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CounterPunch
November
2, 2002
Concerned Citizen:
Episode 6.
Talk Show Host
by ANTHONY GANCARSKI
SCRIPT AND SUMMATIVE COMMENTS [0:30 COLOR]
[Opens with standard procession of sedans,
gleaming, tailfinned, gliding over federally-funded blacktop.
Then the obligatory shots of people having evenings out; Caucasians
conversing in bistros with unsullied white tablecloths and deferential
brown waitpeople. The opening theme, the jazz-fusion "Horehound's
Groove", chikka-chikkaing mid-tempo and mid-range. But the
familiar deadpan voice of TV's Brock Horehound does not make
its gravelly intonations. At least not until the music stops.
Then the screen is black, and his words begin.]
Horehound: Good
evening. This is Grant Cameron, one of the principal players
in Concerned Citizen.
[Here Cameron sits, alone on a director's
chair in front of a sea of blackness, uncharacteristically dressed
in a white suit, white shirt, and red necktie. One can imagine
a nation gasping in shock at the abrupt about-face of this faded
television icon.]
Horehound: Most
of you know me as Brock Horehound. Or at least up until tonight,
you did.
[Various sources have reported that Cameron
received complete creative control of the type necessary for
a grandstand play of this sort because of a "relationship"
with the network representative who inked his deal. I fail to
see how it serves anyone well to traffic in innuendo, however.]
Horehound: This...
[And here he's teasing "is the city",
but doesn't deliver. Instead, he smirks, pauses on a blue note
of dead air. Here he is Miles turning his back on the palpitating
throng before a solo. He is every showman who has transmogrified
into performance, only to find the myth chafing. He becomes here
a star, in ways it's impossible for those of us who have never
been stars to understand.]
Horehound: Is
the final episode of Concerned Citizen. This episode did not
meet with the approval of the LA Police Department, and is only
being aired because of legal machinations on my part.
[Cameron's face has descended into its
trademark shakedown impassiveness, which certainly belie the
feelings he has for the end of this project. To be a fallen star
is akin to being a defrocked priest, a deflowered virgin, or
any other person who lived for his identity and died as it was
stripped from him.
And do I have to tell you how and why
I speak of this from experience? Do I have to tell you how it
feels to be rejected without even the courtesy of a phone call?
Must I go into detail about the awful sounds of generic postcards
and form notes being slid into sullen mailboxes, as seasons morph
into one another and I waste my degree telemarketing, shelving
books, molding fresh shit into table centerpieces?]
Horehound: And so it goes. I
work within the law. I take the law and make it my own. And for
one last night, this half-hour is mine. And with that in mind,
enjoy the final episode of Concerned Citizen.
[Opens with standard procession of sedans,
gleaming, tailfinned, gliding over federally-funded blacktop.
Then the obligatory shots of people having evenings out; Caucasians
conversing in bistros with unsullied white tablecloths and deferential
brown waitpeople. The opening theme, the jazz-fusion "Horehound's
Groove", chikka-chikkaing mid-tempo and mid-range as the
familiar deadpan voice of TV's Brock Horehound intones gravelly,
secure in his poses as omniscient oracular figure, director,
and producer of the series.]
Horehound: This
is the city. This is Los Angeles, California.
[Here we get shots that invert the placid
facades typical of the Civic Booster openings Cameron favored
during the show's run. A harried mother yanking a squalling toddler
down the street by her hair. A businessman pouring exhausted
coffee into a houseplant's soil. There is no joy in the faces
of these individuals.]
Horehound: This is the city in
which millions up people live bunched up in tight cornrows of
resentment.
[A lingering close shot of the houseplant
absorbing toxins.]
Horehound: This
is the city which has spent me like a blackened match. This is
the city which courts itself and consumes itself in despair,
in solitude.
[Cars lined up back to front in traffic
queues, that snake at once treacherous and pivotal over a rain-slickened
thoroughfare. Empty grocery shelves. A bank of department store
televisions depicting a US soldier in Vietnam torching a thatched
hut. ]
Horehound: This is the city in
which I have loomed and labored in dark despair, in which I have
made myself into seething resentment.
