Chapter 5
Jody wasn’t sure what media consultants did exactly, but one of the production assistants for the show had called a couple of days ago and told her to be at the Lester and Loew offices at ten A.M. on Thursday.
The place was located in an office on top of a camera store on Wilshire Boulevard. The L&L logo was etched on the door in a sort of gold leaf and was done up in a typeface that looked as if one of the Ls were going to take flight at any moment.
She opened the door and started up the stairs to the second floor. When she was halfway up she heard two men talking. There was something familiar about their voices, but she couldn’t quite place them.
And then the two men appeared at the top of the stairs and it all came together for her. The man on the left was tall and thin and still quite handsome. If she remembered right, his name was Robert Carroll and he had been the host of the television show Funniest Moments Caught on Tape, which had been a big hit in the mid-1990s but had been off the air the last two years. The other man was shorter, blond and quite muscular. He’d grown out his hair, but even without his trademark crew cut, she recognized him as Gil Belfontaine, who’d had his own syndicated exercise show for years, but who had recently been eclipsed by the next wave of younger, better-trained, better-looking, and more knowledgeable television fitness hosts.
“I don’t know,” Carroll was saying. “Coming out is a big step. It might kill any chance they have to sell Funniest Moments in syndication.”
“You can’t think like that,” said Belfontaine. “Nobody cares about that anymore. It’s actually cool to be gay these days. They’ll still be able to sell the show to all the regular markets… and once you’re out they can sell it to the new gay channels, too. Who knows, you could even audition for a job on one of their new shows.”
Carroll seemed to consider this, nodding slightly.
Jody stopped on the stairs, moving over to the right to let them pass. They both nodded a polite hello to her, but continued on with their conversation as if she weren’t even there.
“And for me,” Belfontaine said, “it would be so liberating not to have to pose with all these women and pretend that I like it.” He shook his head, as if thinking of the possibilities. “I just know we’d really make some news if we came out.”
“I’ll think about it,” Carroll said, opening the door at the bottom of the stairs.
“That’s my man,” she heard Belfontaine say just as the door closed behind them.
What the hell am I getting myself into? Jody wondered.
She reached the top of the stairs and found herself standing in front of a huge lime-green desk, staffed by a very young raven-haired man with a stylish five o’clock shadow, and wearing a silky blue and teal short-sleeved shirt over his rather buffed frame. At first Jody thought he was talking to himself, but soon realized that he was actually having a lively conversation with a friend through his sleek black headset.
“Oh, just a second, hon,” he said, then looked up at Jody. “And you are?”
“Jody Watts, I’m here for—”
“Have a seat. Matilda will be with you in just one sec, okay?”
Before Jody could respond, he was back talking on the phone. She sat down and tried not to listen to his conversation, but couldn’t help it, especially since the man didn’t seem to mind her hearing him talk about someone’s new implants.
“They didn’t really squeak when you rubbed them…” A pause. “You mean like a balloon?”
Thankfully the door of one of the offices opened just then and an attractive middle-aged woman in a tailored gray business suit stepped into the reception area.
Jody hadn’t noticed at first, but the young man behind the desk had stopped talking the moment the door had opened, as if he had some sort of radar that told him his boss was in the area.
“You must be Jody,” she said.
“Are you Miss Lester?”
“She’s off today, I’m Matilda Loew and I’ve been assigned the job of prepping you.”
“Prepping me?”
“Come into my office and I’ll explain.”
She followed the woman back to her office and as she did the young man opened and closed his hand and mouthed the word “Bye.”
Jody waved to him.
“Have a seat,” the woman, Matilda Lowe, said when Jody entered her office.
Jody sat down in the big leather chair that faced the woman’s desk.
She went around the back of her desk and without sitting down opened up a blue file folder and began studying it. “You’re the farm girl, right?”
“My name happens to be Jody, not ‘the farm girl.’ But I did grow up on a farm, if that’s what you mean.”
The woman smiled, but it was a fake, forced smile, as if she knew how to make it look as if she were smiling without ever having experienced joy or happiness in her life. “Those are nice highlights in your hair. Where’d you get them done?”
“Uh, they’re natural, I guess.”
She looked at Jody a long time, as if studying her.
Jody took the time to study the woman, as well. At first she’d thought she was somewhere in her early forties, but now in the different light, Jody realized she was probably closer to fifty, maybe even over the half-century hump. Her face was caked with makeup and the skin seemed unnaturally taut, as if it had been nipped and tucked a few too many times.
“Have you ever considered pigtails?” she asked.
“Uh, no.”
“A ponytail?”
Jody ran a few fingers through her shoulder-length hair. “Not since I was twelve.”
She paused a moment, and pretended to make a notation in Jody’s file. “Have you ever been on television before?”
“Well, once when I was sixteen I went to an Iowa football game and me and a friend ended up on camera for about five seconds. Everybody in town saw it, even wrote it up in the local paper.”
“What a charming anecdote. You should use it every chance you get.”
“Use it? For what?”
Several creases appeared on the woman’s forehead and for a moment her eyes grew dark, like the double barrels of a shotgun. “Didn’t anyone explain to you why you’re here?”
“Not really. They just told me you were a media consultant, whatever that is, and that I had to make an appointment.”
She smiled again, this time causing crow’s-feet to form at the corners of her eyes. “Well, in a nutshell, we reinvent people here. Someone needs a career change they come to us for advice and direction. A news anchor needs a new look to sharpen his image, we design it for him. Some actress slips up and talks about how she’s actually someone from another dimension, we come up with a spin that minimizes the damage… that sort of thing.”
Jody was confused. “But I thought I got this job because the Gowan brothers liked me for who I am.”
“Of course you did, and of course they do, but there’s always some room for improvement. Besides, the network has a lot of money invested in the show and they have a say on what goes out on their airwaves. Basically they just want you to be a little more media savvy in the days leading up to and after the show.”
“For what?”
“Well, television and print interviews for one. The network media relations manager already has a dozen interviews lined up for all the contestants… and the winner—whoever that might be—has been booked on Oprah and 20/20 and a couple other shows like a reality television winners episode of The Weakest Link.”
“Wow!”
“So, it’s my job to help you get prepared for all that.”
Jody really couldn’t picture herself on any of those shows, but she nevertheless felt herself starting to dream. Oprah and 20/20. You are The Weakest Link. “Okay, what do I need to know?”
The woman smiled yet again, and this one was the phoniest of them all. Her cheeks were pulled way back exposing two rows of perfectly white teeth, the kind Jody had only ever seen in toothpaste commercials.
“Well, first of all—”
Jody paid close attention, readying herself for an inside scoop, an industry secret.
“—and probably the most important thing to remember is to always be yourself.”
What?
That was it?
Jody wondered how much this woman was charging the network per hour just to tell people to be themselves. Whatever it was, it was way too much.
“Okay,” Jody said slowly. “Seems easy enough.”
“Second, and equally important, is to never tell a reporter a lie.”
Jody did her best not to laugh.
Here was a fifty-, maybe sixty-year-old woman who’d had twenty years surgically removed from her face, who was wearing a pound of makeup, extensions in her hair, false eyelashes, fake nails, and was flashing teeth that were as white and perfect as her dentist could make them, telling Jody to be herself and to never tell a lie.
And she was able to do it all while giving the impression she was being sincere.
Apparently there was a lot Jody didn’t know about the entertainment business.
And somehow she was glad for it.