Most Talkative: Stories From the Front Lines of Pop Culture (19 page)

Foxy Brown—Used the Greg Brady jumpsuit for this one, with an Afro wig. It was as close to drag as I’ve ever come.

Elvis—While working at TRIO, my best pal Bruce Bozzi and I dressed as Elvis and appeared on behalf of the channel in the NYC Halloween parade. Once the parade started, we realized that people expected us to perform as Elvis, but we had no act. We sang the same refrain from “Viva Las Vegas” all night and were booed and gay-bashed all along the route. It was a miserable experience, but we made it onto the WCBS eleven o’clock newscast.

Austin Powers—I had a really cheap store-bought costume and wore it to a party full of hot gay dudes who were wearing next to nothing. Needless to say, I went home alone.

Yellow Sequined Tails—I’ve thrown this jacket over street clothes countless times when I’m costumeless, and the sheer strength of the sequins has made it a crowd favorite.

Baseball Player—I wore the Cardinals jersey I had from throwing out the first pitch (you’ll hear that story later) and might have enjoyed wearing my tight baseball pants more than I was supposed to.

Giggy—I’ll explain when I tell you about the Housewives.

Guess who’s taking my picture?

WILL YOU BE MY DADDY?

I sometimes wonder if Oklahoma City precipitated a shift in the nature of American news; as our world became more somber—and scary—the news got lighter. Fluffier. More vapid. Over time, Paris the city would become less newsworthy than Paris the Hilton. You probably think I, of all people, snorted up this change like a line of fine Colombian cocaine, but I hate cocaine, and this shift had a downside for me. As someone who covered—and loved—both entertainment and news, I felt caught in the middle.

I was approaching thirty and I felt like I’d grown up at
CBS This Morning.
I was light-years away from the ponytailed smart-ass intern I once was, but the work was still challenging and exciting. At CBS, I had learned much of what I know now about producing live segments, getting the most out of only a few minutes of TV time, booking guests, writing scripts on a tight deadline, and the art of the interview. And yet the show itself had no energy. It wasn’t very good. Ownership of CBS changed several times during that period, and we worked amid constant rumors of anchor shake-ups and staff changes. I remember one week when every single day at least one paper, sometimes two, featured calls for the cancellation of the show, ending on Friday with the
New York Post
saying we were “unnecessary and unwatchable.”

So, what did we do while the world either laughed at us or ignored us? We had FUN! We were a merry band of lovable losers. One day I taught the entire morning editorial meeting the game where you figure out what your name would be if you were a porn star. In the version I knew, you take your middle name, you make it your first name, and for your porn last name you use the name of the street you grew up on. (Or the name of your street now. I gave everybody a choice to make it more fun and because the street that I grew up on was boring.) According to the modified formula, my porn name was Joey Horatio, which I enjoyed because it sounded like rough trade. As we were all cracking ourselves up figuring out our alter egos, Andy Rooney came in and said, “Is this a party? What in the world is going on in here?” And so we figured out Andy Rooney’s porn-star name: Aitken Partridge. Not porny at all, may God rest his soul.

Paula Zahn came in next. “What is this?” she demanded. Turns out Paula’s name would be Ann Jennifer. Which is one sadly sexless name for a porn star. Stick to the news, Ann Jennifer.

Come to think of it, that little game revealed a lot about our problems: We had no
heat
. There was never any energy surrounding anything we put on the air, guests didn’t come to our show first, and America didn’t fall in love with our anchor team. Mention
CBS This Morning
today and you won’t initiate any trip down TV’s Memory Lane. Mention the
Today
show with Katie Couric and Matt Lauer, or Jane Pauley and Bryant Gumbel, and it’s all gushing and rhapsodizing.

One of the lowest points of
CBS This Morning
’s history came when we decided to zig when others zagged. We couldn’t compete with Katie and her window looking out over her devoted fans on Rockefeller Plaza, so we added a studio audience. Which sounds not bad, until you realize this audience has to be there at 6:30 in the morning and watch boring stuff live. Nevertheless, I came down with Lucy Ricardo Syndrome, the symptoms of which include a sudden desperation to be a part of the show. I didn’t care that I wouldn’t be on-camera. I volunteered to do the audience warm-up every day, thinking that getting myself in front of a crowd would eventually pay off in some way. Plus nobody else wanted to do it.

I had no routine—only blind confidence, which had worked pretty well for me at times in the past but had also effed me royally on more than one occasion. So, I made “jokes” about how early it was, though there was nothing funny about how early it was to these people. I made “jokes” about Paula and Harry Smith, only there wasn’t much that was funny to say about them. “They’re nice, decent people who are good at their jobs! Thanks, folks, you’ve been great!” I can’t even claim to have bombed, because those poor dazed souls either stared through me like I wasn’t there or, worse, mustered that horrible frowny smile that kindhearted people reserve only for pitiable wretches.

