Producer (9 page)

Incidentally, for anyone who thinks the escalation of technology is not a good thing, let me remind you about the aftermath
of the earthquake in Haiti in 2010. During the 9/11 tragedies in 2001, our advanced technology allowed us to see what was
occurring in the moment. It allowed Ted Olson to speak to his wife before she died on the plane that crashed
into the Pentagon, and it allowed us to keep track of reactions all over the world. But by 2010, when the earthquake devastated
Haiti and killed so many people, technology was allowing us to save people as they tweeted or e-mailed their locations to
rescue workers.

Today, with the benefits of the most advanced technology to date, we take pride in the span of the topics and people our show
covers. While we might interview a movie star one night, we might book the Dalai Lama for the next night. I recall when Nelson
Mandela was freed from the prison cell in which he had spent the last twenty-seven years, and we were told he was willing
to do an interview for our show. Larry and I flew to New York together that very night on a red-eye so we would arrive in
time for the interview. This was one of those moments when I realized how major an impact our show could make on the world.
We do pop culture (societal trends) and water cooler (the current buzz at cocktail parties). And we also do Nelson Mandela
and the Dalai Lama, people who transcend cultural limitations, race, or color.

As you can see, our palette is so diverse, I have to be ready for anything. Good thing I have some habits in place that help
me out. But even with the best organization and readiness, things happen over which we have no control. Since Larry takes
his interviewer role so seriously, one of my greatest challenges occurs when we’ve booked a guest who arrives late to the
studio. There is no degree of preparedness or organization that can eliminate the angst when a guest is late.

In 2001, we had booked former Vice President Al Gore to appear for the whole hour. He was a hot ticket for the show, we were
thrilled to have him, but it was 8:45, the show was set to begin at 9, and Gore and his wife were stuck in traffic. There
was no way he could make our airtime, so I had to figure out
how to fill in the first segment of the show while we waited. My alternative was to run a show on tape, which would be such
a waste since the Gores were “almost” there.

What should we do in the meantime? My staff and I racked our brains for someone we could throw on in New York or Los Angeles
to fill in the time while we waited, but we couldn’t come up with anybody. There were no famous people in our various news
bureaus and we had minutes to fix this problem. As luck would have it, though, it was Larry’s birthday and his wife, Shawn,
and their two kids, Chance and Cannon, three and a half and two and a half at the time, were at the studio. “Let’s start with
the kids,” I said suddenly.

We carted the kids onto the set and when the show aired, Larry proudly introduced his boys and let them wish him happy birthday
for the first segment.

KING:
They’re expected [the Gores]. They’re on the way. But one of the problems in working live, and I love working live, is that
sometimes traffic difficulties get in the way. And Al and Tipper Gore were in Los Angeles. Pretty humid in LA today. I don’t
know if that had anything to do with it. Temperature’s in the mideighties. But the Gores have not yet arrived… So we decided
to spend those three promised minutes with my two kids and my wife. Today is my sixty-ninth birthday, so on the left on your
screen is Chance King. He is three and a half years old. In the middle is Shawn King. On the right is Cannon King. He’s two
and a half years old. And I thought maybe we could sing “Happy Birthday.”

CHANCE:
I want to do a Halloween song.

KING:
Okay, a Halloween song. Which one?

CHANCE:
And Halloween and Halloween and Halloween.

KING:
Okay. And what do you want to sing, Cannon?

CANNON:
A ghost.

They continued to talk for the next few minutes until we cut to commercial. The kids had been very cute and when Larry went
back on the air, Al and Tipper Gore had arrived and were sitting opposite him. Whew!

KING:
What happened? Where were you?

TIPPER GORE:
Traffic in LA. Misjudged the time, perhaps. We came from the East Coast today. We wanted to give your kids a chance to have
their network debut.

KING:
In the old days, there would have been flashing lights… Do you miss the trappings? You would not have been late if you were
vice president… or president… I mean, what’s it like to come from the life of that to not having the life of that?

