Mumbo Gumbo Page 6

  I looked back at our office building, one of several three-story, tan stucco units, and then headed off on my errand, crossing a small parking lot on my way to soundstage 9, which contains the sets for Food Freak, awaiting the next taping. I should have been concentrating on my task, figuring out some way to correct the trouble I’d started, thinking about what I might say to Chef Howie that could possibly fix things. But instead, I was daydreaming. I always am while walking along these small, private streets, bewitched by the romantic history of early Hollywood.

  In 1914, two brothers in the Warner family started a film distribution company in New York. Their two other brothers, Sam and Jack, came west. It was here, on this very lot, that they produced their first silent serials. Here, I thought, looking at the buildings around me, they had once hired Charlie Chaplin’s brother, Sydney, to star in one of their first features. By 1923, the films that were produced by the brothers became highly respected. Here they shot Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis. All the early stars worked here. Barrymore. Swanson. Rin-Tin-Tin.

  I walked down one of the trafficless streets on the lot, shielded from greater and lesser Hollywood, and from reality, and from the twenty-first century by the tall walls. Alone on the lot, I forgot for a moment the glorious southern California spring weather, lost in the studio’s no-less-glorious past. The movies found their voice in 1927, a most important year in film history, I thought, as I passed by the very soundstage where The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson, was shot. That first film to have dialogue and music was a stunning hit, and an entire era of talkies followed. This little studio on Sunset produced many of those early musicals, like the hugely popular Gold Diggers of Broadway, in 1929.

  On this bright afternoon, I could imagine what it might have been like once upon a time, when dozens of chorus girls in marcel waves and glittery tap shoes hung around these quiet studio streets. Back in ‘29, here, at this very corner I was now passing, a young woman might have caught a smoke, hoping to flirt with someone who could boost her to stardom. I stopped, wondering if it was possible to conjure up such ghosts in the strong sunshine.

  But Hollywood’s history is a saga of boom and bust and this particular piece of real estate’s heyday was soon past. By 1933, the Warners moved to large new quarters in Burbank. By World War II, these production facilities in Hollywood were leased to independent producers, just like they are now. Back then, they were home to war-training films and Warner cartoons; the big feature films had moved on.

  When I reached soundstage 9, I took a look around. Each immense, dome-roofed soundstage squatted on an entire block and I couldn’t immediately see what I was looking for. I checked down the side street. No Chef Howie mobile home. So I continued walking up the block, recalling the stories of this lot’s past.

  As television took over this town, a local station moved in and today KTLA continues broadcasting their morning show and newscasts from here. The station accounts for the two huge white satellite uplink dishes now settled like giant upturned mushroom caps next to one of the newest of the buildings. There’s an eclectic mishmash of entertainment facilities here. It’s the home of L.A.’s number one news radio station. KFWB began life right here, and—no one knows this!—its call letters stand for Keep Filming Warner Brothers! My friend Wesley and I love to stump each other with such trivia about the old days.

  Since the sixties and seventies, these soundstages have been used to film television series, as well. In early 1961, an immense set was built on three of these stages to accommodate Gunsmoke, while the production’s horses were stabled on yet another soundstage. It must have been terrific to spend those years filming here, driving your car through the studio gates and then changing into costume to live in the Old West.

  I turned the corner, expecting to see Miss Kitty hanging around. Instead, down the block, I saw Kenny, one of the assistant PAs, exiting the door on this side of soundstage 9, balancing a stack of scripts. He waved.

  “Hi, Madeline.”

  “Hi, Kenny,” I said. “Say, did you know that Donny and Marie was taped here?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “And Jeopardy!” I continued. I was on a jag now. “And The Dating Game. And Supermarket Sweep.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Bet you thought they shot that in a real market, but no, they built a perfect replica of a supermarket in soundstage two, the better for its contestants to go racing down the aisles, looking for expensive groceries.”

  Kenny looked at me for a beat before he offered, “Cool.”

  Alas, not everyone is a history buff.

  “I’m on my way back to the office,” he said. “Susan told me to collect all the scripts.”

