Read Who Stole the Funny? : A Novel of Hollywood Online
Authors: Robby Benson
B e n s o n
1 3
Kelly, a young James Dean
look-alike they now wished
The Hollywood Dictionary
they’d never cast.
The Pooleys had sud-
LANDING:
Actually making the
audience laugh. For jokes that
denly taken a cocaine dislik-
no one finds funny except the
ing to the young actor. They
writer, a laugh track is provided
were snortin’ angry with
to prod the audience. Thus the
him, they were! They didn’t
term
prod-ucer
.
like the fact that an actor
was overshadowing their
success. What does he do? He just walks and talks. And not well!
The Pooleys were incensed that their perfectly honed jokes were not landing, and it was obviously Kirk Kelly’s fault.
The Pooleys would snort a huge line in their back office, then
come out with rage in their eyes and with Stephanie exclaiming,
“We hate the fucking kid! We want the fucker fired! There is no doubt that the kid is doing drugs! It’s obvious! Doing drugs is something we just cannot and will not copulate! I mean tolerate!”
The network
,
on the other hand, loved the kid. It didn’t matter if he couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag—he
tested
through the roof with the most valuable of demographics: 18-to–34-year-olds.
Adolescent girls from
Alaska to Zimbabwe were
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gaga for Kirk, and he didn’t
TESTED:
If Charlie Chaplin were
threaten young male viewers,
alive and working today, he
either. Yet the network and the
would’ve been
tested
. And if he’d
studio knew that the Pooleys
had one bad test result (based
would take advantage of this
on the opinion cards filled out
stupendous tragedy, this kis-
by young viewers in a test audi-
met, to make their move to
ence), there would never have
fire the young man.
been a Charlie Chaplin.
The network had to ma-
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W H O S T O L E T H E F U N N Y ?
neuver and come up with a strategy that would keep Kirk Kelly
on the show
and
get a director they could live with for the three weeks.
The studio executives knew the cards the network and the
Pooleys were holding. They had to make love with the Pooleys and the network without spending a dime more than had already been
allocated to the show’s budget. Paying off contracts or shutting down the show for a week while they found a new director and
maybe a new James Dean was out of the question! Unless some
other Entity paid for those costs.
“J.T. Baker? He’s a
passionate schmuck
!” yelled Debbie, the volup-tuous, salon-blonde, stark-naked network representative. She’d
been conferenced in from her 90210 home for the emergency
meeting, which was dominated by the Alpha Dog, the Network
President of Current Comedy, Vincent Volari (close friends called him Vincent Volari; mistresses called him Vincent Volari). He sat at the head of the table in the large boardroom while the rest of the pack stood around it.
Debbie Cydnus, a wom-
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an so beautiful that her ex-
otic looks turned heads
THE PASSIONATE:
Troublemak-
everywhere except in the
ers. Loose cannons. Delusional
modeling business, where
schmucks who believe they can
elevate the quality of the show.
she just wasn’t tall enough
Passion
in television is bad—very
(“Why? Why? Why?” she
bad!
cried), became a network
executive by starting in the
mailroom and fucking her
way up to the sixth floor of Development. Her little sweet nothings, whispered into executives’ ears during coitus, always had a network agenda and were laced with tongue and savvy. She finally 1 6
W H O S T O L E T H E F U N N Y ?
fucked the right guy, and the exotic beauty who was born in the city of Tarsus and never grew past the height of five feet six focused her breasts in the direction of
behind-the-scenes stardom.
But, alas, she never lost the
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model mentality.
NETWORK:
The Entity (
gimme,
“Fat.
Too fat
,” Debbie
gimme, gimme
) that buys the sit-
muttered as she stared at her
com from the studio, in a sym-
reflection in the monitor of
biotic relationship similar to that
the 42-inch flat-screen high-
of Mother Nature and mankind.
They both want what is best for
definition television that
them
, but, dammit-to-hell, they
hung on her wall. The only
still gotta live with each other. If
thing Deb was wearing was a
only . . . !
wireless phone earpiece de-
signed to match this month’s
hair color.
“Phat
. We’re with you, Debbie. This sitcom is phat. It’s da bomb!” a lone member of the pack ventured.
“Not P-H-A-T. F-A-T, you F-U-C-K!” Debbie yelled at her re-
flection.
The pack bayed at Debbie’s moon. “We agree, Deb. Don’t we,
guys?”
“Well said, Deb. Brilliant!”
“You really hit the buttons that needed to be . . . pressed.”
“What are you talking about, you backstabbing wieners?”
Debbie snapped out of her trance and tried to switch into P.S.M.
(Problem-Solving Mode, often mistaken for P.M.S.), but she just couldn’t get away from reflective surfaces that drew
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her eyes back into the world
BRILLIANT:
Said of anything or
of
Debbie Does Debauchery:
anyone ordinary.
lusting after herself, loath-
ing herself. Lust. Loathe.
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B e n s o n
1 7
Lust. Loathe. Her mother. Her sister. Her mother. Her sister. She slapped herself with Jack Nicholson intensity, then struck a pose as Faye Dunaway. Debbie stared at her distorted reflection in the toaster.
That was such a good movie,
she thought.
“Now, now, Deb,” Vin-
cent Volari said soothingly.
“We’re just echoing your
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genius. We, um, get
it.
We
GENIUS:
See
Brilliant.
get
you,
Deb. That’s all we
mean. You’re on the money.
Cut the fat. Lose the weight. We’re right there with you.”
