Ship It(72)

“You’re the showrunner, the buck stops at you,” I say.

He snorts and chooses a chair out of the thousands to plop down into. “Not even close. The buck barely touches me as it whizzes by. Being showrunner means you’re just the guy tasked with keeping everybody happy. From the very first meeting it was made clear to me that I was there to do the network’s bidding. And the studio’s. And the stars’.”

He leans back on his chair’s rear two legs to stare at the ceiling. “God, the ‘stars.’” More air quotes. Then, in a sneering, mocking voice, “Rico Quiroz from Star Command wants to do your show! What a get! Congrats, bud!” He rolls his eyes. “I should’ve known right then.”

“Wait…” I try to keep up. “What are you saying?”

“That some old-ass C-list actor from a space show on SyFy wasn’t exactly my first choice to lead my show? Yeah. But apparently you can’t do a series these days with two white leads or you get yelled at on the internet by people like you. So you make sacrifices, and you do what it takes to get your show made.” He looks directly at me. “And you finally find two leads that all the execs can live with who are racially diverse, handsome enough for primetime, in our price range, look the part, and, hopefully, can actually act. Then the people on the internet yell anyway because they aren’t also gay.”

I’m floored that Rico wasn’t his first choice for Heart. He’s so perfect in the role, it’s difficult to imagine anyone else… and straight-up impossible to believe that Jamie wouldn’t like him in the part. Rico is Heart.

“Look, this isn’t the only compromise I’ve had to make on this show. Every single script needs approval from the suits at the studio and the network, and they always have notes. ‘Make it less enigmatic, spell it out. Think NCIS, not Mad Men.’ Then I get yelled at by production in North Carolina that what we’ve written is ungettable, and we need to cut five pages, oh and also we’re running over by a hundred grand. Then I get actors calling me telling me that they’d never say this thing or that thing and I’m trying to tell them I know it’s unwieldy, but the network wants it spelled out. Think NCIS, not Mad Men. But what do the actors care about the network? They just want critics to love them. And then after all that, by some miracle, we make a pilot and put it on the screen and get a full season, and everything’s supposed to finally be clicking into place except now the fans, the very people who are supposedly obsessed with the show, are hollering at me that it’s actually not quite up to their standards. Well, please, pile on.” Jamie runs his hand through his hair and then carefully plumps it back up to its proper volume.

“I know you think everything that ends up on-screen is intentional,” Jamie says, looking over at me, “a perfectly crafted story that sprang whole from the writers’ minds into reality, but it’s just not like that. Half of it is compromise, the other half is just happy accidents.”

“Which half is SmokeHeart in?” I ask.

He starts to respond, then catches himself. I wonder what snarky thing he was about to say. He tries again. “SmokeHeart,” he says slowly but firmly looking me right in the eyes, “isn’t real.”

I sigh and click a button on my remote control. At the front of the room, a screen descends with a buzz.

“Oh goodie,” Jamie says drily, “visual aids.”

I hit another button and a video comes up. It’s a clip from episode six. Heart is confronting a minion of the Commander, and trying to get information out of him before he kills him.

“Oh god, this guy was such a nightmare to work with,” Jamie says as the clip comes up. “Wanted to be paid extra because of the prosthetics. Like, excuse me, you’re a dayplayer. I can find a hundred guys to replace you.”

I ignore his commentary and let the clip play out. On the screen, the minion—a skinny guy with a prosthetic forehead made to look demon-ish—is squealing that he already told Heart’s partner everything he knows. Heart doesn’t understand; he doesn’t have a partner. I look at Jamie for this part because the important line is coming. The minion scowls at Heart and says, “You know, that pretty little boyfriend you run around with.” Heart frowns and says, “Smokey?” The minion nods. And Heart shoots him through the chest. Scene over.

The screen goes dark. Jamie shrugs. “That’s it? Because some meathead nobody called them boyfriends, now it’s canon? It was a joke, dude.”

I hit another button, play another clip. In this one, Smokey and Heart wrestle over ownership of the Bowl of Holding in a biker bar. As they smash into barstools and dartboards, one bar patron wolf whistles at them, while another says, “Get a room!”

The clip ends. Jamie sighs deeply. “That’s also a joke.”

Another clip. An unnecessarily sexy lady-demon tells Smokey that if he really wants to get information out of her, she’s open to bribes, especially “biblical ones.” Then, when Smokey hesitates, she says, “I knew it! You got a hard-on for that demon of yours, don’t you? Richard owes me fifty bucks….” Smokey gags her and tortures her for the information instead.

Jamie throws his hands up. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I want you to say these are shitty jokes. I want you to say you knew that the fans were shipping your two lead characters, and you thought, ‘Hey, we’ll throw them a bone.’ But you had no intention of actually following through. I want you to admit—”