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EDITOR'S
NOTE: This
week, Greta van Susteren made her FOX debut with a new look. And
Thursday's New York Times reported on the injectable
drug Botox, which has made it "rare in certain social enclaves
to see a woman over the age of 35 with the ability to look angry."
NR's Rob Long wrote about his experiences with plastic surgery
in Hollywood for NR in January, 1999. His piece is reprinted
here.
few years ago, a network-television executive was asked to describe
his ideal audience. He was looking for "voracious consumers
of free television," he said, people who couldn't afford cable
services, didn't have jobs during the day or reasons to go to bed
early, and were easily overwhelmed by programming choices and so
preferred to stick with one channel throughout the day.
His ideal audience,
in other words, was the very young, the very old, and the very sick.
Today, the target audience has shifted a bit. The very old and the
very sick are on their own. The desirable demographics that all
the major networks battle over are the very young, the somewhat
young, and the under-30. That's the main reason network television
has an eerie Lord of the Flies vibe to it: Almost every show
features, exclusively, characters without a trace of the tiny lines
and wrinkles that begin to appear around, say, age 32.
Television
advertisers want young audiences, it seems, so programs that skew
young command higher advertising rates. The theory goes something
like this: Old people read magazines and newspapers, they watch
the news channels and listen to the radio-and that makes finding
them a lot easier and therefore cheaper. Young people, on the other
hand, spend a great deal of time listening to depressing music and
doing alarming things to their hair, not reading magazines and definitely
not bothering with the newspaper, so when you get one trapped in
front of a television set, grab him. Their feckless indolence makes
them worth more, perversely. The poor over-40 set, with their good
jobs and sense of civic responsibility, are a dime a dozen.
Last season,
my writing partner, Dan Staley, and I had a series on one of the
large broadcast networks. Our two stars, in an act of purely contrarian
bloody-mindedness, were in their sixties. In other words, the combined
age of our two lead actors was roughly that of all six "Friends"
combined. Our audience was respectably large, but unrespectably
old. The people who watched our show all had jobs and mortgages
and expenses — in other words, were useless.
"Hey,
you guys were cancelled?" People older than 40 would ask that
question, and I always dreaded giving the answer. "But why?"
they would ask. "I LOVED that show."
And then I
would be forced to say that while we had a great many viewers, their
average age was 40-plus, which made them unimportant to advertisers
and, consequently, to network executives. And then the color would
drain out of the face of the person I was talking to, and he would
stammer and cough in the half-rage, half-sadness appropriate to
someone who had just been told that his entire life, its needs,
triumphs, accomplishments, and meaning, had just been rendered undesirable.
And I'd be
glad to still be in my thirties. Although in Hollywood, even 33
is getting up there.
I am out having
a beer with my plastic-surgeon friend. He has a booming Beverly
Hills practice and always has great stories, mostly about liposuction
and breast augmentation. Most of his patients are involved in the
entertainment industry and come to him for simple nips and tucks
here and there — to be what he calls "refreshed."
He is talking about one of his new patients, a well-known young
actress. He won't tell me her name.
"She is
absolutely beautiful," he says. "She has a perfect body."
"Who is
it?" I want to know.
He shakes his
head. "Can't say. Patient confidentiality."
"What
does she want done?"
"Her neck,"
he answers. "Every other part of her is perfect."
"Her neck?
What was wrong with her neck?"
"Nothing,
really. A little loose. Some diminished tautness. Nothing major,"
he says. "But the neck is tricky. You can't really wait until
it sags and completely loses its elasticity. You have to adjust
it a little bit every year or so. Take it in an inch now and then.
You can't put the neck off, like the chin or the forehead. Gotta
start early."
"How old
is she?"
"That's
the problem. She's 28. She waited way too long. Should've come to
me four years ago."
I laugh and
shake my head. To be 28 and worried about your neck! I take a sip
of my beer and look at my reflection in the mirror at the back of
the bar. I think I look okay. Not great, but okay. I lift my chin
and tilt my head back to get a good look at my neck. My friend watches
me do this.
