the back stairs to dinner with Glenn.)
Miranda and I invite Glenn to tea, hoping that we can resolve the crisis. It just so happens that Glenn and Miranda were at school together and hated one another then. (An idea ripped off from
An Ideal Husband
by Wilde, which I have just been in.) Tea goes badly. Glenn has decided that her only chance of staying on is to seduce me and get rid of Miranda. Out of the frying pan into the fire as far as I’m concerned. I escape and decide to explore the embassy to let them hammer it out. In a subterranean corridor I hear hip hop, which I love, and come across the boiler room, which is decked out like a pimp’s boudoir. The keeper of the boilers is Snoop Dogg (type). The central relationship is born.
Meanwhile, upstairs, Meredith (little-person-friend from
Unconditional Love
) has arrived as a temp because one of the secretaries is sick. She has come to Washington from Westchester, New Jersey,inspired by
Legally Blonde
, to break into politics. Things get stickier and stickier as Glenn refuses to leave and Miranda sinks into manic depression.
Our first reception is a disaster and everyone leaves early to go upstairs to see Glenn. Snoop Dogg takes Ronnie (me) on a trip to his neighbourhood to cheer him up. In the ’hood Snoop is known as Mr Ambassador. Ronnie adores the real Washington – everyone is much less stuffy than the diplomats at the embassy. Snoop takes Ronnie to meet his mother who is a Cuban witch (Corky, more of her later) and puts a spell on Glenn. All these comings and goings are monitored by the embassy number two, called Vickers, a sticky career diplomat who thought that
he
was going to be the next ambassador and has been having an affair with Glenn. He thinks that Ronnie (me) is remedial.
I send this story to Victor – in a considerably longer and funnier (if I may say so myself) form, go back to New York and forget about the whole thing.
A couple of months later the script arrives. It bears little or, actually, no relation to my original story and, needless to say, I think it is terrible. The rest of my team aren’t so gloomy. For them everything is part of a process.
‘What does that mean?’ I scream down the phone in a conference call to LA.
‘It’s a journey,’ reasons Benny.
‘Yes. Into hell.’ I am really angry.
‘No. Towards making the show you want,’ reasons Marc.
Benny and Victor come to New York and we have a very tense meeting in the palatial house of a friend with whom I am staying. I rather hope the magnificence of my natural environment will fill Victor with awe, but it doesn’t. If I didn’t know he was religious, I would have thought he was on crystal meth. He is coiled and dangerous with glittering eyes, and clearly ready for a punch-up. I have a silver tray all laid for tea, which I begin to pour into priceless Meissen teacups.
‘I want this show to be like watching a piece of theatre,’ says Victor.
‘But I loathe the theatre,’ I reply. ‘Sugar? And anyway surely this is Television. Not Tired Vaudeville.’
The conversation degenerates over sandwiches. It is very embarrassing to criticise people’s work in a friendly, even manner and so, pouring more tea and passing around the cake, we edge the conversation over the precipice. He is as angry with me as I am with him. The discussion becomes more and more heated until at one point I shriek, ‘
No
.’ (Too late.) There is a long pause while Victor puts down his cup and saucer.
‘Don’t say no to me again,’ he says simply. His knuckles have turned white and the meeting ends.
Benny and Marc are right. All work in Hollywood is a process and they are brilliant at their jobs because, in the course of three or four rewrites, they manoeuvre the script into something more in line with what I had originally envisaged, but it ain’t Yes Minister. It’s lame and flat and in my opinion not even vaguely funny. But they are brilliant diplomats and creatively astute. Which is
Miranda and I invite Glenn to tea, hoping that we can resolve the crisis. It just so happens that Glenn and Miranda were at school together and hated one another then. (An idea ripped off from
An Ideal Husband
by Wilde, which I have just been in.) Tea goes badly. Glenn has decided that her only chance of staying on is to seduce me and get rid of Miranda. Out of the frying pan into the fire as far as I’m concerned. I escape and decide to explore the embassy to let them hammer it out. In a subterranean corridor I hear hip hop, which I love, and come across the boiler room, which is decked out like a pimp’s boudoir. The keeper of the boilers is Snoop Dogg (type). The central relationship is born.
Meanwhile, upstairs, Meredith (little-person-friend from
Unconditional Love
) has arrived as a temp because one of the secretaries is sick. She has come to Washington from Westchester, New Jersey,inspired by
Legally Blonde
, to break into politics. Things get stickier and stickier as Glenn refuses to leave and Miranda sinks into manic depression.
Our first reception is a disaster and everyone leaves early to go upstairs to see Glenn. Snoop Dogg takes Ronnie (me) on a trip to his neighbourhood to cheer him up. In the ’hood Snoop is known as Mr Ambassador. Ronnie adores the real Washington – everyone is much less stuffy than the diplomats at the embassy. Snoop takes Ronnie to meet his mother who is a Cuban witch (Corky, more of her later) and puts a spell on Glenn. All these comings and goings are monitored by the embassy number two, called Vickers, a sticky career diplomat who thought that
he
was going to be the next ambassador and has been having an affair with Glenn. He thinks that Ronnie (me) is remedial.
I send this story to Victor – in a considerably longer and funnier (if I may say so myself) form, go back to New York and forget about the whole thing.
A couple of months later the script arrives. It bears little or, actually, no relation to my original story and, needless to say, I think it is terrible. The rest of my team aren’t so gloomy. For them everything is part of a process.
‘What does that mean?’ I scream down the phone in a conference call to LA.
‘It’s a journey,’ reasons Benny.
‘Yes. Into hell.’ I am really angry.
‘No. Towards making the show you want,’ reasons Marc.
Benny and Victor come to New York and we have a very tense meeting in the palatial house of a friend with whom I am staying. I rather hope the magnificence of my natural environment will fill Victor with awe, but it doesn’t. If I didn’t know he was religious, I would have thought he was on crystal meth. He is coiled and dangerous with glittering eyes, and clearly ready for a punch-up. I have a silver tray all laid for tea, which I begin to pour into priceless Meissen teacups.
‘I want this show to be like watching a piece of theatre,’ says Victor.
‘But I loathe the theatre,’ I reply. ‘Sugar? And anyway surely this is Television. Not Tired Vaudeville.’
The conversation degenerates over sandwiches. It is very embarrassing to criticise people’s work in a friendly, even manner and so, pouring more tea and passing around the cake, we edge the conversation over the precipice. He is as angry with me as I am with him. The discussion becomes more and more heated until at one point I shriek, ‘
No
.’ (Too late.) There is a long pause while Victor puts down his cup and saucer.
‘Don’t say no to me again,’ he says simply. His knuckles have turned white and the meeting ends.
Benny and Marc are right. All work in Hollywood is a process and they are brilliant at their jobs because, in the course of three or four rewrites, they manoeuvre the script into something more in line with what I had originally envisaged, but it ain’t Yes Minister. It’s lame and flat and in my opinion not even vaguely funny. But they are brilliant diplomats and creatively astute. Which is
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