I finally went to Motorino where I enjoyed the pizza. It wasn’t the best I’ve ever had or my pick for the best in the city (I don’t have a “best”) but I could see how the Neapolitan style would appeal to some, so much so that they’d call it their favorite. It was good. The place was loud and it wasn’t cheap but the meatballs were outstanding. And I’m picky about meatballs, but these were worth the trip. Word to your moms and your grandmoms.
[Photo Credit: Serious Eats and Serious Eats]
The Show Must Go On
By John Schulian
With Steven Bochco’s stunning message–“You’re in show business, kid”–playing on a loop in my head, I headed back to Philadelphia to write the rest of my script. No sooner did I get there than his collaborator, Terry Fisher, called to say they needed the script sooner than planned. It was a lesson in the reality of episodic TV, and there was nothing I could do but roll with it. Just as I as picked up the pace, though, my father died.
He and my mother had lived in Marshall, Minnesota, since he retired from the hotel business. It was a farming town of about 12,000 near where my mother had grown up and far from what I think my cosmopolitan dad would have preferred. He let her have her way, though, as if he were trying to make up for all the long hours she had sat at home alone while he was working.
For him to do anything else would have been out of character. He was the only true gentleman I’ve ever met, a lovely guy with an abundance of charm and grace. I don’t recall ever hearing him swear, and I know for sure that he never lost his Danish accent. Unlike my mother, he was at peace with my decision to chase my dreams from one side of the country to the other. And yet I don’t think I realized just how proud he was of me until I was going through his things after he died. It seemed as though every time he found my syndicated sports column in the St. Paul paper, he clipped it out and saved it in a shoebox. I wish he had lived long enough to see me go to Hollywood. It would have been the perfect reward for all the Saturdays he took me to see the great old movies that captured my imagination when I was a kid.
This was the first time death had struck so close to me, and I’m still not sure I’ve ever grieved properly. There wasn’t time. After the funeral, I had to hustle back to Philly to make the new deadline for my script. If it hadn’t been the script, it would have been something else. That’s the way things work, as I’m sure we’ve all learned at some point. I’m just glad I was working for Bochco when things went sideways, because he was cool through it all. He told me to take care of what needed taking care of -– the show would still be there when I returned to Hollywood to work on a re-write. I’m sure he was feeling pressure himself – he had a lot riding on “L.A. Law” – but he never passed the pressure on to me.
I was already creating enough of it for myself. For one thing, the idea of re-writing would take some getting used to. I’d done a bit of it for magazine pieces, but in newspapers there was rarely time for it. In Hollywood everything was about re-writing. For my “L.A. Law” script, I worked with the show’s executive story editor, Jacob Epstein, the garrulous son of a New York literary family, who was a veteran of “Hill Street Blues” and happened to be 11 years younger than me. That was something else about Hollywood that took some getting used to: everybody seemed to be younger than me. Here I was, 41 years old, and the first headline I can remember reading in Daily Variety was about how writers in their 40s couldn’t get work. Sweet Jesus, I thought, I’m dead on arrival.
Maybe the talk about no work for writers of my vintage held true in comedy, where staffs skewed young, but in drama, where I was working, was filled with guys my age. Bochco, for one, was only a year or two my senior. His star writers on “Hill Street” had been around my age. Same with a lot of the writers on “Moonlighting” and “St. Elsewhere,” to name two other hot shows from that era.
So age wouldn’t do me in yet. I just had to lean into my work. Jacob and I would talk about how a scene needed to be different, and then I’d go into a room by myself, re-write it, and emerge an hour later. My newspaper training never served me better, though I’d always hated deadlines for the compromises they forced you to make. I’d been a slow newspaper writer, but by Hollywood standards, I was almost a sprinter. Or maybe I was more like Pavlov’s dog: tell me to re-write a scene, any scene, and I’d do it and come back begging for more.
Jacob turned out to be my greatest advocate at “L.A. Law,” lobbying hard to get me on the show’s writing staff. But Steven was too smart for that. He was also too gracious to be that blunt about it when I finished my re-write and started wondering what came next. I didn’t have any background in law, I was a rookie as far as TV writing went, and, quite frankly, Steven may have realized that I didn’t possess the magic he was searching for. I can tell you for certain that he re-wrote every word of my script, though the on-screen credit read “Written by John Schulian.” Jacob assured me that Steven was re-writing every script as he searched for the right staff. It would go on this way, Jacob said, until later in the season, when fatigue set in and the surviving writers had a handle on what he wanted.
