Category Archives: Momagers

Fat Caesar

by Jay Abramowitz

Actors, Agents, Child Actors, Directors, Diversity, Executives, Fiction, Momagers, Networks, Short Story, Showrunners, TV, TV Sitcoms, TV Writers 3

The unemployed TV writer joked about the most depraved series ever for a black kid. Uh-oh. 3,254 words. Illustration by Mark Fearing.

Eric Ornstill was imparting phony inside tidbits about Tom Cruise during another of his tours to the homes of the stars when the name of his former agent, who’d fired him a few months earlier, lit up on his phone. Eric jerked the van to the side of the street and informed his tourists he was about to present them with a very special treat: a conversation between a habitually unemployed TV comedy writer and a bona fide Hollywood dealmaker. He tapped the speaker icon on his cracked iPhone 4 and turned to face his confused passengers.

“Denny?” Eric asked, trying to mask his incredulity.

“Network’s got a show for some kid under contract,” said the agent. “Want to meet him?”

A few hours later, Eric called Denny and reported on his meeting with the talent and the talent’s manager.

“I sat in the Yum Yum Donuts at Melrose and Highland, with an African-American woman and her son, the star of the series, a somnambulant 5-foot-8, 286-pound 12-year-old who occupied the two chairs opposite. The mother didn’t pitch me a premise, she pitched a bunch of fat jokes while her son never took his eyes off his cell phone and consumed the contents of a box of Boston creams. It was clear to me that this grotesque excuse for a parent considers it in her interest – and, yes, in her son’s interest – that the kid remains morbidly obese for at least as long as it takes to produce a hundred episodes of the piece of shit she pitched me, if he lives that long.”

“And you nodded and smiled, right?”

Continue reading →

The Minder
Part Two

by David Freeman

Actors, Book Excerpt, Completion Bonds, Fiction, Film, Momagers, Recording Artists, Screenwriters Leave a comment

He must make a choice: become the out-of-control young starlet’s BFF – or her babysitter. 2,778 words. Part One. Illustration by Thomas Warming.

Jimmy Sakamuru talked a lot about art, but he cared more about money. It’s the only way a director can A5B3E0F0-C9C6-486D-B9BF-98B356EAA0EBget anything done. Jimmy would try to stick to dollars and cents around Barney but he was sure to look for a chance to tell us how his movie was like Italian neo-realism or some damn thing. He had directed a few studio pictures but none of them had been hits. It meant that now he could make a studio distribution deal but he’d have to find his own financing. Jimmy had lost his pipeline to studio financing. To claw your way back from that took a fierceness that wouldn’t be denied. The ins and outs of this were tricky.

And now Jimmy was bringing Caitlin Harper to our office. We mostly got business people coming through our doors. This would be our first pop diva.

Barney was wearing his best suit — a blue pinstriped double-breasted model that he wore to bank meetings. He seemed a little anxious. It hadn’t occurred to me to dress for the occasion. I was in my usual khakis and an old grey herringbone jacket. Jimmy was dressed in leather, jacket and trousers, though not the James Dean-Marlon Brando biker sort. Jimmy’s leather was buttery and so tight that it must have caused pain. He was wearing Japanese running shoes that had air pumps in them. The shoes looked like the 1980s to me but, as I came to see, those shoes and much else with Jimmy were worn in an ironic manner that mostly went over my head and certainly over Barney’s.

Jimmy showed up solo with a song and dance about Caitlin being ill. Her absence was an unmistakable sign of how things would go if we got in the Caitlin Harper business. Jimmy was full of assurances about how well he could handle her. Before Barney could throw him out, we were treated to a disquisition on the finer points of the shooting scheme for Overdrive. "I don’t want to just tell the story. Not a biopic, you know?" Barney knew what a biopic was but not much more. “The influence here is the nouvelle vague," Jimmy added with an aggressive French accent that irritated Barney.

Continue reading →

The Minder
Part One

by David Freeman

Actors, Book Excerpt, Completion Bonds, Directors, Fiction, Film, Momagers, Recording Artists, Screenwriters 1

Who’ll be tapped to tame a young starlet with wild ways? 2,762 words. Part Two.  Illustration by Thomas Warming.

