Leaving Los Angeles (Epilogue)

It came as no particular shock that the head of ABC Studios very politely fired me Friday evening. "What did I think was going to happen?" is not an unreasonable question. I have not, for someone with a show on the air, been particularly politic about the strike; specifically the media moguls and their polarizing intractability. The head of the studio said it was a bad day, he was making a lot of these calls. I felt sorry for him. I really did. Not so bad for myself. Still, I guess I no longer have any relationship to Brothers & Sisters or to the studio. Just a very gracious, exceptionally polite "bye-bye."

Anyway, I was not put on earth "for to be a big shot," as the hirsute old Israeli who used to fix my car might have said. His other great advice, when I was howling in protest at the cost of maintaining a 1975 BMW 2002, was "don't be a Jew what cry." I have tried hard to adhere to that one to only middling success.

Ah, well. Sad not to be able to write for those actors ever again, or for the characters I created. To not be able to write them from their secrets, from their quietest and darkest places -- places I invented.

I am glad I did it. I liked a lot of how the show came together. First there was Ken Olin and me. Then we brought in my frequent theater collaborator Michael Morris, now a producer on the show, and who directs episodes and is always on set to clarify, explicate, and be the voice of pride, rigor and reason. He used to run the Old Vic; half-English, all tact.

We sat and worked together for six months, starting in August 2005, pushing one another, arguing, and laughing at Ken's house. A lot of martinis, a lot of cote du rhone, a lot of talk, a lot of rewriting, a lot of late nights. Ken very gravely, and with the utmost seriousness, insisted that I buy a new computer, because the one I had was insufficient to the great and good work of creating a new series for the august auspices of the ABC network. It was virtually, he implied with great solemnity, an insult to write a pilot on a Mac book that was older than three and a half weeks. I complied with his request, mostly because I could not stop laughing long enough to protest.

Ken talked about a show that had a bit of thirtysomething (no longer possible; attention spans are different, which is the least of the impediments). I talked about All in the Family (no longer possible, in the age of PC, no network would condone as outre a figure as Archie Bunker). I talked about Family. I talked about A Year in the Life. I wrote absurdly long scenes at dinner tables, which Ken would mock relentlessly and cut in a good-natured (and old pro's anxious) sort of way. Michael would talk about Chekhov, Arthur Miller, and the BBC. Ken and I would tease him. I would talk about all the people we knew, their tics and foibles, the things we loved about our loved ones, the things we did not love, but loved in spite of not loving.

We talked about family. we got to know one another's even better. Everything went in. For months we talked of family -- the Olins, the Morris-McCormacks, the Rifkins and me. We canceled vacations and trips. Christmas of 2005 was spent totally tearing the thing apart, while an eco-resort in Mexico refused to hand over the prepaid ten days on a remote beach I had paid for. Tant Pis. Handed in endless rewrites, watched the attitudes about the script turn around at the network and at the studio. We watched B&S go from dead to alive, to long shot, to frontrunner. It's a miracle we shot even the pilot, given how unhip the three of us were. (Well, two of us, but Ken had never created a show before...)

We created jobs, which is the best part of the thing, we created an economy from all that thought and all that development, and they can't take that away from me. I was able to bring in great actors, and terrific writers, including the playwrights Craig Wright and David Marshall Grant. David, who had never written on a TV show, now knows exactly how they they should look, how they should taste, and what a good episode even smells like on the page. (Fresh laundry, line-dried, with only a small moth hole and speck of bird shit.)

It was not all angst and Borgia-like dissembling from the pros. There was the ongoing joy of gossiping in one of the chairs in the hair department, getting the skinny on the behind-the-scenes business, the real deal. Or hiding out in makeup, where the ladies would put funny things over my eyes to make me look less tired (Never worked).

