Writers: The Scourge of Hollywood!

If I told you his name I’d probably wake up to find a horse’s head in my bed. But I think it’s safe to tell you he’s a major Studio Exec in his fifties with a craggy, deeply tanned face and poofy, oddly scissored hair, who hops around with aimless, vaguely malevolent agitation, like an organ grinder’s monkey. Whether or not you recognize his mug, you recognize his movies.


Studio Exec lay down on the treatment table today, huffing and fidgeting. I’ve been helping him with “potency issues,” and I figured, by his flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes, we were getting results.

Man, I feel great!” he said, kicking off his mahogany New & Lingwood loafers and sending his gaze my way.

“Excellent,” I said, unwrapping some needles. “I’m glad to hear it.”

“Anybody wants to screw with me, watch out!” he said. “I just came from a meeting with our writers. Those dummies have no idea who they’re dealing with. Ha!” It sounded like Studio Exec’s potency issues were being resolved.

“Ya know, Silverman’s got the right idea,” he continued. “Silverman’s brilliant, everybody knows that. Demanding that the writers deliver on time is a good move. But we’re going one step further. We’re cutting the damn writers out of production after the first step. Brilliant, huh?”

“I didn’t even know Sarah Silverman uses writers,” I said. “I thought she just channels her act.”

Studio Exec gave me a pained look--and not because my needles hurt (I use a very gentle technique.) “Sarah Silverman?” he said. “I’m talking about Greg Silverman!”

I must have given him a blank look because he added: “Greg Silverman! VP at Warner!” As if that meant anything to me. I continued with my treatment and he continued with his rant. As soon as the needles had all found their places he’d calm down. I’d see to it.

“Here’s the deal,” he said, clasping his hands over his flat-as-a-dish belly and gazing at the ceiling. “Silverman is demanding the writers turn in their rewrites on time, or else! That’s just the way it’s going to be, like it or not. New world order. That‘s OK, but we’re going one step further! After first-draft we don’t need the writer anymore. We’re outsourcing to India, see? Schools like Digital Academy and FTII are setting loose a thousand hungry grads every half hour, and boy can those kids crank it out! They write just as good as our own spoiled, pansy-ass writers, only faster. Ask any one of those Indian kids and they’ll recite a dozen pages of “Beverly Hills Cop,” One through Five! And number four ain’t even in the can yet! Ha!”

“So you’re feeling more robust,” I said. “Is it fair to say these acupuncture treatments are helping?”

Studio Exec wasn’t done. “Here’s the deal: the local writer sends us the first draft and then we send him back to his lunch shift at The Ivy. Then we go one-on-one with India. Strictly on the down-low, right? We crank it out. Ya know, my wife has been after me to adopt a set of twins from Somali but now I’m thinking India is the way to go. A set of smart, little twins from India! You see where I’m goin’ with this? What do you think I should name 'em?

But before I could suggest “Eternally” and “Grateful,” he was cranking out a snore and slobbering on my sheet.

File Under: Arc for Art's Sake

It was six p.m. and I needed a sugar fix so I jumped in my car and headed toward Vanilla Bakery on Wilshire.  Making my way through traffic, I got a creepy feeling and it grew creepier and creepier, like disembodied fingers massaging my neck.  And as I pulled up to Vanilla I realized the reason: I was being followed.  A black Escalade with tinted windows and blinding hi-beams had been close on my tail for the past six blocks and as I backed into a parking spot by the curb, it sidled up next to my car.

This, I thought, is not a good thing.

Then I remembered Myron’s suspicion that his new bosses were following him around in black BMWs. I had assumed this was the paranoid delusion of a man who had missed his matutinal meds, but it turned out he was right. After all, Myron is now in the business of escorting valuable goods into the U.S. for the purpose of underwriting film projects. Why shouldn’t the bosses put a tail on him and his friends? I called Myron on his cell phone but it went to voice mail so I called the house. His grouchy Czechoslovakian maid, Fanny answered.

“No, Meester Charles,” she wheezed, “Meester Myron is not here. He vas called avay dis afternoon. He is having a meeting with der hoodlums he now vorks for.  I hef not met these people but the whole ting smells bad, very bad. Like donkey goulash.  Very bad smell, yah! Smell is bad, taste is worse. If offered, do not eat!”

