Chapter 1: The Petals Open

“I have a great power.” Mmmm that’s good, let me say it againÉ “I have a great power, and along with great power, some have said, comes great responsibility.” Bullshit. More often than not, reckless abandon is the intimate cellmate of great power. It’s an all too common theme in the history of humankind and its existence on Planet Earth.

So, here I sit in my cell, not the ten by ten kind with iron bars inside grey walls topped with razor wire, but the one I’ve created for myself, inside myself. Everyone creates them. Some of us escape, some of us don’t, but in the end, there are far more desperate souls banging on the walls to get in. That’s what feeds the unstoppable hunger of this machine, what creates the great circle of life (and death) in the entertainment business. In television, no one escapes. Everyone’s trapped and held prisoner in some way. Below-the-liners are basically labor; highly compensated, unionized, trapped in the blue-collar cycle of paying bills and trying to find the next job, labor. Those with their heads and bodies above the line are management; trapped in their own endless cycle of feeding egos, feeding lawyers, feeding agents, and feeding those beneath them who exist only to serve, management. And so, the ring of reality continues, the old maxims just morph into new scenarios, so long as the revenue continues to flow in at a far greater pace than it does out.

Milary Stanton didn’t start out as a needy, ego driven, child star, but the machine, which drives the system, made sure she became one. Her mother, Joansie Mason-Stanton, a bloody Tampax of a woman, made sure the machine continued to feed the whole Stanton family, until she had bled it dry of everything and left a wake of carnage behind her that made the BP oil spill seem like an afterthought.

And the machine? The great Fabriana Corporation, a mega-conglomerate of international divisions and interests with their hand in everything from theme parks to movies and television stations to signature characters known and loved throughout the world. Their corporate iron fist crushed anything standing in the way of greater profits and control. They clamped tight on everything within their grasp that posed even the slightest threat to their branded world. It was often discussed in the below-the-line world, that their immense fortune and popularity, was born from a cultured, cozy alliance with several forms of sub-human deities. These graven images have been purported to be traceable to the early days of Fabriana’s silent motion pictures when the great empire began. Rumors and innuendo about this subtle but obvious homage to a malevolent entity have swirled around the corporation for years.

So, how does it start? From where does that one special show emanate and just how does that young star germinate into a full-blown worldwide sensation?

Well, in the particular case of the show in question, The Family Tree, it started at the Writer/Executive Producer, Lottie Grenier’s house with a phone call.

“Lottie? It’s your agent, Jack. Listen honey, I got good news. Fabriana loves your script. They want a meeting with you and this kid they’ve been grooming, Milary Stanton.”

“Really? That’s fantastic. Milary Stanton? Who’s that? What’s she done?” Lottie held the phone between her ear and shoulder while picking the dead leaves off one of the hundreds of plants in and around her garden home.

“I don’t know. She’s some kid repped by Don Ryson over at DCK. The suits at Fabriana are crazy about her. She sings, she dances, she’s funny. They say she’s the next big one coming down the pipe. And we both know how big the pipes are over there.”

“That’s not funny, Jack. Okay, well maybe it is, a little.”

“You bet your britches it is. Tuesday, ten thirty at the big building. You know the one with the ugly statues carved into the face.”

“Careful, Jack. You know how big the ears are at FC. If this works out, those ugly statues could make us a lot of money.”

“Lottie, I got a good feeling about this one.”

She could almost feel his ooze dripping through the phone, but she was cautious. “Yeah Jack, right. That’s not the first time I’ve heard you say that. You spouted those same famous words about John’s Rainbow, The Final Celebration, A Circle of Birds, A Mile forÉ.”

“Okay, Lottie. I get your point, but I’m always out there pitching for you, ain’t I? You’re a good inker. Always meeting deadlines, solid rewrites, funny jokes, that’s what the studios like to see. Besides, I really mean it this time. I got a feeling, deep down.”

“That’s your Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Jack.” She chuckled.

“No, I mean deeper than that and IBS ain’t a laughing matter. I don’t wish that mishegoss on anyone. You just start bangin’ out story arcs, and I’ll see you tomorrow at the Ugly Creature Building.”