Selling Out

by Dan Wakefield

“Oh no! I’m going back to Vermont for the fall semester. We’ll have finished our current order of shows by then, and if we get picked up, I’ll of course be in constant touch on a consultancy basis. If not, I’ll still come back here during our holidays and our midsemester break in January. There’s lots of other offers I’ve had, and lots of ideas of my own I’d like to develop. But I’ll alternate that with teaching.”

  “Don’t you think trying to do both will make you schizophrenic?”

  Perry smiled.

  “I hope it will only make me like what so many people are becoming who commute from East to West—bi-coastal.”

  The reporter flipped his notebook shut, and finished off his beer.

  “I can’t wait to talk to you a year from now,” he said.

  “It’s a date,” Perry said with a smile. “In the meantime, I really have to run back to the lot.”

  At the very end of the interview-lunch at Casa Tio, a fancy Mexican restaurant, Perry had begun to experience uncomfortable feelings of shortness of breath and a beginning of trembling in his fingers. The anxiety was like he used to feel before his life with Jane when he was always hung over and trying to go a few days without a drink, but this time it was not because of any such envy brought on by the reporter’s swilling of the Mexican beers, while he sipped his pure citrus Margarita without the tequila. That in fact gave him a sense of calm, and control, of superiority. Nor was it the reporter’s aggressive questions, for though they were annoying they weren’t really upsetting. The fact was, Perry now found he simply didn’t want to be away from the lot. He suffered what felt like withdrawal pains whenever he had to leave it during the working day.

  The damn lunch made him miss dailies. The only comfort was that it meant publicity for the show.

  “How was your interview?” Ned asked him.

  “The usual. A bore. The guy was all right, I guess. He just didn’t understand—I mean, I knew I couldn’t really explain to him what it’s like, what we’re doing, why I love it.”

  “Of course not,” Ned said. “You never can, to civilians. Reporters are civilians.”

  Yes.

  Perry understood that now. He had heard guys on the lot speak of anyone outside the business as “civilians” and it was true. They might be smart, and sympathetic, and curious, but they didn’t understand the world you were working in, any more than people at home understood about the life of soldiers in combat. It was simply a different experience, a different life—more intense, exciting, adventurous, meaningful.

  Perry was not a civilian any more, he was part of the army of entertainment, part of the elite troops. Maybe that was why so many of them wore shirts with epaulets on them, and semi-military jackets. They were an army, fighting the never-ending battle against boredom, against emptiness, against the threat of blank television screens or movie screens or stages all across America and the world. They were on a mission to make pictures, stories, images, symbols, to fill the gap, the maw, the waiting wandering attentions and hungry minds of a whole society.

  He realized that was why he didn’t want his best friend—or best friend from his other world—Al Cohen, to come and visit Not because Perry was a snob and didn’t care for Al any more, not that he thought less of him, but the fact was, Al was a civilian. When you were fighting on the front lines, for the life of your cause (the show), you simply didn’t want to be distracted by having civilians around, no matter how bright they were, no matter how you might care for them. He wrote to Al as graciously as he could, explaining it just wasn’t a good time for him to come out, there wouldn’t be any chance to talk or show him around the way he’d like to do, but anyway, he and Jane would be back in Vermont in just a few weeks, he’d explain everything then.

  He had to tell Jane about turning down Al’s request to come visit, since he knew she’d find out sooner or later. Naturally, she didn’t understand.

  “I’m not turning my back on my best friend, I’m not doing anything like that,” Perry tried to explain. “It’s just that he wouldn’t understand what I’m doing now, not because he’s a jerk, for God sake, he’s the most perceptive, brightest guy I know, but he’s—well, dammit, he’s a civilian.”

  “Like me,” said Jane.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But it’s true, isn’t it?”

  “Even if it is, it doesn’t mean I love you any less.”

  “I know what it means,” Jane said.

  Perry figured anything else he might say would only get him in deeper. He went to the bedroom to study a script.

