EPISODE 9: THERE IS NO TURNING BACK
Tuesday, September 11, 2001
The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center collapsed and fell today after terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes – two of which flew right into each World Trade Center tower, one after the other. The other planes hit the Pentagon, and one crashed in Pennsylvania. Mom called me this morning en route home from her job in Virginia. My sister Ellie is home safe in Maryland. My brother is safe. He was driving a fuel truck for a company and ended his shift not long after, worried that his truck could literally become an explosive target if attacked. There’s so much carnage and almost surreal disbelief. It is horrible. The newsroom is doing an issue devoted to this coverage, which updates all the time.
1:55 P.M. (PST)
The newsroom editors had food delivered for lunch, wanted to keep us all close and onsite. The destruction and the hatred against the U.S. has culminated in this unimaginable loss. This day is going to reverberate and affect everyone for the indefinite future. It’s a very sad and jarring day. We need the Lord’s spirit and worldwide prayer.
It’s a sad and stunned reverberating grief that everyone feels. Occasionally, I just want to cry. Many of us in the newsroom are crying silently, seeing the towers fall on a breaking news loop all day and into the night, taking calls, the reporters writing, talking to sources. We couldn’t get in touch with our Broadway bureau in NYC for hours. The hatred and its toll of human life is so heinous and huge. Who would ever have seen this coming? I’ll be here in the newsroom until 8 p.m., 11 p.m. EST just in case any new developments break.
I didn’t get here until 11 a.m., I took a cab, because I didn’t want to leave until I’d talked to my Mom. Stone didn’t want me to go to work initially, worried that the subway tunnels could be a target. I knew the paper was going to need me, all of us, and I wasn’t going to miss helping out during a staggering day. There have been TV sets wheeled into the newsroom and on all day with all of us watching the towers fall again and again and everyone eating, some of us smoking, and stressing more than usual.
The Hollywood Reporter is devoting tomorrow’s issue to the disasters, including Washington, DC, Pennsylvania and New York City. Besides the two commercial jets that were flown into the Twin Towers, another commercial flight was flown into the Pentagon in D.C. The fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania…apparently its terrorist-hijacked route was Camp David but the pilot, crew and passengers must have fought back. It’s an emotionally upsetting day for the world. The sympathy of the world is with the victims, rescuers and people who are volunteering their blood, time and expertise.
Monday, September 17, 2001
The former deputy editor of The Hollywood Reporter was promoted to the Editor position at noon today by the publisher, Robert ‘Bob’ Dowling. The announcement was made in the newsroom with all staff in attendance. We applauded him. The cohesive effort of the coverage and work done on the still-horrific terrorist attacks by the organization was under his direction. I wasn’t alone in applauding him. It will also help THR forge on with a definitive voice and presence. There was no advertising in the 9/11 issue. It was a game-changing issue that focused specifically on the attacks with no trade-specific news that day.
I had some strong coffee from a coffee shop at the plaza next to our building, off of Highland, it’s called What’s Brewing. My selection was called “Wired on Wilshire.” No kidding – wired is exactly what I am. I had 2 bags of Baked Lay’s Chips and did pull ups on a nearby thick tree branch to help me calm down some. I’m jittery as fuck. I need food. I forgot everything at home today, including my metro card. I went to the Terrific Agency on my lunch hour. The agency gave me a heads-up about my salary – or what ‘THR’ may offer. My soon-to-be-leaving coworker negotiated his own salary this past year, It turns out.
Josie said he also had a lot of industry experience. Josie said that if they were to offer me $2,000 less, annually, than him then “that would be realistic and not an insult. If they try to lowball you and offer you $4,00 less then call me and I’ll try to make some headway.” I have confidence in management and THR; the temp negotiations are something I’m keeping entirely separate from my day-to-day. My role was being negotiated all day. That was cool, now my being hired will be in line with this new team assembly. I’m great at my job and I hope that my worth will be recognized. There aren’t a lot of Black people at BPI – maybe 10 or 1, including me, in an 8-story building.
It’s amazing that I have that job in the newsroom. I arrived there during circumstances that were extraordinary this summer. My co-worker who is leaving sold them on me and I earned my compliments and got to my supervisor’s wavelength right away, she is the esteemed office manager and assistant to the editor. I get compliments on my calm, and I do my job. I feel lucky to be in line for the position, but I don’t feel like I don’t have the inner newsroom knowledge that my departing co-worker does after 2 years there. As an actor, I’ve had to know the names of the people I’m paid to interact with and help daily. I’ll be a strong hire. I could give them 2 years.
Tuesday, September 18, 2001
I’m going to be 32 years old soon. I was depressed all day, thinking of those victims of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the passengers and crew who fought to the death in Pennsylvania. It’s horror, a horrible remnant of evil against mankind. It’s a sad time for the world and America is going to change.
Wednesday, September 19, 2001
It’s going to really be something to be entering into my early 30s. I have a lot to be grateful for, and I’ve worked really hard these past couple of years to make things flow and to get myself out of the mundane grind that is so easy to slip into in Los Angeles.
I want a job that doesn’t suck and pays me fairly and I’ve worked very hard to make that a reality. I’ve dealt with a lot of player-haters, turncoats, burnouts, personally and professionally. I am not the one anymore that has to be the essence of diplomacy all of the time. I’m at the point and age where I’ve tried to be creative and be fair. I’m not apologizing for what personal and professional happiness I’m trying to craft for myself. I have a lot to be grateful for. I have a wonderful family, select close friends, and a career that no one can take away from me and, perhaps, a job here at THR before too long.
