Chapter 25: The Court of Public Opinion

The United States of America and a good portion of Canada

February 6, 1996

The American Watcher special edition hit the newsstands and grocery store checkout aisles nationwide on this morning. The headline was big and bold.

IS MINDY SNOW CARRYING

GREG OLDFELLOW’S LOVE CHILD?

Below the headline was a large, high-definition color photograph of Greg and Mindy taken from one of the stills of Us and Them. It was from the first sex scene of the film, where the two of them, Greg shirtless, Mindy in only a skimpy black bra, are staring lustfully into each other’s eyes, about to finish getting naked and start having Hollywood sex on the bed. The caption for the photograph read: Not just acting? Mindy Snow and Greg Oldfellow in a steamy scene from the blockbuster hit Us and Them. It is reported that the two A-list actors had an affair during the premier period of the film’s release and that Snow is alleging she is now pregnant from the encounter. Complete details inside!

And, as promised, there were lots of details inside. The main story of the special edition was written under the byline of Julie Brigg and told the tale relayed to her by Jake and Laura Kingsley, though they were not mentioned by name, only referred to as “anonymous sources within Celia Valdez’s close circle of friends and bandmembers”. Pauline Kingsley and John Stapleton were mentioned, however, and they were quoted as confirming the allegations that Mindy was claiming pregnancy from a one-time encounter with Greg at the Chicago premier of their film. Georgette Minden was also mentioned by name as refusing to confirm or deny the allegations on Mindy’s behalf.

In all, the main article was nearly ten thousand words in length and stretched across fourteen pages of the tabloid. It was accompanied by a dozen full-color photographs, including one that had been shot by Paul Peterson himself, just days before the breaking of the story, that showed Mindy emerging from a trendy restaurant in Hollywood. It had just been a routine shot taken by the notorious paparazzo, a shot he had hardly glanced at afterword (he had basically just stumbled across her and took the shot out of reflex) and had not been planning to try to sell until the Watcher reached out to the paparazzi community asking for any recent pictures of Snow, Valdez, or Oldfellow for an upcoming major story. And so, he sold them the shot for only $200, not realizing that it plainly showed a small swelling in Mindy’s lower stomach region—an unmistakable beginning baby bump once one knew to look for it. The Watcher’s photography editing staff published both the full shot, and a cropped, magnified shot that displayed only Mindy’s stomach with an arrow pointing to the bulge.

The narrative text of the story was about as graphic and descriptive as an article could be and still be openly sold in newspaper check stands to human beings under the age of eighteen. It rehashed how Mindy had been reported to have a crush on Greg when they reported for primary photography on the Us and Them set. From there, it described how Greg had not been attracted to her and had spurned her advances until the night of the Chicago premier when he got drunk and decided to “give her a try” because “I hadn’t been laid in a few days”. It spoke of how Mindy had reported “I’m on the pill, don’t worry” and that, despite this reassurance, Greg had elected to wear a condom anyway. Despite the affair being only a single encounter, performed with two layers of contraception, Mindy Snow had called Greg up nearly three months later and told him that she was pregnant with his child. John Stapleton was on record and quoted as saying Greg found it highly unlikely that the child could possibly be his. Johnny was further quoted as stating that if there was a bigger slut in Hollywood than Mindy Snow, he did not know who it was.

But the main article was not the only article in the special edition. In fact, most of the entire edition was dedicated to the Mindy Snow/Greg Oldfellow story. There was a secondary story that addressed the allegations that Mindy Snow was a notorious floozy. This article contained a long list of men, including Jake Kingsley, who she was known to have or was alleged to have slept with (the writer made no real distinction between these two categories). This article touched upon the allegation that Mindy also had a taste for women on occasion, but only briefly, as that subject was the focus of its own separate article in the edition.

