May, 1999

May 19, 1999 was a rough day. First of all, The Phantom Menace. I was ten years old when the original Star Wars hit the silver screen. It is impossible to overstate how profoundly it affected me. A Born-Again Christian friend once described to me the moment that his life was transformed by Jesus's infinite love, how his world was never the same, how he was never the same. Seeing Star Wars as a young boy was a lot like that, only better, because it had light sabers.

So I was beyond psyched to see a brand new one. I happily waited in line for hours and the Force was very much with me because I got the perfect seat, dead center. In my lap, I had an extra-large tub of popcorn (with butter), in the armrest cupholder a Coca-Cola (not Diet Coke, but The Real Thing) and stuffed into the pockets of my jeans, two boxes of Jujyfruits (because nothing enhances the moviegoing experience like scraping sticky candy off of your teeth with your fingernails). I was ready.

The lights went down in the theater. People cheered and, yes, I did, too. Then there was the familiar 20th Century Fox logo, the sweeping searchlights, the martial timpani. And then... silence.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....

I felt a chill.

Suddenly, the crash of brass as John Williams's stirring score engulfed the theater. And I swear to you, in that moment I felt my soul reach out across time and space, and the jaded thirty-something grown-up I had become hugged the innocent child I had once been and together we shed tears of joy.

And then it all went horribly wrong.

The crawl was going on and on about... tax policy? And why are these aliens talking like racist Asian stereotypes? Is this pod race ever going to end? Jar Jar Binx! Are you kidding me? (Come back, Ewoks! All is forgiven!) God, I want to punch little Anakin in the face! And what the fuck are Midi-Chlorians? Why? Why? Why is this happening?

My ten year old self was curled up in the fetal position. "Make it stop! Please!" he whimpered. "How could you do this to me?"

"I'm sorry," I said to him. "I didn't know."

"You're a bad man! I'm never talking to you again!"

And that was the last time I saw him. Which was fortunate, I guess, because at least he was spared the horrors of Attack of the Clones.

I returned home depressed, exhausted, empty. I glanced over at my answering machine. It had an odd design quirk. Instead of simply displaying the number of messages, it had a red LED light that would blink slowly if there was one message, and blink faster with each subsequent message. Right now, it was blinking so fast, it looked like it was having a nervous breakdown.

I've got a bad feeling about this.

I listened to the seemingly endless stream of incredulous and angry messages from my fellow Cool, Man! writers (plus one from the Department of Water & Power which was obviously unrelated). They were all about Dead Russell being hired back for second season, all with the same sentiment: Can you believe this shit?

As I pondered this shit and its lack of believability, my phone rang. It was Dead Russell, taking a victory lap. "How awesome is this?" I ducked the question and he was too busy self-congratulating to notice. Unsurprisingly, he interpreted this as total vindication, unambiguous proof that he had done a great job season one.

"Well, Sharon did have some serious concerns," I reminded him. "About you being late. Your attitude."

He made a dismissive noise, a puff of air into the receiver. "If her 'concerns' were so serious, why did she have me back?"

I have to admit, that was an excellent question, one which I wrestled with myself. Sharon was painfully aware that Dead Russell was a train wreck, but she brought him back anyway because, as near as I could tell, she simply didn't have the heart not to. It was a level of sentimentality quite at odds with her ferocious reputation, and to me it hinted at a more complicated, and perhaps more intimate, relationship between the two of them than I had previously assumed.

Anyway, it was a fait accompli so I took this opportunity to push Dead Russell in the right direction."Do yourself a favor, Dead Russell. When we start up again, be on time and be perky."

"I'm always perky."

"You fell asleep in The Room in the middle of the afternoon." Seriously. Head back, mouth open, snoring thunderously, like Grandpa had too many beers and passed out in his Lay-Z-Boy.

"Just once," he said petulantly. Jesus. This fucking guy.

"On time and perky," I reiterated. "Trust me on this."

"Why do you always have to be such a downer, Aaron?" he complained. "I thought you'd be happy for me. Everyone else was."

As I'm sure you figured out on your own, when the new season started, Dead Russell was nowhere near on time. And he was about as perky as your Grandma's tits.