Even though I wouldn’t be one of them, when I stopped by to visit the day it was announced that the premiere of “L.A. Law” was number one in the ratings, Steven gave me my first big Hollywood hug. (I’ve got to tell you this is the hugging-est damn town I ever was in.) Better yet, he arranged for me to meet with Bill Sackheim, a veteran of the Hollywood wars, who had been his mentor at Universal.
From day one, Steven had been the antithesis of what I’d heard about powerful people in show business. That was partly because he wasn’t producing a show that was on the air when my letter landed on his desk. He was contemplating what “L.A. Law” would be, and that gave him the time to give me more attention that he might have otherwise. Never was he was less than supportive, classy, and generous. He could easily have forced me to split the writing fee on my script with him, but he was too big for that. He didn’t need the money. He had already made millions, and he would make millions upon millions more.
I took him to lunch as a token of my gratitude, and since then I’ve only run into him once. It was at a prizefight in Las Vegas, in 1992, when I was working on an ill-fated script for HBO. He recognized me then. I’m not sure he would now. But that doesn’t matter. Everything I managed to accomplish in Hollywood in the next 20 years, every penny I made, can be traced back to the fact that Steven Bochco took a chance on me. I can never thank him enough.
“Seated Figure with a Hat,” By Richard Deibenkorn (1967)
Still Illmatic.
Thanks to Nas for beating Primo on this one.
Prince Paul gets vexed.
Here’s a great site–I mentioned it the other day: Retronaut. There’s just oodles of good stuff to be found there.
It’s over. Now, dig this wonderful photo gallery (and thanks to Diane for pointing out the facts).
This story originally appeared in the April, 1994 issue of Life Magazine. It is included in The Best Sports Writing of Pat Jordan and appears here with permission from the author.
The Curious Childhood of an 11-Year-Old Beauty Queen
By Pat Jordan
It’s eight a.m. The lobby to the Riverfront Hilton in Little Rock, Ark., is crowded with pretty young girls. Their faces are elaborately made up — lipstick, mascara, false lashes; their hair is in curlers. The girls are not playing or giggling. They are just standing there.
These girls are some of the 100 contestants, ranging from infants to 21- year-olds, who will compete this afternoon in the second annual America’s Queen of Queens beauty pageant. They want to be named Baby Queen, Toddler Queen or Empress Queen — and win the cash prize that goes with each title. The overall winner, Grand Supreme Queen, will get $5,000. In room 2046, Dr. Bruce Pancake, a Chattanooga plastic surgeon; his wife, Debbie, a former Miss Chattanooga runner-up; and Tony Calantog, their 23-year- old ”pageant coordinator,” are preparing the Pancakes’ eldest daughter, Blaire Ashley, for the event.
Blaire started entering contests when she was five. Now, six years later, she has competed in more than 100 beauty pageants — and won 90 percent of them. It’s a costly hobby: Entrance fees for national contests range from $250 to $800, and that doesn’t include the elaborate gowns, voice lessons, drama lessons, Tony’s $40-per-hour fee, or traveling expenses. Blaire’s prizes range from hair dryers to television sets to a red Ford Festiva to, last year, $12,000 in cash. ”I like the cold cash,” says Blaire’s mom, Debbie. Blaire likes the crowns. ”I fell in love with this one crown,” says Blaire. ”God! I wanted that crown.” But, she says, she sympathizes with girls not as wealthy as she, girls for whom a crown is not enough. ”I feel sorry for them,” she says. ”They have to win a car because they don’t have one. Their parents yell at them. One girl dieted so much she fainted onstage.”
