Producer Read online

  PRODUCER

  Lessons Shared from 30 Years in Television

  WENDY WALKER

  with

  ANDREA CAGAN

  with a Foreword by Larry King

  NEW YORK BOSTON NASHVILLE

  Begin Reading

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  To

  my children,

  Amaya and Walker,

  who constantly teach me

  new lessons about life and love

  FOREWORD

  by Larry King

  “Lessons” is a great word. Whenever I see it, I know that in the next few moments I’m going to learn something. And there is no better teacher than Wendy Walker, my senior executive producer for the past seventeen years. She really is the driving force behind Larry King Live. From early in the morning, throughout the day, and into the early evening, it’s all on Wendy who stays on top of things by booking the show, making the calls, driving the crew, checking in with me, and putting out fires all along the way. Then when she’s finished with her work, I get the last hour.

  When I was ready to hire a new executive producer, the network narrowed it down to three possible choices. What a host looks for in a good executive producer is knowing she’s right there, always at the helm, and always ready to stand up for me versus higher management. It’s all about loyalty, an extraordinary trait which Wendy has demonstrated as long as we’ve worked together.

  Before I met with Wendy, I favored a guy who worked on Good Morning America and was an avid sports fan, just like me. I liked him as a person and I liked the fact that he had no desire to leave his present job—unless he could work for me. I could imagine doing shows about sports each night since that was what I spent my days talking about. In fact, sports is my number one avocation. So much so, that if the Washington Post had a headline that read Larry King’s Secret Sex Life Revealed, I’d turn to the sports page first.

  But a meeting with Wendy changed my mind. At first it seemed impossible. Think about it. Jewish Sports Guy from Brooklyn meets WASP White House Producer from the Midwest. But I was amazed at her large array of letters of recommendation from past presidents, highly regarded newsmen, and other influential people. She had the contacts, that was for sure. Then it was the way she looked me in the eye and said, “I really want this job.” I would learn about her loyalty later (that can only be proven with time), but I figured anyone who was that aggressive and offered me even more impressive recommendations if I wanted them fit the role of my executive producer. And we have worked together amazingly well ever since.

  This doesn’t mean we always agree. Quite the opposite. I often disagree with where Wendy wants to take the show, and we have some spirited discussions. But it wouldn’t be healthy if we felt the same way about everything. As the host, I may want to talk about sports, but my executive producer is not a sports nut. She’s thinking about the audience and what they want, something I never do because I don’t have to.

  This may seem strange, but I never go on the air thinking, “Will they like this or not like this? Are they enjoying this?” That would make me second-guess my questions. I see my job as being a conduit from the guests to the audience, asking the right questions, bringing out what the guests have to say and what they’re thinking about. Then the audience makes up its own mind.

  But the executive producer is all about the audience. While I prefer to talk about Manny Rodriguez, Wendy knows what will draw the highest ratings. This causes us to be at tangents. But the lesson you learn from Wendy is when to give and when not to. She knows when to win and when to lose, and she is impeccable in her loyalty at the same time.

  When I heard that Wendy was writing a book, I immediately thought it was a great idea. I know she has something valuable to say, she has a great background, she’s been through the ups and downs of the news business for the past thirty years, and she has watched television change right in front of her eyes. In fact, she has been and continues to be an integral part of that change. Nobody knows better than Wendy that there is no way to predict the news business, and no one can tell you what the media will look like in as little as five years from now.

  In the end, it takes resilience and flexibility to be a great executive producer, traits of any good general and traits that I see in Wendy all the time. We are close friends, something that can work against us at times, because it feels like I’m at odds with a wife instead of a coworker. But really, I have never doubted my wisdom in hiring Wendy Walker as my executive producer, a woman whose loyalty and actions rise high above her job description.

  So get ready to go back to school. It won’t be as tough as it was when you were a kid, and you won’t be graded. But you better listen well, ’cause you’ve got one hell of a teacher! And I love her with all my heart.

  INTRODUCTION

  My name is Wendy Walker. Although you don’t know me and probably don’t recognize my name, you will recognize the events, tragedies, and celebrations in this book, since we all lived them. I am just one of the people doing my job behind the scenes and I’m a lot like you—except that I couldn’t go to my college reunion because I had to produce the TV coverage for a US-Soviet summit. And I couldn’t pick out the bridesmaids’ dresses for my wedding because I was too busy covering the Bush-Clinton presidential campaign.

  Throughout the years, I have had the privilege of working for Ethel Kennedy, ABC News, CNN, and Larry King. Beginning in 1983, I was CNN White House producer for a decade, and I have been senior executive producer of Larry King Live for the past seventeen years. As I have worked both in the White House and producing this amazing show for Larry King for such a long time, I have loved meeting world leaders, great authors, presidents and kings, extraordinarily influential people who have changed the course of the world as we know it. In fact, over the past thirty years, as I have told my stories, which constantly intrigued my listeners, many people have urged me to write a book. “Who else gets to meet these people?” they reminded me. “You have stories. You need to share them.”