———————————

In more upbeat news, Tom and I had been promoted to Executive Producers. It was the highest title that existed in episodic television, but it was also not very specific. The show runner was an Executive Producer, and she was in charge of everything. The star of the show was also an Executive Producer, but that was just a vanity credit. A handful of managers (they're like agents, but somehow worse) got to be Executive Producers because... um... something. A few studio executives did, too, for the same reason.

For Tom and me, the promotion meant we would often run The Room, but our power was always conditional, subject to Sharon's parameters and whims. There was nothing tyrannical about this — her show, her rules — but we were in a weird position where we simultaneously were, and weren't, in charge. Schroedenger's E.P.'s.

That said, running the room was generally fun. Out of necessity, Tom and I had become very methodical; it was the only way we could juggle both a TV and film career. We kept The Room on task and moving along. We also squabbled periodically, which the staff thought was hilarious.

Oh, no! Mommy and Daddy are fighting!

This dynamic would play out in every Room we'd ever run. And in every case, I was Daddy and Tom was Mommy. Between that and Samantha referring to Tom as my "work wife" a theme was certainly emerging.

Meanwhile, Dead Russell was becoming increasingly difficult. He came in later, and even less prepared than before. He was either lethargic or hyper and it was hard to say which was more disruptive to the flow of The Room, listening to his manic stream of consciousness or watching his eyes roll back in his head as he battled to stay awake.

Tom and I would reprimand him, but Dead Russell quickly learned that we didn't have the authority to punish him. For a while, he would feign contrition, but eventually he concluded even that was unnecessary. He would just ride out our admonishments, staring at us with the bored defiance of a teenager.

I admit, it drove me nuts. The arrogance, the sense of entitlement. I've always had a pathological need to make assholes understand that they are assholes. And I believed, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that if I pushed hard enough, I could get through to anybody, even him.

But my anger towards Dead Russell paled in comparison to Tom's. Hardly a day went by when he wasn't ranting to me behind closed doors about Dead Russell's latest antics. Like the time he ditched work to go with some friends to Disneyland — where he somehow managed to break his ankle on The Pirates of the Caribbean ride — and when we called him on it, he said Sharon had said it was OK, which she didn't, but somehow it was all treated as an innocent misunderstanding.

"How does that fucking asshole still have a fucking job?" Tom would demand, again and again.

It all started to unravel when Dead Russell was assigned his first writing assignment of the season. He turned in his outline several days late and even by Dead Russell standards, it was a mess. A mess that not even our heroic Writers Assistants could clean up.

Tom and I discussed making Dead Russell do it again, but we were fighting a deadline — and, besides, he would just screw it up anyway — so we decided to write his outline for him. We were very detailed, giving him an exceedingly clear road map for the script.

When we handed it to him, he was perplexed. "This isn't what I wrote."

"Yes, we know," said Tom.

"Why did you change it?"

"Because it sucked," I said, "and we want it to not suck."

When his draft came in — late, of course — we discovered that Dead Russell's script wasn't based on our outline at all. He had gone back to his original outline.

"I thought mine was better," he explained.

When Dead Russell left our office, Tom turned to me, flabbergasted by his audacity. His mouth was wide open and the only sounds he could produce were strangled syllables that stuck in his throat. It was so cartoonish that it actually made me laugh.

"Holy shit!" he said when he finally recovered his ability to speak. "That fucking guy has got to go. Now."

We marched into Sharon's office and Tom made an impassioned case for Russell's dismissal. Sharon agreed with everything Tom said, but she thought that he shouldn't be fired straightaway; he should have a warning first.

And the warning, it turned out, would be delivered by us.

———————————

We told Dead Russell to meet us in our office at two o'clock. He showed up thirty minutes late. I can't remember what his bullshit excuse was, other than it was bullshit.

"Sharon wanted us to talk to you," Tom said gravely and gestured to the couch. It was decades old, extremely worn and smelled — as Tom once described it — of comedy writer ass. (Which is like regular ass, but funnier.)

"Why?" Dead Russell asked as he sat. "Is she gonna to fire me?" He laughed uneasily.

