Most Talkative: Stories From the Front Lines of Pop Culture (22 page)

Ugh! I just yawned while I was typing, which is fitting because I have a terrible habit of yawning during pitches, which has got to be the worst possible trait for someone with my job. Once I took a pitch from Charlize Theron at 6 p.m. on a Friday at the end of a long week and congratulated myself on swallowing several teeny yawns, not realizing that they would get together inside me, combining into one huge yawn that I would be powerless to hold in. When I let one rip, Theron called me on it. Lucky for me, she was more amused than irritated. I’m sure it’d been years since someone had yawned in her beautiful face.

Sometimes pitches can be incredibly entertaining and provide a little window into who celebrities are as people—you could call them “Stars! They’re just like us!” moments. I’ve taken a pitch from Ashton and Demi, who seemed very in love and cuddly at the time. I had a meeting with Naomi Campbell, who couldn’t have been nicer and called in to my show later that night. Richard Simmons wore his tank top and short shorts in the winter and shocked a budget meeting as he pressed his face and body against the conference room windows on his way to my office. And what could be better than listening to Ivana Trump talk about her factories and skiing in Gstaad? Certainly not this pitch: A producer had the whole Bravo office in a lather about the HUGE TOP SECRET star he was bringing into the office. I was convinced it could only be J Lo. But the producer arrived for the meeting with only a briefcase, which he opened theatrically to reveal “Madame,” the puppet who in the ’70s had replaced Paul Lynde as the center square on Hollywood Squares. One memorable pitch took me out of my office and inside the mind-boggling 123-room Los Angeles mansion of Aaron Spelling, where I sat in the “library” listening to his widow, Candy, tell me what she would and would not do on TV. As I munched from a platter of crudités the size of a manhole cover, I realized I was surrounded by leatherbound copies of every script her late husband had ever written. Breathing in the rich smells of leather commingled with aging pages of
Dynasty
and
TJ Hooker
dialogue made me feel appropriately faux-literary as I bided my time until I was allowed into the dowager Spelling’s storied wrapping-paper room. It did not disappoint.

But Candy would have had to try really hard to beat my all-time kookiest celebrity pitch meeting. Back when the TRIO network was still afloat, I was in LA when I got a message that Cybill Shepherd wanted to pitch a reality show that she was billing as a real-life
Absolutely Fabulous
starring Cybill and her best friend. We met in her manager’s office in Beverly Hills on a hot Los Angeles summer day. I wore flip-flops, khakis, and a T-shirt, which is not unusual office attire for Los Angeles.

It’s been my experience that when you take any kind of pitch from a celebrity, they are usually “on.” Because in that moment they are their own product, so they are presenting a version of themselves that either they want you to think they are or that they think you want them to be. Sometimes that person can wind up being completely overbearing; other times, they can be charming. With Shepherd, it was somewhere in between.

Cybill was dressed to the nines, made up, hair done, and with her best friend, who was similarly upbeat and well packaged. In a nondescript, steaming office, they were cheerful, engaging, and flirty. Very flirty.

“How
old
are you, Andrew?” they cooed. “Are you
Jewish
?”

“Um, yes?” I stammered. I felt like Dustin Hoffman in
The Graduate
. But Dustin only had one Mrs. Robinson, and he wasn’t gay.

“We LOVE Semitic men!” Cybill exclaimed.

Her friend agreed. “We love them!” she nodded.

I was uncomfortable, and it was so boiling in that office that the internal gaydars of two sophisticated, well-traveled LA ladies had apparently completely short-circuited. I wondered if I should just come out to them right then before they tried to titillate me into picking up their show. Cybill said she was baking. She kept fanning herself and lifting her hair off the nape of her neck into a loose pile on top of her head.

“Do you mind if I slip off my shoes?” she asked, not waiting for a response before letting her dogs out. She certainly didn’t need to explain needing to let her feet breathe—I was the one in flip-flops. I was starting to groove on her casual style as she told me about the real-life madcap situations that she and her pal got into in real life, and how that would translate to a hit show. Blind dates! Motherhood! Menopause! It was pretty much a pitch for a reality version of her successful CBS sitcom
Cybill
. Not a horrible idea.

