Steven Bochco (3 page)

Predictably, like the dance that it always is, Bobby says, “Why am
I
like this? Why am
I
like this? Why am I like
what
?”

“Like, I don't know—like so fucking hostile all the time.”

“Did it ever occur to you maybe I'm so fucking hostile because you never show me any fucking affection, or express any fucking sympathy for the fact that I'm going through the worst miserable fucking time in my whole fucking career right now?”

“Oh, please.”

“Ever hear the concept, I love you, Bobby, let's take a shower together, instead of me always having to feel like a fucking beggar?”

“I'm not a mind reader! If you want to fuck,
say
so,” Vee shouts, trying to match Bobby's rising volume.

“Which is why I said let's take a shower!”

“And I said okay! And
you
said forget it!”

“Jesus Christ, this is where I came in,” Bobby says.

Now Vee starts to cry, as much out of frustration as from hurt. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“Right. It's always about you,” Bobby says.

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe I'd feel like having sex more often if you actually did something productive once in a while instead of getting shit-faced at four o'clock in the afternoon and picking a fight?”

“Fuck you, Vee,” Bobby says, and throws the contents of his wineglass at her crotch.

“You are such an asshole,” Vee says, and slams the shower door shut on him.

“Maybe your boyfriend'll lick it off for you,” Bobby says, and walks out of the bathroom, slamming the door behind him, not sure if she heard him or not and not wanting to stick around to find out.

CHAPTER 4

The next morning, Bobby wakes up on the couch, dehydrated and hungover, and by the time he's chewed three aspirins and taken a hot shower, Vee's headed out the door, her voice as cold as a well-digger's ass, informing Bobby she's going over to Paramount for an audition.

And because writers like to torture themselves, Bobby quickly gets dressed and drives over to the Peninsula Hotel, where he parks across the street, waiting an hour and a half till he sees his wife exiting the hotel with the same guy from the day before, watching them as they kiss and grab-ass each other good-bye.

The toughest part of finding out your wife is cheating on you is not being able to get the picture of it out of your head. You see them in your mind's eye making love, your wife—your fucking
wife,
for God's sake!—opening her legs to this prick, saying intimate things in his ear, touching his body, touching his cock, doing things with him she won't do with you anymore. Or maybe never has.

You see him touching her, putting his hands on her, in her, all over her, invading
your
territory. And as each obsessive image mocks you, insults you, violates you, you experience what's commonly referred to as jealous rage, and you realize you're actually capable, in that moment, of murder. They used to call it a crime of passion, and under the right circumstances, no jury in the world would convict.

By way of example, there was a guy—this is years ago—named Jennings Lang, who was a big-shot talent agent at MCA (which later became Universal Studios in the days before the studio morphed into a multinational entertainment conglomerate).

Jennings Lang was supposedly having an affair with one of his clients, a beautiful movie star by the name of Joan Bennett, who was married to a producer named Walter Wanger. The story goes that Walter Wanger found out about the affair, confronted the two of them in flagrante delicto, as they say, pulled out a pistol, and shot off one of Jennings's balls.

Needless to say, he never spent a day in jail for what he did, and the guy who told me that story, a director named Jack Smight, swore to me that from that day on, he called Jennings
Jenning.

Anyway, Bobby drives around nursing his jealous, obsessive rage, killing time until his two-thirty meeting with Jared Axelrod, and when he finally works his way through the Twentieth Century Fox studio security barricades at the front gate, parks his car halfway across the lot, and gets lost looking for this guy's bungalow, who do you think this Axelrod turns out to be?

If you guessed the guy his wife's been banging at the Peninsula Hotel, you'd be right. If you also guessed the meeting was a total disaster, that would be right, too.

For all the reasons I mentioned before about why I think Bobby didn't confront Vee, he's not about to confront Axelrod, either, particularly in front of Axelrod's development executive, a young, attractive woman named Lainie Ginsberg.

After several moments of strained amenities, while the assistant fetches Evian for everyone, Axelrod gets to it. “So. What'd you think of the script?”

Bobby now commences, predictably, to shoot himself in the foot. He tells Axelrod that the premise of the movie is bullshit and that the audience will be offended by the fact that this old guy is seducing his young stepdaughter. In the alternative, Bobby suggests the notion of turning the story into a less complicated emotional landscape by having the love interest be his dead wife's somewhat younger sister.

Now, even I know that's a terrible idea, and I represent the guy. But the real dynamic in the room has nothing to do with Bobby's ideas about Axelrod's script, good or bad. It has to do with the fact that Axelrod is fucking his wife. Bobby knows it—hell, Lainie Ginsberg probably knows it—and even though Axelrod doesn't know for sure whether Bobby knows it, off the hostile vibe emanating from Bobby, he suspects it. So, without being totally disrespectful (for obvious reasons), Axelrod, as nicely as he can, pisses all over Bobby's idea, saying maybe we'll get together on some other project some time, I'm a big fan of your work, blah blah blah.

