by Laura Levine
“Enough gossip,” Kandi said. “It’s show time.” And with that she took me by the elbow and ushered me inside my first Hollywood soundstage.
I have to admit, I was impressed. At one end of the cavernous building were the Muffy ’n Me sets. I saw Muffy’s cozy living room, her homey kitchen, and her Gidgetesque bedroom—complete with vanity table, lace curtains, and mountains of stuffed animals on her pink chenille bedspread. It was all just like I’d seen it on TV. Only here on the set, there were giant overhead lights, and the floor was crisscrossed with marking tape, to show the actors where to stand.
Across from the sets were the bleachers, where every week a bunch of unsuspecting tourists were herded in to witness the latest adventures of our gal Muffy. Between the two areas, where the cameras would later shoot all the action, a long metal conference table had been set up.
I gulped at the sight of it. In just minutes, I’d be seated at that table, listening to my script being read aloud for the first time.
“C’mon,” said Kandi, “let’s get some coffee.”
She led me over to a buffet table laden with coffee, bagels, danish, and fruit.
“Kandi, I’m wired to the hilt as it is. If I have any coffee, I’ll be bouncing from the ceiling.”
“Cream or sugar?” she asked.
“Both,” I sighed. “Extra sugar.”
“How about a bagel?”
“Nah. Too fattening.”
“There’s the cream cheese.”
“Thanks,” I said, heaping some onto my bagel.
That’s something you should know about me. I’m a lovely person, but a bit wanting in the willpower department.
“Okay,” Kandi said, “let me fill you in on the cast of characters. You see that little guy over there. The one who looks like a Keebler elf?”
She pointed to a short guy in jeans and a sweatshirt, a too-small baseball cap perched on his head. He did look like a Keebler elf. Either that, or one of the Rice Krispies brothers.
“That’s Alan Carlson, the director. The guy’s been directing sitcoms forever. I think he started when Lucy was pregnant with Little Ricky. He’s no Martin Scorcese, but he’s fast and he’s good.
“The big guy he’s talking to is Marco, the prop man. If he looks a little frantic, it’s because his wife is about to give birth any day now.”
“Does Marco know you swiped his stethoscope?”
“No, and don’t go blabbing.”
“My lips are sealed.”
“Vanessa, of course, you’ve met.”
I looked over at where Vanessa was sitting at the conference table, fanning herself with my script. Oh, well. At least she wasn’t sitting on it.
A young bronzed surfer dude was at her side, staring at her worshipfully.
“That’s Zach Levy-Taylor.”
I recognized him. “He’s the kid who plays Muffy’s boyfriend on the show.”
“He’d like to be playing her boyfriend off the show, too,” Kandi said, “but Vanessa won’t give him a tumble.”
Indeed, Zach was trying desperately to make conversation, but Vanessa barely glanced at him, concentrating instead on pushing back her cuticles.
“And that’s Dale Burton, the actor who plays Muffy’s dad.”
She pointed to a J. Crewish-handsome man talking loudly into his cell phone.
“Dale’s nuts. I know he looks as normal as apple pie, but he’s certifiable. You know who he’s on the phone with?”
“Who?”
“Probably the recorded weather lady. Or the time-at-the-tone lady.”
“But his lips are moving. He’s talking.”
“I know. He pretends to be talking to big show biz honchos. He wants everybody to think he’s in demand.”
“You’re the greatest, Stevie Spielberg,” I heard him shout into the phone. “Give my best to your lovely wife Kate.”
“Quelle nutcase,” I said.
Then Kandi caught sight of a petite woman with spikey orange hair. “That’s Teri, the makeup lady. Hey, Teri,” she called out. “You get my mascara?”
The orange pixie nodded, holding up a shopping bag.
“I’ll be right back,” Kandi said to me.
“Where are you going?” I asked, panicked. She wasn’t going to leave me alone, was she?
“To pick up my mascara. Teri got it for me wholesale. It’s the same stuff Gwyneth Paltrow uses.”