Suddenly, though, Ms. Shepherd did have a horrible idea. A very, very horrible idea. “It is so fucking hot in here,” she announced, “that I think I have to take my shirt off.”

I’ve been told that I cock my head a lot on
Watch What Happens Live
, particularly when someone says something weird or outrageous (which is a lot). Well, I’m pretty sure I sprained my neck with the extreme cocking I did at her suggestion. Cybill was squealing with laughter as she asked her broiling friend if she was up for joining in this game of pitch-tease. Big shock: Her friend was into it. I thought maybe a better idea was to turn up the air-conditioning, but for perhaps the first time in my life, and for reasons I still can’t comprehend, I kept my mouth shut. Maybe I had heatstroke.

They proposed a deal: They would take their shirts off, and then I would follow suit and take off mine. I should remind the reader here that there were
other people in the room.
Other people who were certainly as hot and sweaty as me, but nobody was making them take
their
shirts off. Not that I wanted to see any of them without their shirts. Not that I didn’t want to, either. You can see how this was becoming weirder by the second, and although I was already pretty sure at that point that we weren’t going to buy this demented version of
Beverly Hills AbFab Theater
, I had to admit I was curious to see how this would all play out. And I
was
hot. And by “hot” I mean that I was sweating-like-
I
-was-going-through-menopause hot, not hot like ready to bang the
Moonlighting
lady.

“Okay,” I said, and off came my shirt.

There I was, sitting across from Cybill Shepherd, famed star of
The Last Picture Show
and
The Heartbreak Kid
, who was now wearing slacks and no shoes and a black bra. The curiosity that had been percolating moments before abruptly evaporated. Now I just wanted my mommy. Or Dan Rather. Cybill’s friend was also wearing a black bra. And these ladies were lovely, but I really, really did not want to see them in their dainties. They continued to pitch me the show, the two bra-clad Mrs. Robinsons and me, naked to the waist.

“If this is the first meeting,” I wondered to myself, “what would happen if we got into business together?” Would our meetings eventually involve full frontal nudity? Was it a ploy to make their pitch stand out, or could it be that they were just excruciatingly hot? Were they acting out the “parts” they would be playing on their madcap reality show? Cybill was on a tear about the inability of actresses her age to get parts and how that would play out on the show. It was still very hot in the room, but I was not really concerned with the temperature or the show anymore. I wanted out, and I think Cybill noticed.

“I have another idea!” she screamed. Okay, I thought. Maybe she was saving her best idea for last? I sat back, ready to hear her out. “Let’s take our pants off!” she said. Of course. “We’ll go first and then you do it!” They cackled, thrilled by their latest suggestion.

There were so many problems with this suggestion, the most urgent being that my casual attire that day went beyond flip-flops and a T-shirt. I was not wearing any underwear. Listen, judgy: I was in LA, the pants were soft, it was warm, and I didn’t want to be constrained. Also, I was probably out of clean drawers, and you know how much a hotel charges to do your laundry. These are the myriad excuses of a freeballer, I know, and at that moment I gravely regretted my decision.

“NO! I CAN’T!” I immediately yelled, way too quickly and way too defensively. Their eyes immediately broke out in knowing twinkles. I surmised that because of my speedy response, they were now convinced that I had a big, raging, Semitic, double-cougar-induced boner. Which I did not.

“WHY, Andrew?” said Cybill. “Are you that shy? Why won’t you take off your pants? What’s stopping you?”

“I just … can’t,” I said. Now I was embarrassed. I sounded, and felt, like an ashamed child. Let’s be clear: I wasn’t ashamed that I didn’t want to take my pants off. You shouldn’t have to do that in a pitch meeting, or any other type of business meeting. I just couldn’t believe that I wasn’t wearing underwear and that it was now going to become a freaking point of discussion in my freaking television pitch meeting with freaky Cybill Shepherd.

She pushed and prodded. “Come on,” she said. “What’s it gonna hurt?” And with that, I was worn down. Busted.

“I’m not wearing underwear,” I sighed, just softly enough for her to hear. The game was over.