Child beauty pageants –3,000 or so a year–take place mostly in smaller southern cities but are spreading rapidly; more than 1.5 million contestants vie for the money, cars, trips to Disney World and, most important, the experience that will take them one step closer to becoming Miss America. There is even a magazine — Babette’s Pageant and Talent Gazette — to fuel their dreams. The cover features recent pageant winners wearing crowns and sashes. One section announces innovations like pageants for children missing an arm or with cerebral palsy. Ads pitch banners, robes, crowns, trophies, costumes and the services of makeup experts and pageant coaches. Articles advise little girls on the importance of eye contact and offer tricks for overcoming puffiness and dark circles. But the real problems are saved for the Letters page.
”The kids end up victims,” according to one mother; another writes, ”There is more to life than pageants.” Perhaps, but for some girls and for some girls’ families, pageants are the past, present and future.
Blaire Pancake’s bedroom at home looks like Cinderella’s — after she married the prince. It is filled with crowns, tiaras, batons and trophies, all glittering with rhinestones, that make her old Little League trophy look shabby. She has a bulb-lined makeup mirror and two walk-in closets overstuffed with evening gowns just perfect for a miniature adult. (When Blaire was crowned Little Miss Hollywood Babes Superstar, she had a dress named after her. The Blaire is tulle-skirted and sequined in a herringbone pattern.) Blaire doesn’t play organized sports anymore, though she skis occasionally ) with her family, and she’s just started to make time for a sleepover or two. (School is no problem: Blaire gets A’s.) ”Pageants are my only interest,” she says. ”They’re all I want to do. I love what I’m doing. I want to become Miss America.” Which is why there are no posters of Blaire’s favorite rock stars in her room. No posters of a fantasy heartthrob. Blaire’s room is a shrine to her own fantasy.
Room 2046 of the Riverfront Hilton is something else altogether, a shambles of toys, clothes, rumpled beds, potato chips, Pop Tarts, curling irons, makeup, cans of Coke. The Pancakes have brought three of their four daughters along. Alexis, one, also a pageant winner, is home with a sitter. While their mother, Debbie, hides in the bathroom — where she will stay until she is totally made up — and Tony prepares Blaire, Bruce plays with Elise, three, Miss Southern Charm 1993, and Erin, eight, who used to win pageants until she discovered art and sports.
”When Erin quit, we were sick!” Debbie calls out from the bathroom.
”White-blonde is the perfect look,” says Bruce, dreamily fingering Erin’s hair. Bruce says, ”I’m a plastic surgeon only from the neck up. I enjoy the beauty of the face. No doubt that’s why I’m so involved with Blaire.” Bruce is captivated by his daughter’s beauty but prefers it enhanced: He apologizes to strangers when she is not wearing makeup. Some parents have accused Bruce of enhancing Blaire’s looks with surgery.
Debbie, from the bathroom: ”They can be ugly.” ”It’s ridiculous to operate on children,” adds Bruce. ”But if Blaire wanted me to do something when she’s older, I’d consider it.”
This contest has the Pancakes worried. Blaire will be competing against 12- year-olds, some of whom, according to Bruce, ”have the breast development of women.” Blaire is tall and thin, like a stick figure, but this talk of breasts does not seem to bother her. She sits in a chair, dressed in a nightshirt, her hair in curlers, and watches cartoons while Tony fusses over her. Blaire is used to hearing adults talk about the tools of competition. Like the fake tooth she’ll wear today to hide the missing baby tooth. When Tony begins gluing on Blaire’s fake nails, she holds out her hands, limp-wristed, like the delicate wings of a bird. Finished, Tony dabs makeup on Blaire’s eyelids, which flutter shut, then open.
”Now Maybelline Great Lash,” says Tony. ”All the models use it.” Bruce looks over. ”New makeup! Oh, perfect!” he says. Finally, smiling, Tony holds up a lipstick. ”Lasting Kiss,” he says. ”We can kiss collars and napkins, and it won’t come off.” He turns, puckers his lips and blows a kiss across the room.
At 14, Tony Calantog weighed 250 pounds. He went on to play offensive and defensive tackle on his Pensacola, Fla., high school football team. His teammates called him Otho, after the interior decorator in Beetlejuice. But Tony preferred to decorate the faces of little girls. Word of Tony’s expertise in makeup, dance, modeling, dressmaking and fashion coordinating soon spread throughout the child beauty pageant subculture.
