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Monday
morning's mail opening ritual began like
any other: the canvas mail sack looking
like an oversized crumpled potato sitting
on the floor in my office and me, after
arming myself with an ornate, silver
knife, poised ready to gouge out its eyes.
In recent years email has replaced the
bulk of letters but there is still the
occasional Luddite in the journalism world
who insists on sending me story leads the
old fashioned way. Sifting through the
mail bag to find these is a tedious and
frequently unrewarding process.
The
remainder of the letters can be sorted
into three groups. Firstly there's the
pathological letter writers and their hate
mail directed at all and sundry. Then
there's those articulate, lightly
opinionated correspondents who want their
comments aired during my segment on In
Town This Week (ITTW), a weekly television
magazine-style news program. Naturally
it's the former that generate the most
ratings so the second group usually wind
up trashed unread. Then there's the third
group. This group is something of a
mishmash of the previous two. Their hate
mail, articulate and vitriolic, is
directed personally at me to condemn what
they call my apparent "lack of
journalistic integrity." What can I say?
Ten years working with the Fox Network
will do that to a woman who wants to
succeed in television.
Aside
from all the caustic mail, I get a lot of
video tapes sent to me. Most are wrongly
addressed, intended for ITTW's sister
program (America's Weirdest Home Videos),
and I'll redirect these as a matter of
habit more than courtesy to their
production offices down the hall. When
they are correctly addressed to me I'll
still not bother viewing them unless
they're accompanied with a synopsis of
what's on the tape. Rare is the occasion
when I'll waste my time otherwise. This
was one of those rare occasions.
The
video cassette came addressed to America's
Weirdest Home Videos and I might have
automatically overlooked it if it wasn't
for one significant, disturbing detail.
The label on the plain brown wrapper was
emblazoned with
ATTN: ADRIANNA
LOGAN
in bold typeface. I say
disturbing because Logan is my maiden
name, a name I've never used for work, not
even in the five years prior to joining
the Fox Network. Back then, when I was
first starting my career as a broad sheet
journalist, I used the nom de plume
Adrianna Allison. I kept this after I
married and have continued using it in my
professional life ever since, even after I
made the transition into the television
world. Seeing my real name attached to
something addressed to the Home Video show
was something I considered to be doubly
disturbing.
Even
before I sliced open the package I knew I
wasn't going to find any explanation about
the tape or why it was sent to me. There
was nothing except the video cassette,
inside a plain black plastic case and
labeled enigmatically with the title
"Television is for appearing on - not for
looking at." As cryptic as that was, I
still sensed the meaning of it. My news
hound nose immediately twitched to a story
in the making but every instinct was
telling me to keep quiet about it. The
irony of this is something I live with
professionally every day but I still never
expected to see it so pointedly directed
back at me. And so began Monday
morning.
********
Under
normal circumstances I would have switched
off the video of Sunday night's ITTW
program, screening silently on the large
plasma screen in my office, and played my
mystery tape. The curiosity was certainly
consuming me, eating away at my insides,
but I had other more pressing matters to
deal with. A ten o'clock production
meeting loomed large. Despite having
agonized over my presentation for more
than a week, I was still no closer to
having anything beyond the basic concept
of a project I was working on. Perhaps I'd
get lucky and Barney, the executive
producer of ITTW, might be in one of his
infrequent benevolent moods. It was only a
faint hope. Lately all his efforts had
been in trying to save one of the other
Fox Network entertainment arms he presided
over - Reality TV - and things were not
going well for him.
Barney
Delaney is the embodiment of everything
nasty and cut throat in the media world.
Now in his sixties, and looking like a
cross between an aging George Costanza
from Seinfeld and Jabba The Hut, he often
seems imbued with a ruthlessness
unparalleled in the media world. Where
Rupert Murdoch is the pleasant, fatherly
face of a global titan, Barney is its iron
fist ready to throttle the life out of
anybody or anything that stands in the way
of the Fox Network making money. He's a
man not afraid to trample people or make
enemies from the lowliest in society to
the highest echelons of business and
government. All are chewed with the same
jowly, ferocious vigor before being spat
out onto the pavement. When a former
President claimed Barney's exposé
of his illicit extra-marital affair was
akin to peeing in a pristine pool, Barney
rebuffed him saying "I don't just pee in
the pool. I piss from the highest diving
tower!" It was a comment typical of
Barney. Blunt, colorful and deadly
accurate.
