Dan Wakefield - Selling Out - A Novel

“Perry Moss, this is Donn Gunn!” Archer announced, as if to a cheering crowd.

“Glad to meet you!” said Perry, trying to match Archer’s enthusiastic demeanor.

The blank gray eyes of the man called Gunn seemed to roll away from Perry’s gaze, and he made a sound without moving his lips, a kind of half gurgle, half grunt.

Perry wondered who the hell the guy was, and what in the world he was going to do on the show. Maybe he was some kind of stuntman. He could have passed for a walking special effect all in himself. Well, whatever, Archer seemed to want to impress the guy, and Perry wanted to live up to his new role as producer with full flair.

“Welcome aboard!” he said, and the man made his grunt again, then turned and went back to arrange himself in the corner.

“Donn here is practically a legend in the Industry,” Archer said. “Been with some of the best shows of their kind—from ‘Badge 465’ to ‘Krako, Special Investigator.’”

My God, maybe he was the cop! The actor who the network wanted to play the role of Jack’s cop father! But surely not. Surely they could get at least a charming cop, an Irish cop with a lilting brogue instead of a Neanderthal with a grunt! Jesus, with this guy playing the part they’d even have the policemen’s unions down on them, protesting the portrayal of decent men in blue!

He must be some sort of stuntman after all. Or maybe he was an ex-con who served as a technical advisor for TV cop shows in marten relating to theft, extortion, murder, and general mayhem.

“Well, I’m delighted to have someone of your experience,” Perry said cautiously.

“Beautiful!” Archer exclaimed. “That’s exactly the attitude I expected you to bring to this.”

Like a proud teacher showing off his best student Archer turned to Gunn and said, “Didn’t I tell you what Perry’s reaction would be? He’s a team player, all the way.”

Gunn shrugged and belched.

“Long’s he knows who’s the boss,” he mumbled.

Boss?

“Excuse me,” Perry said with a forced smile, “but I’m afraid—not being a veteran in the business—I really don’t know what it is, exactly, you do.”

“I do it all,” grumbled Gunn. “That’s the only way it gets done.”

“Perry, you must have been daydreaming,” Archer said with a nervous laugh. “When you walked in the room, I said I wanted to introduce the producer .”

“I heard you,” Perry said impatiently.

“Well—if I have to repeat myself—he’s your producer.”

“I don’t get it. I thought you meant he had to meet me . I’m the producer. I just signed papers that said so.”

“Of course you are!” Archer assured him.

Perry stood up, felt his head beginning to ache, the room starting to tilt.

“If I’m the producer, how can he be the producer?”

Archer came and clapped a hand on Perry’s shoulder.

“ Amigo , he’s the executive producer.”

Gunn hefted himself to his feet, and said, looking past Perry, “Like the man said, I’m the boss.” Then he lumbered out of the room.

“You’re kidding,” said Perry.

“You’re going to learn things from Donn that it would otherwise take you years to learn,” Archer said. “He’s the best. We were lucky to get him.”

“I thought this was my show.”

“Of course it is. You want it to succeed, don’t you? Donn Gunn’s the man to make it happen.”

“Holy God.”

“You’re a writer-producer. You’ll learn from him. He can carry the burden. You can make it sing.”

Perry opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

Sing, hell. He couldn’t even speak.

Perry was going to hang tough. He was not going to let Archer Mellis, or Max Bloorman, or even that incredible hulk who was now his immediate boss, Donn Gunn, keep him from the sole purpose of making his show a hit. That was his only concern.

“Keep your eye upon the doughnut, and not upon the hole,” he recalled from the wisdom of his childhood. Right.

For the role of the cop who was Jack’s father they cast a terrific, magnetic actor named Shaun Farragan, the charming type with the Irish brogue who Perry himself had hoped for in that awful moment when he imagined Donn Gunn was going to play the part.

Shaun Farragan was perfect as Dan, the likable cop father proud of his teacher-son, Jack, and his daughter-in-law, Laurie, and pleased as punch to be able to move right in with them.

Shaun, in fact, was so good that when the network tested the audience reaction of the first episode he played in at Preview House, Lou Simmell called up to report enthusiastically that he tested higher than any other actor on the show!

“We want him in every scene,” she happily told Perry.

“In every scene? That doesn’t make sense!”

“It does if we want good numbers,” she said.

“I mean, in terms of the story. It won’t be about a young married couple any more. It will be a show about a cop. Is that what you want—another cop show?”

“We want a show we can keep on the air,” Lou Simmell said.

So “The First Year’s the Hardest” became a cop show.

All right, goddam it, it would be the best cop show that TV ever saw, the best one, anyway, that Perry Moss could make it.

He wrote the first script that was built around Dan himself. He even wrote a car chase. Hal Hagedorn, who had done this kind of thing many times before, helped show him how to do it. He gave it proudly to Donn Gunn, who probably didn’t believe he could do it. He not only did it, he gave him the best cop show that was in him.

“This scene where he catches the kid who robbed the laundry?” Gunn said.

“Yes?”

It was one Perry was specially proud of—tough but poignant.

“This sucks,” said Gunn.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Any good cop would kick this kid’s ass about now.”

“This cop is our hero—he’s a decent cop.”

“He’s a bleeding heart if he doesn’t cuff this hood around a little here.”

“You don’t know your ass from your elbow.”

“I know I’m the boss ground here. You know what you are?”

“Yes, I know exactly. I’m the writer-producer on this show, and I’m also the creator.”

Gunn belched.

“That’s a lot of horse hockey. What you are is, you’re a serf. You work for me. You do whatever I say, whether you like it or not. I say write tough, you write tough. I say the cop kicks ass, you write he kicks ass.”

Perry went straight to Archer Mellis.

“I’m afraid Donn Gunn is the boss,” Archer said.

“I am not going to write stupid violence, especially when it makes our hero look like a jerk.”

“I was hoping you could learn from Donn Gunn.”

“He’s a slimy sonofabitch. He’s the dregs.”

“He’s your executive producer. That’s the bottom line.”

“Fuck you, Mellis. That’s the bottom line.”

“I think you’ll be happier in the classroom, when all’s said and done.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Well, I’m not running back to Vermont. I’m leaving this lousy show, and this lousy studio, and now I’m free to do some quality kind of stuff out here—the kind of stuff you promised instead of this junk!”

Archer stifled a yawn.

“Lots of luck, amigo .”

The Christmas trees on Hollywood Boulevard were blond. Kind of a peroxide color.

Perry smiled, shaking his head in wonder and appreciation. The amazing thing about this crazy, fabulous place was that you couldn’t honestly satirize it, even in your imagination, because before you did, it always beat you to the punch, coming up with something so flagrant that it parodied itself far more effectively than any outsider could manage to do.