Much Ado About Mother (7 page)

CHAPTER 8

ERINN

I
t felt good to be working again, although this was an extremely lean production. She was the entire crew: producer, director, camera operator, and sound engineer. She certainly wouldn't spread this around, but she actually preferred it this way. No negotiating with temperamental directors (if she was the camera operator) or moody cameramen (if she was the director).

No network had officially signed on, and it would be months before the show got any feedback, in all probability; there were notes and editing, more notes and focus groups to contend with before the show ever made it to air, if it ever did make it to air. The chances were slim at best. There were sizzle reels and pilots that Erinn had worked on that she had completely forgotten about by the time she'd heard the show had been passed over.

The concept here, the sizzle called
Budding Tastes,
was as jam-packed as the shooting was streamlined. The basic idea was that the winery, called Vermont Wines, produced not only wine but that the winery owner could also steer the viewer toward fabulous food-and-wine pairings. The show would be part business advice show, part travel show, part food show. The only problem here, as Erinn discovered as she got deeper and deeper into a conversation with Tiffany Vermont, the winery owner, was that Tiffany didn't really know anything about food-and-wine pairings, beyond the basic “red with meat, white with fish, champagne with everything.” Erinn had grown up in Napa Valley; she knew her wines and had lived for years surrounded by sophisticated theater people and therefore knew her food-and-wine pairings as well. She had a professional hunch that this woman was not going to bring anything new and exciting to the production. And that had her worried. She would have to think of some kind of angle to make this show stand out from the crowd.

But what? How?

Tiffany practically hummed with ambition. As far as Erinn could tell, it was sheer willpower that got her a TV deal. She was tall, blond, and had a face frozen in a Botox-glazed stare. And most troubling of all was that she saw absolutely no irony in the fact that they were bottling California wines at the Vermont Winery.

When Erinn first arrived, Tiffany had sat on the hood of Erinn's car as Erinn singlehandedly unloaded all the camera gear. “People are always telling me that I should be on TV. Isn't that nice?”

Erinn started filming the winery and the surrounding hills. When she had to work with people and found herself becoming irritated with them, she took refuge in doing the scenic shots, beautiful landscape vignettes, or “the ubiquitous travelog shots,” as Cary called them, as a way to calm herself down. She took in the winery, a California Mission-style building with a gleaming adobe front and a red-tile roof.

Erinn could guess that the wooden shutters and window boxes were probably Tiffany touches, since they had nothing to do with the architectural integrity of the building.

Behind the main building, there were two large, sleeker buildings where the wines were actually made and sat fermenting, and behind those were rows and rows of grapes. No matter what became of this pilot, Erinn was excited by the footage she was capturing. The land was beautiful.

Suddenly, a wine bottle appeared in front of the lens. Erinn stood up with a jolt, totally confused.

Tiffany was standing in front of the lens holding a bottle of wine as if she were a presenter on a game show.

“I designed the label myself. I thought you might want to shoot that.”

Working with “talent,” especially the wannabe variety of cast members of reality shows, was always taxing. These people, people like Tiffany and Blu, just wanted to be stars, not actors. Erinn longed for the dedication of the Broadway actors she'd known. But that was a hundred years ago. This was a new breed and they didn't appear to be going anywhere.

Secretly horrified, Erinn studied the label out of politeness and a touch of fascination. While Tiffany had added Cape Cod touches to her Mission-style winery, she went with a Bavarian theme on her labels. The labels featured Tiffany in a dirndl and low-necked top bending seductively toward the camera to show off her impressive cleavage—a more mature St. Pauli Girl. Tiffany looked at Erinn expectantly and posed again, this time with the wine bottle, mimicking the pose on the label.

There didn't seem to be any chance of ditching Tiffany.

“When do you think you'll start interviewing me?” Tiffany asked. “My hairdresser is also a makeup artist and she did my makeup for free. Wasn't that nice?”

Erinn bit her tongue. She knew better than to tell Tiffany that “for free” was a preposterous statement. Not that anyone seemed to care these days, but the expression “for free” drove her to distraction; “for” was really nothing more than shorthand for “in exchange for” and “free” was a short version of “free of charge.” To say “for free” basically meant “in exchange for free of charge.” Why no one used the correct “She did my makeup free” was beyond her.

But she knew she was alone in her umbrage.

Erinn tried to ignore Tiffany, who still seemed to be posing in the periphery. She looked in the viewfinder and concentrated on her shots. The land really was beautiful, and Erinn thought that if she had any time after the shoot, she might take a few still shots just for herself.

I'll bet Christopher would love to shoot up here,
she thought.

Tiffany once again invaded the quiet, standing and posing in front of several long rows of grapes that stretched out over the hills like corduroy.

“I think this would make a nice shot, don't you? Me and the grapes? I could walk up and down the rows and we could chat about what it's like to create beautiful wine.”

“First of all, the show isn't about making beautiful wine. My understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, is that the show is about pairing wine and food. And second, the sun is not in the right position to shoot you. You'd be backlit and you'd just be a shadow.”

“We don't want that!” Tiffany practically gulped. “Well, what about me in front of the . . .”

“Let me tell you a little parable,” Erinn said.

Tiffany tilted her head to the side in confusion, a long hank of starched blond hair falling away from her slim neck.