”I saw Blaire five years ago in a Jacksonville pageant,” Tony says. ”I didn’t think much of her. Come on! She wore blue eye shadow!” Bruce asked him to help redesign Blaire. After he did, Tony says, ”she became glamorous. She had a certain look, and beautiful hair.”
”Some parents said it was hair extensions,” calls out Debbie.
”Blaire loves the stage,” says Tony. ”She totally turns on. She becomes . . . Blaire! A total package. It’s who she is.”
”She comes alive,” adds Bruce. ”She has that sparkle of spontaneity judges look for.”
”I love pageants,” Blaire interjects, speaking in a precise, adult voice. ”Except when I have to do two back-to-back. Then I have to tell my father I can’t take it anymore. I need a break. Pageants are easy for me, except for doing my hair. I’m very tender-headed. Oh, and the interviews. I try to make the judges like me. If I don’t win, I try harder to make them like me next time.”
”In our first pageant we had no talent,” Debbie says. ”She, not we, honey,” says Bruce. ”Now Blaire looks the judges in the eye,” boasts Debbie, still in the bathroom. ”She smiles, turns on that charm that makes them look at her. That’s talent.”
”We try not to enter too many pageants where the interview is important,” says Tony.
”We put Blaire in a package deal,” says Debbie. ”Clothes, beauty, talent, because she’s got a blah personality, like me.”
”Oh, honey,” says Bruce. Blaire is oblivious.
When Tony begins combing out Blaire’s hair, so thick with curls it almost obscures her face, Debbie emerges from her lair. ”Hi!” she says. ”I’m the mom.” Her face is heavily made up, her blond hair stiffly curled. She is wearing a black velvet pant-suit trimmed with gold brocade. Debbie has a doctorate in pharmacy, which comes in handy whenever Blaire is sick, like now. She has had the flu and was coughing and nauseated until Debbie gave her Dimetapp and an antibiotic. Today Blaire is feeling better. She is eating grapes, grasped delicately between her red fake fingernails. She eats each grape in three bites, with her front teeth, her lips curled back so as not to muss her lipstick. Debbie looks at Blaire’s hair and frowns.
”It’s too full.” Tony says, ”It’ll fall.” Debbie says, ”The main thing is to frame the face.” There is a knock on the door. Tony cries out, ”Oh, my shoes! My shoes!” He rips open a box and takes out a pair of shiny silver high heels. ”Cinderella’s slippers,” says Bruce. Blaire puts them on. ”They’re too big,” she says, without expression. ”Just watch out for the cracks in the stage,” says Debbie.
Tony holds up a black rhinestoned cocktail dress and stares at it in the mirror. ”I couldn’t wait!” he says. The dress is for the talent competition, in which Blaire will sing ”On My Own” from Les Miserables as one of her numbers. Blaire usually wears coral (”her best color,” says Tony), as she will in the western-wear, sportswear and formalwear competitions, which are really exercises in modeling. (The girls walk up and down a runway, posing, hands on hips, a little turn here and there.) Tony and Debbie make most of Blaire’s costumes. When she outgrows one, they sell it, often at a profit because of Blaire’s winning reputation. Everyone wants an original Blaire. Blaire unself-consciously strips down to her panties, a seasoned performer in a crowded dressing room. Tony helps her pull on her pantyhose, then her black dress. Blaire grabs a cordless microphone. (”You should have heard her before voice lessons,” Tony says.) While Blaire performs in front of the mirror, Tony stands behind her, pantomiming her act. He spreads his arms at the finale and bows, mouthing silently but with great exaggeration, ”Thank you!” Behind them, Erin faces the wall, drawing furiously. Elise, meanwhile, is holding up a bruised finger to her mother. Debbie looks at it and says, ”Did you cry? No. Good. Don’t ever make a scene.” Bruce stares lovingly at Blaire.
The ballroom at the Hilton is packed with parents, many of them overweight women in sweat suits or jeans, and their beer-bellied husbands in long-haul $ truckers’ caps. Bruce, Debbie, Erin and Elise, all wearing badges on their chests with Blaire’s photograph on them, are standing against the back wall, trying to be inconspicuous. Some of the parents have complained that the Pancakes get too much attention. Blaire is waiting in line with about 20 other girls. She stares, without expression, at the floor while Tony fusses with her hair. A few places behind her stands Ariel Murray, her main competition. Ariel has already won three cars, and last August she defeated Blaire in an Atlanta pageant.