[ Used car lots teeming with jalopies
and gimmicky flags drooping limp in a breezeless blue sky. Not
a still shot, but might as well be, given that even the most
casual viewer can imagine the small-time salesman desperation
that gives every object on that lot a black, black heart.]
Horehound: I worked here. I carried
a badge.
[A second, two seconds, of blackness
and the void it represents, just after the shot cuts back to
the hut, which has taken flame and ballooned into billowing clouds
of smoke.]
Horehound: Wednesday,
August 18th. It was miserably hot in Los Angeles, and those who
say that it's only a dry heat weren't checking the papers to
see the death tolls.
[Horehound applies a white handkerchief
to his brow, daubing off sweat as he gets out of his vehicle.]
Horehound: I
had one less reason to check the papers. I had been offered a
weekly talk show. Local television. I had a friend at the station
who felt I'd be a great choice for an issues-oriented program.
This was to be my first evening, and I was running late, so I
showered and dressed with alacrity.
[Horehound straightens his tie and puts
his jacket over his shoulder as he strides out of his apartment.
All of this seems to be one sleek, economical motion.]
Horehound: I
got into my 1966 Ford Fairlane, and drove across town to the
studio as fast as the traffic would allow. Despite my knowledge
of the Los Angeles roadways and a usually reliable sense of the
best way to circumvent gridlock at any given time, my progress
was slow at best, and I made it to the studio behind schedule.
[Despite the dialogic mention of the
traffic, Horehound's domestic sedan proceeds unimpeded, in the
spirit of the stock footage sedan shots from the previous five
episodes. And for once, I see the repetition for what it is.
An attempt to impose ritual and order on chaos, to frame, to
channel meaning from the randomness of sunshower raindrops.
The sedan makes its way into an NBC affiliate
parking lot, if the tawdry outsized peacock on the front of the
building is any indication. Horehound chats up a security guard
as he drives through the gate, then walks through a metal door
with the legend TALENT grafted to its surface. A shot of Horehound
traversing a corridor gives way to a pan-and-scan of a studio
audience, largely applauding in reaction to a sign flashing a
message that would compel such a reaction.
Yet there are pockets of resistance,
clusters of malingerers whose hands don't pitter-pat in appreciation
for face time on a public affairs program hosted by a played-out
cop. The grove of afroed heads up front on the left-hand side
of the room. Mad faced. Eyes shielded by sunglasses; black on
black on black, as if bolted into cyclical inversion.
Clusters of malingerers. Hippies toward
the back, bearing signs as if at a WWE wrestling event. Long
haired, Caucasoid, angst-ridden. You can tell. These will be
trouble.
And I was one of them once. I was in
league with them. But we weren't, or at least most of us weren't,
so vapid, so transparent. At least not most of us, not most of
the time.]
Offstage Voiceover: Ladies and gentleman, welcome to Concerned Citizen,
a program hosted by retired Los Angeles policeman Brock Horehound....
["Retired."]
Offstage Voiceover: In this new and exciting program, Mr. Horehound
will take a candid look at issues affecting the city of Los Angeles.
[Here we get a shot of Horehound's face,
caught in a grimace somewhere between nerves and a flat-out smile.
Certainly, the home viewer is encouraged to see this as triumph.
The Concerned Citizen gets a show of the same name, and isn't
the irony just hospital-corner tidy?]
Offstage Voiceover: So, without
further adieu, ladies and gentlemen....
[The applause, if it were a rain before,
has become a drizzle now. It is challenging to maintain emotional
reaction for a length of time sufficient to make one conscious
of it. At least, that's how it has been for me.
But this isn't about me. This isn't about
me calling in "markers" with former colleagues, with
erstwhile professors, with thesis sponsors and the like. This
isn't about me practically begging for a fair consideration.
This isn't about everyone hiring from within, or about everyone
wanting a minority, or everyone wanting someone with more "ability
to be a team player" and less, much less, of a checkered
past.]
Offstage Voiceover: Brock Horehound!
[The applause from the hired hands on
the metal risers picks up when they hear Horehound's name, and
doesn't appreciably cease even as he limps onto the stage, favoring
his left foot for some reason. He fidgets with index cards in
his left palm, and comes off here like nothing so much as a citizen,
as someone without a stake in maintaining order.
