Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [98]
“But hey, that's okay,” The Thumb assured me during one of our many off-the-record phone conversations. We both knew that a failure at this stage would have been catastrophic. He and I had conceived this baby together, and nobody wants to believe they've given birth to the ugliest kid on the block. “Anything new and innovative takes time to gain traction. That's just a fact. Give it a few weeks before you rush to judgment.”
Still, what better way to fan the flames of public curiosity about our wonderful new series, and to raise my profile, than with an appearance on a major talk show?
Or, failing that, on Conan O'Brien's show?
Shortly after, a triumphant Fat Kid summoned me to his office to deliver the news personally.
“DID YOU HEAR? CONAN O'BRIEN'S PEOPLE HAVE BEEN ON. THEY WANT YOU TO FLY TO NEW YORK NEXT MONTH TO BE A GUEST.” Behind the desk, he finished tapping out an e-mail, put a call on hold, took a swig from his water bottle, bit into an apple, checked an instant message on his PDA, then sprang to his feet, eyes on fire. “ISN'T THAT GREAT?”
“Yes, I know,” I said quietly. “Someone already told me.”
“Oh.” And his fire fizzled right out.
I guess he was expecting backflips. Everyone in TV performs backflips. Hysteria is in their genes. But by this point I barely had the strength to unzip my own fly, much less jump about with excitement the way, say, someone who was well-fed, well-rested, unstressed, and not borderline suicidal with anxiety might.
“I may even come to New York with you!” he threw in, lowering the ante.
“You will?”
Once again, my resistance to leaping up and down had him nonplussed.
In fact, for one reason or another, Fat Kid was pretty nonplussed most of the time we worked together, I'd say. Nonplussed or pissed. I could never tell which.
One time he came bowling along the corridor toward me like I was the last pin in the lane. He'd just seen the final edit of our Moscow episode and loved it. LOVED IT! “Right there,” he said, his little Hawaiian face beaming, eyes bulging wider than is medically advisable. “That's your Emmy, right there.”
I'm sorry—what?
I felt the frozen fingers of delusion skitter up my back. What did he just say?
A man with no awards cabinet in his office—“You're telling me not a single episode of Celebrity Tools was nominated for a Golden Globe? Not even the one about Bill O'Reilly?”—but who, by the look on his face, was already mentally flicking through the IKEA catalogue in readiness, had dared utter the “E” word, the third most hallowed word in all of television, after Regis and Philbin.
Sadly, he was way off the mark. As entertaining and beautifully crafted as the Moscow show was, it was still only a “reality” show about a guy bumbling through Red Square making like he was lost, when both the critics and the audience had long since figured out that he wasn't really. We may as well face facts. No way would a “perfectly pleasant show” like that get as much as a nod, much less walk off with an actual award. Not, that is, unless a freak event happened, such as everyone else who was making reality programs in the same year accidentally dying. Short of that, we didn't stand a chance.
Of course, you don't want to crush a guy's dream or rob him of all hope. That would be cruel. But it doesn't pay to lie to him either.
So: “It's not going to win an Emmy,” I put it to him soberly. “I'm sorry, it's just not.” And watched guiltily as he slunk away, crushed and robbed of all hope.
That was a major turning point in our relationship, I think.
By this one simple, honest admission—that our show at its very best probably wasn't good enough, not even in the eyes of its own host, to carry off a major award—I'd skewered Fat Kid's lingering fantasy, a fantasy every TV producer lives for,