"Yeah," I said, looking him straight in the eye. "Yeah, she is."

All the air went out of him and he slumped down. "Oh, Jesus Christ." He stared at me with sad clown eyes. "Why?" Tom and I exchanged an incredulous look. Could he really be this oblivious? "I can't believe this," he despaired. "I was going to go to Hawaii." His tone turned bitter. "I guess that's out." He brooded in silence for a few seconds and then burst out with, "Fuck!" which he punctuated by slamming the back of his head into the wall.

This was the tough love plan (minus the love) that Tom and I had agreed upon and it was clearly working. We wanted Dead Russell to truly understand that he was teetering on the brink, so that if he didn't make the drastic course correction required — and he almost certainly wouldn't — he couldn't say that he wasn't warned. But Tom didn't stay on script.

"Sharon didn't actually say you were getting fired," Tom backpedaled. I rested my forehead on my fist, a pissed off version of Rodin's "The Thinker." Once again, Tom had hung me out to dry. Now I was the heavy, while Tom was the benign friend looking out for Dead Russell's interests. Given how often this had happened in the past, I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was.

"But," Tom continued, "there are some things you need to work on."

"Oh, yeah. Totally." Dead Russell was leaning forward now, an eager pupil. Tom rattled off the familiar list of things that Dead Russell needed to change — punctuality, attitude, contributions in The Room, script quality — and he reacted to each one like it was the first time he had heard them. "Good to know," he said. "That's really helpful."

"And," I added, "if you're going to do drugs, maybe wait until the weekend."

"I don't do drugs!" Dead Russell insisted.

"Unless someone leaves them on the back of your toilet."

"That was a special situation!"

"Come on, guys," Tom beseeched us. "This isn't productive." He was mediating now, when he should have been taking my side. Especially since it was also his side. "You know what you need to do, right?"

"Yeah," said Dead Russell earnestly. "And I really appreciate your help, Tom." He very pointedly did not look at me.

It was amazing. Just a few hours earlier, Tom had stormed into Sharon's office and demanded that Dead Russell be fired. Now, Dead Russell thought that Tom was on his side and I was the one who was out to get him.

"'Cause I really want to stay on the show," Dead Russell said.

"Well, that's up to you," Tom said sagely.

He nodded. Then a new thought occurred to him. "That reminds me," Dead Russell said. "When am I gonna get a raise?"

———————————

The following Monday, Dead Russell pushed his luck one time too many, when, in a tour de force of fucktardery, he managed to show up late. Twice. In the span of thirty minutes. To the exact same chair.

Here's what happened. There was a production meeting at 9:30, which Dead Russell was required to attend, because it was his script (by which I mean that his name was on it; it had been completely rewritten — brilliantly, I might add — by the world class professionals on the Cool, Man! staff). When the production meeting started, he was nowhere to be seen. So we started without him and fifteen minutes later, he stumbled in, pale and sweaty, and collapsed into his chair.

The meeting ended at 9:50 and would be followed by the table read at 10:00. All Dead Russell had to do to be on time to for the read was... nothing. He just had to keep his fat ass in his chair for ten minutes.

And yet, incredibly, when the table read started, Dead Russell was nowhere to be found. Again, he stumbled in fifteen minutes late, disrupting the read as he tripped over people trying to get back to his seat. It was astonishing.

Afterwards, Dead Russell limped over to me, making excuses. "Sorry I was late, Aaron."

"What happened? Your dog get hit by a car again?"

"No. My alarm didn't go off and there was a lot of traffic—"

I had no patience for this nonsense. "Oh, go fuck yourself!"

He bristled. "Don't tell me to go fuck myself," he said through clenched teeth.

"Go. Fuck. Yourself."

"You're lucky I don't beat your ass." His hands were balled into fists.

"You wanna go? Let's go!" It had been seven years since my martial arts days but I was pretty confident I could take him out with one kick to his not-yet-healed ankle.

There was a standoff and my body was vibrating with anger and adrenaline. After a few moments, Dead Russell backed down. "Screw you, man." And he limped away.

Eighteen months later, he was dead.

