Who Stole the Funny? : A Novel of Hollywood (7 page)

Monday

J.T. was barreling along Sepulveda Avenue in a jalopy that had

barely passed the California roadworthiness test eleven months

before, trying to steer with one hand and talk with the other. He was on the phone with his agent, and he wasn’t smiling. “You mean to tell me—”

“J.T., J.T., my main man-director-man-guy. No need to get up-

set over the little things,” Dick Beaglebum interjected.

“Dick, I’m driving a rental car with no brakes. I can’t stop the fucking thing,” J.T. said in a panic.

“Why’d you rent a car with no brakes?”

“Because, Dick, when I got to the counter and gave them the

reservation letters
that you faxed to me,
they informed me that they don’t make reservations with
letters,
they make them with
numbers
! Numbers!”

“Well of course they do, J.T. Who confirms a reservation with

letters? Really. I mean, that should’ve tipped you off right there.”

J.T. veered to avoid a pedestrian. “Tipped me off? Dick, that

was your way of telling me they weren’t going to give me trans-

portation?”

“J.T., you’re gonna crash and kill yourself if you don’t calm

down.”

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“Oh, I see. If I calm down, I won’t crash? Is that what you’re

saying?”

“Fuck you!” yelled the driver of a pickup truck.

“Listen to yourself, J.T.”

“I can’t hear myself over all of the honking horns! I’m going

through red lights at major intersections! I just got cursed at by a redneck who’s more redneck than a real redneck!”

“Huh? Just pull over, J.T.”

“I can’t just pull over unless I want to use a pedestrian as a

brake pad!”

“Well . . . just coast until you stop.”

“I’m going
downhill
!”

“Well, go
up
hill.”

“I can’t go
uphill
because I’m going
downhill
!”

“Of course you can go uphill, J.T. If you’re going downhill,

there must be an uphill,
huh? Gotcha!”

“I’m coming to another red light. Hold on, I’m going to try the emergency brake. Damn—I’m almost fifty! This is a shitty way to die!”

“J.T.,” Beaglebum quickly said, “don’t tell anyone you’re almost fifty! They think thirty’s old. Forty’s the new cutoff. You can’t be funny if you’re over forty. Got it?”

J.T. tossed the phone on the car seat, held his breath, and pulled up hard on the emergency brake. The rent-a-wreck skidded to a

stop. He fumbled for the phone. “It worked.”

“Good. Can you imagine the chatter around town if two direc-

tors died on this show?”

J.T. slumped in his seat. “Tell me I’m getting per diem. Tell me they’re paying for a hotel.”

“J.T.—”

“Nothing? Are you pleading poverty on the only bona fide hit

show on TV?”

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W H O S T O L E T H E F U N N Y ?

“Their budget is skyrocketing, Say-Hey-J-T. We have a dead

guy, for chrissake!”

“We?” J.T. shouted over the honks.

“I did a little tap dance to get you this gig. You should be

happy, J.T. You should be grateful. I don’t hear grateful. Hello?”

Dick waited a moment, then tapped the receiver on his phone.

“Hello? What’s that noise? You there, J.T.?”

“The car stalled.” J.T. was stuck in the middle of morning rush-hour traffic with a stalled car. “Shit!”

“J.T., think of the big picture. You do three episodes which

means you fulfill your Directors Guild requirements so your little boy Jack will be covered by the DGA insurance this year for his liver problem—”

“My son is named Jeremy. And it’s his kidneys—”

“Kidney is a funny word, J.T. Starts with a
k.
You should try and work that into the show. Kidney. Funny.”

J.T.’s voice went very low. “Dick, please
do not make reference to
my son ever again
. Understand?”

“Oh, never. Never. I just wanted you to know I’m understand-

ing and really behind you, J.T.,” Dick said.

“Yes . . . behind me. I’d feel so much more comfortable if you

were in front of me.”

“Funny!” said Dick, thinking,
Oh man, it’s already starting
with this guy.
“You’re funny. So,” Dick continued, enthusiastically,

“you’ll be there for the eleven o’clock read? You know, with the car stalling and everything?”