  “Right.”

  “Um,” Kenny said, checking me out a little more closely. “You lost?”

  “No,” I said, quickly. “Not really. Well, I’m looking for Chef Howie. Can you point me in the right direction?”

  “He’s still in his trailer,” Kenny said. “He wouldn’t give me back his copy of the script.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s just around the next corner,” Kenny said, pointing back the way he’d come.

  “Thanks.”

  Kenny continued toward his office and I turned back to my quest, following his directions, eventually rounding the corner and discovering the white, twenty-five-by-eight-foot motor home that doubled as Chef Howie’s dressing room.

  I stepped up to the door and heard an argument coming from inside the trailer. A male voice was saying, “I disagree totally. This is perfect for Chef Howie.” I tapped lightly on the white door, but got no response. I knocked harder and waited.

  I could make out the sound of Fate Finkelberg’s cigarette-hoarse voice inside as she yelled, “Who the hell is that, now?”

  The door opened a crack and I was surprised to see Quentin Shore’s squinting brown eye. An awkward moment passed as he neither opened the door any wider nor shut it in my face. I suspected he wished to do the latter.

  “Open the door, for God’s sake,” Fate’s voice ordered from inside.

  “Hi,” I said, walking into the overly air-conditioned main cabin. On the far side, a makeup station and professional clothes racks filled the corner. In the larger area, four white leather captain’s chairs surrounded a white marble table. Fate was sitting at the table while Howie and his makeup artist occupied the dressingroom corner.

  “What do you want?” Fate asked.

  “Greta asked me to go over the material for today’s taping with Chef Howie,” I improvised, ever the ingratiating one when I wanted to be.

  “Waste of time!” Fate said.

  “There is really no need,” Quentin whispered, still standing close to me by the entrance. “I’m on the job here. Chef Howie wants me.”

  “Yes, but I don’t think you know—” Okay. Just a quick word of advice. If you should ever be in the presence of a game-show question writer, never, ever begin a sentence implying that there might be something they do not know. Quentin looked like he had swallowed a lemon, whole.

  “Look,” I said, acutely aware of how “not well” this was going. “Greta wants me to take over for Tim. I’m the acting head writer and—”

  Quentin Shore’s shiny face turned red. “That’s…that’s not fair.” He turned to Chef Howie, but at that moment the star was checking his mirror to see if his legendary sideburns were even. Quentin turned again to me. “I’ve been kind to you. I’ve been helpful. But you have just gone too d—, well, too far.”

  Quentin Shore couldn’t seem to bring himself to curse.

  “For your information,” he said, his voice tense, “I’ve been working on Freak since the pilot. Did you know that? Furthermore, Tim Stock is my good, good friend. He dropped me a note and asked me personally to look after the show while he was away. So it’s my duty and my responsibility and my job to brief—”

  “Tim Stock?” I asked quickly. “Where is he?”

  I noticed that Fate was watching us clos
ely as we bickered back and forth, her hand dipping into a can of Planters cashews.

  How had I gotten in the middle of a catfight? As an event planner and caterer, I had taken pride in my tactfulness, in my good relations with both clients and staff. Heck, I like to make people happy. But the emotions in this line of work clearly ran hotter. People here liked to brawl. My friendly little “get-along” personality wasn’t serving me at all well, I was discovering, in this extreme sport of Hollywood ego wrestling. This temp recipe-writing job, which should have been a breeze, had already pitted me against a good number of combatants, each with an agenda the size of Mount Wilson. And why? Because in this arena, I was an unknown, a rank amateur. Everyone wanted to take me on. Here, on this turf, I had zero credibility.

  But every problem must have a solution. If my rational approach wasn’t working, I’d have to adapt to the culture, and, lucky for me, this was a world where outsiders could move up fast. Acting was called for, and I’d have to change my vocabulary, too. I looked at Quentin coolly and tried the New Hollywood–version Madeline out on him. My voice lost every ounce of its calm and friendly tone. “Cut the bullshit, Quentin.”