  IX

  “We’ll hold our fire till the end,” Archer commanded his men. He was bent forward over the wheel in determination, driving at breakneck speed through the high hairpin curves that led up out of the Valley and on to network headquarters. Perry was bending forward, too, not only to catch Archer’s instructions over the booming sound system, but also because of the sense of urgency about this unexpected meeting. Ned Gurney was crunched onto the shelf behind the two seats of the tiny sports car, seemingly resigned if not relaxed.

  “Ignorant bastards,” he murmured.

  “Don’t blow your cool, don’t let them put you on the defensive,” Archer warned. “We have a beautiful script, and we’re proud of it.”

  “I thought they were too,” Perry said in genuine confusion. “I thought they loved it.”

  Only a few days before, word had come down through channels from Archer to Ned to Perry (the writer being by tradition the last to hear any vital information, even about what he had written) that Amanda LeMay was simply gaga over Perry’s first hour script to lead off the series, and even more amazing, though of course less verifiable, was the rumor from higher on high that Max Bloorman had scanned it himself in New York and was not displeased!

  “This is purely an E. and A. problem,” Archer said.

  Over the blast of the music, Perry thought he heard T. and A. Like any other sophisticated citizen who followed the media’s inside accounts of the entertainment world, he knew that T. and A. was television code for tits and ass, a gross shorthand for the kind of show that appealed to the most base instinct of viewers by the most flamboyant possible display of the female anatomy. He understood that although one network in particular was most renowned for its belief in the foolproof lure of the T. and A. factor, there were executives at each network who felt that the addition of that lure could strengthen a weak show, just as there were some like Harry Flanders who thought that cars were the answer for bolstering any drama.

  “My God!” he shouted in genuine shock. “You mean they want us to put in more tits and ass?”

  Both Archer and Ned looked at Perry with alarm, as if they feared he had taken leave of his senses.

  “Well,” he said defensively, “isn’t that what T. and A. means?”

  Archer dialed down the musical volume.

  “Not T. and A.,” he said patiently, “E. and A.”

  “What’s that?” Perry asked, his mind reeling at the possible meaning of this new bit of TV esoterica. Elbows and Armpits? Elastic and Action?

  “E. and A.,” Archer said patiently, “is the network Department of Ethics and Attitudes.”

  “The censors,” Ned explained.

  Perry felt like a real rookie. Of course he knew about the network censors, but so far he had been shielded from them. There was really very little of a controversial nature in the pilot story of his innocent young married couple, and the few issues of censorship had to do with the language, which Archer gently explained to him had to be a bit toned down for television. Perry had been realistically agreeable about removing a few harsh bits of dialogue to satisfy the censors, a couple of “Screw yous” and “Up yourses” that would have been perfectly OK in the pages of a magazine but would not do for the ears of millions on national television.

  He also knew that although every network had its own censors, they were never officially called censors, which smacked of totalitarianism, of un-American pr
actice. Rather, each network, as part of its keeping of the public trust, maintained boards or departments devoted to the protection of what it conceived to be society’s accepted standards of morality, taste, and behavior. Each was called by a lofty title appropriate to this high function, such as, at Perry’s network, the Department of Ethics and Attitudes.

  “But what could they possibly object to?” Perry asked. “We don’t even have any ‘damns’ or ‘hells’ in this script.”

  “Don’t even try to outguess them,” said Ned.

  “And don’t try to challenge them,” Archer warned. “Our best strategy is to see the problem from their point of view and try to accommodate them without losing any story point we feel is crucial.”

  Before Perry could inquire as to how such a feat might be accomplished, Archer turned the music back up to an even higher volume.

  Stu Sturdivant, chairman of the network’s Department of Ethics and Attitudes, was a warm, jovial man in his fifties, the sort who in Perry’s childhood would have been described in the terms of his father’s generation as a hail-fellow-well-met. He wore a plaid sport coat, bow tie, bright slacks, cordovan shoes, and argyle socks.

