Page 13 of Fathers of the Bride
Andrew Lane
Early in our relationship,I foolishly promised Miles I’d make him famous. At first, we tried for MTV VJ, but when that didn’t work out, I suggested he start his own catering company. That set the ball rolling. I was the one who got Miles his first TV guest spot. It was on one of the L.A. morning shows. The one with the alcoholic bleached blond and the closeted gay Olympian. If you don’t remember it, don’t worry. No one remembers it. It’s been off the air for more than a decade.
Anyway, he did a segment on the best way to carve a Thanksgiving turkey—which could also be used as a guide to successfully dismantle and dispose of a body, though you’d need many more plastic containers. It was quite the hit.
That led to other opportunities and, also rather quickly, his own show,The Happy Home. Behind the scenes we, and a large portion of the gay community, referred to the show asThe Happy Homo. Which surprisingly didn’t hurt its reputation.
In fact, I think a lot of people watched it for exactly that reason. There wasn’t a lot of gay representation on television at the time. Pre-Will & Grace. Or post-Will & Gracefor that matter. And one half-hour sitcom is hardly what you’d calla lot.
Anyway, the show was popular. Everyone loved it, until they didn’t. Roughly two and a half years ago, the network came to me, the producer, and said that our numbers were falling. I was aware of that and had started booking minor celebrities for appearances on the show—an additional expense, but one that I hoped would pay off. It didn’t. The network decided that, though they still wanted a “home” show, they didn’t want it from Miles.
That gave me, as producer, the opportunity to pitch that the show continue; albeit with a different host. Of course, I regret throwing my husband under the bus, but we did have a daughter in college, a mortgage, two leased Mercedes and a host of other expenses.
And, given the way our contracts were written, if I left voluntarily I’d lose a ton of money—and possibly even owe the network. It was not smart to have signed a contract like that, but it was a very old contract I’d signed in the days before even convicted felons received huge golden parachutes.
Anyway, I made the choice I had to make.
Miles did not see it that way. I fired him, so he fired me. The day after we shot his last episode, I came home—from shooting a test episode with the former Miss America who’d eventually take over—and found that I had a brand new five-piece set of Louis Vuitton luggage with most of my wardrobe carefully, and ergo-dynamically, packed for me. He’d also made me a reservation at the Bonaventure.
There was some hope that things might thaw a bit when I, too, lost my job at the Home & Craft Network. But the congratulatory bouquet of wilted roses he sent suggested that might not happen. The fact that I was able to quickly reinvent myself as a brand manager—with Raj as my first client—only seemed to make matters worse.
On the drive home from Bean There Donut That, I mulled over our encounter. Miles had looked good, I thought. Yes, he’d gained a few pounds, but Miles was one of those people who carried weight well. He didn’t look fat, he just looked thicker. His evenly featured face never looked chunky, and his smile never dimmed. His eyes sparkled—
No, no, just no. I shouldn’t be thinking about Miles in that way. Things between us were long over. History. All we had to do was get through Kelly’s wedding and we could finally take everything apart. Of course, thinking about the wedding was thinking about money. Even a modest backyard wedding in Los Angeles cost a small fortune. I know it seems to people that we have a lot of money, which is exactly my intention no matter what the truth. I learned early that the way to make money in this town was to seem like you didn’t need it. I made sure we always looked like we didn’tneedmoney.
That meant that we’d spent most of our money even before it came in. We had roughly half of what we needed for retirement saved—and of course we couldn’t touch that, a nice chunk of equity in the house, a trickle of residuals and royalties, and my commissions whenever I got my influencers endorsement deals. Losing the show has been quite the financial adjustment.
I attempted to use my handsfree to call Keswick and Associates, our accountant. But it refused to work. Raj had set it up and I should have been able to simply press the button and say, ‘call whomever’ and I should have been put through. No such luck, though.
“Call Keswick,” I said.
She—the computerized voice of my car—gave me the cast forThe Witches of Eastwick.
“No, no, no. Call Keswick.”
I learned thatNo, No, Nanettewas a 1924 musical featuring the song “Tea for Two.”
Frustrated, I said, “Fuck you.”
My car responded with a rather snotty, “I am not attracted to you.”
I pulled onto a side street, Sweetzer, I think, and illegally parked so I could legally make a phone call. We’d been with Keswick and Associates for more than two decades and had gone through many accountants there. Typically, I could remember our previous accountant’s name but not our current one.
“Could I speak to Barry?” I asked when the line was picked up.
“Oh, hi Mr. Lane. You mean Garth. Barry isn’t with us anymore. He left two years ago.”
“Okay. Thank you. Garth then.”
“One moment.”
I was put on hold.
While we did have a separation agreement, Miles and I had never fully separated our finances. We still owned the house together, of course. And we also owned our company A-OK, Inc., which had basically been a holding company for our residuals and royalties fromThe Happy Homeand related projects we worked on together.
I formed a new LLC after we split for my solo work, and I assume Miles did something similar. Though I hadn’t been willing to pay my attorney to ask the question.
When Garth came to the phone, I asked, “How much is in the A-OK account?”