The applause channel is turned down on
the mixer after Horehound stands at an Oak lectern in the center
of the stage, concurrent with him beginning to speak into the
boom mike.]
Horehound: Thank you very much.
I'm pleased to be with you this evening, and hope that Concerned
Citizen manages to be both interesting and informative to home
and studio viewers alike.
[Note the delicious double entendre here,
at once post-modern and straightforward. The irony is, of course,
that only someone with the establishmentarian credentials that
Grant Cameron had could have gotten this episode to air in the
face of so many objections.]
Horehound: Before
we get started, I want to lay down some ground rules. First of
all, one person may talk at a time. You can talk after you step
up to the microphone, down front and center.
[Horehound gestures to a microphone stand
set up at the base of the aisle that bifurcates the two halves
of the bleachers. Meanwhile, a pan and scan indicates that the
hippies and the black power troupe are scowling to each other
in protest at being asked to follow Horehound's rules of order.
And here I must interject, for a moment.
While I am in league with those who choose to use protest to
make their opinions count vis a vis structures contemporaneous
with their existence (by any means necessary, you might say),
I must hasten to add that I do harbor certain quibbles. It's
important for principled protesters to understand that just because
someone has certain trappings of the establishment--like my degrees
and awards honoring my academic achievements--it doesn't mean
that person blessed with institutional credibility doesn't have
"street cred" or "street smarts" as well.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment of
my career, at least as it relates to my tenure in my most recent
institution, was my inability to fully reach out to the students
who needed it the most. The poetic malcontent, the fiery artist,
the agent of political change! These were the ones who should
have garnered the most knowledge and understanding from me, and
sometimes I wonder if my efforts were limited because of the
divide between "the kids" and "the man."
I know how people look at me now. My
temples, grayer by the day. My smile, once held as forthright,
even dangerous, now seen as the lecherous come-ons of an old
man.
Everyone told me I was foolish to move
east without a signed contract. Everyone. And they were right,
and now I have nothing; not those friends, not my old life, and
from the looks of things, no improving prospects.]
Horehound: Some
more behavioral things. Keep your language clean. Keep your voice
at a conversational level. Maintain a respectful tone. And one
more thing....
[A shot of one of the hippie girls, her
barefeet propped on the armrests of the unoccupied seat in front
of her. She reminds me of nothing so much as the women I lusted
after when still a boy, these full-breasted jobs who would sit
on any lap and share anyone's weed. I knew them, I lusted after
them, I rarely got farther with them than close enough to smell
them.]
Horehound: Keep your feet off
the furniture, sweetheart.
[The comedy bumper music as the camera
dots the audience and finds cells of laughter from among the
straight folks, whites and blacks in church clothes, suits and
dresses with frills and frippery.]
Horehound: All right, then, I'm
ready to take questions.
[Horehound's countenance is that of a
nervous Sunday father getting ready to play catch with his increasingly
distant son. The shot flashes, perhaps too quickly, to a Hispanic
standing at the microphone, his black eyes on level with the
top of the microphone.]
Hispanic: Hey,
ese. I applied for a job with the Police, but they say I can
no do the job. They refused me! Hey, ain't I good enough for
them, man? Or is it because I'm not light-skinned enough? Huh,
ese?
[The camera shifts to the black power
troupe, pumping their fists as if cheering their bets along a
track, as the figure in the center of the shot--the biggest one
with the biggest Afro--mouths the words "cracker racism".
This, sadly, is the kind of thing I was
talking about above. During my sorry tenure at [University Name
Withheld], I always found myself at loggerheads with students
who refused to use proper English in their writing.
I was reduced, and I'm ashamed to say
this, to teaching from a grammar book at times.]
Horehound: Well,
sir, the Los Angeles Police Department has very strict standards
for hiring and retention. In fact, only a handful of every thousand
applicants to the force is accepted.
[The camera shoots Horehound from below,
in an effort to make him appear taller. This was an occasional
cinematographic "signature" of Grant Cameron's work.]
Hispanic: Go
on.
[The anger has been drained from his
face, and he has assumed the "good minority" position
so favored by Cameron in his work.]
Horehound: Another
thing. Just looking at you, you're a couple of inches too short
for the position. How tall are you, sir?
