Slick (3 page)

Meanwhile, the Orono women were off on their own journey. At first they struggled to hide. The most exposed girls fought their way deeper into the crowd, causing the new outer layer to fight their way in. From above it must have looked like a kaleidoscope. Or Busby Berkeley’s dry dream. I’m not sure what psychological force took over, but it spread like current. In eerie synchronization, they simply stopped hiding and started cheering.

Makes sense, I suppose. The weather was gorgeous. They were out in large numbers. And they were defiantly breaking convention, like the Torches of Liberty brigade. By the time the men stopped hooting and hollering, the women euphorically took over. Some of the guys even asked me if they could join in on the nude thing and, you know, help the cause. Uh-uh. I was all for equal rights, really, but if we made this thing coed it would seem more like an orgy than a social protest. People would smell the marketing.

By 7:30, the next wave of staff arrived on the scene. Then the next. And the next. Within the hour, the courtyard was overflowing with spectators. As I’d hoped, the employees showed no ill will toward the protesters. It was kind of hard to take this seriously when being confronted with signs like
fairmont unfair to monk seals!, hey fairmont! ‘aloha’ also means goodbye!
, and my personal favorite:
don’t you know you’re gonna shock the monk seal?

At 9:15, a DC-10 touched down on the airstrip. The press had finally arrived. The demonstrators were quite surprised to learn that the fourth estate, in this case, was simply a petite reporter and a three-man production crew. The reporter, Miranda Cameron-Donnell, worked for the Associated Press. The production crew worked for me.

“That’s it?” yelled one of the boyfriends. “You said the media would be all over this.”

And now they were. Yesterday, while most of the students were booting into the Pacific, I called the producers at each of Hawaii’s four major TV news markets. Since the Fairmont Keoki was a four-hour flight from Honolulu, I figured I’d give them ample lead time, just as a courtesy.

Naturally, they all went nuts for my premise. “Wow! Really? Cool!”

“Way cool,” I replied. “Swing on by.”

As I expected, they sighed and stalled: “Yeah, well, I don’t know. Keoki Atoll’s kind of far, dude. Tell you what, just send the VNR and the B-roll, and we’ll definitely use it. Just make sure to send it early enough so we can tease it.”

Ninety-nine percent of the world couldn’t translate that request for the life of them. That makes the other one percent of us very happy.

As you know, the news has changed dramatically over the last few decades. The media outlets have merged and merged and merged into what are (as of now) six multinational überconglomerates that control virtually everything you see and hear. This has led to an unprecedented streamlining of the news industry. It’s still going on. Just one month before, the newly consummated AOL Time Warner cut four hundred jobs at CNN. Why? The quick and easy answer would be profitability, but it’s also because of people like me. Publicists and journalists used to be flip sides of the same coin. Now we’re sharing space on a one-sided nickel. This isn’t a bad thing at all. It’s made both our jobs a hell of a lot easier. With the exception of AP and
Maxim
, I’m all the media I need for this event.

The video news release (VNR) is the dirty little secret that all flacks and hacks share. It’s do-it-yourself coverage. Using my own crew, my own script, even my own voice, I serve as the on-the-scene (but never seen) reporter. When all is said and done, I’ve got a professional-looking two-minute news piece, the kind you see every night at eleven. From there we use a portable uplink to shoot the whole thing into space. The final step is faxing notice to all the newsrooms.
Hi. I’ve got a sweet piece on a mob of angry naked chicks. Interested? Here are the satellite coordinates. Go nuts.

For the budget-conscious news director, this is manna from heaven. It takes just minutes for Graphics to add their custom network overlays and Sound to dub a local reporter’s voice over mine. Presto. The station runs the piece as their own. There’s no legal requirement to cite the source, and that’s just the way we like it. The producers often mix it up a little to cover their tracks. That’s what the B-roll is for. It’s a no-frills collection of relevant interviews and visual clips, a media LEGO set they can put together any way they want. It’s a great system. On a slow news day, a thirty-minute show can squeeze in a good four to five minutes of VNRs, as compared to five or six minutes of real news. It’s pretty easy to tell the two apart. That fire in Century City? News. That new laser technique to remove wrinkles? VNR. If it promotes a product or company, it’s probably a VNR. If the reporter never appears in any of the on-scene footage, that’s because it’s not his story. It came from outer space.