  “How about those Dodgers?” Sturdivant asked the group with a shake of the head and a wide grin, and though Gurney was obviously at as much of a loss about the local team’s baseball fortunes as was Perry, Archer quickly responded with arcane talk about RBI’s and ERA’s, matching Sturdivant cliche for cliche as they batted back and forth observations on so-and-so’s performance at “the hot corner” and the relative strengths of the “wings” of various starting “hurlers” of skipper Lasorda’s “mound staff.”

  Perry joined Ned in nodding and grinning and grunting through this seemingly interminable “warm-up,” till finally Sturdivant lit up a Dutch Masters cigar, and, amid billowing clouds of smoke, came to the point of his complaint about the script.

  “We don’t mind him jumping on her bones in that last scene,” he said. “What the hell, the guy may be some kind of college teacher, but he’s no pansy. Am I right?”

  “You called it exactly, Stu,” Archer said approvingly.

  “Our hero’s a regular guy,” Ned said, nodding.

  “When does he ‘jump’ anywhere?” Perry asked in genuine confusion.

  Archer slapped him on the knee in a seemingly friendly manner, then added a sharp squeeze that meant, keep quiet.

  “You know, after the argument, they make up, and he ‘jumps on her bones.’”

  “The lovemaking scene,” Ned whispered.

  “Oh! Sure, right, you mean that,” Perry said heartily.

  He tried not to grimace, pasting a manly smile on, trying to black out the mental image of a pervert pouncing on a skeleton.

  “It’s not what they do,” Sturdivant continued, “it’s where they do it.”

  The hour script was a low-key, familiar story of the married couple’s arguments over money that led to a cooling of sexual ardor, that were finally resolved over a “budget meal” so funny that it broke the ice of the couple’s hostility and led to a sudden, loving rekindling of passion right there on the kitchen floor. Of course the scene only suggested it would end in lovemaking, there wasn’t even any nudity, but it was clear that they couldn’t wait nor did they want to wait to get to anyplace more comfortable.

  Amanda LeMay and the programming people had praised its humanness and tenderness and appealing spirit.

  “You mean you don’t mind if he jumps on her bones to show the argument is over,” Ned asked calmly, “but you don’t like him jumping on them in the kitchen?”

  Stu nodded, making a sour face.

  “They can wait till they get to the bedroom, can’t they?” he said.

  “No!” Perry shouted, jumping to his feet. “That’s the whole point!”

  Archer pulled him back down.

  “The charm is that they really love each other so much, and they see their arguments were so silly, they can’t wait,” Archer said to Stu.

  Sturdivant shook his head.

  “The kitchen is kinky,” he insisted.

  “Why, the kitchen is the most wholesome place in a household!” Ned exclaimed.

  “It’s for eating,” Stu insisted, “and I mean eating supper, in case you miss my point. Why can’t they just kiss and then go off to the bedroom?”

  “Then it’s not spontaneous!” Perry exclaimed. “It ruins the whole feeling of it.”

  “The public won’t like it,” Stu said. “The people out there will think this young couple is a little bit on the weirdo side, if they have to do it in the damn kitchen.”

  “It doesn’t show they’re weird, it shows they’re human!” shouted Perry.

  “There’s nothing to get loud about,” Archer cautioned him.

  Stu turned to Perry and stared.

  “I understand you’re from back East,” he said.

  “I live in Vermont,” Perry admitted.

  “In fact,” Stu went on, “all of you people are from the New York area, isn’t that so?”

  “As a matter of fact, I grew up in Minnesota,” Ned Gurney said. “Is that any better?”

  Ned was getting hot under the collar.

  “It isn’t a matter of better or worse,” Stu explained. “It’s just a fact that intellectuals from back East don’t really understand how the real people feel about these things. And it’s our job to see that we don’t offend them.”

  “My God, this is the nineteen-eighties!” said Ned. “You have everything on TV—you even have incest.”

  “Not in the kitchen we don’t!” said Stu, standing up.

  “Besides, I understand this may be an eight o’clock show. That’s a family hour. We have to be especially careful. We have a special responsibility to the children of this country.”

  Archer stood up.