“Have I ever
not
been there? Early? Ever? And it’s the ten o’clock production meeting, then the eleven o’clock read,” J.T. said pointedly.

“Hey, J.T.—
attitude
. Stay in control.” Dick switched back to
compassionately
.

J.T. flipped his cell phone shut and tried again to restart the hunk-a-junk-a-burnin’-rubber. Cars were honking, men were

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4 9

screaming, women were yelling. Defeated, J.T. gave up trying to start the engine.

With everything he had to overcome, the one thing he wasn’t

ready for was culture shock. The expanse and pace of the Smoky

Mountains might have seeped into J.T.’s soul and soothed his spirit, but no one in L.A. gave a damn. J.T. was a captive in road-rage limbo. Assholes to the left of him, suckas to the right, here he was, stuck in the middle of a U-turn. Stuck in the middle of a U-turn.

Half an hour later, J.T. called his agent again.

“Hello, Dick?”

“Jaysaycanyousee T! My main director-man!”

“I rented a bicycle, Dick. Will they at least pay for
that
?”

“A bicycle?”

“Yes. A bicycle.” Then J.T. started to sing a pissy version of the Queen song: “I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike—

will they
at least
pay for a rented bicycle?”

The young skateboarder who stood behind the counter of the

Bike Emporium started singing along. J.T. held the cell phone between himself and the young employee so Dick could hear, then

finished signing
business expense
on the receipt for his bike.

“A fuckin’ bicycle? You’re fuckin’ kidding me, right? What a

kidder.”

J.T. shut off his cell phone, nodded to the skateboarder, and rolled the bike outside into the smog to begin his journey to the studio.

J.T. had managed to get the lemon towed back to Rent-A-

Wreck, rent a bicycle at his own expense, get on the studio lot, find his parking space (which looked rather silly with a crappy bike in it), and be twenty minutes early, as usual. Of course he was drenched in sweat, but he got a shirt out of his backpack and changed in the restroom. He took out his hated cell phone again, but this time he dialed home.

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W H O S T O L E T H E F U N N Y ?

“Honey?” J.T. said. There was a tremble in his voice. He tried

to put up a great façade, but two hours in Hollywood had already dulled his acting ability.

“Darling, screw it all. I’ll pick up Jeremy and drive to the airport right now,” Natasha urged.

“Honey—don’t you worry. I’ll knock out these three—give

’em fifty percent, be a good boy and never be confrontational, get the insurance for Jeremy, pass GO and collect two hundred dollars,” J.T. replied, making a failed attempt at
funny
.

Silence was beamed to a satellite in outer space and back down

to Earth into J.T.’s phone. Finally he said, “This silence is costing us a fortune. Besides . . . Tasha . . . you can’t come out here. Jeremy needs to stay in school, follow all of his medical protocols . . . I’m sorry . . . I don’t know why I said that. You’re the best at that.”

“J.T.,” Natasha paused. “J.T., when does Asher arrive? I’ll feel a lot better knowing Ash is watching your back.”

Asher Black was the strength, the common sense, the Zen mas-

ter, the best friend that J.T. now needed when Natasha couldn’t be there. Ash, a former student of J.T.’s, became a professor of film at Alabama State. He was so overqualified for that particular position that when he negotiated his contract with the university he found he was holding many bargaining chips, which translated into perks: he could take time off, with pay and expenses, if and when he went as an observer or an assistant to a director on a film or sitcom project. This meant that whenever J.T. was directing, Ash could work as his assistant and keep up with the ever-

changing craft of film and video directing and production.

Asher Black was the son of black hippie parents who decided

to dabble in Judaism right at the time of Asher’s birth: thus the name, Asher; thus the nickname, Ash. An indication of his Southern cordiality and his uncommon decency was his gift of putting strangers at ease with his self-deprecating humor: “It’s a good think my last name is Black and not
Blackwards
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tough growing up Ash Blackwards.” Most people would smile

and from that moment on, his name would never be an issue.

