Try Try Again (18 page)

Over the next two months, the idea went from concept to
story board to edited trial tape ready for viewing. The tape of the trial was
edited and paced for viewer interest and story continuity (and to allow for
commercial breaks at just the right moments). Advertisers were lined up,
product placements agreed and implanted.

Hub was wrestling one day with a question: was a commentary needed,
to go along with the trial rebroadcasts, and if so what the commentary should
achieve, how many times per trial-day, etc. Agonists, and ordinary viewers,
would need context and continuity to keep them aware of what was happening in
the courtroom, and why, and to hint what was coming up next.

Hub knew the show’s continuity was weak, and a “Greek
chorus” character was needed. Looking up webV news breaks from the trial, he
focused on JTJ, the woman who’d sent him the tapes. She seemed to be a highly
telegenic presence, and she’d reported on the trial as it happened.

On the original trial tapes, JTJ had appeared twice each
day: at noon recess and again after adjournment for the day; and these
commentaries were contained on the trial tapes provided by Grantwood Junior
College.

Hub replayed JTJ’s commentary several times. The voice and
face and gestures and bodily movements of “This is JTJ, reporting from Grantwood
County courthouse” began to grow on him. Why not use her?

A real break, Hub figured. JTJ’s commentary was pretty good,
and she herself well worth the attention of male viewers and a segment of the
female demographic, too.

But Hub judged JTJ’s commentary, although fine for its time
and place, would not – quite – work for the agonist version of the trial,
addressed to people whose recollection of the Dukes trial, if they had any,
would be vague.

Her commentaries, in addition, were aimed at home-town
viewers. Impact on the Seventeenth Congressional District and the Pennsylvania
delegation to the House of Representatives and the Senate was emphasized, but
the viewers Hub was thinking of wouldn’t care about that.

As Hub explained to Frankie the next day, “We need a writer
to come up with a new set of trial commentaries. And – ah – I’d like JTJ
herself to read them on the show.”

“She got to you, eh?” said Frankie.

“Well, yeah, in a way. But look: she’d be great at this –
screen presence, sexy look, great bod,…”

“OK, hire a writer to update JTJ’s words. Make them fit the
audience, provide clues to what’s really happening, tattle on the sexual
proclivities of the principals, and so on and so on. And fly your new pet to
L.A. and give her a screen-test – OK? I’m sure you’d like that.”

“OK!” said Hub, who hurried off to give JTJ the good news
and tell his agent to find a writer for a very rush job. Neither Al, Bennie, or
Chas was considered.

The evening JTJ arrived in L.A., Hub explained the
arrangement to her after dinner. JTJ wasn’t happy a writer would be re-writing
her undying words, but she saw several possible Hollywood futures for herself,
and agreed. As promised, she had a screen test and to no one’s surprise, (least
her own) she was adjudged “great presence” and “bombshell.”

A few days later, Hub handed the first draft of JTJ’s
revised commentaries to her, said she’d be taped for “Try Try Again” in two
weeks.

After studying the script with greater and greater
annoyance, JTJ called Hub and pointed out that all the weighty political and sociological
content in her commentaries had been trashed, and what was left was, as she
said, “just a lot of happycrap,” one word. “I didn’t say that stuff during the
trial, and it’s dumb and makes me look stupid!”

She told Hub he could cram the new script where the sun
didn’t shine. It made her out, she said, to be mindless, like those amazingly
cute young women who offer on-field commentary during NFL games.

Hub politely asked JTJ how much she was making as a junior
college adjunct, how vital and important being an adjunct was, and how much recognition
her weighty sociological mind had been getting lately.

Hub made a few cosmetic concessions, however, and JTJ began
practicing her new trial commentaries, memorized most of the words,
but
that’s OK honey, just be yourself and remember as much of it as you can. In
your natural voice, you know? Viewers will love it!

Hub proposed including some “at home” segments to Frankie,
as “character” supplements to the trial action: not just JTJ, but Liv Saunders
and Brent Nielsen too. “Imagine,” he said, “Brent arguing with colleagues about
trial strategy at lunch, in trial breaks, etc. Let’s give the agonists some
hint that the trial principals had a life beyond the courthouse, so increasing
viewer interest in them.”

