The Rich and The Famous Ch. 02

2.

Once Sabrina Meadows decided to take the lead role things moved quickly; Alex handpicked the best makeup artists, the best wardrobe stylists, the best cameramen, the best editors, the best everything. He firmly believed that the cast he'd assembled were all perfect for their roles. And the addition of Sabrina would guarantee a large audience. All the pieces of the jigsaw were laid out in front of him and he just had to make sure they fit together perfectly. Strangely he didn't feel any pressure but perhaps on the first day of filming he would tear his hair out, run screaming and drooling around the set, yelling at everyone for imaginary slights or nuances in their performance or job... But he doubted it. One thing he'd always been famed for was that he was easy to work for.

When Alex answered his cell phone one morning, only a week and a bit out from the first day of filming, he was asked by a journalist why he'd moved from a career directing blockbuster films into the less prestigious medium of a television serialised show he, after demanding to know how the woman got his cell number, gave her the usual line about television no longer being a step down from the silver screen. (Which, as far as he was concerned was true thanks to a few pioneering shows.) He then told her that directing a movie was a challenge but directing a television show would be more of a challenge; making sure that each week he produced 45 minutes of high quality programming that would rate through the roof. If you made a movie that was a flop it would perhaps go straight to video or it would be prematurely removed from cinemas everywhere but there would be nowhere to hide in the world of television; that is if the show didn't do well it would be axed and everyone would know he'd failed. One thing Alex hated, in himself and in others, was failure.

In reality the truth was a little more complicated. Marc Cherry had created "Desperate Housewives", J.J. Abrams had created "Lost" and Shonda Rimes had created "Grey's Anatomy", all of which were phenomanal hits across the country and internationally and Alex wanted a piece of that pie. It wasn't necessarily an ego thing but he did believe he could do it better than they could. After all he was Alex Hammond-- director of blockbuster movies that made hundreds of million dollars at the box office, winner of almost every award a director could win from Oscars to BAFTA's to MTV awards and Nickleodian Kids Choice.

*****

D-Day.

Lori Carmichael had almost made it; she was almost out the front door of her small West Hollywood apartment, when he called from the bedroom: "Lori- are you goin' out?"

Lori paused, her fingers almost closing around the doorknob on the front door, as she fought a quick internal battle over whether to pretend she hadn't heard him or not. Considering the fact that it was a couple of paces across the room that the landlord ambitiously described as the "lounge room come dining room" to the hallway which led to the bedroom and bathroom she knew even her boyfriend, his brain usually muddled by illegal substances (and some legal) wouldn't buy that. Her hand fell back to her side. How ironic it was, she thought, that the one time she really wanted to be able to sneak out of the place without having to acknowledge him was also the one time he was conscious during the day!

He appeared in the doorway. "Babe? You goin' somewhere?"

Lori's hand instinctively tightened around her handbag; she had just enough money to get to the studio and back again and she knew that for Carl to be awake, and up, at this early hour of the morning meant one of two things-- that he'd either only just returned home before her alarm went off and was still enjoying the drug high and unable to sleep yet or he was having withdrawals from whatever shit he'd put in his system the night before and needed more. When Lori and Carl had first met, four years ago, he'd been a nice looking man. He was tall and on the thin side of athletic, with thick black hair, piercing blue eyes and a skin tanned by spending more time out of doors than in. Now however it was hard to believe he was still the same person. His previously athletic frame was now thin (some might say scrawny), the muscles he had before having disappeared completely, his skin was pallid due no doubt to lack of exposure to sunlight, his eyes were usually tinged with red if not completely bloodshot, and his body twitched almost constantly. He looked a lot older than his twenty-three years and Lori supposed this premature aging was due to the copious amounts of alcohol and drugs he ingested.

