What I Learned When I Almost Died - Chris Licht [40]
Winding up as the Event of the Year was a quirky sort of honor. But I was damn glad to be there to accept. It was time well spent.
chapter eighteen
So Zen
One September morn after my return, Phil Griffin shot me an e-mail even as Morning Joe was still on the air.
Not good, it said.
Phil was pissed about a conversation that had just taken place during the show, and he wanted to talk about it with me because, as executive producer, I’m responsible for what airs. Even so, being summoned to the front office to explain an on-air episode is so rare that I knew this e-mail was a bad omen. It was so rare that if I had gotten one like it before my brain popped, I know how the hours prior to talking with Phil would have gone.
My God, am I in trouble? What’s gonna happen? How could the folks on the set have put me in this situation?
Dread would have chewed up more of my limited time on Planet Earth in calculations of possible recriminations, none of which I could do anything about, which would not have stopped the angst. I would have been frozen in my office until the phone call or the audience with Phil, at which time a head might roll and it wouldn’t be his.
Here’s what actually happened after I read Phil’s summons.
In an e-mail, I acknowledged his request for a conversation. Then, after the show finished, I conducted the usual staff postmortem of the segments and guests. And I deposited the impending session with Phil into a brand new, what-happens-happens vault, to be retrieved only when it was time for the conversation.
Then Joe called. He knew Phil had contacted me.
Don’t freak out, Joe said.
He was envisioning a Woodstock of worry by Old Chris.
“Joe,” I said, “I’m really not freaking out. I have plans today. I’m not going to stick around.”
If I was in the building when Phil was ready for the conversation, I’d be there.
“You don’t need to calm me down,” I said.
Not having to reassure me meant Joe and Mika had one less thing to worry about during this flap, making things better for all.
The plans I had mentioned to Joe included a doctor’s appointment, and I was waiting in the exam room that afternoon when Phil finally called for the big chat. The head of human resources for NBC was on the line with him, which is usually a leading indicator that someone’s professional health is about to take a turn.
Phil asked if I had known what was going to happen on the set that morning. I hadn’t, or at least I hadn’t known the discussion was going to go the way it did.
What they did out there, Phil said, could get you in a lot of trouble.
Maybe. But I wouldn’t disown them to cover myself, because they had been with me in the emergency room.
I knew Phil would be within his rights to suspend me. If he did and if my conduct became an issue in my contract negotiations, which were not far down the road, well, I could live with that, because what choice did I have? That was what I realized on the deck with Andrew, namely, the beauty of knowing when you have the power to change something and when you don’t. I didn’t want to be suspended and I love NBC, but you cannot enjoy a job, you cannot do it well, if you are always afraid of losing it. And I wasn’t anymore.
In the end, my boss and friend didn’t suspend me. I might have lost points with Phil because of what happened on the air, but my day turned out exactly as it would have if Old Chris had worried the whole time. I had spared myself a lot of hand-wringing and been more productive and emerged right where I would have anyway.
A few days later, I was supposed to go to Las Vegas—for me, not the show. Las Vegas is perhaps my favorite diversion and several friends and I have a sort of annual guys’ trip there. But this year, members of the posse had been dropping out. Then, at the last minute, my friend Marc,