Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [26]
His office was located in Westwood, in a network of one-story buildings configured awkwardly like a badly thought-out puzzle. The moment I walked inside, my ears were assailed by a jangling timpani of slamming doors and rock rhythms blaring from TVs, like an electronic Middle Earth, a Tolkien netherworld of feverish endeavor. All around us, enthusiastic hobbit producers and hobbit technicians scurried back and forth, diving into rooms, out of rooms, shouting, laughing raucously. In cramped, twilit caves with their curtains drawn to make them seem subterranean, young, bleary-eyed hobbit editors sat hunched over keyboards, squinting at computer monitors while binge-eating Oreos and Frito-Lays. Lights flashed, pictures flickered, interspersed every so often with booming detonations of sound—snatches of dialogue or music—that would explode from speakers for an instant, then just as suddenly quit.
In public radio, we can boast nothing even remotely comparable. Our studios have a disturbing, almost sinister quiet to them. Confined to individual gray cubicles, armies of highly competent producers, reporters, and managers coexist for eight solid hours a day, crafting show after show, week after week, carrying out their work with almost catlike stealth, barely making a sound.
The same is not true in television. In television, where youthful urgency is considered a worthy substitute for being good at what you do, and making a great deal of noise is all too frequently mistaken for creativity in action, bedlam tends to be the norm.
In passing, I was introduced to the two owners of the company, seated in their respective caves. They'd be our show runners, Fat Kid explained, if the series got picked up. They seemed friendly enough, greeting me with exuberant cries of “Hiiiii! How are you? How's it going?” the way TV types do to people they've never met before.
“Okay! Great.” Flinging himself down behind his desk with superhuman zeal, Fat Kid made up for lost time—hammered out an e-mail, scrolled down his BlackBerry, asked one of the hobbit PAs to fetch me a bottle of spring water, bit into an apple, glanced at an old black-and-white movie playing on a TV situated directly over my shoulder behind the couch, then finally, I guess once he'd run out of alternatives to actually speaking to me, turned his attention to the show.
“Assuming everything goes well with us”—meaning between me and him today—“then we have a go-ahead from the network to shoot a pilot. That'll be sometime in October. We've found this great little town in Central California. It's a Danish community called Solvang. Cute. Friendly.”
“Is it on the ocean?”
“Er … no. No, it isn't. Why?”
“Then how can I be all washed up in it?”
“Ah. That's another thing. We're thinking of changing the title. The network wants you to arrive by a different means of transport every episode. Boats are too limiting. So one week a Chieftan tank, one week a plane, and so on …”
A Chieftan tank? Already I was nervous. I thought this was my show, so how come key decisions on my show were being made without consulting me?
“Cash, it's not your show,” Fat Kid asserted commandingly “It's our show now.”
“It is?”
“Anyways, Solvang's a weird, weird little place. The people are very nice, though, so I'm sure, with your personality and your British charm, you can persuade someone to take you in, give you a bed for the night and some food.”
Uh-oh. “You mean Danish food?”
“Yes. It's a Danish community.”
“Does Danish food have lots of oil in it, d'you think?”
He had no idea. “Why?”
“Well,” I said, “I have a problem with food.”
“You can't eat food?”
“No, I …”
“All food?”
Not all food, obviously, you clown, otherwise I'd be dead. “No, just certain foods.”
He directed a bemused, unblinking stare at me. “Such as?”
“Oh … milk, butter,