In that article, Cynthia Rasp, one of the most experienced and well-connected Watcher celebrity reporters, had managed to track the story of Greg Oldfellow’s alleged sexual encounter during the filming of So Others May Live to Cheryl Zender herself—the makeup artist that Greg had had the brief affair with. Zender was no longer employed by the movie studio, having moved on to her own private business, and, as such, was no longer bound by the nondisclosure agreement that such employment required, nor afraid of being blackballed. She was also more than a little resentful of the way she had been thrown aside by first Greg and then Mindy. And, the free publicity for her new salon that would be garnered by the article’s publication was just an added bonus. She happily admitted her bisexuality to Rasp and confirmed that she had had sexual affairs with both Greg Oldfellow and Mindy Snow. She also anecdotally confirmed the allegation, made by Julie Brigg’s anonymous source, that Mindy was a lousy lay.

“She is a terrible lover,” Zender was quoted as proclaiming. “All she does is take, and only in the way she wants to take. She gives nothing whatsoever in return.”

She had kinder things to say about Greg Oldfellow’s skill in the sack. “He was a wonderful, generous lover, very attentive, very experienced.”

The story did not touch upon the fact that Greg and Zender had only had one sexual encounter. Either Zender had not mentioned it, or Rasp had not asked, or, more likely, the information was not considered conducive to the main theme of the article.

Yet another article in the edition tackled the subject of Greg and Celia’s relationship. This one was full of quotes from the “anonymous source” of Jake and Laura, describing Greg’s reputation as a notorious womanizer who had cheated on his beautiful musician wife regularly until it got to the point that the marriage was only chugging along. The date of their separation was mentioned again, and there was even a copy of the divorce paperwork with the dates of marriage and separation highlighted.

Before the special edition had even hit the stands on the west coast of the United States, the AP and all of the east coast based media, who had a three-hour head start thanks to the time zones, were all over the story. Pauline’s phone began to ring off the hook at 5:30 AM, with reporters from nearly every major east coast newspaper—including the Wall Street Journal—wanting to clarify details and gather their own quotes. The same thing happened to Johnny Stapleton and Georgette Minden. Pauline and Johnny answered most of their phone calls, despite being annoyed at the early hour. They confirmed that what was published in the Watcher was accurate, at least as far as what they had been quoted on. Georgette, on the other hand, took no calls at all, not even offering a “no comment”.

“I knew I shouldn’t have warned that fucking asshole that this was coming,” Mindy said as she finished reading the article at 8:45 that morning. “Try to do something nice for someone and see where it fucking gets you.”

“I don’t understand,” Georgette said. “What is he hoping to accomplish by this?”

They were in Mindy’s office in her house in the hills. Georgette had driven up directly from the newsstand where she had picked up the copy of the special edition of the American Watcher she had known was going to be on sale this morning. It was even worse than she had been anticipating. The article was almost a complete fabrication of the situation; but it was a fabrication that was being endorsed by John Stapleton and Pauline Kingsley, thus giving it the strong illusion of legitimacy. And now there were reporters and photographers and videographers staked out at the main gate into Mindy’s property. They had never come here before, not even during Mindy’s nasty divorce from Scott Adams Winslow.

“He’s trying to make me look pathetic,” Mindy said. “And, unfortunately, it seems to have worked. This fucking rag is painting me as a slut, a bitch, and a crappy lay all in one stroke.” She shook her head. “And I’m not a crappy lay! I am fuckin’ premo in the sack! Everyone who has ever fucked me knows that!”

“Well ... you certainly have enough experience,” Georgette allowed.

“Hey, fuck you,” Mindy barked at her. “You’ve certainly gotten your share of dick by being my agent all these years, haven’t you? Not to mention the millions of dollars in your bank account.”

“Yes, that is true,” Georgette said. “My relationship with you has been beneficial, both financially and in dick.”

“Goddamn right,” Mindy said. “And to think, you wanted me to keep doing those wholesome good girl flicks after The Slow Lane finally met its merciful end. I would’ve long since faded into obscurity if I’d listened to you and would probably be doing late-night info-fucking-mercials for the thigh-master or some shit like that.”

“That is true, Mindy. You made the right call back then and I was wrong to try to talk you out of it. But let’s not bicker at each other. Let’s try to figure out what the game is here.”

“I told you,” she said. “He’s trying to humiliate me, to make me look like the bad guy so he looks like the good guy!”