"I've got to go to work." Lori told him. It wasn't really a lie, she told herself, because she was going to work, just not at the diner where Carl assumed she was going to be working. The moment she got offered the part on Alex Hammond's new television show she quit the diner, only too glad to be shot of the terrible working conditions, low pay and men who constantly thought her being their waitress gave them license to grab her and make lewd remarks. She still couldn't really believe all that had happened in the past three weeks: Alex Hammond had spotted her in a supermarket. She hadn't recognized him at first and had thought he was just another old man (well she was still in her teens) trying the patented "I'm an agent/director/producer and I'm going to make you a top model/actress/singer" route. When she'd realized it wasn't a joke nor a come on she'd panicked. She hadn't ever acted, was quite possibly one of the only young women in this city who didn't want to be famous and she told him as much. He'd given her his card anyway and asked her to come and read for a part. She hadn't been intending to go, had no plans to go whatsoever, but somehow she found herself at the appointed place at the appointed time and Alex had loved her read-through. The only thing that had been bothering her since the good news was that she longed to have someone to tell, someone who'd be excited and proud, who'd celebrate with her. It was times like this that Lori really missed her mom. Both her parents had been killed in a car accident when she was fourteen and with no relatives to speak of Lori had been left, somewhat, to fend for herself. Her foster mother didn't care where Lori went or what she did so long as she kept receiving the checks.

"Can you pick me up a little somethin' on the way home?" Carl asked.

"I don't have any money..." Lori hesitated. She hated that Carl had turned her into a drug courier.

"Never mind. Rat owes me. Are you sure you can't come back to bed?" Carl gave her what he thought was a sexy look but what really turned Lori's stomach. If the lease for this apartment wasn't in both names she would have left him by now. Because it was however she had to stick it out for another few months, knowing too well that if she did leave she'd never see any of the furniture which she'd bought nor get the bond back which, shockingly, she'd also paid. If she was asked about whether she loved Carl or not she'd say not but if the person really pressed things then she might admit there was some kind of feeling there but it was the old Carl she loved, she was in love more with a memory than an actual person.

"Positive." Lori replied quickly.

"K. What day is it?" Carl questioned.

Lori wasn't even surprised anymore, nothing Carl did could illicit any kind of disbelief from her. "Monday." She told him.

"Ah. So the Monday morning mass should be startin' soon then hey?"

The Monday morning mass (or MMM) was what Lori had christened the weekly event. The walls in the apartment were incredibly thin and it just so happened that the bedroom of their apartment backed on to the bedroom of the next apartment along, meaning both couples could hear exactly what was going on next door. Carl found it a bit of a turn on but Lori was just embarrassed by the idea someone could hear her and Carl having sex-- although it was not a regular occurrence anymore- and that she and Carl could hear someone else having sex.

"I guess it will be. But I've got to run." Lori said, glancing at her wristwatch.

Carl shrugged, indifferent. "That's fine; I'll just have to have myself some MMM masturbation."

Lori managed to end the conversation, kiss her boyfriend goodbye and hurry off for her first day on set. She liked the way that sounded and repeated it out loud as she went down the front steps of their apartment building: "On set."

*****

"It so is him." Someone hissed in a whisper that carried further than intended.

"So ask him." Another whisper.

"No way. You ask him." This reply was not so much a whisper.

Brock smiled to himself as he waited for his skim mocha with whipped cream (and yes, he knew that the cream did kind of cancel out the skim part of the beverage but he loved it too much) in line at Starbucks. Even while placing the order Brock had thought about the probable thousand calories he was about to consume and did feel at least, oh about a second's worth of guilt, hence the skim part of the equation. A little while back he'd had a dietician look at his weekly diet as part of his contract with a long running daytime soap and she'd told him that not eating breakfast was probably his biggest mistake- something about it screwing up his metabolism. When asked he admitted that while he'd list "running" as a hobby in interviews with entertainment journalists it had been a good six months since he'd actually done it. The dietician had suggested he consider exercising every day, complete with a very pointed look at his stomach. After the dietician had left Brock had raced to the nearest mirror to look at his profile: did he look a bit flabby? Did he have a bit of a beer gut? And were his abs no longer washboard? The result of the whole thing was that he'd kitted out a room in his home to be his own personal gym and for about a month had been on a major health kick before falling back into old habits and working out for about half an hour a week instead of half an hour a day. He didn't think he looked chunky. No he wasn't toned and muscley but didn't women like "real men" he asked the producers when they called him in for a "friendly chat". Of course every actor on the show knew that when the producers wanted to "shoot the breeze" with you it meant trouble, usually of the kind that could land them in the unemployment line. They told him that they didn't have anywhere for his character to go, that they'd exhausted all storylines, that they were sorry but the integrity of the show was more important than anything, that they were all, including themselves, expendable. And then they thanked him for the work he'd put in over the past three years. He didn't even get a frigging farewell card!

There was a tap on his shoulder and Brock turned to see two girls, around sixteen, looking at him intently.