Flashing her trademark Cybill Shepherd grin, she finally dropped the subject. Which would have been fine, except I was still shirtless and the ladies were still in their bras. I quickly finished our discussion and we put our clothes back on, awkwardly. Then I ran out and looked for a sink to wash my hands, because the whole thing had made me feel dirty, like I’d done something I wasn’t supposed to. In retrospect, it’s pretty clear that she and her friend were just proving in the room how fun and wacky their show would be. It was kind of a genius idea, but we didn’t wind up buying it. And you can bet that ever since that day, if I’m in a pitch meeting, no matter what the thermometer says, I’m wearing underwear.

*   *   *

All this talk of freeballs brings me to a different kind of pitch altogether, but one that was just as nerve-racking.

I’ve always maintained a pop-culture bucket list, filled with things I have simultaneously dreamed of doing, while also never actually thinking that I would get to. But through the success of my show, which I realize is lucky enough in and of itself, I’ve had the fortune to experience some dream-come-true moments, including an appearance on Letterman and getting to be the grand marshal of more than one parade. (Yes, that’s a humble brag about leading exactly two parades.) One of the toppers had to be when I was asked to throw out the first pitch at a St. Louis Cardinals game.

When the opportunity first presented itself, I was as excited as I’d been when I was a twentysomething B-52s go-go boy. It was big. My family had Cardinals season tickets, I’d witnessed several play-off and World Series games at Busch Stadium, and many relatives to this day call me “Bird” because of my devotion and love for Cardinals mascot “Fredbird.” Now I of little coordination was asked to throw a baseball in front of thousands of St. Louisans and my entire family.

I spent a few months polling everyone I knew who knew anything about baseball about how to throw the perfect pitch, or at least how to get it over the base. I discovered early that the main goal of a layman throwing a pitch was to not bounce the ball—the ultimate in celebrity-pitcher humiliation.

I spoke to several people who’d thrown out first pitches in their career. Jerry Seinfeld told me to stand on the rubber in front of the mound. This, he said, was because I wouldn’t be prepared for the height of the mound. While hosting an event for Bravo at the Kentucky Derby, I asked fellow St. Louisan Bob Costas his advice. “What
ever
you do, do
not
throw from the mound. If you do, you’ll bounce the ball. Throw from the
front
of the mound.” Clearly, bouncing the pitch would lead to many unthinkable forms of terror and punishment. I spent many dark days in a YouTube hole, repeatedly watching a clip of Mark Wahlberg beaning a fan in the ass with his first pitch at a Red Sox game in 2009. If Marky Mark couldn’t do it, what hope did I have?

My own history started to weigh heavily on my mind. I was no stranger to baseball-related humiliation, having played Optimist Baseball for six years growing up in the 1970s. Looking back, I guess I played to fit in, and because the real party was after the game when everybody went to Dairy Queen for cherry dip cones. (The things we do for a crunchy coating.) Also you got a different color T-shirt every year, and I wore mine like a badge of honor. Yes, I’d dropped every ball hit to me, endured endless strikeouts, and made several game-losing plays, but at least I had those T-shirts. At the beginning of every season, my dad asked me to let him coach the team, and every season I begged him not to. I wouldn’t let my parents even
come see me play
, so the idea of my father coaching was problematic, since he wouldn’t be attending any games.

In the last inning of our last game at the end of sixth grade, as we played together for the final time as a team before we moved schools and aged out of the league, we were one run down with men on base and two outs. I stepped up to the plate, with all eyes on me, carrying my teammates’ hopes and dreams on my little shoulders. It was like a movie where the underdog has one final chance to redeem himself. Unlike my boo, St. Louis Cardinal David Freese, in the now legendary Game Six of the 2011 World Series, I struck out. On the way home—we didn’t even stop at Dairy Queen—the mother who was driving us said, “Oh, Andy, you lost the game
again
?”

When I walked into my house I looked at my mom with a heavy heart and eyes brimming with tears. “That bad?” she asked. She opened her arms to hug me and I sobbed into her shoulder, silently vowing never to be humiliated on the baseball diamond again.