It was two o’ clock in the morning and Caitlin Harper was weaving her way east on Sunset Boulevard in her A5B3E0F0-C9C6-486D-B9BF-98B356EAA0EBCadillac Escalade. She’d had a lease on that enormous black beast for all of two days. Three of her pals were on board. Caitlin had sworn up and down to her agents, her manager (who was also her mother), her lawyer, possibly her accountant and to her one friend who had some common sense, that at night she would always have a driver. She would never, day or night, drive after drinking. She probably meant it when she said it, but Caitlin was twenty years old and famous. She did whatever she wanted to do whenever she wanted to do it. Caitlin had recently seen Bonnie And Clyde and was in a Faye Dunaway mood. She’d taken to wearing a black beret, imagining herself an outlaw on the run.

Caitlin Harper might have been the only pop diva I had heard of. That’s because everybody had heard of her. You couldn’t look at a screen or a magazine without encountering her round and lubricious face. She pouted her way across the American media with her high and swollen breasts pushed nearly out of her famous swooning necklines. I couldn’t name any of the songs she was associated with though I had seen a few of her movies.

On this night all that weaving from lane to lane, complicated by those Dunaway dreams, sent her diagonally across Sunset, over the lushly planted road-divider and into a telephone pole near the Beverly Hills Hotel. The pink palace as it was known was the property of the Sultan of Brunei, a personage that I’m sure Caitlin had never heard of though it’s entirely possible that the Sultan had heard of her. A woman in one of the big houses on Foothill Road was awakened by the noise and called in the accident. Caitlin had been drinking, which is what she was usually doing at two In the morning, unless she was having sex or possibly both at once. She was wearing her seatbelt, though I doubt it was buckled at the moment she wrapped the Escalade around that pole. It was a triumph of ingenuity that despite the inconvenience of interference from two airbags, Caitlin had enough of her wits about her to buckle up even if It was too late to do much good. Caitlin had banged her head on the side window which caused a mild concussion, but that was all. Concussions are one of the many things that seatbelts prevent. No one seemed interested in such pesky details. Her chums were bounced around a bit though the serious damage was to the pole and the Escalade.

Continue reading →

Cain And Abel
Part Two

by Daniel Weizmann

Actors, Book Excerpt, Child Actors, Comedians, Fiction, Momagers, Producers, TV, TV Hosts, TV Variety Shows Leave a comment

One of two brothers hosting a hit TV show can’t accept that they no longer have equal roles. 2,679 words. Part One. Part Three. Illustration by John Donald Carlucci.

Fan Club members: It is you that keep the dream alive. And that is why you must know that there was no formal ritual between the brothers. They rehearsed at noon five days a week, talked on the phone four to thirty times a day, met their press agent every other Thursday, and socially were almost inseparable. Even the many girls they took out, they did so in pairs, occasionally shooting each other a deeply knowing look mid-date to signal the switching of seats and intentions. Sean rented his own place in the Los Feliz Hills to be nearer the Burbank studio and liked to sleep late. Marky bought athree-bedroom oceanfront condo in Manhattan Beach, which was a good investment and, besides, what was the point in being a pop star if you weren’t going to live on the beach?

After dinner at Mom’s, Sean headed home to get some beauty rest before the big television interview. Marky, on the other hand, hopped in the Benz and was heading for his beach pad, intending to catch some Zs as well, when he remembered that it was Sunday, and that meant poker night at the shared apartment of Tom and Shanahan, his old high school pals. Marky was already in the old neighborhood, so he skipped the freeway onramp and maneuvered into the parking lot of the Hawthorne Arms, ready for action. He walked the dank stairwell to Tom and Shanahan’s second floor pad, and held his pop-star-ness in check. He lapsed into a joke fantasy, rare but recurring, that he was not and had never been in showbiz. Sean’s bro — the tax accountant. Or Sean’s bro — the sportswriter. If only he had been too fat, early balding like their Old Man.