AL GORE:
I’ve joked about it a lot, but the truth is… it’s great to be out of the so-called bubble and to be able to go on your own.
There are disadvantages like being late here. I’m sorry.

KING:
Don’t you miss the trappings?

TIPPER:
No. No, not at all. It was a privilege when we had them and when Al was vice president. And it was great. But that’s over
with. We’ve moved on. And it’s nice to have our freedom back and be able to, unfortunately, get lost or be in traffic.

Besides a guest being late for the show, I am very uncomfortable when Larry or the show itself becomes part of the story.
I believe that our show is about presenting the facts in a neutral way, and then the audience can draw their own
conclusions. Larry agrees. I always try to keep him out of the foreground, but there are times when it’s unavoidable and it
just doesn’t work out that way, no matter how prepared I think I am.

It was November 1993, when I got a phone call from one of my bookers. He had been on the phone with Al Gore’s people and it
seemed that the vice president wanted to challenge financier Ross Perot to debate the NAFTA trade agreement on
Larry King Live
. Were we interested in hosting the debate?

This highly controversial trilateral agreement, a hotly debated topic, was on track to be signed by the United States, Canada,
and Mexico, to supersede the existing Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement. Gore was for the legislation, Perot was against
it, and they wanted the debate to occur on our show. How could I say no? Gore was a sitting vice president, and these two
men were extraordinarily powerful and influential.

Aware of the opportunity as well as the obstacles, I contacted Ross Perot to see if he was interested. He was game, and we
figured it would be a great night of television, an unprecedented experience for us. But when we made the announcement that
we would host this debate, it exploded into an international news story. Larry and I both ended up on the covers of a load
of global newspapers and we were part of the story, exactly what I had hoped to avoid. Speculation was rampant as to who would
win and how we would know who won. Now that we were part of the story, how would we end up convincing everyone that we were
nonpartisan? I quickly realized that the scrutiny of our show was about to escalate intensely. In order for that to work in
our favor, I needed to do absolutely everything right. I had to fall back on my organizational skills as I started making
lists and springing into action.

First, I got permission from Tom Johnson, CNN president at the time, to extend our usual sixty minutes to ninety minutes.

Check.

Next, I called a meeting with the White House and with Ross Perot’s people.

Check.

We were all on the same page, so to speak, and on November 11, 1993, Gore and Perot arrived at the studio about a half hour
before the show.

Check.

I assigned a different person to take care of each man and make them both comfortable in private rooms that were the exact
same size and filled with the same number of sandwiches, drinks, and other snacks. They did a coin toss for the privilege
of choosing the seat closer to or farther away from Larry. Al Gore won and chose the seat closer to Larry. But once they were
ready to go into the studio, I was up against another obstacle. It seemed that while Ross Perot had arrived at the studio
on his own, Al Gore had Bob Squier with him, a personal friend and political adviser, but I couldn’t allow him on the set.

I recall some years back when I got onto the Reagan press plane in Santa Barbara in tears. I had been dating a notorious womanizer
named Carter Eskew who had been Bob Squier’s business partner at the time. Carter had unceremoniously dumped me by cell phone
just before the plane took off and I was devastated. One of our flight attendants, M.A., a friend of mine by then, whisked
me into the lavatory on the plane to wash my face and help me stop crying. M.A. was so helpful, she actually pulled me down
on her lap on top of the toilet seat cover to keep me safe during takeoff.

The point here is that right before the NAFTA debate, Carter
Eskew, in his inimitable fashion, left his partner, Bob Squier, just as unceremoniously as he had left me, going off on his
own. Now, Al Gore knew that Bob and I had an inside secret—we had both been dumped by Carter Eskew. When I went in to greet
the Gores and Bob, Al said to us, “Now you two really have something in common.” Bob laughed so hard.

Ross Perot took his seat on the set with Larry when there were only about five minutes left until showtime. Where was Al?
It seemed he had made a quick pit stop and Bob stood outside the men’s room, waiting for him.

“Bob,” I said, “you have to get him out here right now.” I was looking at my watch and getting nervous.

