Editor’s note: “The Cult of Truland,”
a contemporary satire by Kevin Brass, a veteran journalist, is a breezy work
filled with TV talk show insider buzz surrounding the light and dark sides of
Jake Truland, a career rogue, who’s main goal in life is to be the most famous
person in the world. The mysteries are
plentiful and many of them go unanswered.
Bottom line a quality read.
Pillar to Post is pleased to preview one chapter from this first rate
first novel.
“The Cult of
Truland,” an excerpt.
By Kevin Brass
At 6:45 a.m. the Hollywood Now! studio
was a buzz of activity centered around a long narrow room lined with small
cubicles. Segment producers scurried from edit bay to edit bay, looking at
tape, exhorting editors to hurry, pleading with others to insert or delete
clips. The room zipped and burped with the sound of a dozen different music
tracks and narrations starting, stopping, rewinding, and fast forwarding,
mixing with the harried screeches of over-stressed reporters and producers
working the phones with their already caffeinated counterparts on the East
Coast.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Today Kevin writes about business,
design and travel as a regular contributor to the International New York Times
and Wall Street Journal. He splits his time between Barcelona, Costa Rica,
Miami and San Diego.
Jessie
Dunbar sat in front of a wall of monitors on the raised round platform known as
the bridge, intently watching the previous night’s show, oblivious to the
bedlam around her. Every morning she scanned the show for mistakes and
potential problems as she ate her breakfast of fruit bowl, protein bar, and Red
Bull in preparation for her morning meeting with her boss, Sharon Jones-Jones.
It was always
a meeting fraught with danger. After Sharon Jones- Jones’s three decades in the
trenches, no one doubted her Hollywood savvy and ruthlessness. And no one made
fun of her name. She was born Sharon Jones and married Abraham Jones, a
party-loving movie producer with a cozy Malibu bungalow. When they divorced
after 13 months, citing “mutual emotional duress,” she kept the dual names,
under the theory that Jones-Jones was “historically accurate,” although it’s
doubtful anyone ever thought of Sharon as much of a history buff. Through two
subsequent marriages she adamantly refused to add the names of her spouses,
although she occasionally signed documents “Sharon Jones-Jones-Rodriquez-Qi,”
the last reflecting her short but tumultuous alliance with a Korean media magnate.
 |
| Author Kevin Brass |
Huddled on
the bridge, her sweater pulled tight against the air conditioning, set low to
cool the video equipment, Jessie was feeling good about last night’s show. No
fireworks, nothing to upset Sharon’s conference call with Farmore corporate.
Truland was a no-brainer, consistently popular with the core audience,
according to internal Farmore studies. She scanned the overnights. All the
numbers were up from last week, typically between 1.3 to 2.7 percent, with the
biggest bounces in the 43 markets where Farmore owned stations. Moving into
Sharon’s office at exactly 7:00, Jessie felt she was on firm footing.
Sharon was
talking on the phone. She pointed to the black-and- chrome chair in front of
her black-and-chrome desk. Sharon liked the ruthless bitch look, which Jessie
respected. Sharon had succeeded in an era when every ex-cheerleader and failed
porn star wanted to work in TV news.
On Sharon’s
vanity wall Jessie noted a picture of Truland and Sharon huddled over a table
at the Casa de Guac. Truland had set it up, Sharon explained during Jessie’s
first visit to the office. He tipped a photographer from the Hollywood Tattler about the dinner date
as a little gift for Sharon. The Tattler
was thrilled to get a photo of Truland, but the editors were enraged to find
him sitting next to the executive producer of a competitor. Ultimately, they ran the photo anyway, with a
headline referring to Truland’s companion only as an “unidentified Hollywood
party girl.”
Sharon
wasn’t saying much on the phone. She nodded over and over again. “Right. Uh
huh. Right.” When Sharon hung up, Jessie could tell she wasn’t in gal pal mood.
Sharon’s face was so red, the tinted wave of hair cascading across her forehead
seemed to light up. Jessie raced through the rundown from last night’s show in
her mind, trying to figure out what may have stirred corporate. The report on
Stan Bean’s affair with his costar? Speculation about the Prince of Earl’s new
girlfriend?
“You know
what it was.” Sharon said, flashing her ability to shoot info-digesting laser
beams into Jessie’s head.
Jessie
hesitated. “No, not specifically...”
“Bambi?
Bambi doesn’t ring a bell?”
Bambi rang a
bell. Last night’s show included a 20-second voice
over on
Bambi Lambard’s lawsuit against Prodorp Productions, charging the company with
firing her for refusing to get a boob job in preparation for her role in its
latest remake of Chekov’s “The Seagull.” The New York Times called it Titgate.
