Well, woo-freakin’hoo! That huge sigh of relief you hear blowing in from the west is the sound of Hollywood exhaling its collective breath and letting out a Bronx cheer. After weeks of a nightmare we thought would never end, there’s finally a light at the end of the tunnel.
I’m not talking about the writer’s strike, which is slogging into its third month. With the deal that allowed David Letterman, his WGA writers and his Worldwide Pants back on the air, that’s effectively over; as Warner Wolf says, if you had the Writers Guild of America and 21 points — you lost!
It’s just a matter of time now. The writers had hoped for a quick knockout, but we were so dumb we negotiated like it was 1988 — surely, we thought, Sherry Lansing would come to her senses and soon enough we’d all be having lunch at Le Dome again, calling each other sweetie and darling and rushing out to buy new homes on the strength of one of her turn-downs. What we forgot was that it’s 2008, Sherry’s in charity work, nice doesn’t either pay or play, and Les Moonves couldn’t care less about what happens to us as long as he can watch his wife, Julie Chen, on his own personal television network.
No, I’m talking about something almost as important as making the balloon payment next week on my house in Elysian Park that’s lost twenty percent of its value in the past six months: Barack Obama won the Iowa caucuses last night, and Hillary Clinton finished third, behind the ambulance chaser. Maybe there is a God.
You’re probably saying to yourself, “Yo, Dave, I thought you crazy Left Coasters were in bed with the Clintons. What about all that talk after BJ left office, about how he was going to take over one of the studios, or become a big indie producer, and pal around with his buddies in Aspen while awaiting the Clinton Restoration in ‘08, which would get the old ball and chain out of the ski chalet and let Billy and his buddies play?”
As I’ve been trying to explain to you since I started this column, everything we do in Hollywood is designed to fool the suckers, er, the esteemed paying public. You think we’re a bunch of hedonists, who lurch from Paris Hilton’s boudoir to the coke seller’s pad and then to the Ivy on Robertson, but the truth is, aside from non-stars like Paris and Lindsay and Britney, the rest of us work hard, don’t drink, don’t smoke, and go home to our wives every night. It’s almost like we’re a bunch of Mormons or something. But not by choice…
Bill Clinton is a walking multiple sexual-harassment lawsuit that would make Jon Peters’s current troubles look like a summer afternoon on Carbon Beach in Malibu. I have a better chance of winning an Oscar next year for my rewrite of Transformers 2 than Bill does of getting a job anywhere near nubility.
In other words: We hate Bill Clinton. Because it’s guys like him who ruined all the fun for the rest of us. And have turned us into the soulless, no-fun losers we are.
But what really cheesed us off was the noblesse oblige these two grifters out of Huckleberry Finn radiated whenever they’d deign to blow into town. While Duke Billy would slink off for some fun with Ron Burkle, we’d be stuck listening to Dauphin Hillary drone on in that god-awful flat midwestern accent of hers, one hand on the mic and the other in our pockets, shaking us down like we were some kind of foregone conclusion.
Obama, on the other hand, is our kind of guy. As Joe Biden noted, he’s clean and articulate, he’s sort of black and he’s sort of Muslim, he‘s sort of white and he‘s sort of Christian and he’s sort of done drugs. He’s a walking, talking diversity seminar and while top agents and executives certainly wouldn’t want him or his family living next door to them in Brentwood — the Obamas would get so tired of people calling the cops whenever they saw Michelle doing anything other than washing the dishes, thus proving she was not the maid, that they just wouldn’t feel comfortable here — he’s more than welcome to become the next president of the United States.
Hey, we’re liberals!
As for the other party, who cares? Huckabee showed up in Burbank the day before the caucus, crossed the WGA picket lines and sauntered onto Leno’s set without so much as a by-your-leave from our negotiating committee. And then he went out and beat the Mormon like a drum.
Like I said, we lost. But so did Hillary. And one out of two ain’t bad.
Absent inevitability, her fund-raising prowess might be a thing a past. It’ll be like that scene in the original Star Trek, where the “angel” that’s been corrupting the kids — cast to perfect type with Melvin Belli, the original celebrity lawyer, as the monster — starts to melt and suddenly the misled children can all see what a evil beast they’ve been unwittingly following.
Or better yet, like the Wicked Witch of the West, Margaret Hamilton, melting down at the end of The Wizard of Oz. Oh what a world, what a world!
Of course, I’ve written and seen too many vampire movies to think this is really Fade to Black. And, in any case, there’s a sequel coming right up: The New Hampshire Primary: This Time, It’s Personal.