“I understand that,” Georgette said. “What I don’t understand is what is the purpose? You seem confident that the baby is Greg’s.”

“It is Greg’s!” she shouted. “I didn’t let anyone else’s dick within five feet of me from the time I reported to Chicago for filming until he finally gave in and hosed me down. And I’m here to tell you, that was a miserable fucking six months! I haven’t gone that long without cock since I was fourteen years old!”

Georgette sighed. “We’ll be sure not to include that quote in our eventual reply to these allegations that you are a slut,” she said. “Anyway, my point is, does Oldfellow really disbelieve the baby is his? Is that why he is making these allegations?”

Mindy thought this over for a moment. “I ... I don’t know,” she said. “It’s possible, maybe even likely. Greg’s a Hollywood insider, and he’s friends with Jake Kingsley. He would know about my ... uh ... proclivity for sexual encounters.”

“He would also know about your proclivity for elaborate schemes as well,” Georgette pointed out.

“True,” Mindy agreed. “In any case, he’s going to be eating a big crate of crow when the DNA test shows that the baby really is his.”

“That’s six to eight months away,” Georgette said.

“No, it isn’t,” Mindy said. “I’m going to call up Dr. Ender and have her give me that amniocentesis next week. They can run the baby’s DNA from that.”

“Amniocentesis?” Georgette asked, horrified. “Mindy, you’re only thirty-four years old! And you’re in superb shape! There’s no reason for that procedure!”

“Sure there is,” she said. “I want to make sure the baby is okay, doesn’t have any genetic defects or anything. And ... as an added bonus, we can run a DNA paternity test.”

“But the risk of...”

“The risk is minimal,” Mindy said. “I’ve already looked into it. I wasn’t going to do it at first because of ... well ... what you just said, but now there’s a really good reason.”

“You would put your baby at risk just so you could show up Greg Oldfellow a little sooner than would happen naturally?”

“Stop being so dramatic,” Mindy told her. “Like I said, the risk is minimal.”

“But what happens if Greg declines to provide a genetic sample for comparison?” she asked. “Have you thought of that?”

“He wouldn’t dare,” she scoffed. “If I file a paternity suit against him, naming him as the father, the burden of proof is on him. If he declines to submit a sample for testing, it will be legally presumed that he is the father. Not only that, but refusal would be as good as admitting the child is his in the court of public opinion, which, in our business, is the highest fucking court in the land.”

“But what about our original story?” Georgette asked. “You know ... that you and Greg fell madly in love with each other during the filming of Us and Them and couldn’t keep your hands off of each other and that you got pregnant from the affair? It’s going to be kind of hard to pull that one off now, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Mindy said with a sigh. “He shot that story right out of the water when he planted this story in the Watcher. Once again, that’s what I get for being nice and letting him know what was about to go down.”

“Yes,” Georgette said, resisting the urge to roll her eyes, “it really doesn’t pay to be nice, does it?”

“You got that shit right,” Mindy agreed, completely missing the sarcasm. “Anyway, let’s talk about what we are going to say.”

“I can’t wait to hear it,” Georgette said, opening her notebook and taking out a pen.

Mindy Snow’s version of the events was published two days later in the Los Angeles Times under the byline of Bernadette Tapp, who Georgette called personally on the afternoon of the Watcher’s special edition release. This story was on the front page, above the fold, displacing headlines about the new president taking power in Haiti and the crash of a Dominican Airlines 757 jetliner into the Caribbean Sea.

“Yes, Mindy is pregnant,” Georgette was quoted as saying. “And yes, Greg Oldfellow is the father of the child. Mindy is quite certain of this as she had no sexual relations with anyone else between her breakup with Raphael Smith, her personal trainer, just before reporting for primary photography on Us and Them in April, and the sexual encounter which Greg, which took place in October. Mindy’s due date is July 16.”

