Stuart Kaminsky - Show Business is Murder

“The present,” I said. “From then to now, it’s always the present when it happens.”

She nodded. She wasn’t that interested. “Well. Libby’s Place can, itself, be quite educational. The invited guests that I mentioned just now, they aren’t experts or celebrities-they’re ordinary members of the public. Extraordinary ordinary members of the public. People to whom things have happened, or people who have done things, and they tell Libby about those things, and then the audience-”

“Rips them apart?”

“Discusses what has been shared.”

I finished my beer, and she went to fetch another round. I watched her at the bar, and noticed that not one man looked at her for more than a second, not even the barman. When she returned, I said: “You work on this show?”

“I’m an assistant producer. Specifically, I source guests.”

“You source them?”

“Yes.”

“And you wish to source me?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ll pay me?”

“Yes.”

“And there’s a hell of a lot more to it than that?”

She smiled. When she smiled, her face looked like something her worst enemy had done to her and then said,

“What’s the matter, can’t you take a joke?”

“Yes,” she said. “There is more to it than that.”

And that’s how I got into acting.

SHE TOOK MEout to dinner, to a Thai place, and at the table she showed me her business card and her building pass because she didn’t want me to have any doubt about her genuineness. Her name was given on both documents as Annabelle Inwood. She didn’t ask for my name. It was Jez Becker, but she didn’t ask for it.

“The trouble is,” said Annabelle, as I ate my curry and she poked at hers with a fork, “there aren’t enough genuine weirdoes to go around. This isn’t America. In California-I worked there for a while-all you’ve got to do is open the office door, grab the first half dozen people you see, and you can rely on at least four of them being completely eccentric and perfectly telegenic.”

“But not over here.”

She shook her head. The motion failed to dislodge the piece of rice which was stuck to her chin. “We are handicapped in this country by an archaic belief that personal grief should be kept private. We’re getting over it, slowly, but in the meantime-well, there are a lot of shows like mine to be filled.”

“A lot of guests to be sourced.”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t think five hundred pounds is very much.”

“Ah,” said Annabelle. “But, like I said, more to come.”

“I don’t see how,” I said. “Surely, once I’ve been on the show once…”

“You’d be surprised. Provided we handle things subtly, and make good use of lighting, makeup and so on, it’s perfectly possible for one guest to appear on many shows, over a period of time.”

“And nobody notices?”

She put down her fork. “Look, this kind of program-people don’t exactly give it their full attention, you see what I mean? It’s something you watch while you’re doing the ironing, or feeding the baby.”

“Or applying wrinkle cream.”

She snorted, and the piece of rice finally fell from her chin. “Yes, sure, whatever. So, if a guy called Joe comes on the show and says he’s just got engaged to his sister, and then six weeks later a guy called Phil, who looks maybe vaguely like Joe, only without the mustache and with darker hair, says he was born a man but he had an operation to become a woman, only now he’s had an operation to turn him back into a man because he dreams of being a professional footballer-well, who’s to notice? Who’s to care?”

I ate the rest of my meal, even though it wasn’t very good, because it is morally indefensible to waste food, and then I said: “What happens when you get caught?”

“We don’t get caught.”

“But if you did?”

She shrugged. “Slap on the wrist from the regulators. It’s not exactly genocide, is it? It’s just showbiz.”

We ordered coffee. “For five hundred pounds, who would I be?”

She got her personal organiser out, and flipped through it to find her place. “Okay, if you’re available on Monday, it’d be a choice between ‘Youth Detention Center Turned Me Gay,’ or ‘I Oppose Legalising Drugs Cos It’d Put Me Out Of Work.’ ”

I stirred my coffee. “I wouldn’t like to be a drug dealer. It might cause complications.”

“All right then, you’re a queer ex-con. Shall I pencil you in?”

“You have the money with you?”

“Half the money, like I said. Got it right here.” She tapped her trouser pocket. “I never keep money in my bag.”

“Very wise.”

“I know,” she said. She smiled.

I smiled back. “I might be available on Monday.”

“Good.”

“Sure. I think I might be.” I called the waiter over and ordered a brandy. “But I’d like to know why you chose me.”

She shrugged. “Spur of the moment. I saw you in the pub and thought you looked like the right kind of guy for the job.”

“What kind of guy is that?”

“Guy like you. You see, what we’re looking for are people who are convincing, imaginative, talented-and reliable.”

“You could tell all that from looking at me in the pub?”

She picked up the bill, glanced at it, put it back in its saucer and laid her credit card on top of it. “I’ve watched you working,” she said. “You’re a good actor. The way you smile at them.”

I felt like someone had slapped my face.

I DID THEMonday gig. Annabelle gave me a basic script-more of an outline, really-around which I improvised. That’s what it’s called, in acting, when you make stuff up: improvisation. Elsewhere, it’s just called making stuff up.

The whole thing took maybe two hours. I met Annabelle at a cafe around the corner from the studio, she took me in through a back way, and a makeup woman dusted my face with powder and gave me a shirt to wear. My own shirt wasn’t in character. The shirt she gave me was pink and had sweat stains under the arms, though it smelled fresh enough.

I was the first performer (or “guest,” as they say) on the show. I sat on a tubular steel chair and told Libby Priest my sad story. Once or twice she asked a question which I might have known the answer to, but didn’t, so when that happened I just cried and said I didn’t want to go there. The sad story had a happy ending (“I’ve learned to accept myself for who I am, and to be my own best friend”), which pleased everyone. The audience offered me various pieces of advice, all of them flatulent. I didn’t see anything of Libby Priest before or after my performance, which suited me. I don’t care for artificial women.

My work was clearly judged a success, as Annabelle sourced me for several other roles over the next couple of months. I appeared, under various guises, not only on Libby’s Place but also on a spin-off program named Libby’s Out, in which the studio audience ruled the set in Libby’s absence (a far superior format, in my view).

I wore spectacles of various types, and disposable coloured contact lenses during all my performances. Sometimes the makeup woman, or some other functionary, would ask me to take them off, saying they weren’t in character, but I always refused. I am no more immune to vanity than anyone else in showbusiness, but I’m not stupid. When you slap a woman’s face and take her handbag she will remember your eyes, if nothing else. She may be wrong about your height, build, beard, or clothing-and casual witnesses, bystanders, will be even less accurate-but she will remember the eyes, for sure. And the smile, of course.