Read Online Hollywood is an All Volunteer Army by Steven Paul Leiva - Free Book Online

these messages.”
    People scurried, repositioning cameras, retouching make-up, getting Jordan’s small mic unplugged, leading him over to the host’s area where I sat, plugging him back in.
    â€œThanks for coming in, Robert,” I said, smiling at him.
    â€œWell, I’d like to say it’s my pleasure, Charlie, but I’ve got to tell you, I live only a couple of blocks away, but I felt like Scott racing Amundsen to the South Pole.” His voice was still dripping with the inconvenience of it all.
    â€œTen seconds gentlemen,” came the word from the floor manager. We both gathered ourselves up, and:
    â€œWelcome back,” I said into the camera. “I’m here with Robert Jordan, our resident film critic and culture creature.” I turned to Jordan. “So, Robert, War of the Wimps ? I guess it’s not going to make your top ten list.”
    â€œOr anybody else’s, I would guess.”
    â€œReally? Lapham’s films don’t do that bad in the box office, do they?”
    â€œThe miracle of modern marketing, Charlie. In the old days hucksters were checker-suited, fast-talking men relegated to the back roads of America pushing useless patent medicines to the local yokels as quick cures for what ails ya. Now they’re Armani-suited, face-lifted, communicators of cinematic glitz. You know, there used to be a plethora of patent medicines sold in America.”
    â€œWhoa! I’m glad you don’t review television.”
    â€œ I’m glad I don’t review television.” I did Charlie Wise’s well-known chuckle in response. “Although, these days some of the writing for television puts Hollywood features to shame.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œYes, I think so.”
    â€œWell, let’s put that to the test. We have a guest television reviewer today.” Jordan was jolted into perplexity. You could see it in his face, magnified, I’m sure on the television screen. “For a look at the current state of television film criticism, here’s film producer/director, Larry Lapham.”
    With panic now peppering the perplex, Jordan looked around and noticed the electronic Lapham on the monitors and, worse, the flesh and blood one over on his set sitting in his red velvet chair.
    Lapham was calm and natural on camera—and just a tad vicious. “Being a big believer in turnabout is fair play I would like to review the review you have just heard of my film, War of the Wimps . I found Robert Jordan’s review to be extremely well written, witty and pungent in that pure Jordanian manner of his. I found his delivery and comedic timing to be impeccable, as always, but I found it disturbing in the extreme that the content of the review was dishonest and deceitful.”
    Jordan turned to me and growled out a whisper, “Charlie, what the—”
    â€œKeep smiling, Robert, you never know when the director will cut back to us.”
    Lapham was continuing. “Of course, I could be accused of not being objective in this, as Jordan’s review was of a film I spent a year of my life on, and am, quite frankly, proud of, but I didn’t say his opinion was wrong. That is not for me to say. I said it was dishonest. For I happen to know, for a fact, that Robert Jordan loved War of the Wimps , or, at least, liked it enough to spend most of the time while he was screening it in the throes of laughter. As this video tape clearly shows.”
    The tape ran on all the monitors, and Jordan looked wide eyed at his electronic self in the green light of the night video, laughing heartily every few seconds; a good round laugh, an old fashioned laugh, the kind of laugh that is almost a pleasure in itself, as well as a vocalization of pleasure. Yet it was eerie. For he was alone in the theater, and one man laughing alone can’t help but seem—mad.
    I leaned over to Jordan and whispered, “Out of courtesy, we edited out the