JTJ, at least he said, would be a natural, in addition to
being smart and lively and very sexy and more or less black. That last
characteristic was, they head-shakingly regretted, important, since no one in the
actual trial, including any of the jury members, was any color other than a
pasty February pinko-grey.

But Frankie thumbs-downed this idea, making the valid points;
scripts would have to be written for these “at-home” characters, which was a
cost, and the principals engaged, which would cost, and who knows if they were
any good at acting? And how would these segments fit into the show? Not easily.

One day, Hub asked his creative staff what the show should
be called. Their answers, while various, lacked creativity. He called JTJ,
asked if she’d like to come over and work out a hard problem with him.

About two a.m., JTJ returned to her hotel, her virtue unblemished,
to Hub’s disappointment; and Hub had a name for the show.

Hub immersed himself in developing the show, watched the
original tapes over and over, cutting each day of the trial down to the most compelling
eighty-eight minutes.

Deciding how and where to insert product placements into the
trial was also a challenge, but given trial recesses could be fictionalized,
and exciting overnight developments he could imagine, including driving sporty
cars of various makes very fast and swigging different brands of cheap beer, no
problem. He had the WizWhiz artists CGI a few brand-name products on to the
defense and prosecution tables, as examples to show prospects. Nothing
outrageous, just MICROSOFT SURFACE tabs, GALAXY phones, and BUBBLE-UP PURE
NATURAL SPRING WATER, specially flavored to imitation inner-city tap water. Or
so it was claimed.

There was one regret, explained Stan Collins of WizWhiz: the
vitals and heartbeats and DNA and all the stuff Frankie wanted to monitor,
well, all that was impossible unless each agonist were hooked up to something
more complicated than an EKG machine, and a lot more expensive. What they could
do, however, was to remotely monitor facial expression and speech and physical
movement – licensing technology similar to that which had originally appeared
in the Kinect – wouldn’t require any cables or wires or tubes up the nose or
crap like that.

That was one problem solved. Hub regretted he wouldn’t be
able to fake any of the dialog, but that was prohibited by the network’s
contract. Just think, he thought, Brent Nielsen could say I THINK I’LL HAVE A
LAGUNITAS IPA OR MAYBE TWO AS SOON AS COURT RECESSES FOR THE DAY. He had
mentioned this possibility to Frankie, who metaphorically wet his pants but
objectively did not.

Frankie set high prices for product placements, because advertisers
would know, in advance, exactly where Brent-agonists and Liv-agonists, and so
on, would be looking at each moment. That’s where the products, as if by magical
coincidence, would appear.

“And the wonderful thing,” he said to fifty-three potential
advertisers, “is millions of viewers will be paying intense attention to the
show, therefore including its CGI’d placements. That’s undivided attention,
rather than playing to an empty chair while the viewer is rummaging in the
fridge for a beer, or pissing away its warm remains.”

Finally, show development was complete, programming of agonists’
real-time technology was complete (although late and very much over-budget),
and promotional materials were nearly finished. An interactive pilot, for publicity
and practice, was developed and made ready for release: How to register as a
character, how to play, how scoring was done, how money could be won; and a
free practice app was programmed and approved for downloading by the High Lords,
Apple and Google.

Word of the forthcoming show leaked, of course. This was a
concern for Frankie until they’d locked in exclusive rights to the trial
footage; after that, the more leaks the better. The best were leaks that
contradicted other leaks, leading to controversy, leading to confidential
interviews, leading to more leaks. And more controversies. And more free
publicity.

On a cloudy winter L.A. day sometime thereafter, there was a
go-nogo full-scale presentation of the final version of “Try Try Again,” to
Frankie, complete with software and mock-agonists. Frankie was delighted, and
prepared the big pitch he’d make to the networks and cable channels.

The first two episodes, corresponding to the first two days
of the actual trial, were now edited, CGI-enhanced, and ready for webcast. Frankie
had his advertisers lined up. Now he had to wait until a favorable webV network
time-slot came open. He had a well-founded ‘hunch’ one of the new fab fall
favorites would be cancelled, and he thought he knew which one.

