National Review: Offstage moments

GREEN rooms are offstage rooms where actors relax when not performing. The origins of the name are lost in the mists of time; the traditional guess is that the color green soothed eyes that had been staring into limelight. Limelight is long gone from theaters, and television never used it, but TV stations also have green rooms, for the use of talk-show guests. Any veteran trotter in the worlds of punditry or book PR has stabled in innumerable Manhattan green rooms, while waiting to run his course.

Green rooms vary with the prosperity of the station that is your host. CNN has moved into new quarters on Columbus Circle, which look like Mordor with a makeover--all sleek icy metal ("Sauron, that volcano was so Dungeons & Dragons"). The road to the green room at Bloomberg LP leads past winking tropical fishtanks. Other green rooms recall precinct houses, or Central American car-rental offices. All are simple, most are primitive.

Every green room has an attendant bathroom. "Never pass a men's room"--advice I have heard attributed to Nelson Rockefeller, and George VI. Some stations give you a key and an intelligence test--two rights, and a left. It's not hard, unless you're trying to think what to say about Social Security or Paris Hilton. Unisex bathrooms are likely to have stern, handwritten warnings against flushing tampons. Ladies, don't you already know this? Worst are the bathrooms with windows pried open, even in winter (though you reflect they would probably be worse yet if the windows were closed). High-quality shows provide refreshments. Firing Line, of blessed memory, had no place to sit, but you could nosh from trays of sandwiches, thanks to the Jewish-motherliness of producer Warren Steibel. My wife was astonished, one morning, at the caliber of the spread provided by the New York City version of the Today show. When the weather reporter on the monitor analyzed clouds over Oshkosh, my wife realized she was waiting to appear on the national version of the Today program ("You'd gone uptown," a friend in the business said). Lesser green rooms have sad little fridges holding the sustenance of employees; in least green rooms these are padlocked.

At some point you leave the green room to be made up. A woman sits me on a director's chair, puts a barber's cloth around my neck, and asks about my few sad last gray hairs. Would I like them brushed? I always refuse. She earns her pay on my face. Sometimes on your way out you can swipe a handi-wipe to get the crust off, which does nothing. Better to resign yourself to looking like a drag queen for the rest of the day. The make-up artists are typically pleasant, as are all the off-stage personnel. One woman I used to see at the History Channel was researching a light-infantry unit of Indians that George Washington had recruited during the Revolutionary War; they were distantly related to some modern casino-owners. I wonder whether she persevered.

Montel Williams had a security guard, phlegmatic and goodhumored. One show, which never aired, featured two sisters and their common lover. The young man admitted to being so high that he had not known which sister he was embracing. "Dumb as a box of rocks," murmured the guard, shaking his head.

Fellow guests are also generally pleasant, with a few exceptions. The anti--anti-Communists of the Cold War--a spokesman, say, for Scientists Concerned (real name: Scientists Concerned That the Soviets Might Lose Some Advantage)--were the worst. In the green rooms, they were cool and distant; on air they would save their sucker punches to the last minute; they knew exactly what they were doing. Professional pundits enjoy a certain camaraderie, whatever their views. In the make-up room at MSNBC Eric Alterman was jovial. "This is why I love Bill Gates," he would say, pointing to the monitor. "There are three commentators--and they're all black--and they're all right-wing." More rightwing than Eric, at least. The most unusual fellow guests were Siegfried and Roy's white tiger cubs. They lay in a groggy heap like Stieff toys. On air, they perked up; one kept stalking off the set.

My strangest green-room moment occurred in Charlie Rose's antechamber, waiting to comment, live, on one of Bill Clinton's State of the Union addresses. We had a text, but since there were last-minute additions, we also had him on the monitor. Like his appetites, his State of the Union addresses were insatiable--stuffed with every possible policy. We were running up against the air time for our segment; it came; we filed off to the big wooden table, confident that the president had passed the clubhouse turn and, though not yet at the finish line, was laboring down the homestretch. We could thus, in good conscience, discuss his proposals, with the wise inconsequence of all such discussions. As we filed back through the green room on the way out, we saw, with surprise, that he was still going strong. I believe he had finished by the time I had taken a taxi home, though I will not swear to it.

The most interesting advice for talking heads I ever heard was from Jerry Nachman: Always have contempt for the camera. Nachman was comely as a fire hydrant; for him, this was a counsel of necessity. But, though contempt is too strong a word, it is good advice for everyone. Talk as you would to your colleagues or your wife. Forget that it's television. Television is written on water. What remains of its first 50-plus years? Some news footage; the Honeymooners; Coneheads. What else? Don't think of anything special to say about Social Security. Say what you think; with luck, it will make sense. The green rooms and the makeup are odd preparation, but think of them as brief preliminary rituals. Then go out, as if you're having a cup of coffee.