted for ease of budget. They considered Emery the man who would give them his name and the man who would write the “literary horror” and “realist speculation”, while they would write other tales, mainly pulp-styled science-fiction and horror, what Tom Nash had once called ‘potboilers’, which was a term Emery had fought hard to keep from his name. The other writers on the show separated from Emery early on, and did not talk to him much.
He sat with his ear to the receiver, his free thumb and forefinger circling his temples, listening to the carefully chosen words that came through the line.
“So I have to keep myself in one place for awhile, is all. I don’t want to spread too thin. I’m honored, Em. Truly. I just can’t wrap my head around two different shows,” Calvin said.
“No, I understand. You’re busy, and rightly so,” Emery backpedaled, “I’m allowed my pick for one writer, my own guy, and I wasn’t sure if you’d have the time or not, but I just wanted you to get the offer first.”
“Thank you; I do appreciate it. In another dimension, I could do it. But man, I’ve got so much going on right now that I just can’t step that far out of the room I’m in, you know? I’ve been writing books, too.”
“I know, and good for you. I do get it, Cal. How uh, how’d that space epic job go?”
“Well, it was just the one episode, could have been more but I didn’t like working with those guys. They’re some real… Well, they’re something, is all I’m gonna say. It’ll go on-air in a couple of months. They’re always looking for guest writers and all those guys know you by name, so you could give it a shot sometime, if you wanted.”
“Maybe I’ll do that,” Emery said.
The conversation continued, in the technical sense, until neither could manage to avoid the awkwardness any longer, and they said their temporary goodbyes and gave each other the customary well-wishes that were expected. Emery hung up the phone and sat in his den, chain-smoking and eyeing the half-empty fifth of whiskey on his desk. He had suspected what the other writer had now solidified. Calvin Moffat wouldn’t go anywhere near The After Hours. Oh, Calvin would never admit such a thing openly, but Emery knew the man well, and the message was clear: Several episodes had aired and Calvin likely thought it was a terrible show. It was the sort of thing the two of them had once poked fun at back on The Other Side. This struck Emery in an unexpected and damaging way. He had hoped Moffat would come aboard and help him make the show something strong, but it seemed Emery was on his own, swimming around in network waters with chum in his hair.
He needed a writer in his corner. Someone to look out for the sort of writing Emery wanted. This person needed to be a bit intimidating, probably from experience, and possibly age, and the person needed to be outspoken and a capable writer. It was disheartening that Calvin was not interested. Moffat had those tumid attributes for which Emery was in heavy need.
Emery was not so young as to commute a great distance for a speaking engagement anymore, and so he booked flights at irregular intervals and attempted to be sparse in his out-of-state commitments. Emery had loved the mad spree of his lecture tour, the constant flights from continent to continent, one country after the next, but this was something he did not want to repeat. He wanted his schedule open enough to handpick certain lectures, but not so open that he became overwhelmed in engagements. The travel, while brief, could be burdensome, though did get him away from Los Angeles, a place in which he had begun to feel trapped. The sunny weather was sanctifying, but the sudden and cloudy nature of his field was a severe drain on his volition. Travel was kind to him, so long as he did not throw himself to it.
Over the course of several months, he had agreed upon and fulfilled several obligations on the lecture circuit, though his dallying with this was not so much circuitous as occasional. The current superintendent of Binghamton High School, a school that had resulted when North High School and Central had combined in his old home town, had asked him to come and speak for a graduating class, being that Emery was half-alumni and quite well-known. This was a service he was more than pleased to accommodate. The new youth were in a pedigree turmoil these days, and leaning every which way to find a meaning for themselves that wasn’t wholeheartedly systemic. The draft had been a large part of this, as had the hippy movement, no matter how those motions were to be considered or haphazardly summarized.
Being a cog in the American machine had an unfortunate side: Following the Second World War and atop the bare back of this new bloodshed in Vietnam, taking one’s place in those most conservative parts of America’s machinery was more unappealing than ever. Emery understood it enough to see the dilemma for what it was: Unfairness. The societal and economic place these teenagers were expected to settle, to dig in and begin fulfilling, was more unfair to them than it had been in previous decades. One could not blame them for wanting to change this, though one could quite well hold them accountable for blaming most everyone else.
The nightmares had quieted in recent months, but he knew this was simply the equinox phase they went through
. They would return by Summer, as they always did. He felt wedged into a certain form of servitude with The After Hours, but the show was keeping him in scripts and giving him, at the minimum, something to do. The lectures paid a little and a family could be kept afloat on this income so long as he kept lecturing, but the real money came from the show. Regardless of where the money came from, no amount of it could serve in place of what he truly wanted: That simple and yet difficult matter of esteem in his profession. Perhaps this was vain of him. Arrogant.
He had been given a taste of esteem and had been marked by it, like the cigarettes he drained of nicotine or the love he felt for his wife and daughters. The notion of a 'comeback' had become a staunch portion of his drive, and its nuances had altered the image he had of himself. He was no leading man, but had for a time accepted bright lights and a potent sort of attention. He supposed that had been happenstance, temporary, and its time had now passed. Unfortunately, it had gone to his head, and he had made many mistakes. He had returned from that sort of life, however. He was just a writer now, getting by well, and he could control both his ego and need for attention well enough. His marriage seemed to have balanced back into a function close to its initial state, that lovely mode it had known before his infidelity had churned it into uncertain chaff, and his home life was steady again. He was just a writer, a slight actor, and occasionally, a speaker. He was a name.