The
boardroom on the sixteenth floor of
Victory Plaza was a foreboding place at
the best of times. More a boiler room than
nerve center, the Monday morning meetings
there were often volatile and plenty of
former Fox staffers had their careers
destroyed and ambitions shattered in that
room. I took my seat at the large, oval
table in between Frank Jeffries, the
stately, always impeccably dressed anchor
of ITTW and Dean Austin, the associate
producer and sometimes anchor on those
rare days when Frank is ill. Others from
the various Fox production departments
filed in shortly after and took their
seats opposite, visibly avoiding the
largest buttoned leather chair at the head
of the table. Barney's chair. Even empty,
it radiated power.
"Hello
Adrianna. You're looking particularly
delicious today."
"Hello
Frank." I overlooked Frank's choice of
words. Coming from anybody else they would
have sounded licentious but from not from
Frank. Poor old Frank had the vocabulary
of a greengrocer if he didn't have an auto
cue to read. He was always well-meaning
though even if he did smile too
much.
Frank's
face always seemed frozen in a broad smile
regardless of the topic of conversation.
It was almost like he was in a constant
state of bliss, except if anybody
mentioned his toupee. He'd keep smiling
but you just knew he didn't want anybody
drawing attention to the glistening, black
pate perched on his taut, wrinkle-less
skull. Poor Frank, I always thought to
myself. A pleasant man, always the
gentleman with me, but he often gave me
the impression that behind his congenial
façade was a tired, sad old man who
knew his days as ITTW anchor were
numbered. A rooster one day, feather
duster the next. Such is life for any
talking head on television.
This
impression was always magnified whenever
Dean was around. At thirty, half Frank's
age, he was the apprentice waiting
impatiently to jump into the master's
shoes. I think everybody at ITTW knew it
was only a matter of time before Barney
axed Frank and installed Dean permanently
as the anchor. It was all about ratings
and Dean invariably polled higher,
especially with the younger demographic,
whenever he appeared on screen. For most
people, their fates are in the hands of
the gods. For poor old Frank, it was in
the hands of a spotty faced teenage
audience and the sponsors who targeted
them like vultures wanting to pluck the
money from their pockets.
"Morning
Adrianna."
"Hello
Dean."
"Did you
see the game at the weekend?"
"Oh,
sure," I lied. Dean always asked me the
same question first thing every Monday
morning. He was well aware of my thoughts
about football; a lot of brainless men
with fat necks running around and knocking
each other over. Of course, I was never so
stupid to speak such heresy out loud, and
Dean knew it.
"Is that
dandruff I see on your shoulders,
Dean?"
Dean
returned my light-hearted sarcasm with a
wink and a discreet kiss blown into the
air between us.
"How was
your weekend, Frank?" Dean asked, leaning
forward to speak past me.
"Fine. I
was going to spend it up in the Catskills
but --"
Frank
was still checking his own shoulders for
any signs of dandruff and appeared to find
a suspicious speck of something. Dean
wasn't even listening anyway, but Frank
resumed citing a list of activities that
spoke volumes of the emptiness in his life
off camera.
"Greetings Moira. And how
are you this morning?"
"Hello
Moira," I echoed Dean, acknowledging
Barney's personal assistant as she lowered
her sparrow-boned body into a seat on the
opposite side of the table.
"Mr
Delaney will be here in a moment," she
said.
Moira
Simpson was never one for pleasantries. If
efficiency was ever given a body, it would
look like Moira. Everything about her was
perfunctory. From the clothes she wore
(she looked like she bought all her
clothes at a church bazaar) to the horn
rimmed glasses always perched high on her
beak-like nose, to the dog-eared note pad
she carried everywhere. At a shade over
six feet tall, she could be an imposing
presence in her own right although she
also had the uncanny ability to be
practically invisible at most times.
Perhaps this was because she had worked
for so many years in the shadow of Barney
that nobody ever really noticed
her.
"Troops." Barney's hulking
form entered the room and squeezed itself
into his chair at the head of the
table.
Ah! I
could always tell when Barney was in a
jovial mood. It was the only time he
referred to us as "troops."
"Morning
chief!" Everybody at the table spoke with
one voice, except Moira.
"Good
morning Mr Delaney," she added.
"Right.