Leaving the newsroom after 7 sometime and I’ll be home before 8:30 and have enough time to chill and unwind with Stone for a moment and catch up on my reading and news prep aka homework. In bed by midnight and get ready to finish my workweek. Tomorrow is my Friday in the newsroom, and a new week starts with my Sunday shift for Monday’s edition.
Thursday, September 20, 2001
The biggest birthday lesson of turning 32 will be: you cannot control anything or anyone.
I cannot control Stone, who I argued with today when he was being nosy and didn’t appreciate what I said, I can’t control my salary negotiations, my career, my family, my income (being decided by others, in that specific case). I can only control Karl, the person that I am. I am only one person and I’m bound to disappoint some people when I don’t act accordingly.
The world is so bonded by human grief, it’s palpable and there in the very atmosphere. You feel so numb with pain to have witnessed the murder of thousands of people who were only doing their jobs or traveling. It’s too much to take in for long doses but it’s there and you have to visit the depths of your fears many times a day. Everyone with a soul has mourned the awful and horrific murders of last week.
Today the FBI called me in the newsroom to alert me, as well as confirming with a reporter, that terrorists threated to bomb the studios if Afghanistan was attacked. Hollywood was on edge and it was a fucking zoo. I worked my ass off.
Friday, September 21, 2001
I was exhausted when I wrote yesterday. My viewpoint hasn’t changed either. You cannot control anyone other that yourself. Anyone or anything else is in God’s hands and you can’t control that. I have lost count of how long I’ve been temping at The Hollywood Reporter. The offer I got I did think was an insult. My agency hasn’t been looking out for my market rate and I’m too busy working and doing the job to handle my negotiations. It’s between THR and Terrific. There’s nothing I can do to affect the outcome until the final, solid offer. Some think I should force their hand for a higher starting salary, and some say the lower salary shouldn’t keep me from accepting the opportunity. I know that people are right to say I’m smart enough to find something else, but an opportunity that’s equal to this would be a long time coming again.
Saturday, September 22, 2001
I went to a memorial for the theater legend Mr. Edmund James Cambridge. He was a solid, robust man who died at 81 in Harlem on August 18 at age 80. He was a co-founder of the Negro Ensemble Company, theater legends all, and he appeared in lots of TV guest spots like Good Times, Starsky & Hutch, Living Single, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and movies like Trouble Man with Isaac Hayes and Friday Foster with Pam Grier.
My six degrees of separation with Mr. Cambridge is that I worked with ‘227’ playwright Christine Houston in 1992; Ed directed the stage version of “227” at Marla Gibbs’ theater in L.A. that launched the series it became in 1984. I cam up and was taught by Black theatrical legends in Chicago – Catherine Slade, Paul Carter Harrison, Abena Joan Brown – I was always aware of Cambridge’s NY theater legacy.
The Celebration of Life here in L.A. was held at the Los Angeles Theater Company. Peers of his from the 1950s and on spoke of him lovingly. Della Resse’s reverend and her choir sang two of his favorite songs.
The reception was what I always face at Industry gatherings these days which is that:
- I don’t see anyone that I know from my peer group. They are ‘The Great Missing.’ It’s unnerving. I always say it in these journals: where are they? I just want to see one person I know from long ago and hug them with congratulations of staying in the game. That was my first social impression.
- The older crowd, from the Boomers on up, were cold and snotty. Mind you, I don’t approach them either but only because they’re so cold, self-satisfied or some shit. They’re very bougie and rude when they think you’re young – bumping into you with no words or excuse me, reaching across your face and body while you try to pass. The only person who spoke to me was Robert Hooks, an Industry survivor and a silver fox who is a legend himself. It was very generous of him. Margaret Avery was there and is cool, she looks years younger than some of her roles and is natural and athletic.
Leaving the service, I just wanted to get outside and get some air, a Black older man in a flowing robe stopped me and asked me if I had attended a high school in L.A. that I hadn’t heard of. I said no and he said, “Well, then your father went there!” We laughed. He said there should have been more people in attendance, as many lives as Edmund touched. His last remark was, “The last time I saw Ed was a few months ago, at a bus stop on Sunset in Hollywood.”
That just fucked me up. There is no reason an 80-year-old stage pioneer should be waiting for a bus in Hollywood. That was just awful to hear and my most vivid impression of the service. It’s crystallized.
I was on the Sunset Bus going to a TV pilot audition for a thankless role and I was 31. It was a waste of time. It sucked. Now, add almost 50 years to that and make it a legend on public transportation. That is wrong. Period. Where were these snotty, rich folks when he was on the bus? Foul. When I brought it up to Norma, the P.A. I went with, she said, “Hollywood is messed up.”
Tuesday, September 25, 2001
More contract negotiations. Josies told me tonight at the agency who the THR hold-out is – it’s on the New York corporate side and their sticking point is that Josie is charging THR almost $3,000 just to buy out my contract. I heard the person complaining about it today via speakerphone and compared my price to an L.A. Times full-page classified ad rate. Nice. Josie said, “Just let them wear themselves out and then they’ll all sign off on it. Don’t worry.”
I’m not. My phone # is on the Editorial phone list, along with my extension and since the FBI confirmed bomb threats to the studios last week, I had to take an ID photo as a precautionary measure. There is no turning back.
It’s all on New York; they’re taking their sweet time. I asked my supervisor today, “What do you think they’ll do?”
“They’ll have to pay it,” she said directly and then smiled, “Or we’ll all walk out! We need you.”