Of course, what Bobby probably
hears
is
I'm fucking your wife, you impotent third-rate hack. Now get the hell out of my office so I can laugh my ass off behind your back.

At the door, Lainie Ginsberg offers Bobby her hand, telling him she's also a longtime admirer of his oeuvre. Bobby wants to say, Stick my oeuvre up your tight little Jewish ass, but instead he gives her a phony smile and beats it out of there.

About now, you're probably asking yourself why Bobby didn't just smack this guy in the mouth. I can't answer that one. Maybe he was afraid to alienate a guy everyone knows is gonna wind up running a studio within five years. Or maybe he was just so ashamed that he didn't want anyone to know his wife was screwing around behind his back with a movie producer who wouldn't even give him a lousy rewrite.

Whatever the case, when Bobby gets home, the first thing Vee says, as casually as she can, is, “How was your meeting?”

“The meeting was swell,” Bobby says. “I asked him does he like fucking you from behind so he can watch his dick go in and out, or does he prefer being on the bottom so he can watch your tits bounce up and down?”

Vee hauls off and smacks Bobby in the face so hard it sounds like a gunshot. And from that point on, it's all over but the shouting. Bobby calls her a cheating cunt. Vee calls Bobby a loser—an impotent boozer who can't write his way out of a wineglass. He says he oughta throw her off the deck in back of the house (from where, by the way, you can see the
HOLLYWOOD
sign).

“Did you ever stop to ask yourself whose fault it is I'm having an affair?” Vee yells. “Can you remember the last time we went out for a meal together without having a fight? Or the last time you kissed me, or made love to me without me having to beg? Can you even remember the last time you were sober? Because I can't, and I finally couldn't take it anymore, and I was so lonely I would've fucked the pool man if we had one!”

“Well if you're so goddamn miserable,” Bobby screams, “why don't you just pack up your shit and get the fuck out of my house,” which is sort of like closing the barn door after the horse has already bolted, as she's already throwing stuff in an overnight bag, saying she should've left him months ago.

The sight of her actually packing suddenly breaks Bobby's heart, and all the fight goes out of him. “Come on, Vee, don't go, please,” he begs. He even promises to go to the shrink with her, but he's a day late and a buck short. As afraid as she'd been, now that her secret's out, she feels liberated. Her fear, catalyzed by anger, has now turned to courage, and her sense of euphoria billows her sails and carries her out the door, leaving their marriage and Bobby, miserable and remorseful, in her wake.

I know all this because, coincidentally, I happened to call Bobby to ask him to meet me for drinks after work. I'd gotten an earful from Jared Axelrod about their meeting, and frankly, as much as I hated the idea, I realized I was going to have to fire Bobby as a client.

CHAPTER 5

Over drinks at the bar in the Four Seasons hotel, Bobby tells me the whole story from A to Z, starting with getting pulled over by the motorcycle cop and seeing Vee across the street grabbing some guy's ass in front of the Peninsula Hotel to showing up for his meeting with Jared Axelrod and realizing he's the guy his wife's been banging.

“It's the worst meeting I ever took in my life,” Bobby says. “If I didn't need the job so bad, I would've killed him on the spot.”

Hindsight being twenty-twenty, I admit my timing could have been better, but then again, is the timing ever right for bad things to happen to you? Is there ever a right time to find out your wife's cheating on you, or that someone you love has cancer, or that Sherry Lansing at Paramount hates your script? I wasn't going to be doing Bobby—or for that matter myself—any favors by delaying the inevitable just because this happened to be the day his marriage broke up.

Plus, for whatever it's worth, no one has stuck by him longer than I have, to my own detriment, I might add, or defended him more loyally when everyone else was saying he'd lost his chops.

So, cutting to the chase, I tell Bobby that notwithstanding the fact that this is a horribly difficult time for him, I have to let him go as a client. Julius Caesar couldn't have looked any more stunned when Brutus stuck a knife in his kishkas.

“Are you kidding me?” he asks. “Is this like one of those sick doctor jokes, I have bad news and I have good news? The bad news is, your biopsy came back positive, you've got three weeks to live, but the good news is, as soon as you leave my office, I'm going to fuck my nurse?”

I try to explain to Bobby that this has been coming for months. I tell him I'll always be his friend, but I can't afford to have a guy like Jared Axelrod pissed off at me.

“This prick is screwing my wife and you're telling me you can't afford to have him pissed off at you? Are you serious?”