And before I could stop her, she was sprinting across the room, leaving me stranded at the coffee urn. Everybody around me was chatting it up, oozing camaraderie, and I just stood there, stuffing my face with empty calories. It was my sophomore year in high school all over again.
And then something happened that never happened in high school. A gorgeous guy walked up to me. Tall and rangy, with thick dark hair and startling green eyes.
“Hi,” he smiled, revealing the most beautiful teeth I’d ever seen in my life. I honestly didn’t know teeth could be that white.
I recognized him, of course. He was Quinn Kirkland, the actor who played Muffy’s Uncle Biff.
Now usually in show biz, the gorgeous people aren’t funny. I mean, when was the last time you had a hearty chuckle over a Harrison Ford performance? But Quinn was a definite exception to this rule. From the episodes I’d seen, he was by far the funniest performer on Muffy.
“And who might you be?” he asked, still beaming his mega-watt smile.
Uh…wait. I know the answer to that. Just give me a minute.
“Jaine,” I finally managed to blurt out. “Jaine Austen.”
“Really?” he grinned. “I love your books.”
I hear that line all the time. And usually I hate it. But coming from Quinn, it suddenly seemed quite amusing.
“It’s Jaine with an ‘i,’” I explained.
“I liked your script, Jaine-with-an-i,” he said, almost blinding me with his smile.
“Thanks,” I said, blushing furiously.
Good heavens. The man was exceedingly attractive. I could practically smell his pheromones in the air.
Quinn was obviously the kind of guy who left a trail of lovestruck women behind him. But I wasn’t about to be one of them. No way. Dating an exceedingly attractive man is like going jogging without a sports bra. Sooner or later, you’re bound to get hurt. Besides, I try never to date anyone who lookes better in a bathing suit than I do.
So I wasn’t about to fall for a guy like Quinn Kirkland. Which is a good thing, because the next thing I knew, Quinn spotted Stan and Audrey Miller coming in the door and dropped me like a hot onion bagel.
“Sorry,” he said, “but I’ve got to talk to some people who are more important than you.”
Okay, so he didn’t really say that.
What he really said was: “Nice talking to you.” And then he proceeded to dash across the room to suck up to the Millers.
If I had to guess, I’d say Stan and Audrey were somewhere in their forties. But I didn’t have to guess, because Kandi told me she’d looked up their ages on their W9 forms.
If ever there was a couple who didn’t looked like they belonged together, Stan and Audrey were it. Audrey was reed thin and perfectly packaged—very Armani. Stan, on the other hand, was a pasty-faced guy with a sizable gut and a fondness for baggy sweats—very Pastrami.
I was standing there, nursing my coffee (I’d long since wolfed down my bagel) and watching Quinn flash his blinding smile at Audrey, when an elderly man with a thick mane of silver hair approached.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” he said, with a velvety English accent. “I’m Wells Dumont.”
“Of course I know who you are, Mr. Dumont. You play Muffy’s neighbor, Mr. Watkins.”
“I hear you’re the writer of this week’s delightful episode.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“It’s really quite amusing. It has a charmingly fey quality that reminds me of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost.”
Wow. The man was comparing me to
Shakespeare! I couldn’t wait to tell the guys at Toiletmasters about this.
“Are you familiar with the bard’s comedies?” he asked hopefully.
“Not intimately, no.”
“Oh.”
He looked so disappointed, like a Jim Carrey fan in a roomful of Hegelian philosophers.
“But I like his other stuff,” I said, trying to cheer him up.
“Really? What’s your favorite Shakespearean play?”
“Uh…Macbeth,” I said, pulling one out of thin air and praying he wouldn’t ask me anything about it. Like, say, the plot.
His eyes lit up.
“Really? What a coincidence. It’s my favorite, too. I’ve played the tortured thane many a time.”
Tortured thane? What the heck was a thane? One of these days, I told myself, I really had to brush up on my Shakespeare. Just as soon as I finished my back issues of Cosmo.
“I’ve got a wonderful idea. Why don’t I take you someplace where we can discuss our love of the bard over chilled martinis?”