[Now the Hispanic looks uncertain, broken
down by the abuse of hegemonic power.]
Hispanic: I am five foot, four
inches, and I'm all fire, ese. I can take care of myself!
[He balls up his fists, as if ready to
take on some imaginary foe. It is all Horehound can do not to
laugh in his face. Horehound clears his throat before responding,
as audience shots reveal amused faces.]
Horehound: I
have no doubt about your ability to take care of yourself, sir.
But the Los Angeles Police Department requires its officers to
be at least a few inches taller than your height. The idea is
that a taller man will be less required to take care of himself,
as you put it.
[And there are always requirements, unless
you know someone who's both in a position and inclined to help
you. A book, an ABD, an ability to use your tongue to turn shoe
leather into diamond and dry-erase boards into Moses' tablets.
If you don't meet the requirements, as folks are wont to say,
you might as well give it up. Give up what you care for the most,
and wait for years to turn to decades to turn to caskets and
fresh, soft earth.
The camera spotlights on audience members--the
L7s, of course--smiling and nodding at Horehound's ability to
mask commonly-held prejudices under the guise of legalities.
Imagine, if you will, watching the news with an addled loved
one. Imagine their reaction when patrol cops roust drug dealers
or small-time criminals from dilapidated shacks. The way their
eyes glaze over. The way they call it safety.
Then the camera focuses on the audience's
microphone stand. A tall man, with an austere crewcut counterpointed
by a full pushbroom mustache. He wears a black suit, black tie,
and a white shirt. A classic look, I would guess, if not for
the metal campaign buttons speckling his suit.]
Suit Wearer: Officer
Horehound! I would like to start off by telling you how efficacious
I believe this enterprise to be. The world needs more police
involvement, and police officers, and programs for, by, and about
the police.
[This line is delivered straight, in
terms of vocal intonations. Less straight is the speaker's physical
mannerisms. He consults his watch after every dependent clause,
creating an effect not dissimilar to Matthew Lesko on amphetamines.]
Horehound: That's certainly one
way of looking at it, sir. Do you have a more specific question?
[Horehound plays this deliberately deadpan.
A natural human reaction, really. I found myself that when confronted
with absurdity, I preferred to maintain decorum at all times.
The ability to maintain decorum is necessary for a fruitful outcome
to any endeavor.
Even one as pointless as this academic
exercise I'm involved in, which means nothing, nothing at all,
in terms of getting me hired. Not when my primary reference lost
his Department Chairmanship for "soliciting congress with
a student". Not when all I have worked for has melted like
a vinyl record left in the back window of a car on a summer's
day, and all I am left with is a lot of SASEs--because hiring
committees can't afford postage, anymore, not with all the rejection
letters they send out--and conjecture.
A black day in America when hoping is
tantamount to deepest folly.]
Suit Wearer: Yes,
indeed! I have a specific question about the gun laws here in
the City of Angels. To wit, I wanted to buy a gun with no delay
whatsoever, and yet I was thwarted in my aims by some... legalities.
[The Suit Wearer has begun to chew his
nails, almost coquettishly.]
Horehound: Sir,
if I may interject for one brief moment...
[The face of the Suit Wearer beams with
a beatific glow that few men can see. Perhaps those hardy souls
of the last millenium who licked brick walls until religious
visions appeared could relate to this, or maybe those Reaganites
who posited the validity of ketchup as a vegetable.]
Suit Wearer: Certainly! That's
what I'm here for!
[A shot of the hippies here is interesting,
as they are divided along gender lines. The women are smiling
here, perhaps at our Concerned Citizen, the straw that stirs
this drink, that stirs all drinks. The faces of the men are Amish-dour,
impassive walls that shed no light.]
Horehound: Sir,
laws delaying the purchase of guns exist to protect you. Now,
I'm not saying you're unreliable, but there are people out there
who are.
[Horehound is interrupted, the efficiency
of his would-be muscular monologue diffused.]
Suit Wearer: I... love a parade....
[His singing voice is an uncracked, professional-quality
baritone, of the sort that results from years of vocal training.]
Horehound: Look,
I appreciate the American vocal tradition as much as the next
guy, but here you're going to listen up, all right?