  When I thought about it, I realized that as great as my stories are, I have something even more valuable to offer—the lessons I’ve learned, often the hard way, along the trajectory of my very challenging and active career. In an effort to share these priceless hard-earned life lessons, I decided to follow my friends’ urgings. So I did it. Here I am, this is my book, and I have to say that I am way out of my comfort zone. But I’m doing it anyway.

  I’m just not used to being in front of the camera or being the center of attention. I feel best in the background, behind the scenes, but with this book, that’s changing. It has been a great learning experience for me, and reliving my lifelong adventures as an adult, rather than a kid, has been illuminating and a whole lot of fun.

  In the pages of this book, you will find unique stories about lessons learned along the way, as I try to highlight the humor and some practical ways to lead a good, exciting, healthy life. There are stories involving many luminaries, such as Mikhail Gorbachev, Marlon Brando, and Yasser Arafat. Not to mention Larry King, an icon, one of the most famous and talented broadcast interviewers in the world.

  When I began my work, I was a kid. Now I’m not a kid anymore, but with each day and each show I produce for Larry, I’m still learning a great deal about life and about myself. I feel excited about the years to come and about finding new ways to understand how connected we all are. In the end, I can see that the energy we give out in this life is exactly the energy we get back.

  CHAPTER 1

  Freaking Out Is Not an Option

  My alarm clock woke me at 5:30 a.m., as usual. It was still dark outside as I reluctantly pulled back the covers, got up, and headed for the bathroom to w
ash my face and get ready for a new day. The digital readout on my clock told me it was Thursday, June 25, 2009, and I felt like I had a jump on the day.

  The night before, when I went to bed, my staff and I had booked what I thought was a diverse and interesting Larry King Live show for tonight. I knew from experience over many years that if breaking news occurred anywhere in the world, we could and would shift our plans in an instant. That’s always the case in the news business. But I was hoping for an easy day as I headed into my home office off my bedroom to check my e-mails. They were arriving fast and furious since it was a little after 8:30 a.m. on the East Coast. I scanned my incoming box quickly and checked last night’s ratings.

  I love living on the West Coast, and in the blush of a promising summer sunrise, I scanned the wires and various reports from my East Coast staff to confirm the morning headlines. Then I went back to my e-mails. My production staff of forty across the country were streaming information to me from everywhere and would continue to do so—to the tune of at least two thousand e-mails daily. I know how impossible that sounds, but it’s true. Imagine taking a half-hour walk or driving a kid to school in the early morning and having more than two hundred new e-mails waiting when you get back home. That’s how it is with me, as I scan thousands of e-mails every day, eliminating what I don’t need and making sure I respond to what is necessary and hopefully not deleting something important.

  While I started answering the messages, my staff kicked in. They do myriad jobs that are all important; it’s the old it takes a village concept. Since ten of the forty producers are bookers, when we decide in which direction the show will go that night they make the calls and do the intense work of booking the guests. When we were in the midst of reporting the deadly earthquake in Haiti in February 2010, for example, we had to decide who we wanted to interview concerning a massive world tragedy. Everybody got on board with ideas and suggestions, and we came up with names.

  Among our staff, one producer is assigned strictly to knowing all the books that come out and which authors might be right for the current show. Two producers are in charge of the fifteen-minute water cooler stories, such as local tragedies that include people who are not normally in the news, which is how the Scott Peterson case began. Another producer handles celebrities and their agents and publicists. There are political bookers who work with Washington and the White House, and all of them have their A list: people we would have on at any time, such as Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt or a sitting president.

  In other words, we are always working simultaneously on whatever is going on today, the rest of the week, and way into the future. While we do this, one of the editorial producers does the research for the open of the show: Larry is extraordinarily well-versed since he watches news all day long, but he still needs specifics. So one producer writes the open, others produce the video components, and still others are in charge of the live show. That includes satellites, audio, graphics, phone calls, the rundown, content, remote locations, and breaking news during the show. There are publicists, cameramen, makeup artists; everyone is doing his or her individual job to create a live show.

  And so each job is a piece of the whole, like a set of dominoes. It all has to fit together in harmony because if one domino goes down, so do all the rest. Everyone has to know what everyone else is doing, and we perform this intricate dance every day, all day long. If the show changes suddenly in the middle of the day, which happens very often, we start the process all over again, with less time and more scurrying around. But we always get the job done.

  So far so good for this particular day. It seemed that Larry King Live would go forward as planned. On our roster, we had conservative Ann Coulter, Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, and Elizabeth Edwards, who was struggling with inoperable cancer and her ex-senator husband’s stunning infidelity. I thought we might include some information on Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina who was also embroiled in an extramarital scandal, so the show was off to a solid start.

