Kevin and the Peacock – Part Two

The second part of my series of missives about my time with the good people of NBC. This is the first part detailing my days as an NBC Page (more page stories to follow). It is 1997. It is polyester.

NBC Page

I was working at Kinkos when the call came. My father took the call, and immediately called me at work. I immediately called them back. I had been offered a job as an NBC page. My foot was now officially in the door.

I hung up the phone and stood there for a moment amidst a gaggle of copy making employees and copy seeking customers. I yelled at the top of my voice, “I quit!” I finished my shift that night, but my mind was already on route to Burbank.

I would be making $8.50 an hour as a page, more than at Kinkos, but there were drawbacks. There were no benefits, and those accepted into the page program were told they could remain no longer than a year. It was also at least 40 miles between where I was living in Corona and NBC Studios. I’d have to wear a polyester suit and A TIE! And there was the inescapable possibility of failure looming over me.

It was early March when I met up with four other new pages in the lobby of NBC’s Catalina building. Sherry, Cindi, Yvonne, Wanton and I were all escorted back to the room where we did our initial interviews. It turned out to be NBC’s offices for Kelly Staff Services. We were informed that we would be working at NBC, but not for NBC. Kelly handled the payroll and paperwork for all the pages. We were then given an abridged version of all the employee orientation stuff I had become intimately familiar with and sent to the far end of the studio facility to receive our formal training.

The pages were a diverse and interesting bunch, particularly the four in my “class.” Sherry was physically perfect in every detail, and she knew it. It wasn’t conceit. She had spent time, and money, to look good. Time and money well spent. Cindi was the most petite woman I’d ever met, and had a cute east coast accent. Yvonne had a cool sophistication about her, and a dry sense of humor. Wanton, whose prior job had been driver of the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile, was just insane (in a good way).

Among the more seasoned pages was David, who moonlighted as a landlord. He spent a lot of time on the phone evicting people. There was another page named Kevin whose last name was Paul, which was weird since Paul is my middle name. Todd was a living poster child for the army, boy scouts or any other organization that conjures images of a stoic, straight laced, militant attitude. He was like a robot, only not quite as efficient.

A page is an usher, a tour guide, a cashier at the gift shop, an information source handling Tonight Show ticket requests and any other calls the switchboard feels like sending our way, and a ticket distributor at a small kiosk located atop Universal City. Because I neglected to list any of my retail experience on my resume, I was told I wouldn’t perform any of the cashier duties. This was actually a good thing, since an opening shift at the gift shop started very early in the morning.

The bungalow which housed the page lounge and ticket office was akin to a coed dorm. It was an extension of the college experience. Oh yeah, the one criteria for acceptance as a page was a college degree. Any college degree. There were business majors, political science majors and even a few of us stupid communications majors in the program when I joined. There were approximately 35 pages at any given time. The ones who had been there longer tended to be placed in positions of authority, but it wasn’t a hard and fast rule. Anyone was essentially able to do anything within the program, but we were all there for a single reason: to get a better job in the industry.

Over the years, I had perfected my skills at smiling and nodding, and considered myself adequate at kissing ass. But I was out of my league at NBC. Some of the other pages would’ve let the elephant man go down on them if it meant a chance at the big time. A few pages were just there to make a few bucks, but most wanted something more. Admittedly, I was among the latter.

If all I wanted was money, I could’ve trained to become a plumber or a house painter. They earned decent scratch and had the weekends off. It felt like I was supposed to be at NBC. The first time I walked into studio one, Johnny Carson’s home away from his Malibu home for over two decades, it was like walking into a sacred temple. On my worst days at NBC, the studio still had the power to inspire me and fill me with a sense of wonder.

The most frustrating part about being a page was giving studio tours. The “factual” information we learned was almost always wrong, and most of the studios were in use during the afternoons. Afternoon tours consisted of a walk around a series of hallways and closed doors. I learned to make them interesting by talking to the tourists and engaging anyone who happened to walk past the tour group in conversation about who they were and what they did for the studio. You’d be surprised how excited people got at meeting an audio engineer, or the local weatherman. Anyone remotely connected to the TV industry was considered a somebody. Even pages were deemed a nobler class of people by many tourists.