[The Suit Wearer nods and clams up as
a somber cast shadows his features.]
Suit Wearer: I'm
sorry, sir. Do go on.
[Horehound nods in his direction, confident
that the tomfoolery has ceased. As any experienced classroom
teacher can attest, however, those hopes are often misplaced.
Situations often arise that even the most battle-tested veteran
has a hard time diffusing, and I feel that one of the benefits
of my commentary on this script is my ability to provide insight
into these issues. In my opinion, my ability to provide cross-genre
insights is a boon to this project, and I can't help but be sure
that some Department will feel that way about this work.
Others may disagree. Others always disagree,
until history proves them wrong. Then they shed documents and
get on the appropriate bandwagons. Always.]
Horehound: The laws exist to
protect people from each other and, sometimes, from themselves.
[Horehound steps behind his lecturn and
leans down toward his partner in conversations. The effect is
that of a televisual grilling, a cathode lynching, of a little
man in a big desk exercising unwarranted authority.
The effect, to my eyes, is not an intentional
one.]
Suit Wearer: Yes!
Protection, that's what I'm interested in! You understand what
so many have not, Officer.
[The Suit Wearer has turned the world
on with his smile once more, directly after licking his finger
and holding it in front of his face, like a candle flickering
in a dark, drafty hall.]
Horehound: First
of all, son, I was a Sergeant. A highly-commended one, at that.
Secondly, I don't understand. Protection? What, pray tell, do
you need protection from?
[Horehound's voice has moved beyond the
"grilling" mode made famous by Cameron's Badge and
Gun series. He has affected the tones--strident, hoarse-voiced-
hectoring--of a drill instructor. In this final episode of a
summer replacement series, Grant Cameron has chosen to pay deliberate
homage to his 1957 film Parris Island Pantywaists, in which he
plays "the most hard-nosed DI in the Corps", as the
description on the back of the video box indicates.
Unsurprisingly, that was another vanity
project. He produced, he directed, he starred in his first and
last feature film. The studio refused the option on the next
film, as Parris Island Pantywaists failed to recoup even its
minimal production costs.
But we all have setbacks. Much of how
they end up being regarded is in how we, or whoever ends up writing
the history of events, frames them. Here Cameron made a conscious
choice to frame his own history. To bring his career full-circle,
answering one charge of failure with another.
The effect is dizzyingly autobiographical,
and yet again I find that grudging respect is indeed summoned
forth.]
Suit Wearer: I
need protection from only one thing. The satelittes.
[The Suit Wearer runs his hand over the
buttons on his lapel in a forlorn manner. The effect is jarring,
like that of a woman who just lost her keys giving herself pleasure
in the middle of a crowded parking lot.]
Horehound: The
satelittes. I'm not following you here.
[Horehound's expression is likewise jarringly
inappropriate, like that of an elderly person who assumes that
everyone with a foreign accent is hard of hearing.]
Suit Wearer: Don't be a silly
bird! They monitor me from on high! The buttons are to ward off
radiation, to block the fact that I know their secrets. Silly
bird!
[The Suit Wearer makes a flapping motion
of the sort that mascots at minor league baseball games are fond
of doing to engage the hayseeds in the audience.]
Horehound: I know your secret,
brother. You're pretty high and far out, aren't you? You don't
need a gun. You need psychiatric evaluation.
[Horehound gestures to his left and
stagehands appear almost instantly, to ward the Suit Wearer away
from the microphone. After the hands have done their job, Horehound
reaches into an interior pocket of his jacket for a handkerchief,
which he dabs against his forehead.]
Horehound: These
lights are killing me. Sorry... what is your question, sir?
[The camera pauses on the microphone
stand, which is now framed by a sea of black. The black of a
turtleneck, the black of a militant, the black on which so much
depends, so much that isn't light.]
Black Militant: Hey, honky cop!
What I want to know is why your people don't leave my people
alone, with your laws and your jive!
[This is the lead militant, the tall
one with the super-sized Afro bulging from his skull. A predictable
confrontation.]
Horehound: Could you restate
your question in the form of a question, please?
[Horehound smirks demonically here, and
there are scattered titters from the audience, unseen so far
in this sequence.