Yesterday’s
report was a simple court update, after a judge refused her lawyer’s request to
subpoena a porn actress to testify as an expert witness on the physiological
implications of fake breasts. “Bambi vows to fight on, even though she knows
the odds are against her,” Tammy read as the cameras zeroed in on Bambi’s sad
eyes, before cutting to a shot of her looking despondent in a Suzy Wong thong
bikini.
“Bambi?”
Jessie couldn’t think of anything to say. “You didn’t like the bikini shot?”
“Don’t be an
ass.” Sharon glared at her, a puma ready to pounce.
Jessie tried
to remember the script. It was a fairly standard VO/ SOT. And it was a D-block
story, practically a throwaway.
“That girl’s
a tramp,” Sharon said. “A two-bit slut. It should have played as a stripper
looking for an easy buck.” Sharon turned to her computer, clearly not
interested in discussing the topic. “She’s trying to gouge Prodorp, and you
made her into a hero.”
“But that’s
how the story played.” Jessie didn’t get out of the Bunny Patch without showing
some backbone. “Did you see those tears? Those were real.”
Sharon
whipped around and slapped her palm on the desk, loud and sharp. Jessie winced.
“Let me make this clear. You missed the story. We’re done with Bambi. No more
Bambi. Bambi is toast.”
Sharon put
on her reading glasses with cold precision and began to scan the script from
the show. The topic was closed.
“Where did
this bit about something weird in Del Mar come from?”
“That was
me,” Jessie said. “Who was the source?” “A contact who works for the county in
San Diego. He was listening to the scanner and heard a fireman refer to it as
weird.” “Weird in what way?” “He didn’t know...just that it was weird.” “Your
source, he works for the fire department?”
“What the
hell does someone in waste management know about a fire?”
“Nothing.
But he is a San Diego County official, and he heard them say on the scanner it
sounded weird. That’s all we said. It’s clean.”
Sharon
seemed satisfied. “OK. Now, who the hell made Tammy
say
‘suspicious’? One of the writers fucking with her again?”
Jessie had
known this was coming. Everyone knew Tammy had problems with multisyllabic
S-words. “It was just a mistake. It slipped through. Tom wrote it. He’s new.”
“How ’bout
‘mysterious’ next time?” Sharon said, giving Jessie a slight wink over her
glasses. The linguistic challenges of the anchor represented their shared
burden. Once Tammy had gone over their heads and sent a personal complaint to
Ralph Farmore himself, after a script made two references to Sarah Stanislaw,
an actress making news for a sex tape. Tammy thought it was a deliberate
attempt to make fun of her speech impediment. Her agent threatened to sue under
the Disabilities Act.
Jessie
quickly moved through the list of possible stories for that night’s show. There
was a behind-the-scenes report on the new Farmore Studios release starring
Reese Witherspoon as an enterprising lawyer who poses for Hustler. Witherspoon wouldn’t talk, but HN! had an exclusive interview
with her 14-year-old costar, who was recently captured by a cell phone camera
doing tequila shots in a Santa Monica dive bar. And they were ready to run an
exclusive interview with Betty Aquilar, the star of a new hit hospital show,
who was accused of calling a costar the n-word during a network party.
But Jessie
knew there was only one story. Truland. Fire. Possibly arson? Everything else
was simply filler. Sure, it was only a house fire. Back in Phoenix, a house
fire wouldn’t make the 5:00 p.m. news. And she realized this house was owned by
a legend of the cheap attention getting stunt. But that didn’t matter. It was
Truland...and fire. And they needed a lead, preferably a story they could arc
over the next few days. Heck, she might get a month out of it. The holidays
were coming up. They could only do so many celebrity turkey giveaways.
“Was it
arson?” Sharon asked.
“The
official fire department statement calls it a ‘fire under investigation.’ But
it looks pretty damn ominous.”
“One of
those Elvis wackos?”
“Who knows?”
“But you
think there’s something more there?”
“Yes,
definitely.” Jessie had prepared for this moment. She had
already
decided to commit to Truland, all in. “This could be a big one. I feel it.”
“Spidey
sense?”
“Yes, definitely Spidey sense.”
“OK, let’s
not screw around then. Full court press. Everybody is
going to
want a piece of this one.”
Jessie knew
the score. They spent ten minutes working the angles
and
potential headlines.
“I don’t
want to be seeing any exclusives on Inside News,” Sharon
said. “Do
whatever it takes. Tell Vince he’s got to play ball on this one.”
Jessie
gathered up her pads and started to leave, her marching orders clear. This was
DEFCON 4.
“Oh, and
Jessie?” Sharon stopped her in her tracks. She used her Commander-in-Chief
voice. “Do what you have to do, but no helicopters, ---OK? Corporate is going
apeshit over the helicopter budget.”
The Cult of
Truland
by Kevin
Brass
Glowing Sand
Media, 350 pp., $15.95 (paper)
Best place to buy a copy:
http://www.amazon.com/Cult-
Best place to buy a copy:
http://www.amazon.com/Cult-
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