“I know you're upset,” I say, “but try to see it from my point of view. I'm not saying he
isn't
a prick, but if I lose credibility with this guy, he'll start bad-mouthing me all over town. And then next thing you know, my calls aren't being returned, my other clients are being penalized because of it,
they
get pissed off at me, and before you know it, I'm persona non grata and my clients are getting picked off like grapes during crushing season. I mean, do the math: losing my credibility equals losing my clients equals losing my job. Suddenly I can't afford my kids' school, I can't make my mortgage payments, and my wife dumps me for Ron Perelman. I'm exaggerating for the sake of the point here, but credibility is the only thing I've got going for me in this business, and if I lose it, I may as well bend over, stick my head between my legs, and kiss my ass good-bye.”

“What about integrity, fucko? What about friendship?”

“Fucko?”
I say. “You have the balls to call
me
fucko? I have lied for you, I have advanced you money, I've been a friend and a shoulder for you to cry on, the words
thank you
have never passed your lips once in all the years I've represented you, and for all that I get called fucko? Well, fuck you, you self-absorbed piece of shit,” I say, dropping a twenty on the bar and splitting before I
really
lose my temper.

I want to go on record saying I'm not unaware that agents have a shitty reputation. People say horrible things about us behind our backs, clients call us names right to our faces, and comedy writers make up nasty jokes about us, like the one about the gorgeous young actress who meets Mike Ovitz at a cocktail party.

“Omigod,” she says to the
über
agent. “It's such an honor to meet you, Mr. Ovitz. You're the most powerful, sexy, charismatic man I've ever met, and I'd like to take you into the guest bathroom, lock the door, and give you the most unbelievable blow job you've ever had in your whole life.”

To which Ovitz says, “That's fine for you, but what's in it for me?”

Then there's the one about the agent who gets a call from a big-shot producer, asking what the agent thinks of his latest movie. The agent says, “Well, I gotta be honest. I didn't think it was your best work ever, the script wasn't all that good, and the actress who played the girlfriend of the lead really stunk up the room.” Furious, the producer tells the agent that the actress who played the girlfriend happens to be his wife. “Wait a minute,” the agent exclaims. “Let me finish!”

The point being, an agent's life is no tea party. Maybe not so much directors, but actors and writers are, by and large, big self-centered spoiled-rotten babies. Every one of their life's little disappointments winds up on our doorstep. And every job they don't get or every job they ever screwed up, whose fault is it? The agent's. You bust your ass trying to build a guy's career, he finally gets hot, and the first thing he does after he buys a new Mercedes is fire your ass and sign with some other agent, who's blowing smoke up
his
ass about what he can do for your client now that he's finally gotten the recognition he should've had years ago, blah blah blah . . .

That said, I still love writers. They're quirky, smart, fun to talk to, and often bizarre in their habits and lifestyles.

I once represented an East Coast writer who'd relocated to Los Angeles after I'd sold his first novel to Warner Bros. Not long after arriving, he showed up at my office early one morning, asking if I could advance him five thousand dollars against his first paycheck, due shortly. I wrote him my own personal check for the amount, and as promised, he paid me back within days. The following week, he asked again, and again I wrote him the check. This time, he paid me back in hundred-dollar bills. I don't know about you, but I don't see that kind of cash every day. (I have a producer friend who maintains that if you walked into every negotiation with a bag full of money and dumped it on the table, you could close most deals at a fraction of what they generally make for. Agents these days routinely close deals for millions of dollars, but can you imagine if you dumped, say, $750,000,
cash,
on some actor's coffee table? The IRS might be pissed off, but I bet the actor would love it.)

Anyway, when I asked my client where he got the cash, he told me with an embarrassed grin that he was commuting to Los Angeles every morning on the six
A.M.
flight from Las Vegas, where he'd taken up temporary residence at Caesars Palace. He'd write all day, catch an eight
P.M.
flight back to Vegas, stay up all night drinking and gambling and God knows what else, then show up in L.A. the next day, ready to work.

I had another writer once who I'd placed on staff at a hit TV show, and during a writers' meeting in the second-floor office of the executive producer, this writer—who'd been animatedly pitching a story to the entire staff (including one female)—at some point realized that a window washer had climbed a tall ladder outside the building and was squeegeeing the windows during his pitch. Without missing a beat, this writer stripped down to his boxer shorts, backed up to the window, whipped his shorts down around his knees, and pressed his bare ass up against the glass. The guys in the room were convulsed with laughter, and the female quit the next day.

And finally, I love writers because I don't think there's anything in the world that's scarier than staring at a blank page and reaching inside yourself for the inspiration it takes to put your fingers on the keys and make something out of nothing, knowing the whole time that when you're done, some idiot in a suit, with tons of opinions and no talent, will probably shit all over it. It takes courage, boys and girls, and courage is a fickle bitch at best.

Now that I've had time to reflect on it, I suppose I could've waited a day or two before dropping the hammer on Bobby. But I guess I did what I did because I felt so sorry for the poor bastard, and I was afraid that if I didn't do it right then and there, I wouldn't have the guts to do it at all . . .