The studio audience is like the classroom,
in the sense that the vast majority of people in either place
are marks who equate random light flashing off of random metal
with their own well-being. Marks who believe looking at the pretty
colors, as it were, constitutes entertainment.
I am finding that a disturbingly similar
tendency exists with hiring committees currently. Despite evidence
overwhelmingly indicating that it is a "bad idea" to
phone Department Chairs, to ask them if they have in fact "checked
out" your CV, to preemptorily schedule an on-campus interview,
and so forth, I have fallen into the habit of doing such things.
That habit is concurrent with my recent habits: afternoon drinking;
watching soaps with the sound cut low; feeling like I'll never
recover from the banality of my fate.]
Black Militant: Whitey, what
I'm talking about are the beatdowns in Watts. About six cops
shaking one brother down for no reason except that he "fits
the description". About a cop forcing himself on a beautiful
black woman, because maybe he can "help" get her man
out of San Quentin.
[The Militant is carrying the scene here,
and the camera flashes to Horehound, whose face has taken on
an ashen cast.]
Horehound: That's not the way
it goes down....
[The camera flashes back to the militant
quickly, who, in contrast to Horehound, is standing in accordance
with guidelines of proper posture.]
Black Militant: What
do you know, fuzz? You ain't there. You ain't seen what your
laws do to people. How they bend over backwards, shucking and
jiving, trying to keep white cops out of their cars, their houses,
their beds. You wouldn't know a thing about that, now, would
you, copper?
[The militant pauses, and Horehound daubs
at his forehead with his handkerchief once more. This is not
a productive exchange for the first episode of a public affairs
show, to be sure.]
Horehound: I'm
sorry if you've encountered police problems. But the Los Angeles
Police Department is trying to do its job. That's all. There
might be some rogue cops--I don't know. I'm not on the Force
anymore. I'm not accountable for this.
[Horehound's voice is weak, slurred.
He is supporting himself with both hands on the lecturn. He stares
downward rather than meet the gaze of his verbal assailant. Though
he has recently swabbed his forehead dry, beads of perspiration
have already started to appear anew.]
Black Militant: Silly
cracker! Your boys do these things, and you can't even answer
for them. You ain't no better than me. You ain't a bit better
than me!
[The Militant knocks over the microphone
stand and stalks back to his seat. The stand doesn't even rest
on the ground long enough for the stagehands to return it to
an upright position, as yet another person has approached the
station.
A willowy blonde girl, probably 30 but
still prone to carding for purchases with age requirements. A
conservative, navy blue dress. A primly clutched handbag, fashioned
of black leather. Black pumps of the same material.]
Willowy Blonde: Mr.
Horehound? First of all, I'd like to apologize for the tone of
some of the previous speakers.
[Here she smiles in the halting, heartbreaking
manner of the most comely and unavailable of all reference librarians
in universities across the country. the ones who smile when they
see you, whose hand lingers in yours when you bid them farewell
when a semester is done, when they go home to stalwart boyfriends
in prefab subdivisions and you go home to a house, solitary and
full of stale air. ]
Horehound: It's America.
[One might have expected him here to
add a line affirming rights to free speech and so forth. But
the pause after America is pregnant with understanding of the
chafing of process, of the unfairness of external critique and
judgment.]
Willowy Blonde: Well,
I don't want to take too much time, but I wanted to thank you.
[Her lips are parted slightly, but enough
to be suggestive.]
Horehound: Thank
me? For what?
[Horehound's ashen face is now glazed
with confusion.]
Willowy Blonde: Just
for the work you did. You were the officer who helped my husband
a few years ago when those extortionists were hounding us. If
you hadn't put them away, our bookstore would've closed.
[She smiles an unconflicted smile as
she reaches into her handbag.]
Horehound: That's very nice.
It's rare that we receive gratitude on this beat.
[Horehound now is practically murmuring.
His eyes flutter in a most uncharacteristic way. An elderly way,
almost beyond makeup and flattering lighting.]
Willowy Blonde: I have here a
book of poetry for you. A Yeats first edition. Are you familiar
with him?
[She opens the book, looking for a specific
poem, as Horehound can only nod.]
