Around the table, total silence. Dick shook his head. “You can’t call God a schmuck, Roman. You know me, I generally don’t give a shit. But that, even I can’t abide.”
“We’re not the ones saying it, a character is.”
“It won’t fly. No one is okay with it. It’s just … anti-American.”
“Anti-American! Having a laugh at God is anti-American?”
No one reacted. I was stupefied. Matt, a tall man with a deep voice, added, “It’s a small phrase. It doesn’t have an impact on the story.” Everyone nodded and Dick added, “Right, a small, blaspheming phrase.”
I went on, indignant, “You, Dick? Nagging me about blasphemy? You can’t say two words without cussing!”
Dick pressed his lips together, no doubt keeping some choice words to himself at that very moment. Ann was facing me, her back straight, looking at me as if to say, They’re right. The series is explosive enough. They’ll never be able to accuse us of deference. Just let it go.…
“Blasphemy hasn’t been a crime in this country since 1971! We’ve got the Constitution on our side, for crying out loud!”
Josh grabbed a pen and drew a line over the phrase in his copy. He stood up, avoided my eyes, and spoke to the room as if I’d already left, “Good, we’re all agreed, then. We’re filming the scene tomorrow without the phrase, okay?”
All agreed. “Wait!” I protested. Josh looked sorry now, sincerely sorry. Who was behind this censorial operation? The board? The shareholders? And no one thought to inform me about it before now? Finally, I found my words, rage filling me, “Today, it’s just one phrase. And tomorrow, what will it be? What are we going to be shooting for our fifth season? The Waltons?”
Josh rubbed his hand in his hair. “We’re wasting our time, Roman. How many of us around the table? Eight? So it’s seven against one.”
“I’m the writer!”
I glanced over at Ann, and she put on a brave smile. My heart tightened. Josh continued, “Please, Roman, in the future, let’s try to avoid easy formulas and simple phrasing, okay? I’m sure you can find something better to write. In fact, I can’t see how it affects the scene. Really.”
Avoid easy formulas?
If I was being honest, I’d have admitted that Josh was right on this one. The phrase certainly wasn’t the best one I’d written in my career. But considering the circumstances ... not saying anything? Because that was the whole point of this improvised — though not so much when I came to think about it — intervention: to shut me up. Ann watched me, imploring me with her eyes to not say anything. She knew how angry I could be, knew that the simple idea of being muzzled sent me back to my childhood, which I didn’t like to talk about and which she didn’t entirely understand. A childhood made of bitter and unpleasant memories, like a dish you hated as a kid and promised yourself never to eat again when you grew up. I’d spent my entire life fighting for a way to express myself, with total freedom, without concessions or constraints, and I wouldn’t, at my age, fifty years old for crying out loud, let myself be told, you can’t say that! Especially just because a gang of fanatics might feel offended.
“Shit, guys!”
I glared through the window, still annoyed. I’d left the windows without drapes on purpose, so I’d never miss a moment of the view — though there wasn’t much to see this morning. I’d been so hostile to them, as if they’d let me down.
They said yes to you for humanitarian reasons.
What idiots, those ABC suits. The way they had of avoiding your eyes, those big network types, incapable of looking at you square and telling you they don’t like what you’ve written. Searching for ready-made formulas as if clutching a handrail. “We regret to inform you we can’t purchase your script.… Doesn’t correspond to the mandate we’ve chosen.…” Their sorry smiles, fixed in scornful pity. Their empty, hurried words, assuring you of an admiration they don’t feel. Almost twenty years of constant refusal.
I smiled. All of it was over. Now I was working with Josh and It’s All Comedy!, a young, specialty outfit, audacious and visionary (it would produce Jungle and My Way, two of the most popular cable shows of the 2000s). They might not have paid as much as the big networks, though I had received four percent in capital actions in addition to the rights and the seventy thousand per episode, including episodes I didn’t write myself but supervised. No, I wasn’t suffering horrible deprivation.…
So, did you make it, then?
I heard Ann upstairs, drying her hair. My watch showed seven-ten. Staff was scheduled to meet at the La Brea studio at eight-thirty. With traffic, it would be a good hour to get there, perhaps more. You could never really tell in this city. A city built for cars, an automotive paradise — though more often than not it was automotive hell. Before going to bed I’d promised Ann: yes, I’d join the majority and accept the amputation of Trevor’s dialogue — Trevor, the young actor who played Dylan Paradise, Gad’s son. Yes, I’d make sure Trevor heard nothing of the previous night’s discussion. I’d put my arm around his shoulder and take him away from the group, two men speaking, two men with important things to take care of, and I’d tell him something like, “You see, Trevor, I’ve reconsidered.… The phrase isn’t exactly the find of the century.… What if instead you answered Gad with a simple: ‘Right …’ you know, with a devilish smile, a gangster’s smile.” And I’d wink at him, maybe give him a slap on the back, friendly, complicit, and Matt and Dick would silently thank me, you can always count on Roman. And it was true, you could always count on me. The actors knew it as well — if there were black eyes to be handed out, I was always first in line. It was my problem. Not theirs.
Ann appeared at my door, car keys in hand. Seven-forty, we were already late. Giving me a surprised look, as if I hadn’t been the one waiting, she exclaimed “You’re not ready? You know Dick, he’s going to kill us.”
I thought about the word Dick had chosen the night before: anti-American. Like others had said sacrilegious in a different time. Or antichrist. Or heretic. A loaded word, calling forth pyres and excommunications. Using the Flag, the Cross, to reduce you to silence. A warning: You’re anti-American … your scripts are anti-American.… Be careful.…
As if I wasn’t American myself. What more did they want from me? What did I still have to prove? I, Romain Carrier, a.k.a. Roman Carr, arrived in 1962, naturalized in 1979 under President Carter, a few years before, “Born in the USA,” an anti-Vietnam song I’d come to hate for the way it had been used by Republicans, misinterpreted, becoming a patriotic hymn for aggressive beer-guzzlers, reminding you that if you weren’t born here you weren’t really American.
“Ready, Romain?”
Romain. The name my parents had given me and that Ann insisted on using. Her sexy way of saying it, the oh-so-slightly exaggerated uvular trill, almost a caress against my skin when she was in a flirtatious mood. She took my buckskin coat off the chair and handed it to me. “Please hurry, okay?” On my work table, the photocopy that Josh’s assistant had handed out, the offending sentence crossed out in blue ink. She glanced at it with concern. Then she smiled and the phone rang. She made a small gesture telling me she’d wait in the car.
God, I loved her.
2
“He really told you that? I mean he actually said it was her ‘dying wish’?”
In the Pathfinder, Ann examined my face anxiously. “Oh, Romain, it just gives me the creeps. What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
I was confused, didn’t know whether I should be angry or rattled or both. The man on the phone, so distraught it was hard to understand what he was saying at first. “Who?” I asked, impatient. “Jack … Jack Holmes.… In Montreal.” “Listen, I’m in