Mumbo Gumbo (6 page)

She smiled. “No, it’s the budget. To cancel a taping at this point will add about seventy thousand dollars to the cost of this season, damnit.”

Poor Greta.

“There’s studio time. Then there are salaries. Our production crew gets paid union wages and this will add another day. Same goes for talent, warm-up, craft services, meals…”

I watched as she ticked off the items on her notepad.

“Well, we have no choice,” Greta said, more to herself than to me. Deep creases etched her pretty forehead. “We have to write another show’s worth of new material and reschedule the taping. Damn.”

Greta seemed extremely disturbed, but then, so was I. There went my pesto recipe. Poof. There went my Confetti French Toast, too. Damn.

“We will not break any laws,” she assured me. “We won’t take any risks. But we need to give everyone a good, convincing reason for why we are canceling today’s taping, a story that won’t invite suspicion. Can you think of anything?”

“I’m good at cover stories. There are always last-minute disasters in the party business and always a great need for discretion.”

Greta smiled back in a distant sort of way.

I continued, “Like the time we threw a launch party for a new CD. One of my waitresses found the drummer of this terrifically famous British band stoned out of his mind, dancing naked in the ladies’ lounge.”

“Really?”

“To hear her tell it, old tattoos on old drummers do not make for the most pleasant viewing. Anyway, we needed a polite way of getting the guy out of there.”

“You didn’t tell his record company?”

“No, no. The problem was, the drummer wasn’t inclined to put on his jeans and go home. But my friend Holly had a great idea. She told him reporters from
Us
magazine wanted to do a feature on the sexiest men of rock and roll…and they were waiting to interview him—with his clothes on—back at his house in Holmby Hills.”

Greta said, thinking of her own problems, “We need a clever story like that.”

I do love to solve problems. It’s just that in my normal line of work, I usually know something about all the variables before I try shuffling them. Here, I was lost.

“I’m particularly worried that Fate Finkelberg will get wind of the truth and get herself in a ferocious snit. That woman. If she suspects we’ve got a real problem
with the production, she could hold up our negotiations with Chef Howie for his next contract. Damnit.”

I had seen Greta deal with difficult problems all week, managing the large operation. The problems weren’t growing any smaller.

“Are you okay, Greta?”

Her hand found the box of tissues on her desk, and whether she had a speck of dust in her eye or a tear, I couldn’t say for sure. “I can handle it,” she said, her voice still strong.

“I know you can.”

Greta Greene looked up and asked aloud, “Where is Tim? Why can’t I find him? He should have been in contact with someone on the staff by now, even if it was just…”

“When someone is missing…,” I started, but I couldn’t finish it. The not knowing is the worst feeling in the world. Any kind of final answer would be better than wondering and worrying and tearing yourself apart inside. I knew that. I had felt that when I was a child. Someone missing was a terrible thing.

Greta said, “I don’t want to give in to panic. I don’t. But why was Tim’s office searched? Is there something worse than stealing scripts going on?”

We were finally talking about the real issue that was causing Greta so much grief. “You’re worried about Tim Stock.”

“I don’t know. He’s just disappeared. What if he—”

She was interrupted by the ringing of her phone. As she answered it, I thought about the problem of the missing head writer. What if all the troubles had not started with today’s office break-in? What if the troubles stemmed from the man who had occupied that office for the past six months?

Greta hung up her phone with a tight frown. “Fate and Howie. He’s waiting for me and I just can’t get to him right now. If Tim were here, I’d send him. But he’s gone. He’s gone. So now you are officially our ‘acting’ head writer.”

“You’re kidding, right?” You have to love this television business, really. A man is missing, a production is in crisis, seventy grand has just flown out of the window because a door is left ajar. If you screwed up badly enough here, you could very quickly wind up running this town.

“Greta, I don’t think this is such a good idea,” I said. “Fate and Howie were here a few minutes ago. I am not Fate’s favorite staffer. Not at all her cup of tea, to tell you the truth. Really. She’d rather stomp on me with her silver platform boots than listen to me.”

“This show is my life,” Greta said, finding perhaps one more speck of dust in her eye. She dabbed. “I know how pathetic that must sound, but this show is all I have. I have worked so hard, so hard to get a hit series. And here it is, Maddie. I just need a little time. I need your help.”

