The Nature Of The Beast

When I heard the asshole screaming at the typist, I got out of my chair and headed to the typing pool.

Allow me to set the time and place: 
Ruby-Spears Productions circa 1980, the fortress studio.

Ruby-Spears occupied four studios during my tenure there.

• The warehouse

• The fortress

• The submarine

• The Tudor house

By fortress I mean literally that.  In the mid-1970s, Bank of America, anticipating increased computerized records, commissioned an ultra-secure facility in Sunland to protect their secure data.  The facility sat on about an acre of property; a high concrete wall topped with concertina wire protected the rear of the facility.  About a third of the property in the rear protected a truck loading area (B of A anticipated physical delivery of computer data, not electronic transmission); a literal pillbox with bullet proof glass and a gun turret guarded this area, controlling a remotely operated solid steel gate.

The main building divided into three areas.  In what originally was an ultra-secure vault, the animation cameras; in the vast storage area next to it, the artists.

Ken Spears told me when he first scouted the building for use as a studio, the B of A representative led him into this big, secure area meant to house computers along the lines of something out of Colossus: The Forbin Project.

But in the five years from deciding to go ahead with the project and actually completing the building, computer power grew so rapidly that instead of wall-to-wall computers, Ken saw only a small unit the size of a desk, all that B of A actually needed for their statewide operations (and today I’m sure a laptop could easily house all that info).

So Ruby-Spears got the building on the cheap while B of A figured out what to do with it.

The last section of the building were the front offices, separated from the art department by a huge secure wall and doors in the original design.  Joe and Ken sat in offices up front; adjoining them were smaller offices for the accounting department and the office manager, Erica Grossbart.

To get from those offices to the art department, one needed to pass through a large area the studio converted into a typing pool; around this typing pool area sat smaller offices for writers.

Yes, this was back in those prehistoric days when word processors remained a dream of the far, far future (about 18 months, to be honest).  Writers either wrote scripts by hand on yellow legal pads or typed them up personally.  When changes came in, we literally cut and pasted a passage from one page and glued or taped it to another.

Steve Gerber, Ruby-Spears’ chief story editor at the time, said word processors broke Joe Ruby’s heart by being able to search and replace names so fast.  Joe was fond of changing character names on the fly and having writers retype an entire script as a result.  Word processors eliminated that, and with it Joe’s desire to change names willy-nilly (which, incidentally, sounds like a Ruby-Spears character name).

The typists handled all the typing duties for the studio, and frequently were called upon to retype scripts when the writer faced another deadline or otherwise couldn’t do the job themselves.

The door to the front offices lay at one end of the typing pool, the doors to the art department lay at the opposite end near my office.

Along the length of the typing pool were other writers’ offices.

The asshole, an ambitious young man at the time, glommed onto Mr. Nice Guy and convinced him to partner up with him. (I do not begrudge him being ambitious; we were all ambitious when young.)

I’m using a pseudonym for Mr. Nice Guy because he was and still is a nice guy and not the villain of this piece.  Mr. Nice Guy was easy to get along with and wrote usable scripts.

He was also -- when working on his own -- reliable when it came to deliverables, and while unlikely to be inducted into the great dramatist pantheon between O’Neill and Miller, he proved good enough and dependable enough and easy going enough to work regularly in animation.

The asshole correctly perceived Mr. Nice Guy as his entry into Hollywood.

Exactly how the asshole met Mr. Nice Guy, I’m not sure.  They shared certain interests that could easily put both of them in the same place at the same time (don’t read anything into that; I’m talking about stuff on the level of belonging to the Lions Club).

The asshole convinced Mr. Nice Guy to become writing partners, and since Mr. Nice Guy regularly sold scripts to Ruby-Spears, the two began writing cartoons for the studio.

Cartoons produced then came in on a pretty straightforward system:  Writer > art department > camera > editing > network (I’m grossly oversimplifying, but the basic idea is correct).

Scripts needed to be turned in on a regular schedule or else the art department sits around twiddling their thumbs with nothing to do (and if you know art departments like I do, you know the devil finds work for idle thumbs).  With no art, all the other departments have nothing to do, either, and if they don’t deliver to the network, the network gets very, very cross.

The asshole and Mr. Nice Guy were writing scripts for Joe Ruby at a brisk clip and getting paid for them (not a lot, but not chump change, either).

They were obligated by union contract to do a rewrite should the studio require it.

And Joe Ruby always required rewrites.

Problem:  Mr. Nice Guy and the asshole weren’t doing the rewrites.  This came to Ken Spears’ attention when he found all the artists assigned to one show doing nothing because the scripts were never revised and now they were five episodes behind schedule.

Ken called Mr. Nice Guy and told him and the asshole to hie thee hence to the studio and finish all the rewrites if they wanted any future work from the studio.

Much hence was hied, and Mr. Nice Guy and the asshole showed up, took over a side office, and frantically began making all the revisions they should have made weeks earlier.  Out of necessity the typing pool got dragged into this, taking hand written corrections from the pair and retyping the scripts while the two writers frantically revised another one.

Joe Ruby needed an important business letter typed up (yeah, this is w-a-a-a-y back before everybody had a PC) and told Erica Grossbart, the office manager, to have it done ASAP.

Erica gave it to a typist, telling her it had top priority.

The typist put aside the script revision she was working on to type the letter.

The asshole came out of his commandeered office with a fistful of red pencil corrections to another script.

When he saw the typist working on something other than the script he failed to turn in weeks earlier, he began screaming at her:  “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?  DON’T YOU DARE WORK ON ANYTHING EXCEPT THIS SCRIPT!  WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?  YOU DO WHAT I TELL YOU TO DO!  THESE SCRIPTS NEED TO BE DONE RIGHT NOW!  I’M TRYING TO SAVE YOUR JOB BECAUSE IF THEY’RE LATE -- “

It was at that point Erica and I both left our respective offices, with Erica reaching the asshole half a step ahead of me.

Erica, short in stature but powerful in personality, later told me, “When I saw the look on your face I realized I had to reach him first because I knew you were going to punch him.”

Erica spun the asshole around and reamed him out verbally.  She explained to him that the letter came from Joe, had top priority, that the asshole screwed up by failing to honor his contract, and that it would take only one word from her for the asshole to never work at the studio again.

The asshole huffed and puffed but knew Erica held all the aces.  He stormed back into his commandeered office and didn’t emerge for the rest of the day.  Mr. Nice Guy came out a short while later to pour oil on troubled waters, apologizing to the typist and to Erica.

Mr. Nice Guy was forgiven, and continued writing with the asshole for a couple of years, but while Mr. Nice Guy was welcomed in the Ruby-Spears office, the asshole wasn’t and any contributions he made came through Mr. Nice Guy.

The asshole broke off with Mr. Nice Guy not too long after that, having gained as much advantage as he could from the relationship.  By then he secured a writing career of his own.

The asshole?  Paul Haggis, convicted rapist.

© Buzz Dixon