There is a scene in “The Devil Wears Prada” where our heroine, Andy–highly educated, competent, intellectual, beautiful noble and polite–gets reduced to an incoherent bundle of nerves by her boss from hell, Miranda, who, in the midst of a hurricane in Miami, demands that Andy somehow find a way to fly her to New York.
I’ve watched the film 10 or 11 times, and invariably, I laugh at this scene, at the impossibility of the task, at Miranda’s entitlement and Andy’s desperate groveling, so absurd it’s hysterical. “How can you stand it?” my husband asks in exasperation when he views snippets of the film (he refuses to watch it in its entirety). “This,” he says disdainfully, “is the kind of job our daughter will never do.”
And I laugh even more, because this was exactly the kind of job I once did; the kind of job nearly everyone who wants to venture into TV or film invariably ends up doing. I was Andy once: A Fulbright scholar newly graduated with a master’s degree from USC, thrilled to land a job as a production assistant and field producer at Fox 11 News in Los Angeles. For those of you not in the know on the TV news business, let me say–this was huge. A job at a high-rated news station in the second TV market in the US? Huge.
Now, I wanted to be a an on-air reporter or a producer. The path to that was to begin small, in a station in some tiny market. Since I was in big, competitive LA, my path towards stardom was via a small job in a big station. Lucky, lucky me. And when it was good, it was great. During the weekends, when the going was slow and the assignment editor kind, I was allowed to go out on the field and actually report the news. But on hectic weekdays, I was a PA, a glorified indentured servant. On good days I’d answer the phone, monitor wires and send reporters on location. On bad days, I’d pick up coffee, take out Chinese and laundry. On worse days, the evening assignment editor–a petite, plump brunette who hated me–had me running up and down stairs distributing scripts to the anchors (there were at least 10 script changes per half hour) during the entire evening newscast. Remember that scene in Broadcast News where Holly hunter almost breaks a leg delivering a tape during the newscast? That was me. Times 10.
It all came to a head one evening after an oil spill off the Huntington Beach coast. Someone decided it’d be great television to show a tank full water with oil floating on its surface during the 11 p.m. news. And who better than your gofer/PA gal to go get it. So off I went with a cameraman who drove the news truck to Huntington Beach during rush hour.
It was one of those horrible traffic days in LA, and the drive that should have taken an hour or so took twice that. By the time we got to Huntington Beach, it was late and dark and there was no sign of oil anywhere. Where was the spill? Where was the chaos? Where were the oil-slicked birds? (as we now know, it takes more than a couple of hours for oil to reach beaches, but apparently no one thought about that then). My cameraman and I walked aimlessly up and down the empty beach alongside the pier, increasingly desperate. We radioed the station and reported the utter lack of oil and people and anything.
“Get me a tank of water with oil,” snarled my assignment editor. “And you better make it back here on time or else.”
“But there is no oil,” I cried, near tears. “Change the script. It’s not going to work!”
“Do it and get here on time,” she repeated and hung up.
I waded out into the ocean, tank in hand, as far as I could go without totally ruining my clothes. I filled the stupid tank, but of course, there was no way to single-handedly haul a tank full of water back to shore. I dumped the water out and waded back. At the beach, with the giant drink cup from a hasty dinner bought at a 7-11, we poured as much water as we could carry into the glass tank. It was brownish, sea water, without a drop of oil in it. It looked sad. With difficulty, we carried the tank between us and deposited in the back of the truck and got the hell out of there, cringing with every turn in the road that made the water slosh out. Every time I looked, the water level dropped an inch.
It was now well past 9 p.m. and our chances of getting back on time were dwindling. We made it, barely, halfway through the newscast. Assignment editor from hell was waiting for us impatinetly at the loading dock. She didn’t even acknowledge me as she motioned for someone to rush the now half-filled water tank into the set. They plunked it between the two anchors and it looked more pathetic than ever: Just a dirty tank with some brownish water.
“Where’s the oil?” asked the anchorman incredulously.
“There is no oil,” I repeated for the 100th time that evening.
“What are we supposed to do with this?” asked the other anchor.
Looking back, every time I picture that silly tank, half-full of murky sea water, sitting between the two impeccable newscasters, I have to laugh, it was all so ludicrous. But that night, it was a tragedy and I figured I’d be fired. She-wench made me write a report detailing every second of my outing, in an effort to prove that we’d been late and unsuccessful because we’d wasted time, ostensibly having drinks or sex at some truck stop, rather than hastily stopping at a 7-11 for a quick bite. Who said we could stop and eat? she ranted. Why hadn’t I taken the sidestreets instead of the freeway? Why hadn’t I gone deeper into the water? Why hadn’t I ventured further south in my quest for oil?
Why did you send me on this half-assed assignment, I wanted to ask. But of course, I said nothing. I was Andy, near tears, trying to salvage my glorified baby-sitting job.
In the end, I wasn’t fired, but I was relegated to desk and messenger duty. The highlight of my day was when I was grudgingly given the keys to one of the newstrucks and asked to go pick up lunch.
A month later, I got a job at Telemundo, where there was no union and where being a PA meant you could actually get on-camera from time to time. The station was way over there in Glendale and not nearly as glamorous as Fox. But everyone was nice, and that’s where I met the friend who would eventually recommend me to the LA Times, where I’d start my writing career, having decided TV news was overrated.
