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“What is it, sweetheart?”
“I’m suh… sorry.”
Angie started to cry and Tom choked back his own tears.
“Don’t apologise, princess. What happened is in the past. We’re all starting over, as of today. Okay? I know some of this has been my fault and I’m going to change too.”
The dam had broken when Angie saw Larry Hoffman’s picture on the front page of the paper her father carried into her hospital room, along with the story of his arrest for murder. She had cried so hard during most of her account of the rape and beating that Farrell had a hard time understanding his daughter.
Farrell’s original plan had been to kill Larry Hoffman in the contact room at the jail, then take whatever the justice system threw his way. It had been even easier than he’d hoped to gain Hoffman’s confidence. By posing as his court-appointed defender, he could make certain that the slimebag was guilty of the things Angie had tearfully told him he had done to her before he ended Hoffman’s sorry life. Farrell’s plan had changed when Larry told him the significance of the videotape for his alibi.
“I love you and Mom, so much,” Angie said.
“We love you too. Now, try to nap. We’ll be home by tonight. Mom will be waiting at the airport.”
“Get me home soon, Daddy. I don’t want to be here anymore.”
“I will sweetheart. I just have one stop to make.” Angle closed her eyes and Farrell headed toward the airport. On the way, he passed the landfill on the edge of town where he had stopped before going to the hospital. As they sped by, he glanced quickly at the mountain of garbage under which he had buried the false ID he had used to gain entrance to the jail and the videotape he had viewed once to make certain he was doing the right thing.
David Morrell
David Morrell is the award-wi
The story that follows is based on a real-life situation. Morrell’s inspiration to become a writer was Stirling Silliphant, whose work for ‘Route 66’ and ‘Naked City’ made him one of the most acclaimed television writers of all time. Over the years, Morrell and Silliphant became friends, and one evening Silliphant confided that the TV networks were less interested in his work now that he was in his late sixties. His abilities hadn’t diminished and his work ethic remained in place, but the young executives who run the television industry decided that he couldn’t speak to the demographically desirable younger audience. Fed up with Hollywood, Silliphant had a Beverly Hills garage sale and moved to Bangkok, where he wrote what he wanted to and died of prostate cancer at the age of seventy-eight. Morrell dedicated this story to him.
Front Main
“Tell me that again,” I said. “He must have been joking.”
“Mort, you know what it’s like at the networks these days.” My agent sighed. “Cost cutting. Layoffs. Executives so young they think ‘L.A. Law’ is nostalgia. He wasn’t joking. He’s willing to take a meeting with you, but he’s barely seen your work, and he wants a list of your credits.”
“All two hundred and ninety of them? Steve, I like to think I’m not vain, but how can this guy be in charge of series development and not know what I’ve written?”
This conversation was on the phone. Midweek, mid-afternoon. I’d been revising computer printouts of what I’d written in the morning, but frustration at what Steve had told me made me press my pencil down so hard I broke its tip. Standing from my desk, I clutched the phone tighter.
Steve hesitated before he replied. “No argument. You and I know how much you contributed to television. You and Rod Serling and Paddy Chayefsky practically invented TV drama. But that was then. This executive just started his job three months ago. He’s only twenty-eight, for Christ’s sake. He’s been clawing his way to network power since he graduated from business school. He doesn’t actually watch television. He’s too damned busy to watch it, except for current in-house projects. What he does is program, check the ratings, and read the trades. If you’d won your Emmys for something this season, he might be impressed. But ‘The Sidewalks of New York!’That’s something they show on Nickelodeon cable reruns, a company he doesn’t work for, so what does he care?”
I stared out my study window. From my home on top of the Hollywood Hills, I had a view of rushing traffic on smoggy Sunset Boulevard, of Spago, Tower Records, and Chateau Marmont. But at the moment, I saw none of them, indignation blinding me.
“Steve, am I nuts, or are the scripts I sent you good?”
“Don’t put yourself down. They’re better than good. They don’t only grab me. They’re fucking smart. I believe them, and I can’t say that for…” He named a current hit series about a female detective that made him a fortune in commissions but was two-thirds tits and ass and one-third car chases.
“So what’s the real problem?” I asked, unable to suppress the stridency in my voice. “Why can’t I get any work?”
“The truth?”
“Since when did I tolerate lies?”
“You won’t get pissed off?”
“I will get pissed off if-“
“All right already. The truth is, it doesn’t matter how well you write. The fact is, you’re too old. The networks think you’re out of touch with their demographics.”
“Out of-“
“You promised you wouldn’t get pissed off.”
“But after I shifted from television, I won an Oscar for ‘The Dead of Noon.’”
“Twenty years ago. To the networks, that’s like the Dark Ages. You know the axiom-‘What have you done for us lately?’ The fact is, Mort, for the past two years, you’ve been out of town, out of the country, out of the goddamn industry.”
My tear ducts ached. My hurried breathing made me dizzy. “I had a good reason. The most important reason.”
“Absolutely,” Steve said. “In your place, I’d have done the same. And your friends respect that reason. But the movers and shakers, the new regime that doesn’t give a shit about tradition, they think you died or retired, if they give you a moment’s thought at all. Then isn’t now. To them, last week’s ratings are ancient history. What’s next? they want to know. What’s new? they keep asking. What they really mean is, What’s young!”
“That sucks.”
“Of course. But young viewers are loose with their dough, my friend, and advertisers pay the bills. So the bottom line is, the networks feel unless you’re under thirty-five or, better yet, under thirty, you can’t communicate with their target audience. It’s an uphill grind for writers like you, of a certain age, no matter your talent.”
“Swell.” My knuckles ached as I squeezed the phone. “So what do I do? Throw my word processor out the window, and collect on my Writers Guild pension?”
“It’s not as bad as that. But bear in mind, your pension is the highest any Guild member ever accumulated.”
“But if I retire, I’ll die like-“
“No, what I’m saying is be patient with this network kid. He needs a little educating. Politely, you understand. Just pitch your idea, look confident and dependable, show him your credits. He’ll come around. It’s not as if you haven’t been down this path before.”
“When I was in my twenties.”
“There you go. You identify with this kid already. You’re in his mind.”
My voice dropped. “When’s the meeting?”