"Excuse me, but are you Brock Myers? From Days of Our Lives?" The first whisperer- who had obviously lost the argument- asked.

Brock favoured her with the smile he gave all his fans- big, white, and teethy. "Yes, yes I am... but can you keep a secret?" He lowered his voice to sound dramatic.

"Excuse me sir! Your coffee." The barista interrupted and Brock leant forward to get his coffee and took that first, desperate, sip before addressing his fans. He didn't want to be late for filming, it wouldn't make a good first impression, but at the same time he just wasn't the same without his morning coffee. His partner knew not to ask him hard questions, or hit him with big news, before he had consumed at least five hundred calories worth of top-notch espresso coffee and while he had already had a coffee at home it had been hurried and therefore didn't count all that much. He'd had a sleepless night after a fight with his partner (which coffee wouldn't have affected in any way) and after drifting off to sleep finally about four o'clock he slept through his alarm and wouldn't have been up at all if he hadn't heard the maid coming in. So he'd stopped at the first Starbucks he'd driven past on route from his Brentwood home to the studio where the television show was being filmed.

"Yes." The first whisperer assured him, exchanging an excited grin with her friend.

"My character is written out of Days. But luckily I'm working on a new show now. With Alex Hammond directing. It's called The Rich and The Famous so I expect you two to look out for it okay?" Brock told them. That was the secret to dealing with fans- give them something that would make them feel like they were special, like you thought they were more important than any of your other fans. That and the big smile. Back when he'd made his first movie where he was actually mentioned in the credits Brock had been sure that was only the beginning and that he was going to be up there with the Tom's- Hank and Cruise for those not in 'the biz'- but, unfortunately, things didn't quite go to plan. It wasn't that he wasn't talented, he was repeatedly told, it was just that there were so many more men around his age who already had garnered big followings. One old director had told him he was born in the wrong time- had he been born ten years before he really was he'd be bigger than Ben Hur now. Brock collected a napkin in case he spilt his coffee.

"Shut up! Who else is in the new show?" The second whisperer asked, her voice unnaturally high as teenage girls voices can be when they're excited.

"Well there's me," Brock flashed the smile again "and the majority of the cast are made up of unknowns. If it worked for Joss Weadon then it can certainly work for Alex Hammond." Look at where Sarah Michelle Gellar was now. And there was also Allyson Hannigan. David Borenaz....

"Josh Wheaton?" The first whisperer looked confused.

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer?" Brock explained. Or were these girls too young to have caught the Buffy phenomenon. Well whatever the case he didn't have the time to explain it. He gave them a scrawled autograph resplendent on a Starbucks napkin, accepted the well wishes of his two young fans and the curious looks of quite a few more people in the store, and hurried back out to his beloved Porsche.

He tried to tell himself that at least he was still being recognized quite a bit out on the streets or in the mall (or Starbucks)- even if he was being noticed by schoolgirls, bored housewives or elderly women who had plenty of time to watch daytime television. After his first credited role in a movie Brock had accepted a few further roles, each a little larger than the one before, until Brock was classed as a supporting actor in a major hit movie. That was the pinnacle of his career. Brock bought his house, bought his car, and thought he was going places. A couple more supporting roles followed before Brock told his agent he would only accept lead roles and he sat back waiting for the offers to roll in. They didn't. Roll in that is. They didn't even trickle in. After a year then Brock said he'd take supporting roles if his character was the second lead role. Nothing. Suddenly it was as though Tinseltown had forgotten Brock even existed. It was around this time that he was told he should have been born earlier which was not exactly helpful. Brock had been beginning to get desperate when he was offered a role in a B-grade, or perhaps C-grade movie with a horrible script, cheesy overacting and cheap special effects. He took it of course but he'd left it off his resume ever since. Then his agent suggested he read for a role in a daytime soap. Brock had mixed feelings: on the one hand he thought that taking this job might mean he'd be typecast and get no offers on movie roles, on the other he wasn't exactly inundated with offers and this would mean being paid a steady, regular income. So he took it. And he actually found he really enjoyed the scripts, the cast and the crew. Then he got fired. Luckily his agent had, without mentioning it to Brock, sent a compilation tape of Brock's work to a number of Hollywood directors- both movie and television- and the rest, as they say, is history.

As he drove along he wondered whether he could trademark his smile- the one for the fans. After all hadn't America Fererra of "Ugly Betty" fame just insured her smile?