Those cunts at Dionysus knocked us out of
top position in the ratings last night for
the third week in a row. Adrianna, how are
you going with that story about
them?"
Oh shit.
I felt all eyes suddenly zoom onto
me.
"I'm
working on an angle -- "
"I don't
want to hear about any fucking angle. Do I
look like a fucking carpenter to
you?"
Shit,
shit! Outwardly, I tried to remain still
but inwardly the billion atoms of my
existence were suddenly bounding
chaotically in every direction. I once did
a story on ITTW about people who
spontaneously combust and ever since I've
always imagined they must have felt
exactly the same way right before their
immolation - the same way I felt whenever
Barney growled at me that way. I looked
down at my note pad and the words I'd
scribbled under the heading Dionysus
Entertainments Inc. "Tell all the truth
but tell it slant..." The company's motto,
appropriated from an Emily Dickinson poem,
stared back at me. Barney would
undoubtedly tell me it was nothing more
than a smart-ass way of saying
"bullshit."
"Fucking
cocksuckers. They stole our fucking idea
of Big fucking Brother and Survivor and
now they're crowing about it like it was
all their fucking idea. What the fuck is
Room 101 anyway?" Barney's eyes glowed
red, like hot embers in his purple
face.
"It's
the torture room in Orwell's novel,
Nineteen Eighty-Four," I said, feeling
slightly more confident at being able to
answer at least one question. "In the
novel, Winston Smith is -- "
"Who?"
"Winston
-- "
"What
the fuck are you talking about,
girl?"
"Nineteen Eighty-Four.
George Orwell's famous novel about --
"
"Fuck. I
know the book. Jesus fucking Christ, where
do you think we got the idea for Big
Brother from?!"
"Well,
Room 101 is from that too," I
mumbled.
"Can't
these cunts come up with anything without
ripping us off?"
"Winston
loved Julia but after being tortured with
rats -- "
"Shut-up, Frank," Barney
grumbled. Frank's expression remained
fixed in a smile, totally oblivious like a
child who just farted and doesn't think
anybody else heard it.
"Adrianna, who the fuck is
everybody trying to kid here? The punters
aren't interested anymore in seeing those
fuck-witted knuckle brains voting their
sorry asses off Big Brother. They want to
see chicks getting their asses whupped.
Fuck. Why the fuck aren't we doing a story
on this? What's your angle?"
That's
what I like most about Barney. He always
manages to bring out the best in me. All
it takes is a bit of pressure and, like an
epiphany, an idea will suddenly
crystallize in my head.
"I think
we should attack them from the moral point
of view. We could get Father Tierney on
the show to do one of his fire and
brimstone pieces about ..."
"Fuck
him. I'm not going to let that Catholic
cunt back on air after all the things he
said to the New York fucking Times about
our shows. Fucking asshole. Who the fuck
does he think he is? I oughta run that
piece Judith dug up on him and all those
children he fucked when he was a priest in
Michigan. Fucking hypocrite!"
Judith
Ernst smirked across the table at me. I
ignored her smug look of satisfaction and
let her think she'd just scored another
point towards usurping me from my
position. Barely out of Havard Business
School, she might have had all the right
qualifications on paper but none of that
meant a thing to an old shark like Barney.
It was a fact of the television industry
generally that my nemesis clearly hadn't
yet cottoned on to. University degrees
don't mean squat in the real world of
television.
"The
girl was thirty-seven before she
complained about it," Frank said absently,
referring to a woman Father Tierney was
alleged to have molested thirty years
earlier. He didn't direct the comment to
anybody in particular but I sensed he was
making a point to remind Judith of her
inexperience in the industry and her
failure make anything of the child sex
scandal.
"Thirty-six," Judith
mumbled tersely.
Frank
folded his arms across his chest and
continued smiling off into space. I can
understand why Judith rubs me the wrong
way but I've never been able to fathom why
she irritates Frank in the same way.
Whatever the reason, he always leaps to my
defense whenever Judith even looks like
playing any one-up games with me. The
gallant knight to my rescue, is
Frank.
"Fuck
Tierney. Next angle?" The razor-like stare
from Barney's eyes at me instantly severed
the dire misfortune I was mentally
projecting onto my nemesis.
"I still
think it's possible to push the moral
angle, even if we don't use him," I said,
still convinced it was the right avenue to
pursue. "There's that guy in Ashcroft's
office. What's his name?"