The allegations that Mindy was a woman of loose virtue were addressed as well. “Her reputation among the gossipy Hollywood elite is much worse than the reality,” Georgette explained (with a straight face, even). “Sure, Mindy has had her share of lovers. That has all been well-documented by the entertainment media. But she is also quite monogamous when in a relationship and not prone to casual sex or one-night stands. She is also quite serious about her work and quite professional while on a set. The encounter with Greg Oldfellow came after months of the two of them working closely together and sharing a certain chemistry. And even then, it did not happen until filming was complete. As reported in the Watcher, the encounter was a one-time episode that took place during the premier tour after the film’s release, and after the two of them had more than a few alcoholic beverages in celebration.”

And the birth control pills? And the condom? Though the LA Times liked to portray itself as a family newspaper with high moral standards of community decency, they had no problem printing the discussion on this topic. “Mindy was on birth control pills at the time,” Georgette explained. “But, as you know, no method of birth control, save for complete abstinence, is one hundred percent reliable. As for the condom, there was no condom used as this was a drunken encounter between two people who did not stop to think about such things. Perhaps we could all use this episode as a lesson and teaching moment for our adolescents.”

And as for Greg Oldfellow’s denial of paternity? “As I said earlier, Mindy is quite certain that the baby is Greg’s as he was her only sexual partner in a six-month period. Mindy will be undergoing amniocentesis next week to make sure there are no genetic defects in the baby. DNA paternity testing will be possible once this procedure is done. Mindy asks Greg to submit a sample of his DNA in order to prove that what she is saying is true. The next step, obviously, would be up to Greg.”

But before Greg could even respond to her request, other newspapers and entertainment shows began to print and broadcast a variety of different things related to the story as people who knew Mindy or did business with her or, most common, had been fucked by her (literally and figuratively) began to contact reporters to get in on the story and pass along a few juicy details.

Entertainment Reports, the weekly celebrity gossip show based in Los Angeles, aired a report featuring Raphael Smith, Mindy’s ex-boyfriend and the last person she had allegedly had sex with prior to Greg Oldfellow. The handsome, Adonis-looking figure appeared in suit and tie, looking nervous to be on camera, but determined to earn the fifteen thousand dollars ER was paying him and to get a little revenge on his ex. He let it be known that his reports back in April that Mindy had broken up with him because she had a crush on Greg were not true at all, but fabricated lines that she had paid him to feed to the media.

“She paid me ten grand to say that,” he told the nation. “She had never even mentioned Greg Oldfellow until she got that role in Us and Them. That was when she broke up with me and offered me the money to say she had a crush on him.”

“Did she say why she wanted you to do this?” he was asked.

“She said it was all part of a plan that was too complicated for someone like me to understand,” he said bitterly.

“But you did it?”

He nodded shamefully. “I did it,” he confirmed. “I didn’t really have a choice. I was unemployed at the time and had no place to live once she kicked me out of her place. She offered me the ten grand and three months paid rent at a condo downtown if I just said that.”

“And why are you telling us this now?”

“I’m back on my feet again,” he said. “And I want the truth to be told. Mindy is not a nice person.”

“What about the reports that she is not a good lover?” he was asked next.

“Those are true as well,” he said, lying through his teeth, but feeling great pleasure at twisting the knife a little bit. “She just kind of lays there, like she’s doing you a favor or something. Very uninspiring.”

The day after that, the LA Times ran a lengthy article featuring an interview with Michael Stinson, Greg’s costar in the Northern Jungle, the current treasurer of the Screen Actors Guild, and the man who briefly dated Mindy Snow in the wake of her divorce from Scott Adams Winslow. He too had been treated badly by Mindy during and after their relationship and he too was eager to deal down a little payback. Bernadette Tapp had conducted the interview and wrote the story. Tapp knew that it was Stinson himself who had contacted her and offered to speak about the relationship. Tapp did not know, however, that the contact had come after Greg Oldfellow had visited his former best man at his wedding, had a few beers with him, encouraged him to contact the Times, and suggested certain things be disclosed in their entirety, a few things that were not necessarily the truth. This was called sworn testimony in the court of public opinion.

“It was the worst relationship of my life,” Stinson was quoted as saying. “She was a horrible person, just a user who was only there to try to ride my coattails to further her career. She even told me that while we were together, several times, using just those words. She was a terrible lover—about the worst I’ve ever been with, truthfully—and I’m quite sure she was sleeping around on me the whole time we were together.”