In those rooms you learned the scoop: the love affairs and the egos of the stars, the hair dramas, the skin conditions, (and the -- sigh -- problem of...tans), the sexual adventures, and new yoga practices. There was hanging out at the taco cart the other producers and I used to hire for the cast and crew when they worked all damn night. I loved the writers, I loved the actors, but I worshiped the crew. They were the ones you could respect without any reservations, and their affection meant so much to me. Being teased by the crew is the highest honor there is, in my opinion, and I would much rather have the good will of those men and women than some stupid TV door prize, say, an Emmy. Swear to God. It got me through it, when I hated the network or the studio, or the trained TV professionals. The crew was where it was at.

I also deeply, truly, wildly endlessly enjoyed subverting the iron-clad Disney law that did not allow dogs on the lot. Not even Pluto. The guards were ruthless border agents when it came to canines never ever being allowed to soil the manicured lawns and nervous topiary of the backlot. I finally got so fed up with the officiousness and the insult of it, the sneaking him in under blankets (which he refused to cooperate with), that in the only act of grandiose nepotism I committed, I wrote my dog Trip into the show, to the enormous frustration of the guards, who had never ever seen a dog with an actual badge that said "Trip Baitz -- CAST -- Brothers & Sisters" next to a grinning Mickey Mouse (I love that badge. I loved flashing it. I loved the few guards who were in on the joke.) For some reason, Trip, a writer's dog all the way, had zero interest in performing.
I wonder if I'll ever be comfortable going to L.A. again. I hope that the affection for my hometown will return at some point, but I don't see how. I'll have to go back to L.A.: My hilarious and clever mom is there, and my dad, one of the last gentlemen, is buried there, half a mile from my old office at Disney. I used to look at the cemetery on my way over there, and wish Ed Baitz could have been around long enough to watch his quite hapless and unpredictable son go establishment, just for a little while. He would have loved it. He would have totally fucking loved it. On some days, after endless notes, reshoots, subterfuge and so on, I would look over there, south of the studio across the freeway, and say, with a smile, "See you soon, Pop."

In the meantime, America's number one export, one of the last industries we sort of kinda invented and do (occasionally) rather well at -- the pictures -- has shut itself down, and with it placed an entire economy into what is virtually a medically-induced coma. An entire industry. Actors, writers, designers, grips, assistants, florists, drivers -- all not working. Digging into their savings. Worried to death about tuitions and mortgages. Houses are being sold. Pensions being borrowed from.

Because the studios' reps will not even have a dialogue. Will not come back to the table. Think about that. Think about the ugly pragmatism of a group of executives who wanted this to go on long enough to punish and to write-off the deals they'd made. People who walked away from a negotiation that they may never have intended to have in good faith from the very first. Think about the kind of people who can conduct themselves in that manner. Think about all the things they have forgotten about honor alone. Think about it for a moment. I do. And I get rather angry. My late dad, a (reformed, not orthodox, so to speak) corporate vice-president at a Fortune 500 company for two dozen years, would, as he grew older and wiser in his work, have walked away from such common and dirty behavior; he would have found it repellent. Insupportable. And would be the first to say so. I do hope that some board members are built similarly, the next time, say, Bob Iger or Peter Chernin have to sweatily justify the Caligula-like compensation packages.

So, right now, the only cultural export we have left (not counting baseball, and even that...) to be truly chauvinistic about is jazz. So, I will have a shot of bourbon and listen to some Monk, some Miles, some Ben Webster, some Bill Evans, and a little Ella in honor of all the things that I love that are in danger of becoming extinct or spoiled by human nature, or by moguls, or by steroids, or by greed or even just changing tastes.

Pick one. I can't. All I can do on this Sunday night in January, with snow on the way, is try and closely heed the words of my car mechanic and "don't be a Jew what cries." Amen, brother. You said a mouthful.

Me with Prescient Sign on the First day of Picketing in New York...

Previously:

Leaving Los Angeles (Part One: Work)

Leaving Los Angeles (Part Two: Love)