I’d gotten us into this mess and now Greta was counting on me, however misguidedly, to get us out. But what was really going on here in Game Show Land? The head writer of the show was seriously missing, his office was turned into a rubbish heap, and what about that Post-it note that read: “Heidi and Monica might have to die.” Were these events connected?

“Greta, about Tim Stock—”

“Oh, don’t worry about Tim,” she said, her face pale. “Forget what I said. He’ll turn up. I know it. But I honestly don’t think I can handle one more thing going
wrong right now. Once the
Hindenburg
has crashed, it’s down, you know? Will you go see Howie for me? I need a miracle, here. Maybe some little white lie to stall him while I think of a way to cancel today’s taping that won’t arouse suspicion.”

“I’ll try my best.”

With all the backstage drama swirling around
Food Freak,
I had a lot of questions. Another visit with the show’s charismatic star might lead to some answers. And that sent me searching for Chef Howie. And Fate.

A
favorite TV show is like a pal. It is an intimate relationship. You invite it into your living room or den in the evening and it tries hard to entertain you.

To the people who package those half hours and send them to your house, however, time stretches out. It takes a week of days and nights to produce each twenty-two-minute package of fun, minus the commercials. And while it may seem like we’re in your bedroom or your family room, we’re not. We’re on some hot soundstage in some dusty studio in an industrial-looking neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Arthur Herman Productions leases office space in the old part of Hollywood, east of Highland.
Food Freak
is made on what is now the KTLA lot, located at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Bronson. Here, a scattering of eighty-year-old buildings covers twelve acres of studio space, all enclosed like a medieval fortress by high, barbed-wire-topped walls that go on for blocks. The guards on duty are not so much occupied with fighting off medieval dark knights as they are mostly busy painting over the rude spray-canned markings of those knights’ present-day equivalents. Sentries posted at the entrance gates keep out the
passersby, mostly neighbors, recent arrivals from El Salvador or Guatemala or Mexico who live in the surrounding dusty apartment buildings. Only those who are employed on one of the productions that are shot at this studio are admitted into this small kingdom, or those lucky ones who have business here and have had their names left at the gate, a pass waiting.

When I worked as a caterer, arriving with dinner for casts and crews at studios like this one, I’d often have a pass waiting. But now, for my tiny stint as a writer on
Freak,
I actually belonged here. I ran down the dozen stairs from our second-floor offices, and opened the exterior door, exiting our building onto a private alleyway. It might not look like much, but I loved being on this lot. Like many transplants to Los Angeles, I have a crush on Hollywood. I enjoy its strange history.

And this particular studio on the low-rent side of Hollywood, ragtag as it appears today and obscure to tourists, has more history than most. Not many folks know that this very lot was the original Warner Bros. movie lot, built in 1919. Although the nine old soundstages have gone through half a dozen owners since that time, it remains one of the oldest production studios in continuous use in this town.

I looked back at our office building, one of several three-story, tan stucco units, and then headed off on my errand, crossing a small parking lot on my way to soundstage 9, which contains the sets for
Food Freak,
awaiting the next taping. I should have been concentrating on my task, figuring out some way to correct the trouble I’d started, thinking about what I might say to Chef Howie that could possibly fix things. But instead, I was daydreaming. I always am while walking
along these small, private streets, bewitched by the romantic history of early Hollywood.

In 1914, two brothers in the Warner family started a film distribution company in New York. Their two other brothers, Sam and Jack, came west. It was here, on this very lot, that they produced their first silent serials. Here, I thought, looking at the buildings around me, they had once hired Charlie Chaplin’s brother, Sydney, to star in one of their first features. By 1923, the films that were produced by the brothers became highly respected. Here they shot
Babbitt
by Sinclair Lewis. All the early stars worked here. Barrymore. Swanson. Rin-Tin-Tin.

I walked down one of the trafficless streets on the lot, shielded from greater and lesser Hollywood, and from reality, and from the twenty-first century by the tall walls. Alone on the lot, I forgot for a moment the glorious southern California spring weather, lost in the studio’s no-less-glorious past. The movies found their voice in 1927, a most important year in film history, I thought, as I passed by the very soundstage where
The Jazz Singer,
starring Al Jolson, was shot. That first film to have dialogue and music was a stunning hit, and an entire era of talkies followed. This little studio on Sunset produced many of those early musicals, like the hugely popular
Gold Diggers of Broadway,
in 1929.