Most people I came across at NBC were friendly and polite to tourists, as well as myself. One of the hosts of Access Hollywood, Pat O’Brien, was notorious for chatting up tour groups. Dennis Haskins, known to many as the principal on the long running teen series Saved By The Bell, would actually go out of his way to talk to anyone and everyone. When the cancellation of his show was officially announced, Haskins threw a send off party and invited everyone who happened to be on the lot that day. I took in a full tour group of about 20 people. He shook everyone’s hands and gave all in attendance souvenir pens he’d made up.

The stars of the popular daytime drama, Days Of Our Lives, also knew how to work the public. Drake Hogysten, who portrayed John Black, once talked baseball with a member of my tour group for a half an hour. And the male teenage actors often hit on the female tourists.

Krista Allen, a stunning woman who portrayed Billie Reed on the show, was walking to her car one night the same time I was. For reasons never made totally clear to me, she was… well… I’ll just say she was adjusting two lovely pieces of her anatomy. And she was really concentrating on whatever it was she was doing. Perhaps her bra was caught on something. I don’t know, but after a few moments she realized someone, me, was walking beside her and she stopped whatever it was she was doing. She even went so far as to apologize for her awkward behavior. In what I can only describe as the riskiest thing I’ve ever said to a total stranger, I replied, “That’s alright. If I had those, I’d probably sit around all day and do that too.” She laughed. It was at that moment I knew there really weren’t too many taboos in this business. Had I not been wearing my polyester suit, I might even have asked her to join me for a drink.

Another moment of free expression came while buying a cup of soup at the commissary. The commissary of any studio has to accommodate many classes of people with many different tastes. And many of those who frequent the commissary do so only because they don’t have time to go someplace better. And at no time was that more apparent than the day one of the stars of NBC’s short-lived drama Sunset Beach found her way to the salad bar dressed in nothing but a see-through, silk robe. Having never watched the show, I could not tell you her name on a bet, but there she was in all her glory, frantically trying to assemble herself a salad. Every guy in the room, and more than a few women were staring at her. But as soon as she’d look at them, their faces would turn red and they’d quickly look away. Not me. She looked at me, and I looked right back at her. She gave me a look which seemed to imply that it was wrong for me to stare at her. I continued to look and responded to her negative glance by saying, “Oh, come on, look at yourself for a minute.” She smiled, told me I was right and that was that.

But not everyone was as easy going as daytime drama’s most beautiful women. One of the on camera talent, who shall remain nameless, for a show, which shall remain equally nameless, used to hide behind walls, cameras and even crouch under a desk if tour groups came near her. She was, in my humble opinion, staggeringly beautiful, and, being on air talent, one would think she’d be used to people watching her. The thing was that she wasn’t very good at hiding and inevitably someone on my tours would ask me why she did it.

There is a place on the lot known as SkyPath. SkyPath is the main routing station for the network’s programing. The system had long ago been automated, but the room remained a technical wonder. Dozens of monitors and hundreds of blinking lights and flashing knobs filled the room. Most of the pages didn’t bring their tour groups there, because it usually prompted tourists to ask technical questions the pages could not answer. I thought it looked cool, so I always brought people to see it. One day, I made an offhand remark that while SkyPath was automated, it was still visited by the occasional engineer, than I added that really all the engineers did in that room was scratch themselves or read the newspaper. The comment drew a few laughs from everyone except a nearby engineer who was heading towards SkyPath. When I got back to the office, I learned that engineer had informed his supervisor, who had called my supervisor, not to complain, but to confirm or deny which engineer I had seen scratching himself or reading a newspaper.

Something strange happened to the local news in Los Angeles while I was away at college. I used to watch a locally produced show on TV called Eye On LA. Regular viewers of the Simpsons might have seen the show’s parody called Eye On Springfield. Eye On LA was an “evening newsmagazine” show that mainly featured fast cars and big breasted women. One of the more memorable episodes was a swimsuit spectacular filmed in 3D. The host was a mild mannered, non threatening man named Chuck Henry. He did a good job, and by that I mean he never obstructed my view of the fast cars or big breasted women.

