Stories From Candyland (16 page)

Chapter 11
There’s a Lot of Funny Business in Showbiz

I
t seems as though there’s nothing secret in show business any longer.

It’s not just the tabloids that have the behind-the-scenes stories. The women’s magazines, news broadcasts, Web sites, gossip columns, blogs, entertainment magazines, YouTube phone videographers, and water cooler and buzz gatherings all provide information about celebrities and what they’re doing. It seems that everything’s public.

Wrong.

I hate to tell you, but most of what you learn is what some marketing executives in a meeting want you to know as part of a campaign to sell you something.

Show business is a business, just like selling groceries or manufacturing lampshades. Not everyone is good at figuring out which movies will be hits, or what TV series will make it to syndication, but some people are really good at determining what the public should know in order to make them buy song downloads, movie tickets, celebrity clothing lines, or celebrity-branded tennis shoes.

As a people watcher, I find nothing more enjoyable than watching “showbiz people,” including celebrities at various stages in their career, aspiring writers and directors making their networking moves, less-than-subtle agents and publicists pitching all the time, and the assorted characters who are expert name droppers and status seekers, and who think they’re going to make it big with their next deal. You have to be fairly savvy to be able to make a living in showbiz over a long period of time, so those with longevity have to have special skills, if not big bank accounts. There’s a lot of creativity and a great deal of talk about nothing—sometimes at the same time. When Aaron was at work I especially enjoyed the meetings at which people presented publicity strategies for how to make an actor appeal to a certain audience, or how to change an actor’s image to attract ratings for a new show.

Since I started writing this book, I’ve been trying to figure
out what I could reveal without being ostracized. To put it in perspective, I live in a place where the tabloid newspapers and TV shows run ads aimed at medical office receptionists, waiters, grocery baggers, and parking valets, offering them money for “confidential celebrity information” they might have overheard. Everyone is listening and taking photos. It can be quite profitable to be in the right place at the right time, but the odds of getting the “gotcha” are not that good.

When you live in a community where the most popular books have titles such as
Hello, He Lied; You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again
; and
Indecent Exposure
, you get the idea that there are some strange rules and customs here.

Let me add some others.

One of my town’s favorite activities is watching awards shows from private gatherings across town from the chaos, glitz, and glamour of the actual event. Why? First, there are only a small number of good seats at these awards shows, and these go to the most-nominated people and the presenters. Everyone else is worried about his or her seat and how it defines them. Row MM? Yikes! It’s better than the balcony, but too close to last year’s loser. Seat 144 to the left? Not good, but better than those seats behind the pole. Sometimes it’s safer to stay home, where there’s no risk of being named to a worst-dressed list.

Besides, when you’re not at the awards show, you can gossip and laugh—and tell the truth.

My
favorite awards show activity is a guessing game. When I hear someone receiving an award talk about the “generosity” and “collaborative spirit” of the cast or crew, that usually translates to someone surrendering close-ups or lines to someone else during production (and chances are they didn’t want them anyway).

One constant when watching awards shows is knowing that at least one—and probably more—of the winners is shaking as he or she leaves the stage not from excitement but from the fear that it’s the end of his or her career. “I’ll never top tonight,” no one in particular will be told. “Who’s going to hire me now that my price will go up? It’s a terrible thing to happen at this point in my career.” That’s what you hear in between the stage and those fluffy backstage press conferences where the stars pull out the lists of names they said they forgot to thank earlier. Winners’ angst is overwhelming.

Confidentiality agreements are quite common in entertainment companies and households. People have to promise that they won’t talk about a script they think is bad, report that a star spilled his water, or that a dress didn’t fit the not-so-petite starlet.

Even though I haven’t signed one, I’m going to be discreet and tell some stories without naming names.

The dashing star of one of television’s most famous series used to make frightening sounds—like birds in pain—each time before shooting began. When people would ask if he
was hurt or ill, he’d explain, “I’m just trying to get my voice warmed up to make it deeper. My role and wardrobe demand a deep voice, and I can’t disappoint my millions of fans.”

An actor who played a debonair police detective really wanted to be a recording star. The first time I met him, he greeted me with “stereo or mono”? I didn’t know what he meant. Aaron explained that he had just released a record, and wanted to know what equipment I had at home to listen to it with. Once he found out, he would sell people the album. Stereo, I discovered, cost a dollar more per album than monaural.