On this bright afternoon, I could imagine what it might have been like once upon a time, when dozens of chorus girls in marcel waves and glittery tap shoes hung around these quiet studio streets. Back in ‘29, here, at this very corner I was now passing, a young woman might have caught a smoke, hoping to flirt with someone who could boost her to stardom. I
stopped, wondering if it was possible to conjure up such ghosts in the strong sunshine.

But Hollywood’s history is a saga of boom and bust and this particular piece of real estate’s heyday was soon past. By 1933, the Warners moved to large new quarters in Burbank. By World War II, these production facilities in Hollywood were leased to independent producers, just like they are now. Back then, they were home to war-training films and Warner cartoons; the big feature films had moved on.

When I reached soundstage 9, I took a look around. Each immense, dome-roofed soundstage squatted on an entire block and I couldn’t immediately see what I was looking for. I checked down the side street. No Chef Howie mobile home. So I continued walking up the block, recalling the stories of this lot’s past.

As television took over this town, a local station moved in and today KTLA continues broadcasting their morning show and newscasts from here. The station accounts for the two huge white satellite uplink dishes now settled like giant upturned mushroom caps next to one of the newest of the buildings. There’s an eclectic mishmash of entertainment facilities here. It’s the home of L.A.’s number one news radio station. KFWB began life right here, and—no one knows this!—its call letters stand for Keep Filming Warner Brothers! My friend Wesley and I love to stump each other with such trivia about the old days.

Since the sixties and seventies, these soundstages have been used to film television series, as well. In early 1961, an immense set was built on three of these stages to accommodate
Gunsmoke,
while the production’s horses were stabled on yet another soundstage. It must have been terrific to spend those years filming
here, driving your car through the studio gates and then changing into costume to live in the Old West.

I turned the corner, expecting to see Miss Kitty hanging around. Instead, down the block, I saw Kenny, one of the assistant PAs, exiting the door on this side of soundstage 9, balancing a stack of scripts. He waved.

“Hi, Madeline.”

“Hi, Kenny,” I said. “Say, did you know that
Donny and Marie
was taped here?”

“Excuse me?”

“And
Jeopardy!
” I continued. I was on a jag now. “And
The Dating Game.
And
Supermarket Sweep.
”

“No kidding.”

“Bet you thought they shot that in a real market, but no, they built a perfect replica of a supermarket in soundstage two, the better for its contestants to go racing down the aisles, looking for expensive groceries.”

Kenny looked at me for a beat before he offered, “Cool.”

Alas, not everyone is a history buff.

“I’m on my way back to the office,” he said. “Susan told me to collect all the scripts.”

“Right.”

“Um,” Kenny said, checking me out a little more closely. “You lost?”

“No,” I said, quickly. “Not really. Well, I’m looking for Chef Howie. Can you point me in the right direction?”

“He’s still in his trailer,” Kenny said. “He wouldn’t give me back his copy of the script.”

“Oh?”

“It’s just around the next corner,” Kenny said, pointing back the way he’d come.

“Thanks.”

Kenny continued toward his office and I turned back to my quest, following his directions, eventually rounding the corner and discovering the white, twenty-five-by-eight-foot motor home that doubled as Chef Howie’s dressing room.

I stepped up to the door and heard an argument coming from inside the trailer. A male voice was saying, “I disagree totally. This is perfect for Chef Howie.” I tapped lightly on the white door, but got no response. I knocked harder and waited.

I could make out the sound of Fate Finkelberg’s cigarette-hoarse voice inside as she yelled, “Who the hell is that, now?”

The door opened a crack and I was surprised to see Quentin Shore’s squinting brown eye. An awkward moment passed as he neither opened the door any wider nor shut it in my face. I suspected he wished to do the latter.

“Open the door, for God’s sake,” Fate’s voice ordered from inside.

“Hi,” I said, walking into the overly air-conditioned main cabin. On the far side, a makeup station and professional clothes racks filled the corner. In the larger area, four white leather captain’s chairs surrounded a white marble table. Fate was sitting at the table while Howie and his makeup artist occupied the dressingroom corner.

“What do you want?” Fate asked.

“Greta asked me to go over the material for today’s taping with Chef Howie,” I improvised, ever the ingratiating one when I wanted to be.

“Waste of time!” Fate said.

“There is really no need,” Quentin whispered, still
standing close to me by the entrance. “I’m on the job here. Chef Howie wants me.”