“Dude!” Shanahan called out. “Total surprise.”

“Yo!” Tom said, his back to them, pulling a twelve-ouncer of Olde English Malt Liquor out of the fridge. “Do I hear Marky?”

“The man arriveth!”

Marky shrugged, then sat in the breakfast nook with the five neighborhood buffoons in Old Navy duds and hand-me-downs, some sporting baseball caps on their $20 haircuts. The homies looked happy but tired. Marky feigned a “long, hard day,” too.

“What’s up, superstar?” Tom said, high-fiving.

“Dude,” Kev said, cracking a beer, “aren’t you on Kimmel tomorrow night?”

Continue reading →

Cain And Abel
Part One

by Daniel Weizmann

Actors, Book Excerpt, Child Actors, Comedians, Fiction, Momagers, Producers, TV, TV Hosts, TV Variety Shows Leave a comment

Two brothers have a hit TV comedy-variety show – and a less successful relationship. 2,271 words. Part Two. Illustration by John Donald Carlucci.

Dear Fan Club Members: They say these things don’t happen overnight. But they kinda do. The fun began at three in the afternoon in Hanger One right on the Fox Lot when 21-year-old heartthrob Marky Nash sat on the edge of the newly reconstructed stage thumbing tweets to the base on his iPhone to tell us that Season Two is coming. After a breakneck rehearsal sched, he was psyched to get back to where he belonged: the spotlight. Behind Marky sat his blond baby bro, 19-year-old Sean Nash with his feet up looking all sanguine ‘n’ shit. That’s when the Producer and the Other Producer — whose names we can never remember! — huddled with the Bros. One Producer was older, tall, skinny, full of jagged grey competence in white sneakers. The Other Producer was husky in a Dodger’s cap and Cal State t-shirt, looking like a disgruntled dirtbiker.

It was lecture time as the stage crew slid gels into the footlights and wheeled the giant behemoth TV cams into place.

“This,” the Producer said, “is our moment.”

“And you boys have what it takes to answer the bell,” the Other Producer added.

“You are already stars,” the Producer said. “Don’t believe us? Google yourselves.”

“But Season Two is a major test,” the Other Producer said.

“For everybody,” his partner added. “Not just you guys.”

“And I don’t have to tell you we have competition,” the Other Producer said. At this, the two men paused, arms akimbo, Old Jew and Junior Jew, staring down the Nash Bros for dramatic effect.

“Meno?” Sean asked, sitting up.

The Producer said, “Meno Dalmucci’s variety dogshit debuts day after tomorrow in prime time opposite you guys.”

Continue reading →

Tyrannis Rex
Part Three

by Richard Natale

Actors, Casting Directors, Directors, Executives, Fiction, Film, Hollywood Scandals, Journalists, Media, Moguls, Momagers, Oscars, Screenwriters, Short Story, Starlets, Studios 1

The screenwriter’s challenge for Act Two is seamlessly threading the studio mogul’s public and private lives. 2,260 words. Part One. Part Two. Part Four. Illustration by John Donald Carlucci.

Hollywood – 1969

The second act of his screenplay, the Untitled Jules Azenberg Biopic – First Draft, gave Dave problems as second acts generally do. Determined to push ahead, he rose every morning at seven and, hangover or not, sat down at the typewriter with a pot of coffee and waited for his fingers to magically click into action. On a day when his hands just sat there stiffly poised on the keys and not a single coherent scene emerged, Dave took a break. He and his pal Joel Rodgers went out on the town for a movie, dinner and drinks at Trader Vic’s where Joel regaled him with the details of the latest showbiz scandal. Dave listened, but without much enthusiasm. Like most current gossip, it was graphic and tawdry and destroyed what little illusion was left about movie stars’ private lives. What was Hollywood without glamour? Without fantasy?

When the muse finally revisited Dave, she came equipped with a metaphor. Act Two opens with Jules at a gaming table tossing dice in a visual motif establishing the studio mogul as an inveterate gambler and a smart one at that. For Jules proves himself an expert crapshooter, knowing exactly how long to play, how high to raise the stakes, and when to walk away from the table.