Willowy Blonde: It feels like
the most appropriate thing for this event. The idea of things
falling apart, of the center not holding. The idea of a beast
being born....
[Here she pauses and looks taken aback,
as if noticing Horehound's compromised state for the first time.
How his form is caving under pressures.]
Horehound: Thank
you. I know all about that beast.
[Horehound lifts his head up and looks
directly into the camera before leaving the stage. The commercial
on the talk show is implied here, as Concerned Citizen itself
fades to commercial. When the show resumes, we get an exterior
shot of Horehound's house, and then a shot of him sitting at
a desk typing, lips not moving even as his voiceover begins.]
Horehound: Despite
changing shirts, I was still perspiring uncontrollably. I was
unable to continue the show, as my temperature was taken and
revealed to be 102 and change. With that in mind, a film about
water safety was shown, and the audience was thanked for coming.
[The visual footage shifts from Horehound
typing in shirtsleeves to him straightening his tie in front
of a bathroom mirror.]
Horehound: I felt it might be
better if I arrived at the studio early for my second show. Perhaps
I would be less nervous if I were relaxed. Perhaps I could perform
my duties. I was about to head out the door when I heard the
telephone ring.
[Scene shifts to Horehound picking up
the receiver.]
Horehound: Hello?
[Horehound's voice here is tinged with
nerves. It is obvious to even the most dull-minded viewer that
his Citizen posture is but a pale shadow of his Badge and Gun
persona.
Then again, perhaps that's the point.
Perhaps it's as simple as saying authority itself imbues machismo.
If that is the point, I don't see how I can argue it. Not knowing
what I know, having done what I've done.]
Linger: It's me, Brock. We need
to talk.
[Linger's voice here--metallic, driven
by the need to project an assumption of authority--stands here
as a badge for the cravenness of those who benefit from wrongful
terminations and misapprehensions.]
Horehound: Shoot.
[Despite Horehound's tone being that
of someone who just washed his hair, who was headed out the door,
who wanted to be anywhere but on the phone, he lit a cigarette
right after saying the word. Shoot. Emblematic, given how a cigarette
ember burns through the sky like a bullet, and how the purpose
of both a bullet and a burning cigarette is to foment the exhaustion
of resources.
It could be said simply that the "point"
of this episode is to "depict a sense of exhaustion".
Then we could move on. But that's not the point. Not in and of
itself.]
Linger: The Department's not
happy.
[The Department's not happy. As if there
is this entity in which people move and think in concord. As
if people aren't driven by their own individual demons. Wants,
fears, needs, compulsions.
As if the happiness of the Department
can matter one whit to someone disposed of by that self-same
Department.]
Horehound: The Department is
never happy, Linger. They always seem to have a beef with one
thing or another.
[Inhale. Flick the ashes into an decorous
black ashtray on the coffee table. Inhale again.]
Linger: Well, right now they
have a beef with you, son.
[Linger's voice increases in both volume
and the degree of hectoring. Horehound rests his smoke in an
ashtray groove.]
Horehound: Son? You're making
promises you can't deliver on, friend, when you talk so bold
to the man who made you a cop. Who CYA'd for you when you turned
tail from bullets in Watts--you remember that, boy?
[Horehound stands, but is tethered by
the cord of the phone.]
Linger: The Department is not
happy with your grandstanding TV show. The Department expects
that you will not do tonight's show, nor that you will do any
other. The Department-
[Horehound interjects as he loosens his
necktie.]
Horehound: I
don't owe the Department a single thing. You can tell that to
whoever told you to make this call. See, I know you, Linger.
You can't move without backup.
[By the second sentence, Horehound's
voice has grown quiet and slow. Linger is beaten, it would seem.]
Linger: You
don't know what I'm capable of. I'm calling you as a friend,
telling you what people are saying.
[Linger's voice trembles here, in a manner
not dissimilar to Horehound's in a previous scene of this episode.]
Horehound: Oh, I know, all right.
I've seen your work. Without a badge, without a gun, without
"you have the right to remain silent", you're a jelly
donut. You're not even a sparring partner, glass jaw.
[Every syllable like a body blow on a
meat slab.]
Linger: Buddy, keep in mind what
was on those papers you signed.
