I ran into an old friend the other day. Well, just to clarify: it's probably too much to call him an "old friend". We don't really know each other. But we do share an interesting connection. Years ago, he was a guest star on a television series of mine.
Well, just to clarify: when I say "guest star", I mean a very specific thing. You see, "guest star" in the television business doesn't really mean "star" - or even "guest".
It's just one more Hollywood euphemism, like "Assistant Director" or "Executive Producer" - neither of which assists much or executes anything. But in Hollywood, we create lofty-sounding titles to paper over the truth, which is a lot of us don't do anything and get paid too much.
For instance, a "guest star" used to be called, crudely, a "day player" because in the old days they were paid by the day. But "day player" is a title that day players hate, so at some point in the early years of the television business, the job was euphemised and became a "guest star."
To recap: my old friend, the one I ran into recently, has been a guest star on a series I did. This was almost 20 years ago. It was very early in his career, and very early in mine, and I'd forgotten it. Mostly.
But when we ran into each other it was at a party, and it was one of those things where you never know if you're supposed to say that you've actually met, or that you remember each other, or just let yourselves be introduced as if for the first time.
In this case, it was slightly more awkward because for some reason, I vividly recalled the last time we met: we were on a soundstage when he was a guest star, and for some reason, the single line of dialogue he had to say gave him a lot of trouble.
He was supposed to say: "Hey Joe, did you hear? Pike and Symes got into a fight during the board meeting, and one of them stabbed the other with a pencil." Not too taxing, really. But those 26 words gave this actor a lot of trouble.
Multiple takes kind of trouble. Lots of mess-ups kind of trouble. Meaning: he kept "going up" on the line. "Going up" is a Hollywood euphemism for forgetting a line, or messing it up in some way that costs the executive producer - in this case, me - a lot of time and money.
By the sixth take, he was clearly having a minor breakdown. By the eighth take, he managed to get through it, and we moved on. Or, at least, I moved on.
He, apparently, never quite forgot it.
Flash forward to today. When we met - again - at the party, I was prepared to do that thing where you re-encounter someone after a few years, but you nevertheless pretend it's the first time the two of you have set eyes on each other.
He wasn't having any of it.
"You remember the line I ruined, right?" he asked. And when I pretended that I didn't - I was still doing the let's pretend thing, and when I commit to that, I'm in - he snorted dismissively and said, "Come on. Let's not do this. Let's not lie to each other."
And then he began to recall that moment for everyone within earshot. He was laughing, of course - I mean, the guy has gone on to have a very solid career. And to help him along, I joined in, first pretending that it was all coming back to me, "Oh yeah, oh yeah …" I said, and then someone asked if he knew the line, and he looked me in the eye and he recited, without hesitation, the single line of dialogue that gave him so much trouble 20 years ago.
"You remember the line?" I asked.
"Remember it?" he asked incredulously. "I say it to my children. They know the whole story. I'll bet if we called my daughter right now and I said the first two words to her, she could finish the line."
"Gosh. I'm sorry that this has haunted you." I said. Even though I thought it was kind of cool.
"I have no idea why it gave me so much trouble," he said. "But I knew I was falling apart when some of the atmosphere came up to me" - atmosphere, by the way, is a Hollywood euphemism for extras - "and told me that it was okay, that this kind of thing happened all the time, and that maybe I should think about becoming one of them."
As I said, he didn't. He's a professional working actor.
I'm sure way back then I was annoyed that a day player was causing such a pointless delay, but in the big picture, which is really the only picture that matters, it was something to forget and then remember at a party, as if we are old alumni of a college long since closed.
Which in many ways is true. And that's not a euphemism.
Rob Long is a writer and producer in Hollywood
