In between working on crap I got a job at a cable TV company in Los Angeles. The cable industry was still fairly new and there was a huge demand for “product.” If you were an HBO subscriber you could watch Robin Williams in Popeye 27 times in one week. I wanted to work there because the Public Access Division had cameras, editing equipment, and a studio. For Free! All I had to do was figure out what to put in front of the camera.
I’d film commercials in the dead of night and sometimes was paid off in “product” in lieu of cash. How else do you think I got that wonderful portable dishwasher?
During the day the Public Access Studio was used to produce “Must See TV” like The Jewish Television Network which consisted of two bearded guys in black hats talking about Current Events with a Hassidic slant a couple of times a month. Two guys, two chairs, against a white wall. That was it. Some “Network.”
One morning the studio was all abuzz. I noticed three chairs in the studio. The boys had a guest coming in. Imagine my jaw-dropping surprise when I saw Gore Vidal enter the room. What in the Wide Wide World of Sports was he doing there?
In 1982 Vidal was running against Governor Jerry Brown in the Democratic primary election for the United States Senate. Somehow somebody on his staff thought it would be a good idea for him to be on The Jewish Television Network. I don’t know what the two bearded, black-hatted guys expected from the man who had said, “I would stop all military aid to the Middle East. This would oblige the hard-liners in Israel to make peace with the Palestinians. We have supported Israel for forty years. No other minority in the history of the United States has ever extorted so much Treasury money for its Holy Land as the Israeli lobby.”