Steven Bochco by Death by Hollywood Page A

cell number.”
    And then, because Dennis can’t ever stop thinking like a cop, or maybe it’s because he already has feelings for Vee that are making him nervous, he asks her if she ever heard about Ramon liking to tape himself having sex with women.
    Vee looks almost shocked by the question. “No, I never heard that. Did he?”
    â€œNot to my knowledge,” says Dennis.
    â€œWhat a creepy thought,” Vee says, and then she blesses him with her smile again. “Call me.” And she’s gone.

CHAPTER 15
    Personally, I’m not a big fan of movie premieres, or for that matter the gigantic parties that follow. For one thing, they can cost anywhere up to a million dollars, which is an insane amount of money to add to the already horribly bloated bottom line of most big-budget movies. Also, you can’t even really justify the cost as part of your publicity-and-promotion campaign. The premiere itself, with all the fans, the TV cameras, the klieg lights, the paparazzi, provides the media bounce. The party after is nothing more than a self-congratulatory jerkoff. And finally, there’s the simple stupidity of it. Let’s face it—paying a million dollars for a party is like paying a thousand bucks for a bottle of wine in a restaurant. It may be a showy gesture, but no matter how good it is, six hours later it’s still piss.
    Or maybe I’m just cynical. The fact is, people in and aspiring to
be
in the industry love these parties. It’s an opportunity to network on someone else’s dime. It’s an opportunity to hook up. It’s a chance to amortize the cost of your new tits. And of course, like all industry functions, it’s a chance to aggrandize yourself—i.e., to lie. I mean, how else are you supposed to get good at something if you can’t practice?
    I’m telling you this because I happened to attend, albeit reluctantly, the premiere of the latest Tom Hanks movie, as well as the party immediately following, in a giant tent set up a block away from the movie theater in Westwood. I was there because I represent one of the six credited writers on the movie, Bobby Newman, which is how I can tell you the next part of the story with the certainty that it’s true.
    But before I get to that, you’re probably wondering what Bobby and I were doing together after I fired him. What happened was, a couple of days after Ramon was murdered, Bobby called me to apologize. He said he realized what a terrible pain in the ass he’d become, how he’d taken Vee’s love and my friendship and support for granted, and how his drinking had pretty much killed his marriage, not to mention shut off his creative faucet. He went on to say that maybe Vee leaving and me firing him back to back was just the wake-up call he needed to get his shit together and that, finally, he was back on track. He said he was going to do everything possible to show Vee he was a changed man and that he was hoping she’d be willing to give him another chance. He also told me he’d have the Brian Grazer draft finished by the end of the week. He’d literally been working on it night and day, plus—for the first time in years—he’d gotten an idea for an original screenplay, which he thought was absolute dynamite.
    When I asked him what it was about, he told me he wasn’t talking; that when he talked, he didn’t write, and he wasn’t going to dissipate his creative focus by discussing it, even with me.
    Say what you want. I’ve known this guy a long time, and one thing I know for sure is when he’s bullshitting me and when he’s not, and I heard in his voice that he’s not. So I unfired him, and to tell you the truth, I’m glad. I was having second thoughts about what I’d done anyway. Not so much because I thought I was wrong, but because my timing was lousy. Here was a guy whose career was going down the tube, his wife had