“What makes you believe that?” Stinson was asked.

“Well, she would come home at times smelling of sex, she was always gone a lot longer than necessary on minor errands, and I ended up having to be treated for gonorrhea about a week after we broke up.”

“And what was the cause of the breakup?” he was further asked.

“When Northern Jungle bombed, she dropped me like a hot potato,” was the reply. “Didn’t even say goodbye. Just disappeared from my life and had her publicist issue a statement that we were no longer seeing each other.”

Most interesting and intriguing, however, was an offer made by a man named Jerry Claw. Claw was the owner and editor of the magazine Smooth Operator, a notorious pornographic publication that, in addition to featuring glossy, high-definition pictures of women showing everything they had with a minimal amount of subtlety, also published shots of celebrities, though not the sort of shots found in publications like the American Watcher or Celebrity Times. These shots were of famous people—usually women—showing some degree of nudity: Celebrities experiencing nipple slips, or a brief flash of underwear beneath a skirt (or, on many occasions, the lack of underwear beneath a skirt), or lounging topless or nude on a beach in France or changing in a changing room infiltrated by a camera. Not only did they publish pictures of celebrities in compromising positions, they also penned articles about them, sharing details far too graphic to be published in mainstream magazines—tales about sexual exploits and infidelity were their bread and butter. And Claw wanted in on the whole Mindy Snow and Greg Oldfellow deal.

Claw announced publicly that he would pay twenty thousand dollars to anyone who would give an interview about a sexual encounter they had had with either Mindy Snow or Greg Oldfellow. But he was not a mere gossip magazine. He wanted some weight behind his stories. His stipulation was that he would only pay if he decided to print the tale in question; and he would only print the tale in question if he could verify that the teller of the tale had actually been in a situation where the tale was feasible. In other words, his reporters would have to be actually able to corroborate that the teller of the tale had been in the same place with Snow or Oldfellow long enough to have had sex with them. Georgette, upon hearing this offer made, immediately released an angry statement declaring that if Smooth Operator actually printed some sordid accusation, Mindy Snow would sue the magazine, Claw himself, and whoever spun the tale for libel and/or slander.

This threat did not seem to bother Claw one bit. Nor did it keep more than a hundred people from making contact via the special 800 number he had set up just to field the calls. Most of the callers were idiots and/or scam artists who had never even met Mindy Snow or Greg Oldfellow, people who were just trying to cash in. A few, however, were not.

On February 14^th, Valentine’s Day, and two days before the announcement of the Academy Awards nominees for 1995, Greg released a statement through John Stapleton.

“I will consent to providing a sample of my DNA for the purpose of answering the question of whether or not I am, in fact, the biological father of Mindy Snow’s child. This will be done provided the procedure is performed at a reputable laboratory, that a proper chain of evidence is followed and documented during all steps of the procedure, and that Ms. Snow pays for the procedure. It is my belief that I am unlikely to be the father of this child given Mindy’s well-documented sexual exploits and the fact that I used protection during the incident in question, but I do acknowledge that it is possible in theory. In the event that the child is determined to be of my parentage, I will, of course, accept full financial responsibility as required under the law. However, if the child is determined to be biologically mine, I will have no parental relationship with him or her other than the financial one because, if this child is mine, it was conceived in an atmosphere of fraud and deception. The child will have my pity, but I will not be a father to a child or become emotionally attached to a child that I was tricked into producing.”

And before Mindy could even respond to that quote, another was released the next morning, this one by Celia herself.

“My goal in this ordeal is to just move on with my life. I hold no real ill will against Greg for the circumstances he now finds himself in. Our marriage was already over at the time he committed his indiscretion with Mindy Snow. Like Greg, I believe it to be unlikely that the child is his given Mindy’s behavior. I just want our divorce to go smoothly and be finalized as quickly as possible so I can remain focused on my music career and my touring schedule. As stated before, Greg and I will remain dear friends forever. We just simply cannot be married to each other. And, as for Ms. Snow, despite her well-known reputation for promiscuousness, low moral character, and scheming, I am not prepared to call her a whore ... at least not yet.”