“I’ll remember that, the next time I’m at Spago,” I said.  If Myron’s goons were following me around, it probably wasn’t to get my autograph.  But since I had nothing to hide, there was nothing to worry about.  I opened my door and as I did the front passenger window of the SUV slid down.

“Mister Yarborough,” came a woman’s stern voice.  It was Miss Feather, my daughter’s kindergarten teacher. “Mister Yarborough, come here,” she commanded.  I went up to the window, half relieved and half anxious.  I had blown off our parent/teacher meeting again last week after promising to change my ways and become an “involved” parent.  And now, since I had ignored her numerous calls, she had gotten in her car and followed me. With gray hair pulled together and choked into a bun atop her head, Miss Feather sat primly in her seat, shooting disdain over the rim of her glasses. “Come closer,” she said. “We need to talk!” I came closer and, no sooner had I set my hands on the door when she swatted my knuckles with two great cracks of a wooden ruler.

“That’s for your unexcused absence on Friday,” she said.

“But Miss Feather, I had to go to a very important--”

“No excuses!” she said. “I expect to see you in my classroom at 5 p.m. sharp, next Friday for our parent/teacher meeting. Understood? Are you aware that your daughter showed up at school dressed as Joan of Arc this week and started a bonfire in the trash can?”

“She did?" I said.  "What’s wrong with that?  We all started fires as kids.”

“At your reform school?”

How did she know about that, I wondered.  “Look, it’s just a little trash can fire,” I said.

Miss Feather’s face grew red. “She was standing in it at the time.”

Damn, I thought.  What a towering talent!  Meryl is only five years old and she’s already got Method Acting down cold.  Yale Drama School will be lucky to have her.  “Okay,” I said, pulling back from Miss Feather and heading toward Vanilla.  “I’ll see you on Friday.”

“You’d better.”

Brilliant, I thought, brilliant.  Meryl gets a bourbon cupcake and fifty bucks for this one.

File Under: Vixen, Vodka, Violence, Etc.

A young vixen from a big-screen, sci-fi three-parter called today for an appointment. After reading this blog she decided I could help with her knee, which had been twisted while skiing.

“I’ll do my best,” I said. “Acupuncture might help.”

“And will you write something wonderful about me afterwards on your blog?” she asked, coyly.

“Perhaps,” I said. “But I don’t use names.”

She said it sounded like fun and could she come right over.  I said yes, which meant that I’d have to forego taking Meryl to “Revenge of Kitty Galore.”

Nanny tells me little Meryl was disappointed that I missed her Show & Tell last week, but Meryl seems fine to me. In fact, when I came home last night the little prodigy recited Katherine Hepburn’s rousing second-act monologue from “Long Day's Journey Into Night,” the one where Mary Tyrone chastises her husband for his thoughtlessness and throws her teacup across the room, only Meryl was holding a glass of milk, so it went flying (another stain on my chinchilla throw!).   Anyway, Nanny thinks I should spend more time with the kid, hence the movie date. What’s more, when I have my meeting next week with Meryl’s teacher, Miss Feather, I need to tell her I’m an attentive parent without it making my eye twitch, which always happens when I exaggerate.

Now I’m going to tell you something I probably shouldn’t which is that I think that I’m an OK dad--despite what anybody thinks--especially considering I didn’t ask for the job and had only seen the kid’s mother in passing (see July 8).  In fact, my caterer Cecile perpetrated a nasty trick if you ask me, leaving the baby in my care after her employee gave birth at my Oscars party. What happened to the kid’s mom, I'd like to know?  Cecile says she probably returned to India but we may never find out. Soon after the baby was left in my care, Cecile sent an Indian nanny for me to interview, and she’s been with us ever since. I’m always mindful that little Meryl's mother might show up and take her back. So why should I get overly attached to someone who could be legally swiped from under my nose?

In the meantime, sci-fi Vixen needed help with her ligaments. “Come right over,” I told her. “I‘ll try to help.” I called Myron and instructed him to take Meryl to the movie.  Myron isn’t busy.  He’s waiting anxiously for his next assignment, which is sure to be a big one, judging by the harrowing test he endured with the fake diamonds (see June 29).  Myron refers to himself as an Investment Specialist to the Film Trade but really, smuggler is more like it.

Vixen said she was nearby and would show up in twenty minutes. Half an hour later, she called to say she was forced to stop at Judith Lieber when a pair of jeweled violet sunglasses in the window practically screamed out, “Take me with you!”

