Man and Wife. Tony Parsons
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‘You can’t make an omelette by keeping your dick in your trousers,’ Marty Mann told me. ‘That’s the trouble with you, Harry. You’re a born romantic. You’re going to get your foolish heart broken. You’re going to get butt-fucked by fate. What other way can it end?’
We were sitting in his well-appointed office at Mad Mann Productions, talking about work. Only work. But Marty was one of those go-getting, self-made businessmen who always made work sound like something else. Like the rougher end of jailhouse sex, in fact.
Marty was always promising male, middle-aged commissioning editors that he would ‘make you my bitch’. He didn’t get merely excited about the TV programmes he produced, he ‘got a boner’. He was never let down in a business deal, he was ‘humped and dumped’. He didn’t just work hard, he ‘fucked like a rattlesnake’.
It made me wonder what his married life was like. After a couple of drinks on a Saturday night, I could imagine him asking his wife if she would consider a co-production deal.
I had known Marty a very long time. Siobhan, his wife of about two years, had once been my kind of girlfriend, of about two hours. Just before my first marriage broke up.
Marty and I had started out together, on late-night talk radio, working the nut shift. I produced, and Marty made sad, lonely people sound wildly entertaining. Then we went into TV together and I thought that our partnership was my meal ticket for life. Right up until the lunch where he sacked me.
We eventually made it up. Because I bounced back with a younger, hotter talk-show host, while Marty lost his bounce altogether. When he had been suitably humbled by the grim realities of zero-rated daytime television, trying to sell jewellery that would make your skin turn green, we found that we could be friends again.
These days we were on the same side of the camera. Mad Mann Productions no longer produced shows featuring the dyed-blonde shock jock who caused so much controversy back in the nineties. Now Marty was a programme maker. He was always on my case because my production company made just one show, Fish on Friday. You might have seen it. The one with Eamon Fish, that young Irish comic? Eamon was famous for dating weather girls. It was said he knew more about warm fronts than any man in the country. Marty would never put his faith in one young stand-up comic pretending to be a talk-show host. Marty had a whole raft of programmes.
‘Six Pissed Students in a Flat,’ he said, hitting a button on the remote. One wall of his office was covered with TV screens and every one of them switched to his latest concept. Beautiful young people in minimal clothing raising their voices in rented accommodation. ‘It’s got the lot – sex, youth, drama, low overheads, pierced nipples. Six Pissed Students in a Flat, Harry. The advertisers are weeping with gratitude.’
He hit another button. The screens switched to a weird-angle black-and-white shot of two young men struggling with the owner of a convenience store. ‘Ah, this bit is great,’ Marty chuckled as the man behind the counter produced a baseball bat and began wildly lashing out. One of the young men pulled out a gun.
‘You’ve Been Robbed!’ Marty said. ‘Hilarious – and sometimes tragic – real-life footage of violent robbery. A, er, savage indictment of, you know, our violent society.’ Another button. Footage of Vietnam villages exploding into orange flames, hippies fornicating in the mud at Woodstock, students confronting the National Guard, all given a coating of melancholy by the Kinks singing ‘Waterloo Sunset’. ‘All Your Yesteryears. Making the past funky. One for the baby boomers – and their children. Show the spoilt little bastards what they missed.’
Our production companies couldn’t have been more different. I worked out of a back room in Soho with a couple of part-timers, Marty had a big office full of staff. I had Eamon Fish on the midnight shift, Marty had Six Pissed Students in a Flat on prime time.
‘You can’t have just one show,’ Marty insisted. ‘It’s no good having all of your eggs in one chicken. And Eamon’s not going to be hot forever.’
‘But I like working with just one production. That means I can really focus on Eamon. Get the most out of him.’
‘What if it all goes wrong? What happens then? You know what TV programmes are like, don’t you?’
‘Women?’
He slapped his desk. ‘Exactly. TV programmes are just like women. You’ve got to have your chicken in a number of pies. Diversify, dude. You’ve got to spread your seed.’
Marty had a wife at home who was expecting their second child. Siobhan was a former programme maker who had made the switch to homemaker. She was a smart, beautiful Irish redhead who I sometimes saw at launch parties and screenings but I had no idea if she was happy or not. I couldn’t help noticing that Mad Mann contained a greater proportion of attractive young women than you would expect in a production company of this size.
But I listened to Marty. He knew his stuff. And I listened to him because work was increasingly important to me. Not just because I was self-employed now. Not just because the number of bills I had to pay seemed to be growing every year. The real reason I worked so hard was because I was good at it. This was what I did best.
Dealing with commissioning editors, production coordinators, and the talent. I could talk to these people, I could get them to do what needed to be done. Tearful make-up girls, surly floor managers, drunken lighting technicians. I had seen it all before. Guests with stage fright, guests who turned up drunk, guests who froze when the red light above the camera came on. That was nothing new. This was my world, and I spent time here because there was nowhere else that I felt so comfortable.
Even if you have just the one show, television demands that you work long days. Early mornings and late nights, script meetings and full rehearsals, too much coffee and not enough daylight. Sometimes I lost sight of why I worked so hard. And then I remembered.
I worked hard for Pat, of course. For Cyd and Peggy too. Also for my mum, now that my dad had gone. And whatever my wife said, I couldn’t stop myself feeling that I was also working for my child. Not the little boy who lived with his mother, or the little girl who lived with me. My other child. The one who hadn’t been born yet.
A young woman came into Marty’s office without knocking. She was one of several slim young redheads who worked at Mad Mann, women who looked a lot like Siobhan did when she was single. This one bent over Marty’s CEO-sized desk, rummaging in one of his drawers.
‘What’s the matter, darling?’ Marty smiled. ‘Lost your stapler?’
‘I need the pilot of Six Pissed Students in a Flat. For your Hungarians.’
Marty pulled out a battered-looking VHS and gave it to her.
‘We’re selling the concept all over,’ he told me. ‘There’s going to be Six Pissed Chinese Students in a Flat, Six Pissed Polish Students in a Flat. The world is sporting a stiff one.’
We watched the redhead go.
‘We’re going for a couple of drinks at the Merry Leper,’ Marty said. ‘Want to come, Harry? She’s got a friend.’
‘I’ve got to get home. There’s a bit of a party.’
‘Sounds good.’
‘Well, it’s a party for seven-year-old girls.’
‘Some other time then.’ Marty saw me to the door of his office. ‘Don’t forget what I said about keeping your eggs in more than one chicken.’
‘I’ll remember.’
He embraced me.
‘You know the trouble with you, Harry?’
‘What’s that?’
‘You believe in true love.’ My old friend smiled sadly. ‘That stuff always