“A hermit living way up in the Swiss Alps decides he is lonely and he goes down the mountain to find a bride. He meets a lovely young woman who agrees to go with him if she can bring her loyal donkey, who has been her constant companion since childhood. The hermit agrees; they marry and head back up the mountain. The hermit ties the donkey in the barn and they go to bed.”

Tiffany snickered. “They went to bed, huh?”

“Yes, they went to bed. That has nothing to do with the story, so please concentrate. The following morning the hermit finds out that the donkey has kicked down the barn wall. The young bride, who doesn't really know anything about this man, worries what he might do. But the hermit just says, ‘That's one' and goes off up the mountain with his goats.”

“He has goats?”

“Yes, Tiffany, he has goats, but again, not the point. When he comes down the mountain, he discovers that the donkey has trampled all the vegetables in his garden. His bride is terrified of his reaction, but again, the hermit is very calm. He merely says, ‘That's two.' ”

Tiffany nodded. “He's a good man.”

“Please stay with me, Tiffany. The hermit ties the donkey up and in the morning finds that the donkey has kicked over the chicken coop. The hermit looks at the donkey and then looks at his wife and says, ‘That's three' and pulls out a gun and shoots the donkey. The wife, horrified, throws herself on the lifeless creature, and asks the hermit how he could be such a beast. The hermit looks at her and says, ‘That's one. . . .' ”

Tiffany nodded. “So . . . ,” she said, “he wasn't a good man?”

“That's one!”

Tiffany gasped and her hands flew to her mouth.

“Oh!” she said and then punched Erinn playfully on the arm. “Oh, you!”

Just as Erinn thought she was going to pack up the car and go home, Tiffany's cell phone went off in her back pocket. Her jeans were so tight Erinn wasn't sure she'd be able to release it in time to catch the call, but with a flick of a pointed acrylic nail, she was focused on her phone call.

“I'll see you later,” Tiffany said,
sotto voce,
waving to her like a little girl.

Erinn breathed a sigh of relief. Was this what life was going to be like with Blu? She put her eye back to the viewfinder of her XF300 HD Camcorder. She'd bought the camera when she was still flush with work, but even now that times were tight she didn't regret the purchase. The video quality was excellent and the body was lightweight. She hated to admit there were shoots she couldn't—and wouldn't—get because she couldn't physically handle the bigger cameras. Maddeningly, those jobs would always still go to the men in production. A harsh reality, but one not likely to change until the industry wrapped its collective head around the smaller, lighter cameras. There was a woman who was legendary in the industry. She could shoulder a big camera and even run through sand while shooting. Erinn tried her damnedest to work with a thirty-pound camera and got as far as getting it onto her shoulder, but after shooting for an hour, she had to have a production assistant lift it off. So she'd done her homework and came up with this lightweight beauty, which she knew she could handle. She was confident her work spoke for itself. If only a few more production companies would listen.

When she had shot every square inch of the winery and vineyard she knew she had to get back to Tiffany. There was no escape. She walked into a cool wine cellar and saw Tiffany sitting by herself with a bottle of Riesling and a bag of cheddar goldfish. She looked up—a bit drunkenly, Erinn thought—and held out the bag.

“Goldfish and Riesling is my best food-and-wine pairing idea, ever,” she said. “EH-VER.”

That's two,
thought Erinn.

There was no “three” because the rest of the day magically turned around. Erinn seized on the idea that Tiffany, in her own way, was a food-and-wine-pairing genius! They threw out, at Erinn's insistence, the filet mignon paired with a cabernet sauvignon or a crisp, dry chardonnay with salmon. Boring! Instead, Erinn hit on the idea of a show revolving around pairing decent wines with junk food. This was more in line with what the average American ate anyway, she reasoned. The change in format was probably not what Cary had in mind, but Erinn thought it was genius!

Tiffany was the idiot savant of food-and-wine pairing. She poured out her thoughts. Hot dogs, for example, actually had nuances the average consumer never dreamed about. She recommended a dry rosé if plain, a pinot noir if the dog was served with mustard, and a humble zinfandel if it was served with chili.

At the end of the shoot, Tiffany was in tears that Erinn was leaving. She'd never dreamed anyone would ever take her junk food pairings seriously. When Erinn had finished loading the car and secured all the camera equipment, Tiffany was weeping theatrically in Erinn's arms.

“It's good, isn't it?” Tiffany asked. “Somebody will buy this, right?”

“You never can tell,” Erinn said, trying to peel Tiffany off her. “But we did our best, right?”

“I really want to be on TV.”

“Noted,” Erinn said and got quickly into her car.

Tiffany stood waving until Erinn had pulled completely out of the long driveway. Erinn hated shooting sizzle reels for any kind of lifestyle or reality TV. Production companies across Los Angeles churned out these short pilots like factories during the Industrial Revolution. Professional actors understood that the chances were a thousand to one that a show would be green-lit. But not these real people; they pinned all their hopes on one afternoon of shooting . . . even unreal people like Tiffany.

Ten minutes later, Erinn was unloading all the camera gear into her hotel room. She reviewed her footage and she had to admit it looked quirky and edgy (words she loathed but knew to sling around production company or network conference rooms). She resisted calling anyone in Los Angeles. If she called Suzanna, she'd have to feel guilty that she hadn't been in town for their mother's arrival. If she called Cary to discuss the show, she'd be trapped in a conversation about Blu Knight—and frankly, she wasn't up to envisioning the aging starlet ensconced in her guest room. Erinn realized with a shock that Blu was still several years younger than she; only in Southern California would midthirties be considered “aging.”