“I’m originally from Bell Harbor, Michigan,” he said. “I was born there, but more recently I was based out of Los Angeles.”
“Ah, Los Angeles,” Reggie said in a poor rendition of a Latino accent. “City of Angels, yeah?”
“Hardly,” Grant answered. “No angels around there that I could find. Just a lot of false perfection. Everything there is so glossy. Everybody is a voyeur, but nothing you see is real. Just a bunch of D-list celebrities saying look at me.”
Delaney felt a little dizzy, and it wasn’t from the whiskey. Her whole job revolved around LA glitz and gloss and voyeurism. But she wasn’t on the D-list. Worse than that. She was a stylist for the D-list.
“I didn’t spend much time in the city,” Grant added. “I travel mostly.”
“In a Volkswagen?” Humphrey asked, the guitar pick still flicking over his fingers.
Grant chuckled. “No, that’s Elaine’s car. You ever heard of One Man, One Planet?”
“Hells, yeah!” Humphrey exclaimed. “I love that show.”
“I’m a coproducer and the director of photography. Well, I was. I just quit.” He cocked his head. “And it still feels good saying that.”
“That’s the show with Rock Blakestone, yeah?” Reggie asked.
“Blake Rockstone,” Humphrey corrected him before Grant had the chance.
“Whatever. That guy is badass.” Reggie lifted his glass. “Here is to the badassery of Blake Rockstone.”
Grant shook his head. “Can’t drink to that. Blake would like you to think he’s a badass, but trust me, the only thing bad is his attitude. And his real name is Ned Beidelman. He’s an asshole. It feels good saying that too.” Then he took a drink.
Humphrey fell back against the cushion, both hands pressed against his chest in a display of mock agony. “Blake Rockstone is an asshole? No, say it ain’t so. I love that guy. Y’all remember that episode where he wrestles the alligator? Man, I thought for sure he was a goner.”
Grant shook his head. “That poor alligator. The thing was half dead, shot up with so many sedatives we thought we wouldn’t be able to revive it.”
“I remember that episode,” Reggie said. “Looked like the gator was fighting him pretty hard, yeah?”
Grant took another drink. “The assistant director put bungee cords on the poor thing’s back legs so they could make it twist and turn. Couple of poor sap production assistants were in charge of jerking it around to make it look ferocious. Add a few close-up shots and a little editing, and poof.” He spread his fingers wide. “Cinema magic. To the untrained eye, Blake Rockstone dry humping a sleeping animal looks pretty intense. That’s why I quit.”
“Because of the bestiality?” Finch asked.
Grant chuckled. “Yes, that, and the way it’s edited to manipulate the audience. When we first started the show, we had just one or two cameras. We were right in on the action. We had to be or we’d miss the shot, but now it’s too slick. There’s nothing authentic about it. Just like LA, I guess.”
Delaney took a big swallow of her drink. It burned, but not as much as Grant’s obvious disdain for television fakery, which she was very familiar with. Pop Rocks was full of it, thanks to sound bites and clever editing. In one episode, they’d made it seem like Melody had broken her foot, when in reality all she’d done was stub her toe. And in another episode, a well-articulated discussion about gun control was made to look like a heated argument between her and Roxanne about where to go to lunch. Every conversation she’d had on camera had been somehow twisted into something different. The trivial became significant, while the substance was boiled down to nuggets.
Delaney gave a little hiccup after swallowing the whiskey, and Grant squeezed her shoulder. She didn’t look his way. She didn’t dare. She just pulled her bangs down over her forehead.
“So you quit. What now?” Finch asked. “What does an ex-director of photography do when he’s out of work?”
“Well, if I can get the money Blake owes me, I’ve been kicking around this idea for a new show.”
Now she looked at him. “New show? What kind of show?”
He ran a hand over his jaw, as if he wasn’t fully on board with sharing, but then he started talking and his enthusiasm became evident. “Kind of an extreme makeover show, only with charities. Traveling all over, I’ve seen some truly devastated areas. The kind of places most people don’t want to think about. We’re pretty desensitized to seeing human suffering on a TV screen. You know, you hear about a village of a hundred hungry kids, and you think, ‘Oh, that’s so sad, but it’s too big a problem for me to solve.’ So, my idea is to personalize it. Take a different charity each week and do a feature about just one person or one family who that organization has helped. I think if people can see how even a little participation can impact the life of a real person, they’d be more apt to get involved. I mean, if you saw one hungry kid crying on the street in your neighborhood, you’d never forget it, right?”