Eye On LA ran through the mid 1990s with Henry serving as the show’s host. But sometime between when I left for college and when I came back, something changed. Eye On LA had been canceled, and Chuck Henry began anchoring the newscasts for the Los Angeles NBC affiliate, KNBC. KNBC’s news was shot in studio 10 at NBC Burbank. It was not uncommon to catch the news personalities dashing from one end of the building to another. It was even less uncommon if you happened to give studio tours several times a week.

Having grown up watching Eye On LA, I found it difficult, if not impossible, to take Henry seriously as a news anchor. He seemed born to walk along a beach interviewing a swimsuit designer, but awkward talking about multiple rape victims and government corruption. But I kept a reasonably open mind, until the day a high speed pursuit took place.

It is a fact high speed pursuits happen with enormous regularity in Los Angeles, and I confess I love watching them. Don’t get me wrong, I believe the fact police officers allow criminals to roam the streets, at high speeds, in two ton automobiles is a crime against the public. But most police departments, fearful of lawsuits and other excuses that go against everything the badge stands for, constantly let people speed through red lights, ram into other vehicles and hit pedestrians. I decided if the police could turn a blind eye to all the dangers, so could I. In fact, the more violently a chase ends the better. I don’t mean I like it when innocent bystanders get hurt or killed. I like it when the criminal being chased gets hurt or killed. And because it’s really their fault to a large extent, I don’t mind if the pursuing police suffer a few scrapes and bruises (I don’t like to see them killed, but if they’re going to allow the lives of the public to be endangered by not stopping someone who is clearly evading them, I have an enormous lack of sympathy for their plight).

It was a warm, summer afternoon. I was sitting in the page lounge watching a good car chase on TV when someone reminded me I had a tour to give. I tried getting someone else to take my tour so I could watch how the chase ended, but no one was willing. I took my tour from studio to studio, and as I entered each studio, I changed the channel of a monitor to KNBC’s coverage of the pursuit. I got the tourists involved by reminding them that the live coverage was being anchored right down the hall. Soon, it was the focus of the entire tour. I took them into the Tonight show studio and the stage manager put the pursuit on the wall of monitors Leno stands in front of as he performs his nightly monologue. Finally, as I was leading them past studio 10, where the news was taped, out came Chuck Henry. It is not uncommon for high speed pursuits to go so long that the midday news anchors handed the coverage over to the evening news anchors. Curious as we all were, I asked Henry for the latest info on the chase. He looked at me like a man who had just been shot with a charge from a stun gun and asked, “What chase?” The whole tour group was speechless as we all realized Chuck Henry had managed to cover a breaking news story while simultaneously possessing no knowledge of what the story was about.

As an intern, my first on camera exposure took place on the Tom Snyder show. We were doing a live broadcast outside the Catalina building (it was the closest thing to going “on the road” cable TV was going to offer). It was the middle of summer and the valley was swarming with gnats. My job was to continually spray the area with bug spray. Tom encouraged me to, “spray the area” during his opening segment, and as I did, a heavy wind picked up and carried the bug spray right in his mouth. He cussed on live national television and I was the indirect cause. Oh, the feeling of power.

I appeared on TV many times while working as a page. I appeared in various audience pans, and I was used as an extra on both the Tonight show and the Howie Mandel show. I once got paid $50.00 for less than five minutes work on the Tonight show. I played a security guard. I was on air for less than three seconds, but they say three seconds on the Tonight show is more than 99.9% of humanity will ever get.

I am a realist, however, and I knew even then that I was not made to be on air talent. I had a lazy eye, receding red hairline and pale skin. Aside from being an alien abductee or a nutty neighbor on a sitcom, my future as an actor was never a serious option. My future had to be in a behind-the-scenes capacity.