“I simply had to have them!” Vixen gushed. “I’m sure you understand!” She begged me in her well-practiced baby voice to wait another fifteen minutes, which I agreed to do.  Twenty minutes later she called to say she was absolutely famished and had stopped La Scala for a quick vodka penne, where she was deluged with paparazzi.  Could I possibly wait another twenty minutes, “pwitty pwease?”

I was about to suggest we reschedule our appointment when a man’s rough voice came on the line. “Hello?” he said. “Who is this?”

“The acupuncturist,” I said, hoping it wasn't a jealous boyfriend that had grabbed her phone. “We're just making an appointment for--”

“Sir, I’m sorry but she’s in a rehab facility right now and the afternoon therapy group has already started. She’ll have to call you back later.” I could hear Vixen screaming and cursing in the background and then the phone clicked off. I thought to myself, if I hurry home I can get Meryl to the movie in time, but then I remembered that Myron’s got it covered. And anyway: Penne? Vodka? Why not.

File under: Lapdog, Hand That Feeds You, Etc.

A welter of screen writers blew through my office this week, leaving behind a trail of flattened Red Bull cans and the cloying scent of “Why Me?” This wasn’t surprising: patients often move in herds. One week I may treat a half dozen producers from the Paramount lot and the next a swarm of deposed Bulgarian royalty and their jeweled lapdogs. You never know.

But this week it was writers. William the screenwriter pretty much crawled into my Westside treatment studio today, complaining of depression, shoulder pain, wrist pain and an overpowering sense of doom. He set his leather satchel on a chair and climbed onto the treatment table, folding his slender legs into half-lotus. His clothes were so threadbare and his shoes in such despair that I decided to give him his treatment free of charge. 

From under long, dark, curly, unwashed hair, William sent me a bloodshot, hound dog look. “I’m in an abusive relationship,” he said, sipping his energy drink.

“Oh?” I said, sanitizing my hands and opening a box of needles, then sanitizing my hands again.

“That’s right,“ he said. "But that‘s to be expected! Hollywood has always abused writers and it always will. It denigrates us and leaves us feeling worthless. We’re the lowest caste of society."

“So, what happened?” I asked.

“My agent destroyed my script! It was the beautiful story of a young mute girl in an Irish orphanage at the turn of the century, a girl with psychic abilities.”

“How did your agent destroy your work?” I said.

“She had me change the girl to a boy, switch Ireland to a ghetto in Brazil, and made me change her special talent to soccer. And for what?!”

“I understand your frustration,” I said.

“Do you?” he said.

“This kind of crap happens all the time in this town,” I said. “So now, after all your hard work, after all the concessions you’ve made, you’ve got nothing, not even a promise. You toil all day on your writing project, then you go to your waitering job in the evening, barely scratching out a living,

“Not exactly,” he said, sadly. “We sold the script. The movie’s being made. Big names attached. Would you like to see a picture of my new Lexus?”

"You mean you're crying about abuse even though you've sold the script, and probably sold it for a fortune?" I was getting irritated.

He shifted nervously.  "Well, yeah.  But I mean it's about the principle of the thing.  The way I see it, life is over in the barest blink of an eye, so we might as well be appreciated and compensated fairly for our talents, don't you agree?

"Now that you mention it," I said, "I guess you're right." And in the barest blink of an eye, my rate went back up.

File under: Fanny, Fishy, Kahlua, Calamity

Myron may have recovered his lost diamonds in time for the producers’ pow-wow but that didn’t leave him with a more positive outlook on life. Instead it served as a reminder that God can bestow calamity upon anybody and at any time.

“Why me?” whimpered Myron, curling up on his chrome Baleri Italia chaise and staring out at the afternoon ocean from the deck of his 2.3 million dollar pied a terre. “Why am I so unfortunate? And where is that girl with my drink?!”

His sullen Czechoslovakian maid, Fanny, wobbled out the door, carrying a tall, pink drink on a tiny silver tray. Fanny is a squat, grumpy woman in her sixties with doughy features and a wide, lumpy torso that resembles an engine block. She dresses herself in a black skirt, white blouse and a ruffled white apron with indelible yellow stains.  If you look hard enough, you might find a tiny white kerchief folded into the unruly tumbleweed of her coif.

“Here. Drink,” she wheezed, holding the tray under Myron's chin. “Thees might make you feel better, but probably not. Enjoy it, if you can! Ah, but you probably won’t. But try anyway. Vypit, Myron. That means drink up in my country. Vypit. Life is short. Drink up while you may. Tomorrow, who knows, eh? Tomorrow: boom!”