He clears his
throat. "You know," he says, "you'd be surprised
how many of my patients are men. It's considered totally acceptable
for a guy to want to get a little work done."
I scoff.
"I'm serious,"
he says. He mentions the name of a young actor in a hugely popular
sitcom. "He came to me for a simple nose-job and left with
a chin implant, an ear bob, and a male breast aug."
"You gave
him breasts?" I ask, laughing.
"I gave
him pectorals," he says. "I turned him into a romantic
lead. Before me, he was strictly character roles."
"Forget
it," I say. "I'm not an actor and I'm not paying you $25,000
to stretch my neck."
"Don't
flatter yourself. The neck is the least of your problems. For you,
I'd recommend an eye tuck, a forehead lift, a chin implant, a jaw
shape, and some lipo around the jowls before we even think about
the neck."
"Forget
it," I say. "I'm going to let myself deteriorate naturally."
"Try this,"
he says.
He puts my
hands together, as if in prayer. He tucks my thumbs under my chin
and places my two index fingers against my nose.
"Now,"
he says, "leaving your thumbs touching, open your hands up,
like you're trying to smooth out your face. Pull back gently."
I do it.
"Now,
hold," he says. "And look in the mirror."
I do. I see
a tight, wrinkle-free face. I see a pronounced jaw-line. I see the
familiar face-lift perpetual smile. I see myself, refreshed. "Forget
it," I say, still holding back my face.
"Suit
yourself," he says, finishing the rest of his beer.
I drop my face
and do the same. We pay for our drinks and walk to our cars.
"Tonight,"
he says, ominously, "you'll brush your teeth and look at yourself
in the mirror, and you'll think, 'Hey, I don't look bad.' And later
this week, maybe in the morning after you've shaved, you'll chuckle
to yourself and do the thumbs-under-the-chin trick, just for a laugh.
But you'll start to notice all the little droops and sags. The folds
of skin that suddenly appear. The creases where nothing should crease.
And then maybe you'll hear about a couple of young writers, guys
in their early twenties, who are suddenly hot. And the years will
start running together in your memory and teenaged boys will start
calling you 'sir' and the gray hairs will start sprouting and every
single morning you'll tuck your thumbs under your chin, 'just to
see,' you'll tell yourself. And then one day you'll be in my office."
I stare into
the night, car keys still dangling in my hand.
"Who are
you?" I ask. "The devil?"
My friend laughs.
"Nope. Just a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills." He gets
into his new Mercedes and speeds away. How many "breast augs"
does it take to buy that car? How many chin lifts for the Chevy
Blazer, his other car? How many "refreshers" for the two
weeks in Vail? I'll let myself turn into a raisin before I'll give
him one penny, I think to myself.
Nobody is retiring
on my neck.
A year or two
ago, during a casting session, I ran into a former high-school classmate.
I had just stepped out to refill my coffee, and there she was: still
ravishing, sitting with a dozen or so other actresses, ready to
audition for me, my producing partner, and our casting staff.
"Hey!"
I shouted.
"Hey!"
she shouted back.
We gave each
other a little squeeze and a peck on the cheek. I remembered her
as a beautiful girl, and here she was, in my office, a beautiful
woman. "How long has it been?" I asked, and as I started
to mentally calculate the intervening years, I felt her hand close
tightly around my wrist. "Do you have a sec?" she asked.
I walked with
her to the coffee machine. She whispered frantically. "See,
I play 23, 24, okay?"
"Excuse
me?"
"I'm 24.
Twenty-five at the max."
"But we
were in the same high-school class," I said, still not getting
it.
She looked
at me for a moment, eyes wide and fierce, like she was trying to
drill her meaning into my head.
"Oh,"
I said, finally getting it. "OH."
"It's
just, you know, the business," she said.
"Should
I pretend not to know you?"
She put her
hand on my shoulder and shook her head in pity. "No,"
she said, "you can say you know me. But I'd appreciate it if
you said that you were better friends with my older sister."
I didn't even
have time to spin some filthy casting-couch fantasies. I was shunted
off into an undesirable demographic. I'm too old, even for people
my own age.
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