  “What?”

  “Stop fucking around. Stick with the topic, okay? Tim Stock. Just where the fuck is he?”

  At the table, Fate Finkelberg stopped chewing her cashew, and in the makeup corner, Chef Howie’s hairdresser stopped spraying Freeze and Shine on Chef Howie’s perfect hair.

  “I don’t know where he is right this very minute,” Quentin pleaded, a tinge of hurt now creeping into his belligerent tone. “I don’t. I got a card,” he explained, “from Vegas. Tim asked me to look after Chef Howie, and that’s all. I’m not trying to give you a hard time, Madeline. Honestly,” he lied.

  I blinked. Quentin had responded perfectly to the New Madeline. So this is what it took—being willing to be more obnoxious than the other guy. I realized why people hated what Hollywood did to them. But now, even the New Madeline’s silence threatened Quentin.

  “It’s the truth. I swear,” he said. Quentin’s eyes darted over to Fate. She sat there ignoring Quentin. She was, instead, checking me out. Recalculating, I hoped.

  “Go,” I ordered him. The dominatrix approach seemed to be working, so why change it? “Talk to Greta. Talk to Artie. Just get going.”

  Quentin, head bowed, turned to Howie and said brightly, “Well, I’ll leave you now and get back to my meetings at the office.” And with that, he left.

  Two f-words. That seemed to be all it took for anyone to be taken seriously in Hollywood. You simply need a competitive nature, which I clearly proved I had, and a willingness to sink to that level. I swallowed.

  “So,” Fate said slowly. “What do you want?”

  That was a good question. My original plan had been to get Chef Howie alone. He had seemed like a nice guy. I had hoped I could convince him to be a pal and call off the taping. Perhaps it could have been implied that he wasn’t feeling well. Getting Howie alone, however, would be a challenge. In the meantime, I had to stall. “Let’s go over today’s script,” I suggested.

  “That’s a laugh.” Fate popped another cashew. “This script is total garbage, which we just told Quentin. The script is unacceptable. We hate it.”

  “Oh?”

  “Chef Howie,” she called out. “This new girl was sent here to go over the script. Tell her what a complete and utter piece of crap it is.”

  “I’m not sure it’s total crap, Fate,” Howie called cheerfully, turning back to check out his reflection in the mirror. His makeup man had finished with Howie’s hair and now picked up a large brush and dipped it into a jar of powder.

  “Well,” she said, speaking loudly across the room to him, “that’s because you haven’t read the thing yet, darling.” She turned back to me as I took a seat at the table. “It’s crap.”

  “Okay,” I said, taking out my pen, looking earnest. I had suddenly hit upon a whole new plan.

  “Why is it crap?” she bellowed. “Because the show is based on a man, my husband, who is famous for just one thing: New American cuisine. That’s the gold mine, doll. New American. This script you want to shoot today is full of recipes that are supposed to be from Chef Howie, but they are dishes that Chef Howie would never in a million years cook.”

  “That sounds particularly stupid,” I said.

  Fate eyed me, surprised. “Yes, it is. As you know, Madeline, Chef Howie’s name is revered on seven continents. He is the leading star of New American cuisine.”

  I wondered, briefly, how many gourmets in—say—Antarctica were praising Chef Howie’s expertise with grilled pork chops, but held back from actually asking.

  “So which of the writing geniuses on Food Freak decided,” Fate continued, fuming, “to have today’s cook-off recipes feature a ‘little Italian café lunch’?”

  “Good question,” I agreed, matching her irritated tone and volume. Then I gave what I hoped was a properly smug smile. “I’d like to know what Quentin had to say when you asked him that!”

  A cashew was held arrested in the air as she got my point. “Quentin wrote that Italian dreck? Those nasty bruschetta aglio e olio, al pomodoro? That sad, sad cozze all’aglio e prezzemolo? No wonder that damned little toad defended this script and sang the praises of today’s pathetic menu. No wonder!”