Myron sipped the drink, a frothy mix of vanilla Haagen-Dazs, Kahlua and Pepto-Bismol. Or as he calls it: dinner.

“Cheers,” I said, sipping an absinthe and lighting a new Camel from an old one.

“The most horrifying part of it all,” said Myron, “is that those diamonds were fake.”

“Agh!” said Fanny, who wasn’t supposed to be part of the conversation and didn’t even know what we were talking about. “Well, it figures, yah!”

“How did you find out, Myron?” I said.

“They told me when I showed up at the studio. There were execs and a couple of scary looking thug-types and they were all sitting around a big table. When I set the diamonds down, an exec picked one up and examined it. Then he said, ‘This is fake!’ Well, I nearly had a heart attack but then they all started laughing. You see, as it turns out, this job I did was a test. They wanted to see if I could be trusted! They’ve got new equity and new suppliers. There are new avenues for revenue and they want me to get more deeply involved.”

“You mean more dangerously involved,“ I said.

Fanny gurgled. “Don’t like the sound of it, Myron. Not good. Is shady.”

I hated to say it--so I didn’t--but Fanny was right.

File under: Twigs, Trauma, Tranny, Nanny

I’ve been in Atlanta for the past two days, helping a film director in distress. I had treated him successfully a year ago in L.A. for sciatica and now he was experiencing cramps, vomiting, nausea and “the runs.” He was also in the middle of a big-budget shoot. The director refused to take medication, so the studio flew me in and put me up at the Four Seasons overnight (How will the accountants code that?).

At first I thought the director’s ailment might be stress-related. He complained that the star of his film--a gentleman with a well-publicized history of "eccentric behavior" (code for major drug habit)--had just gotten out of rehab. The star was medicated beyond the ability to give the necessary high-powered, comic performance. Worse yet, whenever the director took the star aside to give him notes, the star’s posse came along, vetoing all his suggestions.

Anyway, I figured out that his nausea, vomiting, etc. started when he commenced an affair with a Puerto Rican tranny named Jezebel, whom he was keeping in a hotel room adjacent to his own and who was dressing the director up in diapers and feeding him milk from a bottle. I suspected the director’s ailments were due to lactose intolerance, so I told Jezebel to give him soy milk instead. Problem solved!

When I got home, Nanny was standing inside the door wearing a yellow sari and a frown. “Why gone so long, Master Charles?” she said sternly. “Do you know that you missed your daughter’s Show & Tell yesterday? I went in your place and made up a lie about your absence. I told them you had jury duty. But the teacher, Miss Feather, didn't believe me. I don’t think she likes you very much! She wants to have another meeting with you.”

“I had no choice," I said. "Working is the way I keep this household together (code for lay off). How did Meryl's presentation go?  Has Myron come by? He doesn’t answer my texts. His producers’ meeting is this afternoon.”

“Haven't heard from him,” said Nanny, wringing a hand towel like it was my neck. “And Meryl’s Show & Tell went very well for her, but even better for you.”

“What do you mean by that?” I said.

“She recited a poem in French that I taught her. It was by Verlaine.  I was so proud of her!  While all the other children had brought their parents' Golden Globes and AA medallions, Meryl brought a poem.”

“And so, why did this go better for me?” I asked.

“Well, I’ll translate for you from the French. The poem goes: ‘Here are some fruits, some flowers and some leaves…’ As she mentioned each object she took it out of her Madame Chocolat box. She took out a tangerine, a daisy and then a twig.”

“Yeah, so?” I said.

“The next line was: 'and here is my heart, that beats only for you.' When she said the word, heart, she took from her box a diamond as big as a pine cone and--”

“She’s got the diamonds?!” I said. “But you put them out by the curb!”

“She had found them and was keeping them under her bed.”

“She found them? And nobody looked under her bed for a whole week? Aren't you supposed to search your kid's room regularly for dope?”

“She’s only five years old,” said Nanny. “And she’s your child, not mine.”

I texted Myron: “Found diamonds.”

He texted me: “Thank God!” (code for Thank God!)
**********************************************************************
                                                                                                  Photo: Craig Russell

File Under: Infants, Conniving

It occurred to me I should explain how I got tricked into being a father.