Mindy became so angry after reading this article that she had to pop a couple of Xanax pills and chase them down with a vodka and tonic before she could even start to formulate a response.

“Those assholes!” she screamed at Georgette, who had pretty much moved in with her to keep on top of the crisis management. “Those lying pieces of shit! How dare they?! How fucking dare they?!”

“Mindy,” Georgette said gently, “are you sure you should be drinking that?”

“It’s okay,” Mindy said with a wave of the hand. “I took an extra prenatal vitamin with the Xanax.”

“Oh ... well, in that case...” Georgette said, again resisting the eye-roll urge. Not for the first time (or the last) she started to wonder if it were about time to retire from the celebrity management gig.

“They’re flat out lying!” Mindy said, slugging down a little more of her drink. “They’re lying about the condom; they’re lying about their fucking marital problems!” She looked at Georgette meaningfully. “We’re dealing with liars here, Georgie! Liars! People who have no qualms about telling those dirtbag reporters completely false information just to make me look bad!”

“Yes,” Georgette said soothingly. “Isn’t it awful when people use the entertainment press for their own nefarious schemes.”

Again, the sarcasm and the hypocrisy flew right over her pretty head. “Exactly!” she said righteously. “We have to respond to this! We have to do it today. The fucking nominations are being announced day after tomorrow. I don’t want this shit to detract from that.”

“I think that ship has pretty much sailed,” Georgette opined dryly.

Mindy tensed up, prepared to yell again, but then relaxed. She nodded her head. “Yeah ... maybe you’re right. But I still want to respond to this slanderous crap immediately.”

“What exactly do you plan to say?”

“First of all, that there was no fucking condom!” she said. “I’ve already gone on record with that, but I want to reiterate it in no uncertain terms. No condom was used! It’s the fucking truth! There wasn’t one! How in the hell would I have gotten knocked up with his baby if there was a condom? Why would he even suggest that?”

“Again,” Georgette said patiently, “it is highly likely that Greg really believes the child is not his; that you are just trying to scam him.”

“I am not trying to scam him,” Mindy said righteously. “I don’t give a fuck about his money or about child support. I don’t want to marry him or have an ongoing relationship with him—he’s way too fuckin’ square for me—and nothing would make me happier than for him to renounce all involvement in the baby’s life. I just want the goddamn world to know that my child carries his genes. Is that too much to ask?”

“Apparently so,” Georgette said. “You don’t really want to go into detail with the entertainment press about the use of a condom during the encounter, do you?”

“Fuck yes I do,” she said. “I want the truth to be known.”

Georgette sighed. “Very well,” she said. “I will discuss how you rode bareback on Greg Oldfellow’s cock when I talk to Ms. Tapp later today. What about Celia’s statement?”

“What about that fuckin’ cunt?” Mindy growled. She was still steaming about the ‘not prepared to call her a whore’ quote.

“Do we acknowledge her release? Her accusations about your moral character?”

“Goddamn right we do,” Mindy said. “Whip me up something about how that bitch doesn’t even know me and that she’s only passing on Hollywood gossip and that I’m considering suing her for slander. Yes, I boffed her fucking husband, but only because she didn’t want him anymore and now she’s just a sore loser.”

Georgette nodded. “I will present the concept,” she said. “After, of course, a bit of rephrasing.”

“Probably a good idea,” Mindy agreed.

And so began the back and forth on the issue of protection involved that would be forever known as ‘Condom-Gate’. Mindy’s version was fed to Bernadette Tapp of the LA Times later that day. In it she reiterated that she had a single sexual encounter with Greg Oldfellow while the two of them were intoxicated. She had been on birth control pills but there had been no condom involved. She was unsure why Greg Oldfellow kept insisting that there was a condom involved, but her speculation was that Greg, who had been pretty drunk, might not remember the entire encounter. She also reiterated, once again, that she had had no other sexual partners in the months preceding her encounter with Greg. She once again advanced the opinion that the upcoming DNA paternity test would remove all doubt.