Good heavens! The guy was old enough to be my really old father. Was he actually asking me out on a date?
“I know a charming French restaurant that serves the most wonderful pommes frites.”
Sure sounded like a date to me.
“Well?” He smiled hopefully.
“Gee, I’d love to, but…”
But what? What was I going to tell him?
“But she’s engaged to be married.”
I turned to see Kandi back at my side. I shot her a grateful smile.
“Her fiance Duane is a great guy,” Kandi said, “but terribly jealous.”
“Lucky man,” Wells said. He took my hand and kissed it. “A pleasure meeting you, my dear.”
Then, undoubtedly brokenhearted, he headed over to the pastry tray to seek solace in a prune danish.
“Duane?” I whispered to Kandi. “My fiance’s name is Duane?”
“You don’t like it? Invent your own lovers.”
By now, Audrey and Stan had wandered over to the conference table.
“Okay, everybody,” Audrey called out, “let’s get started.”
Kandi and I took our seats at the table.
It was interesting to note that Audrey, not Stan, sat at the head of the table. Stan sat at her right hand, puffy and pasty-faced, taking occasional sips from an Evian water bottle.
Dale was still on the phone with his imaginary celebrity. “Gotta run, Antonio,” he said, loud enough for everybody to hear. “Give my best to Melanie.”
Kandi kicked me under the table and rolled her eyes.
“Before we start reading,” Audrey said, “I’d like you all to meet the author of this week’s script, Jaine Austen.”
Quickly, before anyone could say, “Love your books,” I added, “No relation.”
Zach, the teenage adonis, looked up from where he was marking his script with a highlighter.
“No relation to who?”
Uh-oh. Not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed.
“Jeez,” Vanessa sighed. “Don’t you know anything? Jane Austen is a famous writer.”
Zach’s eager smile faded. “Oh.”
“She wrote the movie Clueless.”
I waited for someone to point out that Jane had been dead for almost two centuries, but obviously no one was willing to ruffle the star’s feathers.
Audrey glanced over at the director. He took his cue.
“Here we go, folks,” he said. “Act One. Fade In: Muffy’s Bedroom—Day….”
As Kandi predicted, the reading went well. People were actually laughing. Mostly at Quinn Kirkland’s lines. Even the lines that weren’t so funny got laughs when Quinn said them.
Vanessa didn’t seem to mind that Quinn was getting all the laughs. I guess she’d quite wisely figured out that her talent lay not in her comedic abilities but in her amazing bustline. Dale, on the other hand, clenched his jaw at every laugh Quinn got. Clearly, the Me of Muffy ’n Me was feeling a tad threatened.
But that was his problem, not mine.
I was just happy nobody farted.
Chapter Three
Never Get Attached to Your Jokes. That’s the first thing you learn when you’re a sitcom writer. Because, chances are, they’re going to be rewritten.
The rewrite process, I was about to discover, was a ruthless affair. No joke was sacred. If it didn’t work in rehearsal, it was gone. Even if it worked in rehearsal, but someone thought of something funnier in the rewrite session, it was gone. So if you ever decide to become a sitcom writer, remember to grow a very thick skin.
Luckily, a couple of my jokes had scored well in the read-through. So the process wasn’t too excruciating. Besides, I was happy just to be there.
Kandi and I spent the rest of the day working on the script with Audrey and Stan. As I had observed earlier, Audrey was the undisputed captain of the S.S. Muffy. Who would have thought that a woman with Audrey’s icy good looks could be funny?
Sitting across from her, I marveled at how thin she was. Everything about her was thin. Her legs, her waist, her hips—even her nostrils. The only thing that wasn’t thin was her thick head of perfectly coifed blond hair. I could tell it was going to be a struggle not to hate her.
Audrey and Kandi were the ones coming up with the strongest jokes. I managed to get in a few gags here and there. As for Stan, he sat with his feet up on his desk, sipping from his Evian bottle, and reading Variety—the Pillsbury Doughboy gone Hollywood. Every once in a while, he’d toss out an idea, which Audrey would promptly ignore.