90210
, the show that made one of Beverly Hills’s zip codes the most famous in the country, was shot in the San Fernando Valley. Aaron rented a ware house and turned it into a soundstage. He did the same for the series
Vega$
, but that one was actually in Las Vegas.
Melrose Place
was also miles away from the actual street, also in a nondescript Valley ware house that Aaron transformed into hip and trendy Melrose Place.

One day a longtime wardrobe person on Aaron’s shows called in sick. An office assistant went to a chic Beverly Hills store in her place to pick up pieces of wardrobe for one of the series. The salesperson told the young woman, “We’ll just do the regular three-for-one arrangement, right?” Wrong. Fortunately, the assistant (who got a very big bonus) told us, and that’s when we found out that our wardrobe person
had been buying three of everything and charging Aaron. One outfit went to the production. One went to her closet. And the third was listed as a store credit in her name! We knew we were spending a lot on a genuinely expensive wardrobe, but we never dreamed the budget was three times what it should have been.

Some of the stars of our most elegant shows often deliberately threw off the shooting schedules so they could leave the lot wearing the show wardrobe. It was actually pretty transparent. It would happen on the final day of shooting, when no one was paying full attention to the clothes. Aaron knew it was taking place, but he let it go for a few years. “What was I supposed to say?” he would ask plaintively. “I’ll get sued if I ask an actress to undress or unzip.” This was often his lame excuse. I’d get so mad when I saw those famous and rich actresses on awards shows wearing those clothes. They belonged to Aaron!

Pilfering isn’t uncommon; many people think they’re entitled. A business manager once asked why our wallpaper budget was so high. What? “We have a five-figure wallpaper budget?” I asked when I’d seen the numbers. “Why do we buy so much wallpaper?”

I had insisted that the Carrington home and other glamorous locations on Aaron’s shows have the same kind of wall coverings and furniture that a family with that amount of wealth would have. So the crew bought wallpaper, furniture, light fixtures, carpeting, and everything else that the
rooms in exquisite mansions would have. I discovered that they also bought excessive quantities of spares, just in case.

We found out that people were sneaking rolls of wallpaper and carpeting off the set. It was hard to believe. These were well-paid people, and rolls of wallpaper and carpeting were big and heavy objects. But, alas, a Realtor I knew told me she was selling a home that the owners said had
Dynasty
rooms. Sure enough, the house belonged to someone we knew from the show, and his home had carpeting, wallpaper, and even some of the fake antiques from our show.

I recently had a meeting with some television executives, and we were trading stories about working with celebrities, discussing some of their, uh, unusual preferences and habits. One executive told me a funny story about a remote location shoot, and I told him about the
Dynasty
house filled with our stolen props.

“You’ll never believe this,” he said. “My wife and I have one of the actual tables from the Acapulco Lounge on
The Love Boat
.” He explained that they had bought the house from the estate of a man whose name I immediately recognized as someone who had worked on several of Aaron’s shows. “When we looked at the house and saw the table,” the executive said, “we said it had to be part of the deal. The owner agreed, and it’s in our bedroom. We love it. What a treat.”

I like this man, and I’m glad he and his wife like the table, but my regard for our former employee evaporated. I tried to remember what he’d earned. It was a lot of money.

One of the scariest things was when people brought guns on a set. One
Mod Squad
co-star, who later admitted to a serious drinking problem, used to wave a loaded gun around between takes. A co-star of another series often ripped his pockets and got stains on his white jacket and pants because of his heavy gun.

Drugs? Yes. Enough said.

One early, edgy series of Aaron’s featured three young stars who were to personify the coolest, hippest, trendiest, smartest, and most fashionable of the sixties generation. One of the stars asked Aaron to explain every line of dialogue, every gesture and every decision the character made. The star said it had to be “righteous.” It was. The show ran for six years.

It wasn’t all about being a babysitter, traffic cop, security guard, and ego-massager, but those were big parts of most Hollywood job descriptions.

Aaron got the most joy from casting the older stars on
The Love Boat.
He saw himself as a guardian of Hollywood’s legacy and tradition, and realized there were very few jobs for these actors in young, hip, happening Hollywood.

The stars were grateful, most said they had a great time, and the shows created stories for all generations and nostalgia for some, and it introduced former stars to new ones.

“If my legacy is that I gave some of our most cherished stars a place to work, that’s enough for me,” Aaron used to say.

Turns out his legacy was bigger. Despite working with some of young Hollywood’s biggest celebrities every year, it was his “oldies but goodies” he most valued. And as far as we know, none of them ever stole wallpaper or carpeting from the set.

Chapter 12
I’d Like a Thousand Shares of Pushkey, Please