I got to know a lot of the union folks at NBC. The facility is what is known as a union shop, meaning there was a person specifically assigned to do every task on the lot. If I, as a page, moved a chair in the Tonight show studio, I was in violation of a union contract. I was taking away someone else’s job. The union could fine me and shut down the show. If I picked up a piece of paper off the floor, same thing. Most of the union men and women were not that strict about the small stuff, but there were a few souls who lived in constant fear of unemployment. They’d just as soon shoot you as look at you, particularly if they thought you might want their job. It was those hostile union members that I befriended first.

The thing about unions in the industry is that it is tough as hell to get into them, but once you’re in, you’re in forever. I became acquainted with every cameraman, stage manager, prop master, audio technician, lighting designer and engineer I could find, even a few janitors just to be completely covered. Doing so allowed me an unprecedented chance to see how things were done. College TV and even an internship at a cable TV station can only teach you so much. To be allowed to sit in the audio booth during a taping of the Tonight show gives you first person insight that cannot be duplicated in a classroom. Swapping stories with the crew during official union breaks offered me the chance to learn from the mistakes of others, and hear a few interesting tales that go back to the earliest days of the industry.

I talked to the security guards, the commissary staff and the guy who ran the shoe shine stand. And if I happened to be conducting a tour at the time, then the tourists got a true idea of the people who made television happen. After a few months, my tour was totally different from tours lead by any other pages. I developed such a sense of familiarity with the people at NBC that they often voluntarily chimed in with their own stories about what went on at the studio. Many also loved to heckle me and point out any mistakes I might make along the way.

Seating audiences was a different story. As a guide, tourists want to hear what you have to say. As an usher, they want the front row… or your ass! There is no middle ground. Rocket scientists, FBI agents, scholars and philosophers alike all drop IQ points while standing in line to see a show. The smart become stupid and the stupid become more stupid. And the most stupid of the lot are in a class all by themselves: paid audience members.

Paid audiences are big business in the television industry, and it is a part of the industry that is kept as quiet as possible from the general public. Most shows do not tape in real time, neither live nor what is called live-to-tape. Shows start and stop constantly, shoot out of sequence, and hold audiences captive for hours. And there just aren’t enough tourists with the patience to sit through the process. That’s where paid audiences come in. They are supposed to be a supplement to standard ticket holders and guests of people who work on a given show. But new shows or low rated shows very often fill their seats almost entirely with paid audience members.

These people typically got paid less than $20.00 a day in cash to sit in a chair and clap on command. Who would take such a job? Exactly who you think would take such a job. Most of them arrived by bus wearing the same clothes they had slept in the night before. As pages we always figured the $20.00 in cash went towards bus fare, beer and smokes. Audiences are wrangled to a studio like cattle. The wranglers usually find people downtown or near Groman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood. They are unclean, usually under the influence of some decidedly non-prescribed medication, and have an indescribable odor. I’ve placed paid audience members into seats who didn’t even speak English… and that was for a talk show! The only audience members worse than the paid ones are fans of teenage music groups.

It is like living in an alternate universe. Girls who were not even old enough to be called teenagers offered to perform certain acts on my physical person that I hadn’t even heard of until well after my 21st birthday. They dressed the way I wished grown women I dated dressed and they told me they would do “anything, <wink> absolutely anything” to see the show. And 9 times out of 10, their parents were standing behind them when they said it. They all screamed with very high pitched voices and every one of them had a fake ID that stated they were at least 16-years-old, usually the minimum age required to attend a TV taping.

Before long I managed to get a recurring task of yanking all the underage kids from the audience line. I had fun with this. I was told by my bosses that I and I alone was the final authority on the subject. Power is what they say it is. I’d emerge from the studio doors wearing my page outfit, but on top of that I’d have on my trenchcoat, fedora, leather gloves and dark sunglasses. The whole outfit just shouted “asshole!” I explained to them that nobody was getting through the doors without a valid state ID, and I could spot a fake ID. What I wouldn’t tell them until I’d reached the end of the line was that I would reward whomever spent the most time and/or money on a fake ID by letting them inside, but not before singling them out before the group and embarrassing them. To see the looks on the faces of all the young, virginal girls who had dreamed of being at arms length of their favorite Hanson, only to be denied entry by me.