Another Life_ A Memoir of Other People - Michael Korda [11]
Sidney chuckled. “Oh yes,” he said. “I think so.”
“A good starting point for the play?”
“Maybe. The fact is, my boy, I haven’t read any of it yet.”
I tried to conceal my disappointment, but Sidney could tell that my feelings were hurt. He glanced at me shrewdly through a cloud of tobacco smoke. “You can’t hurry the creative process,” he reminded me sternly.
We sat in silence for a few minutes. “I want you to sit in on the meeting with these guys from CBS,” Sidney said, to my astonishment. I could think of no good reason why he would want me present and said so.
“You’re going to present what we’ve got,” he said. “After all, you know what’s there. I don’t.”
“Do you think they’ll be interested?” I asked dubiously. There was an awful lot of material there.
“No. But they’ll go back to CBS convinced that this is a mine of industry. I want you to bore the shit out of them, my boy. Don’t disappoint me.”
The two executives from CBS arrived on time and were shown downstairs. They had that combination of bland WASP good looks and a ruthless manner that was the style of the period in the television business. Both wore tailored, pinstripe English suits, white shirts, dark ties, glossy, expensive shoes—the CBS look.
Sidney greeted them amiably, every bit the artist, in a tweed jacket and a wool shirt open at the neck, offered them coffee, which they refused, introduced me as his assistant, and puffed on his pipe while they gradually worked their way up to asking him when he expected to have a first draft.
He listened to them in silence, nodding sympathetically. They should not think he wasn’t just as concerned as they were, he said. He was anxious to get the play out of his system and move on to other things, but the creative process didn’t run in a straight line, they should understand, it zigged and it zagged. He gestured with his hand.
“Is there anything in writing yet?” the more aggressive of the two executives asked.
Sidney smiled benevolently. Was there anything in writing? You bet there was! He signaled to me. I should show them what he had so far, he told me. While I placed the black binders full of research material on the desk, he explained, in a low whisper, as if I couldn’t hear him, that I was a veteran of the revolution myself, a freedom fighter, and that my job was to give him the firsthand material that made the difference between fake theater and real theater: the human interest.
“Human interest,” they understood. The one thing everybody in the television business knew was that “human interest” was the key to success. News had to have it (i.e., fires in Harlem or lost children, as opposed to commentary and facts), quiz shows had to have it (thus the need to rig them so the more appealing contestants won), drama had to have it, which is to say that it had to be about people the audience understood and, if possible, identified with. Television was an extension of the home, and the people who appeared on the screen had to be like family, not remote, glittering, and improbably good-looking, like movie stars, but familiar and unpretentious. All this the CBS executives knew by instinct; it was gospel, bred into their bones. If Sidney was pursuing human interest, he was on the right track.
It was my turn now to put them at their ease. I read to them highlights from the binders, now displayed on Sidney’s desk. They didn’t look particularly interested, but it wasn’t my job to interest them. A veil of polite boredom settled on their faces, interrupted by one or the other of them glancing at his wristwatch. After about half an hour, they exchanged looks and stood up. Sidney, who had been listening to my recitation of facts, figures, and news items with Buddha-like contentment, looked concerned. Were they sure they had to leave? he asked. There was much, much more, all of it riveting.
No, no, they protested, they would love to stay, but they had to be getting back.
Sidney stood up and looked them in the eyes. What they had to understand, he said gravely, was that this—he made a sweeping gesture