”Blaire won Miss Photogenic,” says Debbie. ”And we were missing teeth.” When Blaire goes on, it is a seasoned performer who stalks the stage, belting out ”New York! New York!” moderately well, except for the high notes. For the first time in hours, Blaire is truly alive. She bows and leaves the stage. As Blaire and her mother walk back to the hotel room, Debbie says, ”If you had held the mike closer, you would have been more dynamic. But you wouldn’t. Ariel did it.”
Back in room 2046, Blaire wraps herself in her mother’s white satin kimono. Outside, little girls race down the hall, squealing. But Blaire has work to do.
Debbie: ”What’s your favorite color?”
Blaire: ”Coral.”
Debbie: ”Say ‘Because it looks good on me.’ ”
Bruce: ”If you could be anyone in the world, who would you be?”
Blaire: ”Myself, so I can obtain my goals.”
Bruce: ”What’s your secret weapon?”
Blaire: ”When people have problems, I try to help them.”
Bruce: ”You mean, help your sisters?”
Blaire: ”Aw, yeah, help my sisters.”
Debbie: ”Don’t say ‘Aw.’ ”
Bruce: ”If you went to the moon, who would you take with you?”
Blaire: ”My mom, because she never goes anywhere.”
Bruce: ”If you could be like anyone, who would you be like?”
Blaire: ”Leanza Cornett, because she was Miss America.”
Bruce: ”When you look in the mirror, what do you see?”
Blaire: ”Myself. I like what I see.”
Debbie gets down on her knees and begins rubbing moisturizer into Blaire’s legs because she will be wearing shorts for the interview. ”If you cough, say ‘Excuse me,’ ” Debbie says. Blaire holds out her arms, and Debbie rubs moisturizer into them. ”If they ask what the smell is,” says Tony, ”say ‘Wings.’ ”S He throws out his arms. ”Tra-la!”
Tony takes Blaire to the interview, which is conducted in private, and Bruce goes out for some fast food. With them gone, Debbie expresses her true fears: ”You got to watch out for them Louisiana girls. They pull ’em out of the swamps. They’re dumb but gorgeous.”
When Blaire returns, she says she thinks she did well. ”It’s not hard for me to talk to adults,” she explains in her precise voice. ”I like to spend time with adults, even though I have to act older because they expect more from me.” Maybe Blaire, who has given up a child’s spontaneity, shows so little offstage emotion because she’s so busy editing herself with adults.
On Sunday morning, the third day of the pageant, all the girls, in their gowns, and their parents assemble in the ballroom. When last year’s Grand Supreme Queen gives up her crown, the pageant organizer, a short, bald man, begins to cry. Then the winners in each group are announced. When Blaire’s name is not called for her group, the Pancakes turn to leave. But the pageant organizer urges them to stay. Finally, after each of the group winners has been introduced, the name of the Grand Supreme Queen is called out: ”Blaire Ashley Pancake!”
Her parents scream with joy as Blaire takes the stage to receive her crown and her five $1,000 stacks of $1 bills. The huge piles weigh heavy in her hands, like bricks. Blaire stands there for only a moment, smiling, looking slight and a little bit lost, before she leaves the stage. On the nine-hour ride back to Chattanooga, Bruce, Debbie and Tony are still too excited to sleep. Tony says, ”I feel great. I did everything correct.”
Debbie says, ”My parents think we go overboard with pageants.”
Blaire says nothing. She is asleep, clutching her crown in her hands.
Couple of days ago guy asks me, “What’s the best pastrami in New York.”
“Katz’s.”
I didn’t know if it was a question or a test but I didn’t hesitate. And that’s part of what it means to be a New Yorker, being certain. Now, I could be wrong, and these things are a matter of taste, of course. Mile End makes a tasty sandwich out in Brooklyn. But it is not like Katz’s. And not only is the food tasty but the ambiance is usually just right. Has always been better than Ratners, the Stage or the Carnegie or even the 2nd Ave Deli, rest in peace.
Any other nominees for the best pastrami in town? Get at me.
