Make Me Over_ Getting Real - Leslie Kelly [0]
By Leslie Kelly
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Prologue
“I F YOU THINK I’m ever gonna work on the set of another reality TV show, you’re whacked in the head, old man.”
Jacey Turner stared at her father across his expansive desk in his highbrow Hollywood office, not believing he’d just asked her to take over as lead camera operator on his latest project. And definitely not believing why he was asking.
He was nearly broke. Burt Mueller, the king of TV in the 1970s, had backed a string of stinkers in more recent decades—everyone knew that. But she’d never thought he’d come to this. Losing his edge, his power, his “in”-ness.
Cripes…his Rolls.
“I’m serious. I need you, babe.”
“Whacked,” she continued, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Or you’ve been popping some of those happy pills that got you through the sixties.”
Daddy dearest tsked as he gestured toward his recently Botoxed face, which looked as if it belonged on a forty year old—not someone two decades older. “Do you think I’d spend this much money on trainers and plastic surgeons to go and poison myself with drugs?”
She cast a pointed look at the cigarette smoldering in the ashtray on his desk. Against policy in this no-smoking building, like every other building in L.A. these days. As if he cared.
Burt merely shrugged. “They’re not hurting me on the outside, which is more important to me than my lungs right now.”
God, how could a man say something so completely shallow, yet manage to make it sound so sincere? She couldn’t help chuckling. “Tell that to the wrinkles that are eventually gonna show back up around your mouth from constantly having a cancer stick clamped between your lips.”
“You berate me because you care.”
Yeah, she did. And he knew it. Leaning back in the chair, she put her boot-clad feet on his desk and crossed them, just to keep him guessing. She did not need the old man realizing she’d do just about anything for him. “Okay, be honest, how bad could it be? I mean, the residuals on Paw Come Git Your Dinner alone should keep you in Bruno Magli shoes until you’re ninety.”
“You’re thinking like a Hollywood insider of today. Not of the seventies,” he retorted, sounding weary. “Residuals? Ha. Ask me why stars of The Brady Bunch made so many bad reunion movies, until I thought we might soon see Alice Does Dallas. Or why Gilligan’s gang had to be rescued by the Harlem Globetrotters.”
Jacey, who recognized the shows by their eternal life on TV Land, merely waited.
“It’s so Gilligan doesn’t have to shine shoes at LAX and Cindy, Jan and Marcia don’t have to work as Hooters girls. Everything was in the studio’s favor in those days.”
Okay, she’d heard that, but still found it hard to believe Burt could be so bad off. She was looking at the man who’d created six of the top ten shows of 1970. Who’d first seized on canned laughter to beef up audience response and sparked a revolution in sitcoms. Who’d earned ten Emmys, for piss sake!
“So you really think you can salvage a historic thirty-some-years career as a TV legend by jumping on the reality-show hysteria which hasn’t died its overdue death? What a dumb idea.”
He didn’t take offense. Her old man never took offense at anything, except being called a has-been. And he certainly didn’t get all fatherly on her. Why would he? Their relationship wasn’t like that. He hadn’t even known she existed until she’d shown up on his doorstep at age seventeen with a ratty backpack and a bad attitude, informing him he was her dear old dad.
Some Hollywood types would’ve kicked her to the curb. Burt Mueller hadn’t. He’d taken her in, welcomed her, convinced her he’d never known of her existence, and given her a job.
Somehow, over the past six years, they’d become, well, if not exactly what you’d call family…at least friends. But there was only so much she’d do for friendship. And setting foot on the set of another reality show wasn’t on the list. Not after the last one, Killing Time