“Yes, but I don’t think you know—” Okay. Just a quick word of advice. If you should ever be in the presence of a game-show question writer, never, ever begin a sentence implying that there might be something they do not know. Quentin looked like he had swallowed a lemon, whole.

“Look,” I said, acutely aware of how “not well” this was going. “Greta wants me to take over for Tim. I’m the acting head writer and—”

Quentin Shore’s shiny face turned red. “That’s…that’s not fair.” He turned to Chef Howie, but at that moment the star was checking his mirror to see if his legendary sideburns were even. Quentin turned again to me. “I’ve been kind to you. I’ve been helpful. But you have just gone too d—, well, too far.”

Quentin Shore couldn’t seem to bring himself to curse.

“For your information,” he said, his voice tense, “I’ve been working on
Freak
since the pilot. Did you know that? Furthermore, Tim Stock is my good, good friend. He dropped me a note and asked me personally to look after the show while he was away. So it’s my duty and my responsibility and my job to brief—”

“Tim Stock?” I asked quickly. “Where is he?”

I noticed that Fate was watching us closely as we bickered back and forth, her hand dipping into a can of Planters cashews.

How had I gotten in the middle of a catfight? As an event planner and caterer, I had taken pride in my tactfulness, in my good relations with both clients and staff. Heck, I like to make people happy. But the emotions in this line of work clearly ran hotter. People here
liked to brawl. My friendly little “get-along” personality wasn’t serving me at all well, I was discovering, in this extreme sport of Hollywood ego wrestling. This temp recipe-writing job, which should have been a breeze, had already pitted me against a good number of combatants, each with an agenda the size of Mount Wilson. And why? Because in this arena, I was an unknown, a rank amateur. Everyone wanted to take me on. Here, on this turf, I had zero credibility.

But every problem must have a solution. If my rational approach wasn’t working, I’d have to adapt to the culture, and, lucky for me, this was a world where outsiders could move up fast. Acting was called for, and I’d have to change my vocabulary, too. I looked at Quentin coolly and tried the New Hollywood–version Madeline out on him. My voice lost every ounce of its calm and friendly tone. “Cut the bullshit, Quentin.”

“What?”

“Stop fucking around. Stick with the topic, okay? Tim Stock. Just where the fuck is he?”

At the table, Fate Finkelberg stopped chewing her cashew, and in the makeup corner, Chef Howie’s hairdresser stopped spraying Freeze and Shine on Chef Howie’s perfect hair.

“I don’t know where he is right this very minute,” Quentin pleaded, a tinge of hurt now creeping into his belligerent tone. “I don’t. I got a card,” he explained, “from Vegas. Tim asked me to look after Chef Howie, and that’s all. I’m not trying to give you a hard time, Madeline. Honestly,” he lied.

I blinked. Quentin had responded perfectly to the New Madeline. So this is what it took—being willing to be more obnoxious than the other guy. I realized why people hated what Hollywood did to them. But
now, even the New Madeline’s silence threatened Quentin.

“It’s the truth. I swear,” he said. Quentin’s eyes darted over to Fate. She sat there ignoring Quentin. She was, instead, checking me out. Recalculating, I hoped.

“Go,” I ordered him. The dominatrix approach seemed to be working, so why change it? “Talk to Greta. Talk to Artie. Just get going.”

Quentin, head bowed, turned to Howie and said brightly, “Well, I’ll leave you now and get back to my meetings at the office.” And with that, he left.

Two f-words. That seemed to be all it took for anyone to be taken seriously in Hollywood. You simply need a competitive nature, which I clearly proved I had, and a willingness to sink to that level. I swallowed.

“So,” Fate said slowly. “What do you want?”

That was a good question. My original plan had been to get Chef Howie alone. He had seemed like a nice guy. I had hoped I could convince him to be a pal and call off the taping. Perhaps it could have been implied that he wasn’t feeling well. Getting Howie alone, however, would be a challenge. In the meantime, I had to stall. “Let’s go over today’s script,” I suggested.

“That’s a laugh.” Fate popped another cashew. “This script is total garbage, which we just told Quentin. The script is unacceptable. We hate it.”

“Oh?”

“Chef Howie,” she called out. “This new girl was sent here to go over the script. Tell her what a complete and utter piece of crap it is.”

“I’m not sure it’s total crap, Fate,” Howie called cheerfully, turning back to check out his reflection in
the mirror. His makeup man had finished with Howie’s hair and now picked up a large brush and dipped it into a jar of powder.