move on.”
J.T. could see his son’s brave face as he was hooked up to the dialysis machine for the first time. Jeremy always tried not to cry, but he squeezed his daddy’s hand tightly whenever he was afraid or it hurt. He’s such a brave child, J.T. thought. He should cry . Little boys should feel that it’s okay to cry . . . “It’s okay to cry,” he mumbled.
“How dare you?” Stephanie Pooley exclaimed in horror. “How
the fuck dare you tell me and my husband that it’s okay to cry !”
“I wasn’t talking to you. To either of you,” J.T. whispered.
“Why are you whispering?” Marcus Pooley shouted.
“Because I prefer whispering to shouting,” J.T. said. Something had momentarily died behind his eyes. “Please, continue, William.
You’re doing great. The floor is yours.”
J.T. sat back, deflated but certainly not defeated. He knew that every filmmaking skill he had ever acquired was going to be necessary—mandatory. I have to
make it through these three
weeks. Surely I can do that,
The Hollywood Dictionary
he thought, again and again
PULLING A SHOW OUT OF YOUR
The production meeting
ASS: Buy stock in Preparation H.
ended a few minutes later.
Nothing from a production
standpoint was discussed. It would just happen, according to the Pooleys. And if it didn’t happen, they would throw more tantrums and blame would be ascribed and crew members would be fired,
so J.T. was ready to pull the best ever Christmas with the best ever explosion out of his ass.
The Table Read
The production meeting room doubled as the table-read room,
losing none of its aura of confrontation, passive aggression, power struggles—of war. The cast members trickled in and gathered
round the chuck wagon—er, food—er, craft service table—each
one doing the obligatory round of hugs and air kisses as they arrived. There they were—the Buddies. Their lives had forever
changed because of the show’s instantaneous global popularity.
If there were Tivo on Mars, these young actors would be Mar-
tian celebs. NASA astronauts were downloading shows onto their
spacecraft’s computer and actually screwed up their avionics with the episode about the orangutan.
J.T. watched the Buddies interact for a while, sizing them up.
Betty Balz, whose big break had come in a toothpaste commercial, was just as perky-cute in person as she was on TV. Rare. Anorexic-thin, she had a perky black bob and small perky breasts with perky nipples never covered by a bra, and wore a perky shade of red on her lips—thin lips, her one feature that photographed perky on
TV but in real life was less than, well, perky. Despite this flaw, she was drop-dead gorgeous—in other words, anyone involved with
her would eventually drop dead. Very high-maintenance.
Devon Driver was doing shtick trying to impress her. Devon’s
shtick was attitudinal: he gave advice to the other Buddies, espe-8 2
W H O S T O L E T H E F U N N Y ?
cially the hot ones—okay, mostly to Betty Balz. Betty was so perky with excitement when she spoke to Devon, her voice sounded like the piccolo trumpet on the Beatles’ “Penny Lane.” Just now, he
was tut-tutting Betty for having signed on to promote a cosmet-
ics company.
“But the company is offering me a million dollars for a one-
day photo shoot. One million dollars. For one day!” Betty trum-
peted. “Obviously they’ll have the right to use the photos on buses and billboards, but why do you think that’s such a bad idea?”
Devon really wanted to say, Because they asked you and not me, but he broke it down into the actor’s vocabulary, putting emphasis on each action verb . “It’s desperate on your part. It belittles you.
They coax you with money. They boost your ego. They appeal to your vanity. I’m astonished you would demean yourself.”
A putzy Woody Allen-wannabe type (ineffectually so, not
least because he was six foot two, weighed about two hundred
pounds, and slicked his brown
J.T. could see his son’s brave face as he was hooked up to the dialysis machine for the first time. Jeremy always tried not to cry, but he squeezed his daddy’s hand tightly whenever he was afraid or it hurt. He’s such a brave child, J.T. thought. He should cry . Little boys should feel that it’s okay to cry . . . “It’s okay to cry,” he mumbled.
“How dare you?” Stephanie Pooley exclaimed in horror. “How
the fuck dare you tell me and my husband that it’s okay to cry !”
“I wasn’t talking to you. To either of you,” J.T. whispered.
“Why are you whispering?” Marcus Pooley shouted.
“Because I prefer whispering to shouting,” J.T. said. Something had momentarily died behind his eyes. “Please, continue, William.
You’re doing great. The floor is yours.”
J.T. sat back, deflated but certainly not defeated. He knew that every filmmaking skill he had ever acquired was going to be necessary—mandatory. I have to
make it through these three
weeks. Surely I can do that,
The Hollywood Dictionary
he thought, again and again
PULLING A SHOW OUT OF YOUR
The production meeting
ASS: Buy stock in Preparation H.
ended a few minutes later.
Nothing from a production
standpoint was discussed. It would just happen, according to the Pooleys. And if it didn’t happen, they would throw more tantrums and blame would be ascribed and crew members would be fired,
so J.T. was ready to pull the best ever Christmas with the best ever explosion out of his ass.
The Table Read
The production meeting room doubled as the table-read room,
losing none of its aura of confrontation, passive aggression, power struggles—of war. The cast members trickled in and gathered
round the chuck wagon—er, food—er, craft service table—each
one doing the obligatory round of hugs and air kisses as they arrived. There they were—the Buddies. Their lives had forever
changed because of the show’s instantaneous global popularity.
If there were Tivo on Mars, these young actors would be Mar-
tian celebs. NASA astronauts were downloading shows onto their
spacecraft’s computer and actually screwed up their avionics with the episode about the orangutan.
J.T. watched the Buddies interact for a while, sizing them up.
Betty Balz, whose big break had come in a toothpaste commercial, was just as perky-cute in person as she was on TV. Rare. Anorexic-thin, she had a perky black bob and small perky breasts with perky nipples never covered by a bra, and wore a perky shade of red on her lips—thin lips, her one feature that photographed perky on
TV but in real life was less than, well, perky. Despite this flaw, she was drop-dead gorgeous—in other words, anyone involved with
her would eventually drop dead. Very high-maintenance.
Devon Driver was doing shtick trying to impress her. Devon’s
shtick was attitudinal: he gave advice to the other Buddies, espe-8 2
W H O S T O L E T H E F U N N Y ?
cially the hot ones—okay, mostly to Betty Balz. Betty was so perky with excitement when she spoke to Devon, her voice sounded like the piccolo trumpet on the Beatles’ “Penny Lane.” Just now, he
was tut-tutting Betty for having signed on to promote a cosmet-
ics company.
“But the company is offering me a million dollars for a one-
day photo shoot. One million dollars. For one day!” Betty trum-
peted. “Obviously they’ll have the right to use the photos on buses and billboards, but why do you think that’s such a bad idea?”
Devon really wanted to say, Because they asked you and not me, but he broke it down into the actor’s vocabulary, putting emphasis on each action verb . “It’s desperate on your part. It belittles you.
They coax you with money. They boost your ego. They appeal to your vanity. I’m astonished you would demean yourself.”
A putzy Woody Allen-wannabe type (ineffectually so, not
least because he was six foot two, weighed about two hundred
pounds, and slicked his brown
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