This is what happened. First off, Dead Russell was finally fired. And then, almost immediately — and with typical self-blindness — Dead Russell filed a lawsuit against the studio claiming wrongful termination. Which meant that a number of us had to spend hours meeting with the studio's lawyers, and Dead Russell's as well. Even fired, he was still a pain in our collective ass.

This was the first — and so far only — time I've ever been deposed and I have to say, I did not care for it. Sterile, acontextual and utterly humorless. For instance, I had this back-and-forth with Dead Russell's lawyer.

Q. So at this point, you told my client to fuck off. Correct?

A. No. I told him to go fuck himself.

Q. What's the difference?

A. Level of difficulty, I guess.

It might be funny here, but is sure as shit wasn't there.

Of course, Dead Russell has some unkind things to say about me as well. He used terms like "abusive," "bully" and "rude." He had nothing bad to say about Tom, who he seemed to think of as an ally.

And there was also this, from Dead Russell's deposition:

Q. Were you ever warned that you were in danger of being fired?

A. No. The only person who told me I was in danger of being fired was Aaron Rubicon, but I took that with a grain of salt, because he hated me.

Leaving aside the fact that the answer was actually yes, I was very — some might say weirdly — gratified by his answer. After all, everyone on the staff knew he was in danger of being fired, but nobody else was willing to tell Dead Russell the hard, cold truth. Instead, they hedged and sugar-coated and avoided direct conflict. It was well-intentioned, but it ultimately fed his delusions, and those delusions ultimately got him killed. To be clear, I am very much not saying it is their fault, because it wasn't, but they did him no favors with their niceties. I may have been a rude, abusive bully, but at least I got through to him.

Anyway, the studio's stated justification for terminating Dead Russell's employment was, among other things, that he was consistently late and using drugs. Dead Russell adamantly denied those accusations, although he pretty much blew his credibility when he (1) kept showing up late to his hearings and then (2) died of a drug overdose.

Case dismissed.

Once again, I got the news from a flurry of messages from my fellow Cool, Man! writers on my hysterically blinking answering machine. They were all variations on a theme: Am I a bad person for finding this hilarious?

Maybe. But if so, we were all were. And that's where the story would have ended, but it turned out there was one more wrinkle.

On Dead Russell's final day on the show, a rumor went around that he was planning a killing spree. The evidence for this was scant. He had brought a gym bag into his office, which was inherently suspicious for a guy so sallow and puffy. Plus, it was very heavy, which seemed strange. Even if he had suddenly decided that it was time to get in shape, he surely didn't have twenty pounds worth of T-shirts and track shorts in that bag.

None of us believed it, really, but once the idea was in our heads, we couldn't entirely not believe it, either, especially since this was only a few months after the massacre at Columbine and as Dead Russell's scripts had amply demonstrated, he was not above stealing other peoples' ideas.

But the day passed without incident and the only casualty was Dead Russell's writing career. The Cool, Man! writing staff celebrated with champagne and a custom designed sheet cake that someone had forethoughtfully ordered, with a photo of Dead Russell — smoking a cigarette on the back lot with one eye closed — rendered in edible ink. We ate and drank and we laughed at our own paranoia.

After his death, though, we were stunned to learn that the rumor was, in fact, true. At the funeral, Dead Russell's sister told Sharon in confidence — quickly betrayed — that he had "borrowed" a Glock 9mm semi-auto from a friend and brought it in to work along with a half-dozen boxes of ammunition. For the first and only time in the Cool, Man! Room, nobody had anything funny to say as we pondered the bullets that we had all unknowingly dodged.

"I guess Dead Russell had a change of heart?" one of the writers said.

Sharon shook her head somberly. "Not exactly. He was serious about using it but he..." And here her face contorted and she dropped her head and it looked like she was trying not to cry. But that wasn't it at all. She was trying not to laugh. "He brought the wrong ammunition." She was laughing now. "It wouldn't fit in the gun."

The Room was in hysterics then. Even as an would-be mass murderer, he was a doofus.

"Wow," The Future Mrs. Rubicon Or Gilmore said to me. "You must feel extra-relieved."

"Why extra?" She seemed surprised that her statement wasn't self-evident..

"Because," she explained, "he definitely would have shot you first."