At about one o’clock, we sent out for lunch from a trendy bistro. Audrey ordered a Chinese chicken salad, Kandi ordered a tuna on whole wheat, and Stan—clearly not worried about his burgeoning waistline—ordered the steak with shoestring fries.
“And what will you have, Jaine?” Audrey asked, looking up at me over the rims of her five-hundred-dollar designer glasses. I scanned the menu, looking for something lo-cal. It was a toss-up between the nicoise salad and the fruit plate.
“I’ll have the meatloaf platter.”
What did I tell you? No willpower whatsoever. It’s disgraceful, n’est-ce pas?
Stan looked at me with newfound interest. Aha, he seemed to be saying. A fellow nosher.
“Help yourself to something to drink from the refrigerator,” Audrey said, as she phoned in our lunch order.
And that’s where I made my big mistake. I got up and headed for the small refrigerator in the corner of the room.
“No!” Stan shouted.
Huh? Hadn’t Audrey just told me to ‘help myself’?
Stan smiled apologetically. “Not that refrigerator. Use the one in the kitchen.”
Kandi jumped up.
“I’ll show her where it is,” she said, steering me out of the room.
“What was that all about?” I asked when we were in the hall. “What’s he keep in that refrigerator, anyway? Cocaine?”
“Close,” she said. “All those bottles of Evian you see him drinking?”
“Yeah?”
“They’re not Evian. They’re gin.”
“But he was drinking that stuff at ten in the morning.”
“I know. He’s amazing, isn’t he? I’m surprised his liver is still functioning. He usually manages to stay awake until about three. Then he starts nodding off. By five, he’s snoring like a buzzsaw.”
We got some real Evian water from the designated refrigerator and headed back to the office. I snarfed my lunch down in mere minutes. Almost as quickly as Stan polished his off. He offered me some of his fries, which I had every intention of refusing. I wish I had. They were much too salty.
When Audrey had managed to force down a few mouthfuls of her Chinese chicken salad, we went back to work. Sure enough, by three o’clock, Stan was dozing. By five, I got a bird’s-eye view of his tonsils as he snored. Audrey finally swatted him with a rolled-up script.
“Wake up, Stan. We can’t concentrate with
all that racket.”
“Sorry.” He smiled sheepishly. “Guess I must’ve dozed off.”
We worked until six, then sent the script off to be retyped and distributed to the actors, so they could have a fresh batch of lines to complain about.
“Well, kiddo,” Kandi said as we walked to our cars. “You survived the first day. It wasn’t so bad, was it?”
And I had to admit, it wasn’t.
“You want to grab a bite to eat?” I asked.
“I can’t.” Kandi’s eyes danced with excitement. “I’ve got a date.”
“Really? I didn’t know you were seeing anybody.”
“I didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t want to jinx it.” She put her bag down on the trunk of her car and hugged me. “Oh, God, Jaine. This one is Mr. Right.”
Kandi says that about every guy she dates. For a girl who grew up on the mean streets of New York, Kandi can be incredibly naïve when it comes to men. But she looked so darn happy, I didn’t want to bust her bubble.
“So?” I asked, faking enthusiasm. “What’s he like?”
“Wonderful!” she gushed, a fountain of hope springing eternal. “I’ll tell you all about him tomorrow. I promise!”
And with that, she gave me a quick hug and got into her car.
I watched her drive away, hoping that this time Kandi’s Mr. Right wouldn’t turn out to be another Mr. Mistake. Then I stepped over a banana peel that had fallen from the commissary dumpster and opened the door to my Corolla. The studio was quiet. The roller coaster had long since shut down for the day. The terrified tourists whose screams had pierced the air were now safely ensconced in their hotel rooms, vowing never again to trust their travel agents.
It had been a rough day for all of us. And we all survived. But unlike the tourists, I had to do it all over again tomorrow.
The first thing I did when I got home that night was reach for my Prozac. No, I’m not on antidepressants (not yet, anyway). Prozac is my cat, a twelve-pound furball with the appetite of a longshoreman.
I found her in the bedroom, curled up on my best cashmere sweater.