Debbie hit the mute button, navigated her way to the toilet,
and forced herself to vomit the seven Ho Hos she’d gorged only
minutes before. She wiped her mouth, then released the button.
“That’s better,” she managed to say.
“Good! Then we’re on the same page. We’re speaking the same
language. Now about J.T.—”
“I think J.T. is the perfect choice for the new directing job,”
Debbie interrupted, with an awful taste in her mouth. “All that passion means he’ll give the Pooleys hell. Like, when I was a junior exec and he was directing a show I was assigned to? Like, he spent an hour—a fucking
hour
—making leaves fall from the scaffolding.
He said something about if the exterior looked more credible, the jokes would play funnier. I, like, threatened to fire him, and you know what he did? He asked for leaves with
color
because the scene was supposed to take place in the fall. He, like, drove me fucking crazy. So you know, once the Pooleys have to deal with that every day for three episodes, we’ll be holding the power card, not them.
Besides, even better, it’s really possible that J.T. will only last the first episode. Either he will want out or the Pooleys will want
him
out, and we’ll have the Pooleys and the studio eating . . .” Debbie looked at the Ho Ho remains floating in the toilet bowl. “Eating out of the palms of our hands.”
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W H O S T O L E T H E F U N N Y ?
“J.T. is one of those idea types,” one of the dogs whined.
Vincent Volari cleared his throat. He felt it was time to focus, so he focused on the vision of what Debbie wasn’t wearing. “I love the way you . . .
think,
Debbie,” he said in a seductive tone. “Inno-vative. Out of the
box.
”
Then he seemed to remember he had an audience. His voice
grew more authoritative.
“Every single one of you
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should learn from Deb-
IDEA TYPE:
Think Joseph McCar -
bie. There’s a reason she’s
thy when he used the word
Com
-
on her way up.” Suddenly
munist.
Spoken with the same
his brow furrowed. “I have
repugnant tone and disdainful
one reservation, Debbie,”
connotations reserved for dicta-
he added, to everyone’s sur-
tors, mass murderers, war crimi-
prise. “This J.T. Baker. For
nals, and mimes.
some reason—I’m trying to
remember why—I don’t . . .
like
him. He ruined a project of ours . . .”
“Actually, sir,” Debbie said, “he, like, directed the pilot to our most successful show.”
“He did?”
“Yes, sir.
Tabitha the Teenage Tallis-Girl!
”
“Really? What is his name again?”
“J.T. Baker, sir.”
“Oh! Oh! I know why I don’t like him! I had him confused
with J.
P. Brick
er
.
J.P. Bricker was our gardener and ruined our to-piary. That’s it. Never mind. Continue.”
Someone to Vincent Volari’s left spoke out. “Should I take him
off your list of directors we never want to hire?”
“You
think
?” Debbie lashed out. “If he does last the three weeks, at least he’ll take care of our show.”
Vincent Volari’s memory was born again. “I know why some-
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thing’s bothering me. The death of the director. Whatever his
name was. This could be problematic.”
“I’m on the same page as you, Vincent Volari.” (Think about
it. Debbie’s thought process, which in network terms was actually quite sane, was
on the same page
as Vincent Volari’s.) “The death of our Amer-icon. The rollout of Kalamazoo P. Kardinal,” she said.
The network had just spent millions of dollars in PR to bury
its old icon, Minnesota B. Moose, and roll out a new corporate
symbol.
“Exactly,” Vincent Volari agreed. “Debbie, you are
sooo good
.”
“Like, thanks. We have to make sure that the media coverage
for the dead director isn’t conflicting with the death of Minnesota B. Moose. We don’t want anything taking away from the moose’s
funeral. It’ll, like, really screw up the momentum we have for the introduction of Kalamazoo P. Kardinal.”
“Debbie, is the cardinal red enough?”
“Yes, sir. Candy-apple red.”
“I love you, Debbie.”
Silence.
The underdogs in the boardroom quickly checked the reac -
tions of their litter mates. They began to giggle and whisper.
Debbie stopped obsessing about her weight long enough to
luxuriate in the words of lust that were her blow job to the top.
“I mean I love the way
you think
.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Click.
End of conversation. End of Network Emergency Conference
Call.
The studio executives were packed in tight, even in the corpulent boardroom. There weren’t
enough chairs, so many of
them stood.
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The president of the stu-
THE STUDIO:
The middleman
dio had put Lance Griffin,
Entity (
gimme, gimme, gimme
)
the studio representative to
that finds a sitcom and then
I Love My Urban Buddies,
in
tries to sell it to a network. Once
charge of the meeting.
the network buys the sitcom, the
Lance Griffin would
studio begins the practical phase
of producing the shows with the
stubbornly maintain to any-
showrunners from whom they
one unfortunate enough
purchased the sitcom. The stu-
to be cornered by him at a
dio and the showrunners main-
cocktail party that he was a
tain a symbiotic relationship
product of reverse discrimi-
similar to that of pharmaceutical
nation. With all the assump-
companies and physicians. They
tion of privilege typical of the
both want what is best for
them
,
young Caucasian-American
but, dammit-to-hell, how can
male, Lance had been cer-
you have good medicine if the
disease is cured?
tain that affirmative action
quotas represented the only
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possible explanation for his failure to be accepted into an Ivy League law school. Or any law school, as it turned out. In the
United States. He’d believed that his GPA of 2.5 wasn’t a reflection of his street smarts, just his book smarts
—and what did book
smarts have to do with winning?!
He finally earned his law degree between street-smart classes
at the Inter-American School of Law in Puerto Rico and online
courses taken through the Concord Law School (where he could