"Satini?
Santini?" Dean offered helpfully.
"Joe
Santrini. No, nobody wants to hear that
prick these days," Barney said flatly.
"Who do we know down at City Hall? I'm
sure they're breaking a million fucking
city ordinances filming that shit. Get
onto it, Adrianna."
Barney
immediately dismissed me from the meeting,
closing his squinty red eyes and waving
his hand in such a way as to suggest he'd
made the decision and I now had to find a
way to make it work. I still wasn't
convinced it was the right way to approach
the story but in lieu of having any real
alternatives, I quickly collected my
things and hurried back to my office. On
my way there I made a quick detour into
the library to see Scott.
********
"Hello
Scott."
"Hi
Adrianna," Scott replied, his cherub face
flushing slightly pink at the sight of me.
"I have a copy of the latest episode of
Room 101 here."
"Ah!
You're an angel, Scott. How do you manage
to do that?"
"What?"
He blushed a deeper shade of
crimson.
"You
know. How you always manage to read my
mind. I'll have to be careful what I think
around you." I lowered my own glasses
slightly on my nose and peered back at him
over the tortoise shell rims. The look I
gave him was one of playful suspicion
intended to tease.
"Oh.
That. I can't really do that." Scott
shrugged. It was always difficult to tell
whether or not he thought I was
serious.
No trip
to the library was ever complete without
teasing Scott. In his mid-twenties, lean
but still carrying a few pounds of puppy
fat, he bore a striking resemblance to a
young Woody Allen. He wasn't more than
five-five tall which made him the only
person on the Fox staff who was shorter
than me. It was only an inch but it made a
pleasant change to be able to stand next
to somebody and look into their eyes
instead of their chests. Not that I ever
looked directly into Scott's eyes. These
were always refracted and magnified like
giant saucers in his geeky, goggly
black-framed glasses.
"Has
anybody ever told you you look like Woody
Allen?" I had asked the question before
and I got the same, indifferent shrug. The
large, dark glassy pools of his eyes
blinked back at me through the thick
lenses.
"Nope."
"You do!
You look just like him!" I enjoyed
watching his face contort and
blush.
"I do
not," he protested. His thick Brooklyn
accent did nothing to camouflage his
hyper-tense, nervy disposition.
"Yes you
do. The spitting image."
I wanted
to add "Except for your untidy mop of
curly dark hair," but this would have
compelled me to mention it made him look
like a strange hybrid of Woody Allen and
Groucho Marx. He was too young to see how
that could be funny and besides, I didn't
want to genuinely insult him. It was just
a game we played.
"No I
don't," Scott mumbled, like a condemned
man protesting his innocence to the
end.
Scott
fidgeted with the video cassette in his
hands. He lightly tossed it from one hand
to the other; a brief manifestation of
confidence that suddenly evaporated when
he fumbled and almost dropped it on the
floor.
"Here,
let me take that," I said, smiling as I
took the tape from his hands. The relief
he obviously felt at that moment was
palpable.
"Did you
watch it?" I asked. I suspected he had.
More than once, probably.
"No!"
Scott shot back the answer with such
defiance I knew the latest episode of Room
101 was going to be an even more
outstanding example of televisual
depravity than the previous two episodes
I'd seen.
"How do
you do it, Scott?"
"What?"
"I mean,
you must watch hours and hours of this
mindless nonsense when you're making the
tapes to archive and yet you always manage
to look like you're so, um , you
know?"
Scott
shook his head like he didn't have a clue
what I was talking about.
"So
detached and uncorrupted by it!"
"Just
lucky, I guess." Scott said it with such
youthful certainty I almost believed he
meant it. A slight hint of a smile creased
up the corners of his ruddy lips.
"Must be
some pretty hot stuff on here,
hmm?"
"Mmmm."
Scott's smile broke out in a grin.
"Mmmmmm." I pretended to
frown and raised an eyebrow at him.
If the
show was half as bizarre as I now imagined
it was, it was little wonder Barney was so
angry about it. For an entertainment
pariah like Fox, especially being the
colossus that it is, to be upstaged by a
backyard operation like Dionysus is
something you just know is going to become
a David and Goliath battle. They'll lose,
of course. Nobody ever takes on Barney
Delaney and wins.
********
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