  Despite her rant, her Italian pronunciation was perfect. Fate Finkelberg obviously knew from her Italian dishes. But “nasty” and “sad”? Who could despise a simple and satisfying bruschetta, crusty toasted Italian garlic bread with a topping of fresh tomato and basil salad in olive oil? And why hate the cozze, a perfectly marvelous dish of fresh mussels sautéed with garlic, lemon, parsley, and wine? Since she had chosen to get riled about them, and since she didn’t actually know I had written those very recipes, I kept it to myself and let Quentin take the rap.

  “I’m new here,” I said with a sigh, “but honestly, how do you both put up with this?”

  Howie was actively listening to our conversation now. He waved at his makeup man to stop powdering and I suspected he didn’t want to miss a word.

  “Exactly,” Fate said. “My God, Howie, she understands us!”

  I smiled at her sympathetically and became Fate Finkelberg’s new ally.

  “Madeline, you know food. You know how hard my Howie has worked to make this show the top show on the network. You go and tell Greta we will not ruin Chef Howie’s credibility. He owes it to his fans to stay true to his damn muse.”

  “Chef Howie stands for something important,” I said. “And no network or producer is going to make him break his word to the American public.”

  “That is goddamn right,” Fate said.

  “But they’ll never postpone a taping to make corrections to the script at this late hour,” I said, my voice thick with disgust at the horrid network. “They would rather ruin an artist than pay a crew overtime. Damn them,” I said, in deep frustration.

  Fate smiled at me in friendship. “Let me tell you something, sweet pea. There is nobody and nothing on the face of this earth that can force Chef Howie to do something that’s just plain wrong. Chef Howie has principles, damn it to hell.”

  “You are just amazing,” I said.

  “The truth is,” Fate said, pushing the half-empty tin of nuts across the marble tabletop, “Chef Howie is a sweetheart. He loves everyone and everyone loves him. He’s buddies with the head writer, Tim Stock, so my Howie just lets a lot of this crappy writing go. I always tell Chef Howie he’s gotta put his foot down or they’ll figure they can roll right over him, like damn battle tanks. That’s the way it works if you show any kindness, am I right?”

  I nodded, watching Fate warm up to the problem. Her mounting frustration reminded me of the mercury in one of those bulging old Warner Bros. cartoon thermometers, which had been inked right here on this very lot, over half a century ago.

  “Believe me when I tell you, Madeline, I know what is happening here,” she continued, the me
rcury edging higher. “Sure, the network loves Freak. They love the ratings. But they think they can push us around. If I don’t watch out, they’ll destroy Chef Howie. It’s maddening, honey. It kills me.”

  In my several years as a professional caterer and party planner, I’d run into plenty of clients like Fate Finkelberg who had some huge gripe that they couldn’t let go of. However, in my former role, my task was to settle the client down at all costs. This new job was actually a hell of a lot easier.

  “It is simply sickening,” I said, disturbed to my core. “But they have the power. In the end, just what can you do?”

  Fire burned behind her leather lids. “What can I do?” she said, raising her voice even louder and looking to the back of the trailer.

  Chef Howie met her eyes. “It’s okay, Fate. Come on, honey. It’s okay.”

  “Tell me something, sweetie,” she said, her voice edging higher. “I forget. Who calls the shots around here?”

  Howie waved away his makeup guy. He walked over to the table and crouched down right beside her. “Fate,” he said, soft and low. Chef Howie flashed her the kind of smile that would have stopped a female elephant on the veldt in midcharge.

  “No, Howie,” she said, but her voice had softened. “No. I mean it this time. How much longer, darling, are we gonna let these game-show jerks screw with you? Italian food? Bru-fucking-schetta? We’re walking, baby. So they lose a day of production. What the hell do we care? It’s not coming out of our pocket. Madeline knows how these things work. This is the only language they understand, believe me.”

  And so it escalates up the chain of command, I realized. A little drama just to get some attention and respect. First a little swearing, and next, the stakes had been raised so high that a star walks off the set.

  “Fate…,” Howie started again, but she simply wasn’t going to be Fate’d.