  “We didn’t know they were thinking of us for eight o’clock, Stu. We appreciate your concerns, and we’ll of course cooperate in every way we can.”

  Ned and Perry rose glumly, murmuring, and Stu got up to walk them to the door.

  “Don’t worry, boys. We’re not prudes over here, we’ll get along fine.”

  He slung a comradely arm over the slumping shoulders of Ned and Perry.

  “Say, you boys hear the one about the traveling salesman who stopped at the farm where the daughter kept a pet giraffe in the barn?”

  Obediently, they listened.

  Loudly, they laughed.

  Outside, they cringed.

  For the first time since he started working on the show, Perry wanted a drink. He did not have in mind a fine Chardonnay with a delicate nose and amusing bouquet. He was thinking more of a water glass filled with straight gin.

  From the fuming looks of Archer and Ned, he figured they might for a moment forget their higher tastes and join him. It was only eleven in the morning, but maybe they could find one of those dark, anonymous, funky bars, air-cooled and stinky with last night’s booze, and quietly tie one on. Maybe they’d decide to give it all up and go buy a small newspaper on the Cape.

  They walked down the sterile hallway in stony silence, and once inside the elevator, Perry jabbed for the lobby button, anxious to get on the road to his imagined oasis. But Archer brushed his hand aside and poked the button for ten—the top floor, the executive floor.

  “What are we going to do?” Ned Gurney asked, “jump?”

  “We’re going to get an explanation from Amanda LeMay,” Archer said grimly.

  “You mean about why a young married couple can’t make love in the kitchen?” Perry asked.

  Ned snorted.

  “I’m sure as far as Amanda’s concerned, they could make it on top of the refrigerator. Or in the sink, for that matter. That’s not the problem.”

  Archer grunted as the elevator reached ten.

  “The problem is,” he said, “we’ve given them a sophisticated, adult show, a quality show for an intelligent, educated audience, and now they’re planning to shove i
t into a family-viewing slot. It’s going to tie our hands behind our back, besides giving us the wrong audience. They’re going to bury us.”

  “We’re going to nurture you,” Amanda said.

  Her eyes were large and warm, almost moist from the intensity of her assurance. She stood up and moved from behind her desk toward where Archer, Ned, and Perry sat facing her. She was wearing a loose dress with long, puffy sleeves, but cut low in front, showing the ample breasts that now seemed to be rising and falling with her heartbeat, her emotion. She seemed like an earth mother, strong and protective.

  “A show like yours,” she said, “is unique, special, a bit fragile. You need to be nurtured.”

  She extended her arms, and for a moment Perry had the feeling she was going to come a little closer and bury his head against her heaving breast, and he averted his eyes in flushed embarrassment, fearing if she did what he fantasized, he would hurl his arms around her waist and clutch her to him, crying, “Mama, make it all right!” To his relief, however, she turned to Archer.

  “Our strategy now is to put you on after the season starts, Sunday night at eight. You’ll be against ‘Danny, the Golden Dolphin,’ and ‘Little Asian Rascals,’ a new sitcom about a group of Vietnamese orphans who live on a catamaran in Newport Beach, looked after by a retired Air Force general and his deaf-mute daughter. Danny’s been on for four years and he’s starting to slip. The new show is very iffy—we don’t think the Vietnamese kids will draw in Middle America.”

  “Still, that’s traditionally a family hour,” Archer argued.

  “Our testing has shown that you have a great appeal to teenagers,” Amanda said. “It’s the old story of young people wanting to know what the big kids do—what they’ll be emulating in only a few years. Research shows you can build a real following in this slot—a following that will grow up with your show, mature with it, and eventually move with it into a later time slot.”

  “That’s awfully far down the road,” Ned Gurney said uneasily.

  “Exactly,” Amanda said. “That’s how much faith we have in ‘The First Year’s the Hardest.’ We see it as a slowly building staple, something that will work itself into the American grain, like ‘The Waltons,’ like ‘Happy Days.’ That’s why we’re going to do all we can to nurture it.”