TV - Brian Brown - Hardcover - 1 ED

Super Bowl The most watched event in the history of American television was about to end. The people responsible for televising it were huddled inside a converted truck, a darkened, loud, cramped mobile control room. "What are we doing?" This was a fair question. The broadcast was coming back from its last commercial break and Caesar Fortunato wanted to know what to do with the seventy pieces of equipment at his disposal. To differentiate between all this hardware, there was a code: His cameras were numbered, tape machines were identified by color, the top-end toys that did special effects were lettered. Caesar wanted to know if he would be using numbers or colors or letters, or perhaps a combination. "What the FUCK are we doing?" "I don't know," the producer replied. "What do you mean?" "I've lost track." "JESUS CHRIST!" "It's a blimp pop or a promo or billboards. I don't know which one. Sorry, Caesar, I'm totally fried." "Coming back from commercial in thirty," the associate director noted. "You're an idiot. We'll do a blimp pop." "Fine, fuck it." As director, Caesar Fortunato was the person most responsible for what America had been seeing. He'd been writing an improvisational narrative with pictures, composing each and every shot, determining the pace, rapidly and artistically: cut, cut, cut . . . or cut, dissolve, dissolve. It was Caesar who had decided when America would see a wide shot, when America would see a close-up, when America would see a replay, when, in some cases, America could go to the toilet. But, as usual, this being a Super Bowl, he hadn't been able to make much of a movie. In another NFL championship game swiftly sapped of drama, Buffalo's forever hapless Bills had been outscored 24-0 in the second half by the Cowboys of Dallas. Through fifty years of TV history, Super Bowls dominated the top-ten list of most watched shows. But maybe one out of every five were worthy competitions. That last-minute touchdown pass by Joe Montana against the Bengals was one example of the few and far between, and Scott Norwood's missed field goal that could have won it for the Bills, and somewhere in the 1970s, the Cowboys and the Steelers were in a good one. Most of the rest: awful, soporific: Broncos busted, Vikings falling flat, and here he was in the middle of another foregone conclusion. The water cooler summits on Monday wouldn't even review his work. As usual, they'd be forums for chatting about the best commercials: talking frogs, snappy beer ads, soda spots with million-dollar budgets. "I don't see it!" "Caesar, we may be out of blimp shots." "Here we come in ten . . ." "I don't see it!" "Caesar, we're still rewinding!" The tape operator at the red machine was stationed in another part of the truck. His hand was trembling, the right index finger poised inches from the Play button, disposed as Adam's crooked finger on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. "Nine . . ." The man's name was Larry Swenson, and his heart was beating at about ninety-six percent of its capacity. "Eight . . ." "Where is the fucking blimp shot?" "WE'RE REWINDING!" "JESUS, SOMEONE ANSWER ME!" Caesar knew that his tape operator had provided him with an adequate response more than once. "Seven . . ." But as the associate director dipped under double digits in his count back from break, and though Caesar knew Larry was surely scrambling, he kept asking for the shot anyway, and he couldn't resist uttering the most commonly used phrase in live television. "You're killing me! . . . YOU GUYS ARE KILLING ME!" It didn't make tBrown, Brian is the author of 'TV - Brian Brown - Hardcover - 1 ED' with ISBN 9780609606155 and ISBN 0609606158.