The bathroom door opened and out came Al Gore looking extremely anxious. He seemed to be on edge about this debate and I hated
to make him even more nervous by asking him to go out there alone. But I had to stop Bob from walking onto the set. “You can’t
go into the studio with him,” I told Bob.

Bob looked at me and realized I wasn’t kidding. He glanced over at Ross Perot, then he looked at Al, and I saw a smile break
out on Bob’s face. He leaned in and whispered in Al’s ear, loud enough for me to hear, “Just remember one thing, Al,” he said.
“Everything on your body is bigger than his.”

Al broke into a huge belly laugh and walked onto the set, looking completely confident. Who expected such a thing would end
Al’s anxiety? That day, I learned a good lesson from Bob Squier:

If you can’t say something nice, say something funny!

The poignancy of this comment was well demonstrated seven years later, when Bob passed away from colon cancer on January 24,
2000. Before he died, I recall how pissed off he was that a thing like cancer was getting in the way of his great passion—running
a winning campaign for presidential hopeful Al Gore.

The cancer got him in the end and I was honored to be asked to speak at his funeral at the National Cathedral in Washington.
It was a well-attended funeral, with speakers like President Clinton, and then there was me, Wendy Walker, once again feeling
way out of my league. I recall shyly walking in the procession and taking my seat just behind the president and the vice president.
As I prepared to get up and take the podium, I looked down at the lovely black suit I had bought for the occasion, only to
notice that my fly was open, the zipper was all the way down, and peeking out were my pink underpants. I turned the color
of my underwear as I attempted to pull the zipper up. As I pulled myself back together, one zipper tooth at a time, the sound
resounded throughout the silent cathedral. I was embarrassed but I couldn’t help but smile. Bob would have really appreciated
this bit of humor, I realized, which made it all the more sad that he was gone.

Back to the debate. We timed every comment with a stopwatch to make sure no one got more time than his opponent. We even took
callers on the show and made sure their questions were equally distributed as well. When it was over, I was confident no one
could complain that Larry had favored either candidate, although public opinion leaned in the direction that Al Gore had won.
I was satisfied that we had pulled it off, it had been a success, and we had accomplished our goal of no favoritism. I owed
it all to organization, for which there is no substitute.

I got home that night, exhausted but happy that we had worked so hard and had done such a good job of being fair. I was elated
when I found out we had received the highest ratings for a cable show ever, and I fell asleep feeling contented. I expected
to sleep in late that morning, but I was awakened
around midnight by a call from a
Washington Post
reporter. I reached for the phone a little bleary-eyed and said, “Yes?”

“We have it from the highest sources,” he told me, “that you rigged all the calls during the debate.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked him. I sat up.

“We got this from a very reliable source,” he went on.

“You know I would never do that,” I told him. “You know our policies for the show. Where did you hear this?”

“We listened to a recording,” he pressed on.

He was referring to a comment that the radio shock jock Howard Stern had blurted out earlier that morning on his undisciplined
show. I got up and had the tape sent to me. When I listened, it was nothing more than the indomitable Stern prodding his listeners
with criticisms and rumors, accusing us of political manipulation. Still, during that whole day, when I should have been able
to revel in our success, I had to deflect call after call from reporters who were trying to depict us as cheaters. As hard
as I had worked to keep everything fair and equal, nothing ended up looking equal until the Stern group finally admitted they
had made the whole thing up.

For obvious reasons, I’m much happier when we book a standard show, which may be one person, or may include a panel of five.
What interviewer besides Larry do you know who can talk with as many as five people at the same time and give them all equal
time?

The additional logistics required when Larry interviews a group rather than an individual are considerable. But it is in our
favor that Larry has such an innate relationship with time that we call him Mr. Clockhead. While the rest of us have to set
clocks, Larry always knows in his head exactly how much time he has given to each person, and he does his best to keep it
fair and square. It really bothers him when he inadvertently
gives more time to one person than to another, so he makes sure that doesn’t happen.