I was glad the cavalry finally arrived. Keoki Atoll was six hours be hind the East Coast. I wanted to get this out by 11
a.m.
so the eastern affiliates could tease the story all through prime time.

The video crew was from an L.A. production house called Metropia. Its three principals—Denny, Gray, and Vivek—were your standard ponytailed AV geeks. But they were masters of their craft. I flew them out here at great expense because I didn’t want to take a chance with an untested local outfit. If the final piece looked like crap, the stations wouldn’t run it.

I wished I had filmed their faces as soon as they broke through the outer shell of the brouhaha and got a look at the chewy, creamy center. Even Vivek, the gay one of the bunch, was stunned by the unprecedented display of natural breasts.

The last one into the fray was the AP’s own Miranda Cameron-Donnell. Established in 1848, the Associated Press was a nonprofit collective owned by more than fifteen hundred newspapers. In effect, they did what I did: ship their stories off to others. Unlike me, they got credit for their work. Also unlike me, their reach extended to over one billion people. That was why I called Miranda. Once she put her piece on the wire, it would get picked up by newspaper, radio, and Web outlets all over the world. There was quite a lot of power packed into that small frame.

Miranda was an old friend of mine. Actually, she was an old friend of an old flame, but we remained chummy. Since I was the one who got cheated on and dumped, Miranda didn’t have to play the allegiance card and freeze me out. To her, I was only an asshole by profession.

Inviting her to Keoki Atoll had been a cruel pleasure on my part. It was always fun to crack her carefully maintained appearance. Miranda was a power dresser. Even in tropical weather, she looked ready for the catwalk in her sleeveless white Donna Karan blouse and three-hundred dollar Gucci slacks.

Predictably, her jaw dropped at the spectacle of skin. “Oh my fucking God. I can’t believe you really did this.”

“Miranda. Hey!” I went to hug her.

“Don’t. Don’t even touch me. You are the scum of the earth. I’ve stepped in better things than you.”

That was just how New Yorkers said hello. “How are you, hon?”

“Jet-lagged. And thoroughly repulsed. What did you do, hire strippers?”

“Nope. These are genuine New England student activists.”

“Pathetic, Scott. Am I the only real journalist here?”

“You and David Green from
Maxim
.”

“I’ll take that as a yes. Here.”

She handed me a DVD-ROM. The AP GraphicsBank was one of the world’s most extensive video image libraries. You try finding stock footage of a monk seal.

“Oh, perfect,” I said. “I really needed this. Thank you.”

“I don’t even know why I’m helping you. Jesus.”

“Hey, where’s your photo guy?”

“That would be me.” Proving her point, she extracted a two-thousand dollar digital camera from her leather bag, holding it as if it were somebody else’s baby. “There weren’t any photographers available from the Honolulu pool. And my goddamn bosses wouldn’t pay to fly Armand out here.”

Typical. “All right. Hope you know how to use that thing.”

“I hope I don’t.”

It was finally time to get started. I gave Denny and Vivek a list of required shots, and they immediately sicced their cameras on the pool of nudes. No doubt there would be an unedited C-roll added to their personal collection. I made a note to get a copy for Ira.

Meanwhile, Gray set up his editing station: a titanium G4 Power Book, complete with satellite uplink terminal. As I handed him the monk-seal disc, Miranda yanked my script out of my pocket. She paced the pavement, reading aloud.

“‘You know the old expression: it’s not what you say but how you say it. This morning on the beautiful Hawaiian islands of Keoki Atoll, over two hundred young female activists staged a “cheeky” demonstration against the brand-new Fairmont Keoki, a ninety-million-dollar, twenty nine-acre luxury’—God, Scott!”

“Keep reading.”

“‘—luxury beach resort scheduled to open tomorrow. Their gripe? Fairmont’s treatment of Keoki’s oldest occupant, the endangered monk seal. Now in order to save the critters’ hides, these lovely young women...are baring theirs.’”

She handed the script back. “You’re going to burn in hell.”