[Photo Credit: Joel Zimmer]
“Yellow Porch,” By Richard Diebenkorn (1961)
A Message From Mr. Bochco
By John Schulian
In the midst of the terror that paralyzed me in my first Hollywood story meeting, I heard a voice from my newspaper days tell me to do what I’d always done when other people were talking: take notes. So I madly started scribbling down everything Steven Bochco and Terry Louise Fisher were saying. And I kept scribbling until the day was done (thank God) and the story was broken (no thanks to me).
The story would become a script called “Gibbon Take.” It was about, among other things, a trust for the poor people of Beverly Hills. Steven sent me off to write the beat sheet for it, so we could see how the story looked on paper and where it needed shoring up. A beat sheet is a scene-by-scene outline that serves as the foundation for a script and a safeguard if a writer (me, for instance) makes a hash of said script. In the movie business, it’s known as a step outline, but movies take forever to make and writers come and go, leaving step outlines trampled and forgotten. But in TV, where the pace is furious-–a new episode is shot every seven or eight days-–a beat sheet is a rock to cling to.
On my way out the door that day, with my head still spinning, Steven’s assistant asked me the magic question: “John, where would you like us to send your check?” I hadn’t done anything to earn it yet, but I’ve never been one to turn down an offer of money, so I gave her my address in Philly and hurried off before she learned the awful truth about me.
I was staying at the Hyatt on Sunset Boulevard–the fabled rock-and-roll Riot House from the 60s-–and I spent the next day or two arranging and rearranging the order of scenes, looking for coherent act breaks, and basically taking baby steps as a TV writer. I worked on the same Olivetti portable typewriter that I’d hauled around the country as a sports columnist.
Steven would make changes in what I concocted, but still what I handed him wasn’t so bad that he banished me back from the premises. Instead, he gave me a big smile, wrapped an arm around my shoulder and asked, “You all right?”
“I think so,” I said.
“Well,” he said, “you looked like a horse in a burning barn the other day.”
Then we sat down to do some more work on the story. He wanted to get me writing as soon as he could, just as he had the other two untested TV writers he was taking a flier on. One was a woman whose name I forget. The other was a young lawyer from Boston named David Kelley. Maybe you’ve heard of him. Created “Boston Legal,” “Ally McBeal,” and “Picket Fences,” to name but a few series. Wrote almost every episode himself (to the amazement of even the most prolific and best writers in the business). Won every kind of award they hand out. Married Michelle Pfeiffer. All that and he was a good guy, a certified Boston sports nut who kept asking me what his favorite ballplayers were really like. I told him they were all princes. I was in no position to disillusion anybody.
Anyway, Steven wanted to find out about me as a writer as fast as he could. The woman he’d taken a chance on had just delivered her script, and it was a disaster. If I turned out to be just as bad, he wanted to send me packing as quickly so he and Terry Fisher could do a salvage job.
This wasn’t anything he told me, of course, but I could see it written on his face just as he had seen the fear written on mine. Inspired by our mutual discomfort, I made a proposal: what if I wrote five or six scenes from my beat sheet as a test run? If he liked them, I would finish the script. If he didn’t, I’d go back to sportswriting and we would part as friends. It didn’t take any convincing for him to say yes.
By now I was staying at Mike Downey’s apartment in Marina del Ray while he was on the road for the L.A. Times. Just me and my Olivetti as I tried to bring those great Bochco-esque characters to life. If I had any gift at all for what I was attempting, it was that I was a decent mimic. Steven’s characters spoke with such specific voices that I could imitate them without embarrassing myself. So I wrote and re-wrote each scene, polishing them until they had as much shine on them as I could muster. Then, on a Friday afternoon, I stopped by Fox and handed them to Steven. He said he’d read them and get back to me as fast as he could. Both of us were nervous, though for far different reasons.
I spent most of the next day wandering around and didn’t get back to Downey’s apartment until 3 or 4 in the afternoon. The message light on the phone was blinking. It was Steven, with a verdict: “I don’t know what you’re doing hanging around with sports writers, kid. You’re in show business.”
More is more. More is better.
Dig this most cool photo gallery of American restaurants, cafes, and dinners of the 1950s and ’60s over at the even cooler site, Retronaut.
(Peace to Brad for showing us the way to this one.)