Around that time I got a call from an exec at ABC Daytime who was developing a talk show about soaps and heard I might be the perfect producer. This seemed to me like potential kismet—Lucci and Cohen reunited at last. I knew I could produce that show, but that blind optimism told me I should try to take it to the next level.
Why don’t I audition to host it?
I thought.
Who would be more perfect than me for this?
I put the blank stares of
CBS This Morning
’s audience out of my mind and rushed out to make a demo tape of myself interviewing
The Young and the Restless
stars (whom I had access to, working at CBS) and sent it along. When I was called in to meet with the ABC Daytime producer I knew something big was about to happen for me. And my instincts were right, in a way. But instead of kvelling over my natural hosting skills and gorgeous, barely noticeably crossed eyes, she ripped into me for more than three minutes. And I quote: “How
arrogant
are you to think you could go from producing to being
on-air
with no experience? I’m in the business of making stars and the camera doesn’t lie and in your case it CERTAINLY didn’t lie.”

But did you like the tape!?
I wondered.

Meanwhile, our new
CBS This Morning
format was such a dud that people just stopped showing up to sit in the audience. Within a couple weeks of our debut, there were days when we’d have just fifteen people in the studio. We made the interns come in early to fill the rows, and we’d seat whatever sad (and usually exhausted, bused-in) group (of senior citizens or sick people) we could find strategically, in a bunch, so Harry or Paula could stand in front of them and it would
look
to the home viewer like an actual crowd. Oh, by the way, you know what’s not made to be seen live on a stage? A morning show newsblock reporting on the latest in the Middle East or the weather report or a segment about consumer fraud. Fortunately, my pitiable routine must have been so unremarkable that no one upstairs caught wind of it, because one afternoon I got a call from a CBS exec offering me a producing job at
48 Hours
. The show’s original incarnation was as a fly-on-the-wall documentary spotlighting various characters associated with one story for forty-eight hours. They called me because they were looking to expand into some celebrity-based shows and thought I’d be able to help. Eager to tackle something new, but also feeling a teensy bit like a rat leaving a sinking ship, I took the job and said a bittersweet good-bye to Harry, Paula, and the remaining fifteen audience members.

With Paula and Harry on my last day at
CBS This Morning

In edit rooms and in the field at
48 Hours
, I learned much that would later inform how I now give notes to the producers on Bravo shows. For instance, lingering on little moments—a facial expression, a tic, a swallowed word—can actually be far more revealing of someone’s character than the big moments. On
Housewives
, a wig-pulling episode is naturally provocative, but I’m just as intrigued by hearing what our subjects order at a meal.
Ashley got the steak—?!!
can become a vital thread in the overall tapestry. I worked on every kind of story at
48 Hours
, including a segment on the original Broadway cast and production team behind
Rent
, a profile of Shirley MacLaine, and a piece about Barry Manilow’s relationship with his British fans, the Maniloonies. That last one was funny to everyone with the exception of Mr. Manilow and his fans. Our approach was: “Aww, look at these ladies of a certain age (and dimension) who call themselves Maniloonies, worshipping at the feet of Sir Barry.” They’d participated in the shoot willingly, but when it aired, they felt we were making fun of them, and Barry’s publicist was furious that we’d portrayed his audience as anything other than frenzied teenyboppers. The reaction didn’t surprise me. At Manilow’s concert, the publicist had repeatedly said, “Look at all the
young
people!” I looked around and didn’t see any, but I nodded anyway. We see what we want to see. Another story reunited me with my intern mama, Erin Moriarty, who’d long since left Morning Consumerville for a gig in prime time. At a booksellers’ convention, I’d been handed a book that I read and loved, a ten-hanky weeper that appealed to every schmaltzy bone in my body. I pitched Erin a story following the book’s author, Nicholas Sparks, and his publishing team in the period (which worked out to be more than forty-eight hours) leading up to publication of what I was convinced was going to be a smash bestseller,
The Notebook
. After Erin’s interview, I stayed behind in North Carolina to shoot some B-roll (that’s TV-speak for “more footage”) of Sparks at home. We happened to be there, and rolling camera, when he received a phone call: His father had just passed away. It was a heartbreaking moment and very real. He begged me not to include the footage in his profile. It was just too personal and he couldn’t bear the thought of it being shown on television. He appealed to my decency and I wanted to respect his privacy, so I gave him my word. I never told Erin about that footage. The book went on to sell millions of copies, and Nicholas Sparks has been a best-selling author ever since.

Years later, I had long forgotten this incident and was surprised to learn that Sparks had written of me in a nonfiction book about his life. In it, he thanked me for my compassion in not airing that footage. I was honored, but mortified. Looking back on it now, I wondered if I should’ve included it in the story. This may sound unfeeling or opportunistic, but we were a legitimate documentary show, and we were there to tell the truth about what was happening to this man in the days leading up to the biggest event in his life. One of the reasons that I think the
Housewives
resonates with viewers is that we show
everything
that happens during our production period—good, bad, or ugly, it’s real.

Some might actually say I flouted the laws of journalism by cutting the phone call. At the time, obscuring a detail about a fiction author’s life did not seem the same as withholding information about a world leader. Last year, Erin took me as her date to a party celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of
The Notebook
. In the car on the way over, I finally confessed that I’d withheld the footage of Sparks receiving that phone call. Her reaction surprised me and instantly eased any lingering doubts I had. She said that had it been a hard news story, it would’ve been our obligation to show that footage, but since it was a feature, she was okay with my judgment call. I walked into that celebration with a light heart and loved reuniting with Nick, who still credits that
48 Hours
piece with much of his first novel’s initial success.