By DAVID KAHANE
Well, woo-freakin’hoo! That huge sigh of relief you hear blowing in from the west is the sound of Hollywood exhaling its collective breath and letting out a Bronx cheer. After weeks of a nightmare we thought would never end, there’s finally a light at the end of the tunnel.
I’m not talking about the writer’s strike, which is slogging into its third month. With the deal that allowed David Letterman, his WGA writers and his Worldwide Pants back on the air, that’s effectively over; as Warner Wolf says, if you had the Writers Guild of America and three touchdowns — you lost!
It’s just a matter of time now. The writers had hoped for a quick knockout, but we were so dumb we negotiated like it was 1988 — surely, we thought, Sherry Lansing would come to her senses and soon enough we’d all be having lunch at Le Dome again, calling each other sweetie and darling and rushing out to buy new homes on the strength of one of her turn-downs. What we forgot was that it’s 2008, Sherry’s in charity work now, nice doesn’t either pay or play, and Les Moonves couldn’t care less about what happens to us as long as he can watch his wife, Julie Chen, on his own personal television network.
No, I’m talking about something almost as important as making the balloon payment next week on my house in Elysian Park that’s lost twenty percent of its value in the past six months: Barack Obama won the Iowa caucuses last night, and Hillary Clinton finished third, behind the ambulance chaser. Maybe there is a God.
You’re probably saying to yourself, “Yo, Dave, I thought you crazy Left Coasters were in bed with the Clintons. What about all that talk after BJ left office, about how he was going to take over one of the studios, or become a big indie producer, and pal around with his buddies in Aspen while awaiting the Clinton Restoration in ‘08, which would get the old ball and chain out of the ski chalet and let Billy and his buddies play?”
As I’ve been trying to explain to you since I started this column, everything we do in Hollywood is designed to fool the suckers, er, the esteemed paying public. You think we’re a bunch of hedonists, who lurch from Paris Hilton’s boudoir to the coke seller’s pad and then to the Ivy on Robertson, but the truth is, aside from non-stars like Paris and Lindsay and Britney, the rest of us work hard, don’t drink, don’t smoke and go home to our wives every night. It’s almost like we’re a bunch of Mormons or something. But not by choice…
Bill Clinton is a walking multiple sexual-harassment lawsuit that would make Jon Peters’s current troubles look like a summer afternoon on Carbon Beach in Malibu. I have a better chance of winning an Oscar next year for my rewrite of Transformers 2: This Time It’s Personal than Bill does of getting a job anywhere near nubility.
In other words: We hate Bill Clinton. Because it’s guys like him who ruined all the fun for the rest of us. And have turned us into the soulless, no-fun losers we are.
But what really cheesed us off was the noblesse oblige these two grifters out of Huckleberry Finn radiated whenever they’d deign to blow into town. While Duke Billy would slink off for some fun with Ron Burkle, we’d be stuck listening to Dauphin Hillary drone on in that god-awful flat Midwestern accent of hers, one hand on the mic and the other in our pockets, shaking us down like we were some kind of foregone conclusion.
Obama, on the other hand, is our kind of guy. As Joe Biden noted, he’s clean and articulate, he’s sort of black and he’s sort of Muslim, he‘s sort of white and he‘s sort of Christian. He’s a walking, talking diversity seminar and while we certainly wouldn’t want him or his family living next door to us in Brentwood — the Obamas would get so tired of people calling the cops whenever they saw Michelle doing anything other than washing the dishes, thus proving she was not the maid, that they just wouldn’t feel comfortable here — he’s more than welcome to become the next President of the United States.
Hey, that’s the kind of folks we are out here. We’re liberals!
As for the other party, who cares? Huckabee showed up in Burbank the day before the caucus, crossed the WGA picket lines and sauntered onto Leno’s set without so much as a by-your-leave from our negotiating committee. And then he went out and beat the Mormon like a drum.
Like I said, we lost. But so did Hillary. And one out of two ain’t bad.
Absent inevitability, her fund-raising prowess might be a thing a past. It’ll be like that scene in the original Star Trek, where the “angel” that’s been corrupting the kids — cast to perfect type with Melvin Belli, the original celebrity lawyer, as the monster– suddenly starts to melt and suddenly they can all see what a evil beast they’ve been unwittingly following. Or better yet, like Margaret Hamilton melting at the end of The Wizard of Oz. Oh what a world, what a world!
Of course, I’ve written and seen too many vampire movies to think this is really Fade to Black. But they don’t call Hollywood the Dream Factory for nothing.
— David Kahane is a nom de cyber for a writer in Hollywood. “David Kahane” is borrowed from a screenwriter character in The Player.