By the early 1930s, his Argot Pictures is on a roll. Most of its B-movie competitors fall by the wayside, victims of the Depression. Argot slowly buys up all the rivals and establishes itself as a viable rival to the A-list studios like MGM and Warner Bros. Here, the script hones close to the real story by assigning Jules due credit. Given his brother Mort’s cautious nature, Argot might have survived the transition to sound but not the economic reversal of the times. It took more than business savvy to keep Argot afloat: it took Jules’ ingenuity and daring.

His risky gamble is to jump head-first into larger budget movies at a time when everyone else, including the established major studios, is cutting corners. And for that he needs an ally because Jules feels inferior to the task of convincing talent to sign with Argot rather than a more deep-pocketed institution like MGM. He needs someone with the polish and finesse to talk to theater types. So he enlists a celebrated and ceaselessly charming German-born director and appoints him vice president of production. It’s a curious choice and, at first, the board expresses concern that a creative type will run financially amuck.

Continue reading →

Guarding Gable
Part One

by Nat Segaloff

Actors, Bodyguards, Book Excerpt, Executives, Fiction, Film, Momagers, Publicists, Studios 4

The entire MGM studio springs into action to protect a grief-stricken Clark Gable from everyone but himself. 3,031 words. Part Two. Illustration by Thomas Warming.

The King paced his throne room with deeply un-royal anxiety. He longed for his queen with a passion known only to royals, or so the fairy tales say. Since their celebrated marriage barely twenty months earlier, the two of them had been out of each other’s sight only when affairs of State commanded their separation. And so it was for the past fortnight when he had been compelled by royal obligation to remain within easy traveling distance of the castle while his queen journeyed to the far heartland of their realm on a mission of great diplomacy. For there was a great war. The kingdom was being attacked by forces of evil, and the King and Queen had drawn their country together in spirit even as the details of fighting it tore the royal couple apart.

America was at war. January 16, 1942 was five weeks into a declaration against the Axis powers, and Hollywood was already strutting its patriotism. Every star that wasn’t currently shooting pictures was crisscrossing the country bolstering unanimity and asking the citizenry to pay money beyond their taxes to keep their nation alive and stave off the collapse of the free world. Carole Lombard’s mission took her to the town of Indianapolis for an appearance that drew thousands of people. Clark Gable was the unquestioned king of Hollywood, and, since marrying him, Carole had become the town’s queen. They had been an item even before they got married, but, once their union became official, what belonged to one belonged to the other, including their retinues.

Back in Culver City, Gable was locked into a production schedule on Somewhere I’ll Find You when Lombard boarded the Douglas DC3-382 Skycub prop-liner to depart Indianapolis at 4 a.m. Flight TWA-3 took off as scheduled and then made several stops before the flight resumed from Las Vegas Airport at 7 p.m. The flight gained altitude, yawing slightly in the updrafts that blew up from Potosi mountain, then leveled at 7,770 feet when the aircraft, its fuel, and all 22 passengers and crew aboard slammed nose-first without warning into the side of the peak. The aircraft was going at two hundred miles an hour when its freshly refilled fuel tanks exploded on impact. The shattering fuselage repelled off the steep cliff, accelerated by the fireball. The cold January weather had brought a snowfall that cushioned the sound of falling debris.

The news that Flight 3 had failed to contact the control tower at Burbank airport reached Gable who was waiting at the Lockheed terminal to greet Lombard. He heard the mumbled conversation of gate personnel and asked if there was some kind of trouble. When told that Lombard’s flight was missing, he immediately chartered a plane for Las Vegas where he learned there were no survivors.

Continue reading →

My Little Trainwreck

by Eric Moyer

Actors, Book Excerpt, Fiction, Film, Hollywood Scandals, Momagers, Producers, TV 1

A hot mess Hollywood starlet provokes a bar fight with the hot tempered manager. 3,778 words. Illustration by John David Carlucci.

The bar went silent as the jukebox changed songs. At that moment, just as a popular song blasted through the speakers, the door opened and she walked in. The regulars had a habit of turning to look, and this was no exception.