A webV ‘reality’ show about a group of wacky female stunt
pilots, at first called “Flighty Fems” and then, after a few protests, renamed
“Airheads,” was cancelled after two weeks and three crashes. Frankie saw his chance.
The only broadcast-ready show the network had was “Try Try Again,” the Dukes
trial redux. Hub and his team, and JTJ, rushed to finish the third through
fifth episodes.

One week before the premiere, a Special was aired explaining
what “Try Try Again” was all about, the fabulous prizes that were offered, and
the tagline “From a Buck to a Billion,” although “billion” was well-asterisked.

The required home setup was carefully explained, although
for the past three years all major-brand webVs had come with motion-sensing,
face recognition, and voice-sensing technology built in.

Viewers were linked to a practice site where they could
figure out how the show worked and get ready for serious competition. Online
pre-registration as the contestant’s character of choice was urged, although real-show-time
registration was also supported (all fingers crossed at WizWhiz).

Frankie’s genius, planted news stories said, was to see a
technology intended for couch-potato-ism and muscle-cars-vs-zombies gaming,
could also be used as a network contestant input device with no modifications
required.

The show previewed with a one-episode pilot in late February,
representing day one of the Dukes trial. At first only a few agonists jacked
in, but the idea quickly picked up steam, especially after several thousand
dollars was awarded to each of seventy-five randomly selected agonists.

Publicity went into overdrive, even though not one American
in a thousand knew what ‘overdrive’ actually was. ‘The ultimate reality show’
it was called, and ‘A show to die for’ (a slogan quickly withdrawn).

Several thousand habitual game-show fans became mildly interested,
soon to be several million more, and with increasing levels of fervor.

But others had differing responses.

Sybille Haskin was annoyed. Her long-planned goals were about
to be achieved: a President of the United States completely under her control,
required to do her secret bidding. And now this bother had to happen, a stupid
webV show with plenty of publicity. People would remember once again, Thomas
James Conning’s political future had been saved in a shocking and bloody way.

And not just publicity. She was concerned someone might
notice something that had happened during the trial she had attended, Charley
Dukes’ startled glance when Chief Gardner testified neither he nor Barnes’
security guard had fired. No one else seemed to have paid attention to Charley’s
look at the time. But now, someone might notice, be moved to figure out what it
meant, what had surprised Dukes. Many skeins could be unraveled.

Jillian Hall had just had another fight with Roger Hall, her
husband of five years. The subject was, once again, Suzanne Garofalo, their
neighbor, with whom Roger had become increasingly friendly. Jill had found
evidence Suzanne had visited her home when Jill was out. Additional evidence led
her to believe Roger had tried to clean up after these visits but of course,
being male, he hadn’t succeeded.

That afternoon, home from work, her careful inspection of
the premises revealed someone with Suzanne’s scent (both natural and perfumed)
had lain on her and Roger’s marriage bed. When Roger came home and denied
everything, she asked him to leave and find a hotel again and he did, although
not to the same hotel as before, which had since been closed by the county
Health Department. Jill spent that evening burning the bedclothes and trying to
bend Roger’s golf clubs into interesting abstract forms she was sure he would
appreciate.

To take her mind off golf she tuned to a webV channel. There
was going to be a new contest show, the channel said. Imitating someone in a
trial. Well, she’d spent several years imitating an accountant at work and a
wife at home, would imitating a lawyer be so much tougher?

She looked into the show, became fascinated. Of the trial’s
characters, she picked defense attorney Liv Saunders to emulate. Liv reminded
her of herself but quieter, more tightly wound – someone she might be like in,
oh, maybe fifteen years or so.

Before long, Jill was spending all her spare time studying the
show and talking about it. Ellie Mason, her other next-door neighbor, told her
she was doing that just to forget Roger and shouldn’t she just face her own
situation instead of some murder trial? Jill told Ellie to go fuck herself, but
they became friends again soon after. Ellie never said Jill was compensating
for losing Roger, ever again. But a trace of resentment remained.