  I gave the go-ahead to check into the availability of Governor Sanford and a few others, but as executive producer I had to keep in mind that Barbara Walters was airing an ABC special about ailing actress Farrah Fawcett that night. In her advance publicity for the special, Barbara had suggested on Good Morning America that Farrah, who was struggling with the last stages of cancer, might not make it through the day. It sounded a little presumptuous on Barbara’s part, but the actress had supposedly been at death’s door for quite a while. If she died today, I would have to change the show. That was par for the course. I often changed the focus of a show when we were in the planning stages, since I had to respond to what was going on in the world at each moment. But I hoped I didn’t have to.

  I was in the middle of the morning booking call when, at 9:28 a.m., a flash showed up on my computer. Farrah had passed away. Barbara had been right and we had some adjusting to do.

  Adjusting on a moment’s notice is what this job has constantly demanded during the past seventeen years. Now we were facing the death of a beloved actress and we had to change the show. We did an about-face. There was no doubt that the show we originally planned was out. It was tough since we had to start from scratch again, but I didn’t freak out. That would have taken up too much time and wasted too much valuable energy. We would replace show number one with show number two, which would be devoted to Farrah’s death. We all got on the phone to reschedule our guests (we never cancel; we always reschedule) and round up the appropriate people for the tragic new show.

  When a show suddenly turns on its head because something important supersedes our plans, each moment is crucial and we are filled with anxiety as we are required to book a whole new show in a very short period of time. It’s not unusual for me to be ironing out the wrinkles of a show well into the late afternoon, which is edgy since we air at 6 p.m. on the West Coast. By the end of a day like the one I was presently facing, I have generally made hundreds of decisions, and the only way to do that is to remain calm. That would be the case today, I realized, reminding myself to breathe as we began drawing up lists of guests who knew Farrah, as well as checking their availability. Dreams of a simple day flew out the window as we began to prepare for show number two, but I had no idea how crazy the day would turn out.

  Before I got back on the phone, I shot off an e-mail to my friend Lisa Ling, special correspondent for CNN, and The Oprah Winfrey Show. Her sister, Laura Ling, and a colleague, Euna Lee, had been detained in North Korea since March 17, 2009, for entering the country without a visa. They had been covering a controversial story on human trafficking, and on June 8 the women had been sentenced to twelve years of hard labor, having been found guilty of the “grave crime” of illegal entry into North Korea, even though they were told by their guide that it was safe to do so.

  Lisa had been working day and night to try to bring her sister home, and we had booked her, her parents, and the husbands of the two detained journalists on the show to make a public appeal. I recall being very careful to accentuate Lisa’s needs rather than making the show what we wanted it to be during that hour she talked with Larry. This was all about getting the women back, which overrode our desire for good ratings. All of Lisa’s pleas and maneuverings needed to be handled with great delicacy because of how political and disturbing the situation was. I couldn’t imagine how she was getting up in the mornings, so I e-mailed her daily, asking about her progress and if there was anything I could do. This morning, I wrote:

  Hi. Have you heard anything more? How are you holding up?

  Lisa wrote back:

  Hey, Mama. [That’s what she calls me.] I’m about to lose my mind.

  This is so frustrating. I’ll be ok, just venting about bureaucracy…

  Back to Farrah. Time was flying by as we contacted various principals in her life and tried to book them. So far, we had gotten Dick and Pat Van Patten, Candy Spelling, Joan Dangerfield, and my dear friend Suzanne Somers. It was coming together, but I stop
ped for a moment when a provocative e-mail landed in my in-box. The popular TMZ Web site, a huge leader in entertainment news, had posted the following information:

  1:44 p.m. We’ve just learned that Michael Jackson was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Los Angeles… we’re told it was cardiac arrest and that paramedics administered CPR in the ambulance.

  Oh, no. What was this? Please! I e-mailed the staff member who had sent it:

  1:45 p.m. We might have to do something on this. Check it out please.

  I got on a conference call with several of my producers while one of them phoned Jermaine Jackson, Michael’s brother, to find out what he knew. She sent me this:

  1:47 p.m. I’m on with Jermaine’s wife right now. They had no idea.

  I immediately e-mailed Lisa Gregorisch, my close friend and executive producer of Extra. She always got the celebrity breaking news fast and we often validated our information with each other.

  1:48 p.m. I am sure you know this. An insider just told me that an ambulance just went into the compound of Michael Jackson’s home. No details or for what reason or for whom. Minutes ago, the ambulance just left Michael’s home with sirens sounding.

  Lisa wrote back:

  1:49 p.m. Yes, it could be cardiac arrest.

  My staff continued booking the show about Farrah and I told them to keep Larry off all press calls, at home and on his cell phone. We had to find out the truth about Michael Jackson before he said a word to anyone. What if Larry answered his phone, was asked a question, and made a comment that was not true? When I was sure Larry would not answer any calls, I placed a call to criminal attorney Mark Geragos, a regular on our show and a former lawyer to Michael. “Mark,” I said, “we’re hearing that Michael Jackson might be very sick. Or dead.”