“Only if they use my tit-for-tat pun.”

“So how much did you spend on this whole sham?”

“Who says I spent anything?”

“Right. I’m sure these kids just cashed in their beer bottles. Do they know you’re using them?”

“Who says I’m using them? God, Miranda. Relax. You’re in Hawaii.”

Over the years, I’ve taught myself to observe people’s subtle nuances, to read between their lines. Now I can’t turn those powers off. I suffer from Terminator Vision, a red-screen overlay with constant streaming data on the side. At the moment that data was telling me Miranda had issues. Not with me or the gratuitous T&A. She was having problems at home. Of course that wasn’t a blind guess. I’d met her husband many times. Quite the prick.

Speaking of pricks, the cameras brought out the worst in some of the spectators. One of the hotel workers shouted NC-17 compliments from outside the cordon until a pair of Orono guys got on his case. Fortunately security broke it up before it became a brawl.

Miranda shook her head at the spectacle. “Scott, give me one good reason why I shouldn’t blow this farce wide open.”

“Because you like me.”

“Not after this.”

The real reason was because, like David, she knew that
200 women strip naked
was a hell of a lot more interesting than
pr guy manipulates news
. You have to understand something about Miranda. Prior to AP, she spent five years at
USA Today
, until she had a four-color meltdown. Now she liked to tell herself that she was doing real journalism. For all I know, she could be. Just not today. Today she was working for me.

“So who’s the ringleader of this thing?” she asked. “Besides you.”

“I’ll take you to her.”

I hadn’t seen Deb since the stripdown, and I was having a hell of a time locating her now. Fortunately, she found me.

I waved for Denny as Deb worked her way to the rope border. She was definitely getting airtime. The movement needed a voice, a face, and
that
body. Good Lord. In my preemptive defense, I’ll say that the sexiest woman I’d ever known was an A-cup. With that out of the way, I feel better in expressing my fervent belief that Deb’s stunningly large breasts could stop air traffic. In L.A., women spent thousands to get what she got.

“Deb, this is Miranda Cameron-Donnell, from the Associated Press. Miranda, Deb Isham. She’s a senior at U. Maine, Orono. This is her show.”

“Hi, Miranda.”

“Hi, Deb. Thanks for the complex. I need my tape recorder.”

While Miranda rooted through her bag, I threw Deb a cautious look.
Remember what we talked about, hon. Keep your answers short. Play up your conviction. Never speculate. And never, ever say anything off the record. There’s no such thing as “off the record.”

Miranda found her recorder. “All right. Here we go. Don’t worry, Deb. This’ll be painless, especially if you have nothing to hide. Obviously, you don’t. You ready?”

“Sure.”

“All right. Let’s start basic. Why are you doing this?”

“Because the Hawaiian monk-seal population is down to twelve hundred and shrinking fast. Keoki Atoll has been their home for millions of years. Now, because of yet another resort this state doesn’t need, these animals have nowhere to mate.”

“Uh-huh. And what does this have to do with you girls getting naked?”

“Well, Miranda, let me ask you. If we were fully clothed, would you even be here?”

“Actually, yes. But that’s a good line.” Miranda grinned and gave me a thumbs-up. “A-plus on the prep work, handsome.”

“Thank you.”

Yet another advantage of the VNR: my crap was read-only. They would only see what I wanted them to see. Although Miranda was barred from the conspiracy angle, she still had the power to tarnish my paint job. It was a calculated risk to bring her here. I was hoping our friendship, plus a break from the miserable New York weather, would make her go easy on the story. No such luck. She was going to take her marital rage out on us.

Denny arrived and blithely turned his camera on Deb. Miranda kept going.

“By the way, Deb, how many of you are there?”

Deb crossed her arms and nervously looked to the camera. I had to wave her gaze back. “Uh, two hundred and three.”

“Are you sure? It looks like less.”

I cut in. “If you want to count them, go ahead. They’re all here.”

Fact: there were a hundred and twenty-eight. But if Miranda wanted to call my bluff, she would have a most difficult time. Counting a crowd of homogenous nude women was like counting a floor full of ball bearings, except fun. I had correctly banked on the assumption that Miranda would not see it as fun.