Asher was viewed (advertised) as a valuable asset to the uni-

versity. He was an African-American (
Please, refer to me as black. I
am a black man. I was born and raised in America. That makes me a
black American. Thank you
) who could
integrate
the show business world into the orb of academia. He was the perfect recruiting tool for snagging the few liberals and blacks who were thinking of attending a college of fine arts in the deep South. Asher’s forays into Hollywood, thanks to J.T.’s help, gave him real-world skills that he could then impart to his students. This was rare for a university known solely for its football team.

Being the university’s poster boy grew tiring, and when Ash

found work as a “punch-up” writer on a UPN sitcom, he moved

to Los Angeles and began a new career as a junior writer. When

work slowed, he was offered a position at UCLA teaching acting, writing, and a course appropriately titled “How to Survive in Hollywood.” Most of the course was based on his firsthand knowledge of J.T. and his personal struggles in L.A. Ironically, Ash now knew more about the L.A. scene than J.T. Student became teacher, and that was fine with J.T. and Tasha.

“Asher’s going to meet me on the set if he can’t make the pro-

duction meeting or the table read. First he’s gotta teach his ‘How to Survive in Hollywood’ course. Maybe I should take his class while I’m here . . .” J.T.’s voice trailed off.

“I adore you,” Natasha said.

“I adore you, too. Kiss Jeremy for me. Tell him . . . if I see Kobe Bryant I’ll tell him he’s a selfish asshole.”

“You’re stalling.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

J.T. checked his watch: nine minutes to ten. The week was

about to begin. He couldn’t feel a single joint in his body as he 5 2

W H O S T O L E T H E F U N N Y ?

walked toward Stage Five. If only it were about
the job
. If only it were about doing a great job of
directing
. . . if only . . . J.T. took a deep breath and disappeared into
the cave.

J.T. opened the soundproof door and entered a five-foot-square

holding room, padded from floor to ceiling with old soundproof-

ing material that had aged from white through the vanillas all the way into a stale chocolate color. It was kept in place with chicken wire stapled to beams and two-by-fours. This was the place where people stayed when the flashing red light was on signaling do not enter because filming was in progress.

J.T. pushed a second heavy door that opened into one of the

caves, also known as Stage Five. Stage Five was the home of
I Love
My Urban Buddies.
A blast of icy air immediately accosted him.

“Cold is funny.” That was a theory started by frightened joke

writers who blamed the Southern California heat for sluggish audiences who weren’t responding to their jokes. Because of that hy-pothesis, every soundstage was like a subzero freezer. Funny was not only cold, it was now arctic.

The experience of walking into the cave for the first time is

very similar to that of a kid walking into Yankee Stadium for the first time. It’s intimidating for visitors, because this is the very spot where the dramas unfold, where the heroes and villains wage war and where other metaphors are mixed. It’s overwhelming. When

there are no sets on a soundstage, even the smallest cave can look like an airport hangar without the 747.

As J.T. walked deeper onto Stage Five, he took a quick glance

at the bleachers, which were to his left. The bleachers were just that: uncomfortable metal bench seating in stacked rows that

could hold a live audience of nearly four hundred friends, family, agents, managers, and a few of the viewing public. The bleachers hadn’t been cleaned since the late Friday night shoot of the previ-R o b b y

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ous week, and along with the litter of candy wrappers there were empty pizza boxes—never a good sign. Ordering pizza was a very

cheap way of enticing an audience to stay when the shoot night

was running ridiculously long—as in starting on Friday and fin-

ishing on Saturday.

Hundreds of thick black wires ran above the sets to powerful

lamps, capable of creating the illusion of daylight, that were hung on metal bars and safety-wired onto grids (in case of earthquakes or lawsuits). Despite the wattage of the lamps, there always seemed to be a slight visibility problem in the caves because of the dust that perpetually floated in the air, filtering the light. Dirt had accu-mulated since the day the stages were built, tracked in and stirred up by generations of feet. Some caves still had asbestos hanging from the rafters that was supposed to have been removed years—

decades—before.

Only in a cave could grime be glamorous. It’s a magical way of

seeing the world, through a filter. When you work in a cave, it’s a way to develop magical allergies and come down with magical illnesses.