You know the saying, “Sometimes bad things happen to good people”? Well, I can pretty much guarantee you, they wrote that for me. How else to explain losing four grand on my 2005 “Best Actress” pick, or the caterer dropping a molten s’more on my chinchilla throw, or the baba ghanoush lady giving birth under my chocolate fountain? All these bad things converged at the worst Oscars party I ever gave. This may have been five years ago but my chinchilla is forever besmirched and I’m still waiting for the baba lady to pick up her kid.

My caterer, a retired French actress named Cecile, begged me to keep the newborn for two days until the baba lady could return for it. The lady had been hiding her pregnancy from her family and now had to arrange for the child’s adoption. Only the lady never returned. After repeated calls to Cecile, in which I threatened to mail the kid back to her--book rate--I got the lowdown. The woman, she said, had given a fake name when Cecile hired her and had now disappeared.

“Not my problem,” I said. “You come get this creature. I’ve changed this kid eleven times. I’m almost all out of dinner napkins.”

“Why, Monsieur,” said Cecile, “How you amuse! Why not simply keep her? Everybody’s adopting nowadays. She must be adorable, n’est-ce pas? Fatherhood will be a marvelous experience for you and Myron. I suggest you get a baby bottle and some formula and then paint your guest room a girly shade of rouge coquette. Perhaps you’ll start thinking of somebody other than yourself?"

I put the kid in the car. Beverly Hills City Hall was nearby, on Rexford, and that’s where I’d redeem it. Then I’d take my finder’s fee and skip over to Cartier for a little reward. But as I barreled down Santa Monica Boulevard, the baby started crying up a storm. I pulled the car over and, when I reached into the laundry basket to reposition the bottle at her lips, she took hold of my finger with her tiny brown hand.

“What!” I said.

She gave me a look that said, “You’re not really going to turn me in, like a poker chip, are you?”

“Don’t try that,” I said. “We haven’t bonded, so it won’t make any difference. You don’t even have a name. City Hall will send you wherever it is they send helpless orphans and…” Oh. Orphans, I thought. Now there’s an ugly word. My only experience of orphans was the musical “Oliver!” and it wasn’t very pretty, mainly due to it being a shabby, Catholic school production in Pittsburgh, financed by bake sales. I played Oliver during my first encounter with angel dust and, the next day, found myself in a state-run facility for the young and the restless.

“Maaaaa,” said the little brown and pink creature, with a hopeful smile. “Meeeehhehhh.”

“Let go of my finger,” I said. “I’ll be needing that hand to drive.” But she fixed her peepers on me and kept with the baby sounds. “Alright, alright,” I said . “I’ll bring you home if you if you can answer three questions correctly. If you miss any, it’s hello City Hall. Understood?”

The baby kicked her blankets aside joyously, bubbles forming between her lips.
“Question number one,” I said. “Who won Best Supporting Actress in 1979 for ‘Deer Hunter’?”

The little radish face looked up at me and squinted. “Meh-Merrrryl,” it said.

“Can I get a last name?” I said, but as you know, there is only one Meryl. Everybody knows that. “Alright,” I said. “Who won Best Actress in 1982 for ’Sophie’s Choice’?”

The creature rolled her head back and forth and, after some incoherent burbling, said, “Merrrryl!”

I felt my Cartier bonanza slipping from my grasp and yet something made me press onward. I asked the only question that would come to my lips, the only one that made any sense.

“Okay then,” I said. “Who is the most versatile film actor in America today, hands-down the best overall--”

“Merrryl, Merrrryl, Merrrrrryl!” she babbled, victoriously, wisely and with unimpeachable good taste, paddling her feet and squeezing my finger as if her future enrollment at Yale Drama School depended on it, which it did.

Well, nobody would have known. Nobody would have called foul, had I reneged on my promise. But a deal was a deal and if I didn’t make good, this kid’s first break would have been a lousy one, a bad thing happening to a potentially good person--who could say? So I pulled a U-turn. “Meryl, huh?” I said, firing up a Camel, then tossing it out the window. “Guess what we’re gonna call you, little lady.”

The sun was beginning to set and a string of traffic lights flickered yellow, daring me to get across town before the shops all closed. I stepped on the gas. “Hold on, kid. We’re gonna need some brushes and rollers and paint pans and a fifth of Wild Turkey and a couple gallons of--Jesus, Meryl, what do they call that color?”

“La rouge coquette.”

“Huh?”