What I Learned When I Almost Died - Chris Licht [5]
The O.J. show was supervised each night by a certain line producer, except on Wednesdays, when he left early to teach a college class. He would designate a writer to sit in his chair during the show, which was not as big a risk as it sounds, because the trial always ended at five, giving us plenty of time to prepare for seven-thirty before he left. To be Line Producer for a Day was a babysitting job, a judgment-free exercise, so easy that one evening they gave the chore to me.
Then, at 6:15 P.M., with the line producer now gone and Jeff off that day, the Fuhrman tapes were released.
Mark Fuhrman was a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department who investigated the O.J. case. He is white. Simpson is black. Fuhrman’s racial attitudes were a major part of the defense’s case because Simpson’s lawyers believed the police were prejudiced against their client. Fuhrman had sworn in court he held no racial animus and hadn’t used the word nigger in a decade.
But during taped interviews in recent years with a writer developing a screenplay about police officers, Fuhrman had used that very word several dozen times, and now the court had released some of the tapes, which the jury would be allowed to hear.
That detonated our script. There had to be a rewrite. A camera crew had to scramble to get to the home of Fred Goldman, the father of Nicole Simpson’s murdered friend, so we could get his reaction to this development that was so damaging to the prosecution’s case. That evening’s program would be no babysitting affair. I was in charge, me, age twenty-three, training wheels still on and, at that moment, terrified.
With major help from another writer whom I thank to this day, the overhaul of the script came together. But would the camera crew get to Fred Goldman’s place in time? The show began. The crew arrived at Goldman’s. It began setting up. Five minutes left in the show. Three. There! We went live from the Goldman home, with two minutes to spare.
The adrenaline rush was nothing like I had ever felt. The show was so good that when we had finished, the news director wanted to thank the brilliant soul who had led the effort. He refused to believe it was the Syracuse kid. In fact, he was annoyed I had been put in charge in the first place.
That night changed everything. No more Tom Brokaw. No more aiming to be in front of a camera.
I knew instantly that the feeling of control and creation I had experienced made me happy. I liked sculpting the chaos. To have a vision and see it broadcast on TV, well, there was nothing better than that, I thought. Being on-air talent could not possibly be as wonderful, because you only command the slice of the whole involving you. Being a producer meant having the entire show in your hands.
We all went to a restaurant and got drunk to celebrate.
Producing was what I wanted.
chapter three
A Migraine Guy
Not long after my text entered cyberspace on its way to Mika Brzezinski, a doctor came to my cubicle in the emergency room of George Washington University Hospital and asked me to hold out my arms, push my fists against her hands, and other tasks to discern whether my very disagreeable brain was still in clear communication with the rest of me. She was calm, if detached.
“Look, you’re not exhibiting any signs of anything neurologically wrong with you,” she said after a few minutes of this, “and I think what you’re experiencing is a stress migraine. Do you have a stressful job?”
I told her my job at MJ. It was pretty clear she had never heard of the show.
“Well, we’re going to get you something for the pain, and then when I come back, I’m going to give you some tips on how to manage your stress.”
“So I’m not going to get a CAT scan?”
“No, you don’t need a CAT scan.”
A migraine made sense. My nausea had faded, and there were no other symptoms. No fever, and nothing was numb, immobile, or weak. And migraines can be extremely discomforting, and I certainly was extremely discomforted. A migraine