Scott was pouring a beer when he first saw her. He immediately lost all concentration and let the glass overflow. Her long blonde hair cascaded down her back and her bright blue eyes lit up the room along with her red cocktail dress. Spilled beer continued to cascade from the glass, but Scott didn’t care. The bar’s waitress, Alison, turned off the tap and punched Scott on the shoulder.

Alison followed Scott’s eyes to the door. “Hey! Isn’t that…” Scott was still staring. “No, it can’t be Laura Summer. What’s she doing here?”

“It’s that movie that’s about to film here,” Scott replied. “We’re becoming a Hollywood hotspot in Pennsylvania. Ka- ching!”

He jumped over the bar and rushed to Laura’s side. “I’m Scott, the manager here. Actually, tomorrow I’ll be on my way to becoming the new owner.” Laura was used to star treatment. Scott was in a trance. Finally, Laura broke the eye contact and looked around, waiting for Scott to say something. She seemed to get bored fast. He got the hint.

Continue reading →

Method
Part Two

by Heather E. Ash

Auditions, Casting Directors, Child Actors, Fiction, Film, Momagers, Short Story 1

Two child actors are up for the same film role – much to the dismay of their momagers. But one mother has second thoughts. Last of two parts. 3,610 words. Illustrations by John Donald Carlucci.

The ER doctor lifted Sam’s shirt and looked to Susan for explanation. Raised welts covered Sam’s back, already purpling. “Sam? What happened?”

Sam picked at a loose thread on the sheet and shrugged. One of his curls was caught in the bandage above his left eye.

“Samuel McGrath, answer me.” She heard her voice shaking.

“Why don’t you let me have a minute?” the doctor suggested, guiding her to the door. Susan knew what that meant. He had to question Sam alone. Ask if Mommy hits him and whether she uses her hands or a hairbrush.

She stepped into the hall. Wendy was coming toward her. “How’s Caden?”

“His arm’s broken.” Wendy swallowed and took a shuddering breath. “They’re taking a CT scan to check…for swelling. In his brain.”

Susan folded Wendy her in my arms. “Caden’s going to be okay. They’re both going to be okay.”

The door opened behind them. “Mrs. McGrath?”

“What do you mean he landed on you?”

“He said I should lie on the ground. To jump over.”

“But why?”

“He said I had to or he wouldn’t be my friend anymore. And you like Miss Wendy, so—” Sam’s voice broke and he leaned his head into her arm.

Continue reading →

Method
Part One

by Heather E. Ash

Auditions, Casting Directors, Child Actors, Fiction, Film, Momagers, Short Story 1

A mother brings her young son to Hollywood hoping he’ll make it as a child actor. Then she starts to rethink everything. First of two parts. 5,983 words. Illustrations by John Donald Carlucci.

Like so many things in Los Angeles, the rain was fake. That didn’t make it any less wet as it pounded onto the heads of the children, dragging Sam’s curls into his eyes. The director yelled cut and then yelled it again. He wanted scissors.

The make-up girl sprang forward, but only wielded bobby pins to secure Sam’s hair with steady hands and a vacant half-smile…products, no doubt, of the pill bottle Susan had seen nestled between the lipsticks.

Sam’s lips were blue. No one seemed the least concerned about hypothermia. Hell, none of the kids would have eaten lunch if Susan hadn’t reminded the A.D. of work rules. The mothers of the other two boys didn’t like that at all. “You can’t cause trouble,” Fake Blonde warned, while Fake Boobs bobble-headed agreement and added, “You want your son to work again, don’t you?” Better to let their kids starve than take a chance at upsetting the D-list director of a cookie ad. They probably thought Susan was some hopeful Okie – but she knew more about this business than both of them combined. She knew people would take advantage of you only if allowed to. And everyone was out to take advantage.

Susan slipped in behind the make-up lady and caught Sam’s eye. “This is the last take, baby,” she told Sam. “This is ridiculous.” Already twenty-six minutes over schedule.

“But Mom,” he protested through chattering teeth, “this is fun!”

Continue reading →