[The click of disconnection. Then the
straightening of the necktie, as the cigarette burns unattended
in the ashtray. The lingering shot of the rich, smooth-tasting
Chesterfield melds into the opening shot of the burning Vietshack,
momentarily, before we shift scene again and join Horehound's
Fairlane on an expressway where a voiceover commences.]
Horehound: The unexpected phone
call from Linger thwarted my plans to arrive at the studio with
time to spare, even as it put certain things into perspective.
The drive served as a constitutional, and for the first time
in quite a while I felt awake, even alive.
[The Fairlane pulling into the studio
parking lot. Horehound exiting the vehicle and walking through
the TALENT door. These shots are here recycled. Directly after
he walks through into the building, we get a shot of Horehound
on stage, adjusting index cards at the lecturn.
We will assume that the show has started
already, given that Horehound's card-shufflig reverie is interrupted
by an audience member. She is brutally, efficiently slim and
pretty. Her hair blonde, but not in the safe Florence Henderson
mode. More like Tippi Hedren after boosting bills from a safe.
Right before the blonde starts talking, a shot of Horehound,
unconsciously, licking his lips.]
Blonde: You were a former Los
Angeles Police Officer, correct?
[Her tone is confrontational, in the
manner of a server girl getting uppity with a customer who considers
sundry liberties and considerations to be part of the "service."
Men of a certain age often elicit those reactions from women
of a certain age, as I can attest from personal experience.]
Horehound: You have a firm grasp
of the obvious. Have you considered ghostwriting my autobiography?
[Horehound smiles, a conscious aw-shucks
affair reminiscent of Reagan tossing out grins in the 1984 Presidential
debate. Not the guarded smile of confrontation that he so often
hides behind, but the genuine smile of Grant Cameron himself.
The man who had five marriages, all to B-List starlets who are
even to this day linked to him in "tabloid accounts"
of their problems with alcoholism, the failing of organs, and
the inevitablity of decline.]
Blonde: There's no need for a
confrontational tone, Mister Horehound.
[Her schoolmarmish tone so obviously
foreshadows darkness that Horehound has stopped licking his lips.
The exchange has quickly become business, as all exchanges, as
all relationships do.]
Horehound: I think I know what
tone I need to use. So, go on already. Tell me what brilliant
insight you want to make. Tell me about how your civil liberties
were violated. Tell me how the pigs are harassers. Go on, please.
But keep in mind it's only a half hour show.
[All of this is said in the drill instructor
tone elaborated on at length earlier in this episode, as Horehound
loosens his tie. ]
Blonde: Perhaps you don't remember
me. I was a prostitute, not five years ago. A call girl.You helped
me get out of it. You caused me to get off the junk, to get in
a Junior College. And now I've decided. I'm going to be a police
officer-
[Horehound cuts her off with a sharp,
barking laugh. The Blonde looks perplexed, like a Spaniel who
wakes up in a house and searches all over for her owners, but
is unable to find them.]
Horehound: Lady, I don't remember
every case I've ever handled. No one does.
[The Spaniel nods, ponderously. The Tippi
Hedren comparisons have fallen by the wayside at this point.]
Blonde: I figured you wouldn't
remember me....
[Horehound smiles, eyes twinkling.]
Horehound: But I'd like to give
you some insight anyway. Don't expect one consideration from
the Force when you're done. Expect to be made the fall guy--or
gal--for politics, for need, for whatever. When you're old, if
you're not on the inside, you're useless. I could tell you a
story, about an officer who wasn't even present at a shooting,
set up to take a fall. I could tell you my story-
[And here his mike goes dead. His lips
move, then Horehound realizes he's holding a dead stick, and
tries to revive it with slaps. No dice.]
Offstage Voiceover: We are having technical difficulties. Please
stand by!
[A voice ridden with malevolent cheer,
even as a couple of plainclothesmen walk onto the stage. One
has a memo pad out, presumably reading Horehound his rights.
The other has cuffs.
Otherwise, the men are identical. Dark
gray slacks. White shirts. Navy blue tie. Shoes, dress shoes,
fashioned of leather. Black.]
THE
END
Anthony Gancarski can be reached at:
Anthony.Gancarski@attbi.com
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