When Those 15 Minutes Beckon

Looking back, I see now that for much of my life, I never had any real power. Not strength, but power. You know, the sense that the rest of the world waits for you instead of the other way around. In grade school, I was the last one picked for any ball team. In high school, I gave up on the prom after five turndowns. Later in life, I stayed on every telemarketer’s speed dial no matter many times I demanded to be removed from their lists.

And then, I discovered celebrity journalism.

It afforded me the perfect power trip. I was the one deciding who was important. I determined what information did and didn’t get into a story. I got invited to the best parties, and restaurants gave me tables away from the restrooms.

This sort of power has its downside, though, which I’ve only recently learned thanks to Robert Blake.

Here’s the situation: Eight years ago, when I was a correspondent for People magazine, I was assigned an interview with the actor. He was on the comeback trail, making his first acting appearance in years with the television movie “Judgment Day: The John List Story,” the true story of a man who killed his family.

During our afternoon together, Blake rambled on in a fashion that every chronicler of the rich and infamous lives for. He talked about being abused as a child. He confessed that he played the tough guy on television for so long, that image began to take over his life. He told me he didn’t care for young punks like me and, if our conversation had taken place a few years earlier, who knows what sort of confrontation we might have had?

It was a fascinating interview, and my four hours with Blake provided me with eight years of stories to tell at cocktail parties. Every detail of that afternoon, from the way he ate popcorn out of the largest bowl I’d ever seen to the vast collection of BB guns and pocket knives displayed in his bathroom, turned into fodder with which I could amaze and amuse those who asked for tales from my adventures in Hollywood.

Lately, however, I was set to retire my Blake stories for a couple of reasons. First, I’d left People and wanted to make a break from the world of celeb reporting. Second, and more importantly, hardly anyone remembered him (whereas requests for my story about seeing David Duchovny in boxer shorts have skyrocketed in recent times).

And then, Blake’s wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, is murdered, the media has its new O.J., and I get a phone call from a producer at a major cable news outfit. He’d come across my old People story, and was fascinated by some of the actor’s revelations. We chatted briefly, and I shared details of my Blake encounter that never made it into the piece. When I finished, he got right to the point. He wanted me to sit down with a camera crew and share my take on Blake with his viewers. I promised to check my schedule and get back to him with a time for the interview.

This should have been a big deal. In my pursuit of power, what offered more of it than talking on television? Trust me on this one. I am still immortalized as the country’s foremost authority on Traci Lords, even though she and I met exactly once for a People interview. Years after that story ran, a crew from E! Entertainment Television spent several minutes quizzing me about the actress and her past in adult films. The E! show on Lords continues to air on a regular basis and whenever it does, I get stopped by strangers asking me, “Man! So you know Traci? What’s she like?”

I assumed the same thing would happen with Blake. I’d get recognized by waitresses eager to discover some new tidbit. With any luck, perhaps Katie Couric might call. And perhaps, dare I even think it, a book deal? Stranger things have happened. Can you say “Kato”?

For the briefest of moments, I did wonder, “Why me?” After all, it had been nearly a decade since my chat with Blake. I had no idea what he might be like now. And in any case, there was nothing he’d said or done during the interview that gave me particular insight as to whether he killed his wife. He didn’t even meet her until years after I last spoke to him. I even stopped to wonder if sharing my Blake stories in such a public forum might somehow prejudice potential jurors out there.

I happened to mention some of these doubts to a fellow writer, who instantly mocked me for all of the above sentiments. What possible harm could I do to Blake’s reputation or his case that his chatterbox lawyer or his countless “friends” hadn’t already done in their endless media appearances? The man was now a curiosity, and since I’d already spent years telling my stories about him in private, what’s the difference if I now tell them in public?

So, I left a message for the news producer giving him a time I could come by for my close-up. Even if I wasn’t sure what brilliance I could offer him, I sympathized with his situation. I knew from my People days that when a story gets rolling the way this Blake extravaganza had, there’s no sating the feeding frenzy. The pressure is on to inundate the public with information, and all legitimate resources get exhausted rather quickly. Thus, it’s time to move on to the second, more tenuous tier of interviews.

You know how it goes. Whenever the U.S. drops a bomb somewhere, every retired general with a gray buzz cut becomes an expert. Whenever a president’s poll numbers drop, every disaffected ex-staff member is an authority. Whenever Robert Downey Jr. gets arrested, anyone without a major drug arrest on his or her permanent record gets air time. Some of these people might offer the occasional nugget or two of new information but for the most part, their insights are no more or less valuable than the ones you share with co-workers over lunch.

And now, it was my turn to take over the guest-starring role of The Authority.

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Perhaps because it was a heartless killing that brought the gig to me, I was feeling rather guilty. I realize this makes me sound like the worst kind of journalistic wimp, but I was not happy turning a woman’s death into a career opportunity. I thought about showing a little more restraint than the parade of Blake acquaintances who continued to go on camera insisting he couldn’t have killed his wife but, oh yeah, he was mad at her.

Then, I watched as a local news station ran for the 20th time that tape of Blake dashing into his house (in super-slow motion, of course, to heighten the drama and obscure the fact that they have no other recent footage to share), I realized I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be a part of the horde. It’s precisely that weakness that has drummed me out of the celeb journalism corps, but maybe the best way to achieve power was to avoid going along with the crowd and instead demonstrate a little personal integrity.

When that producer called back to firm up my interview, I would tell him I was no longer interested. There was only one problem with that plan: He never called back. The Blake caravan moved on without me and my meager input. My moment in the lights was gone before it could happen. I never got to make my stand, but then again, I could take comfort in knowing that I was at least going to make one.

It’s just too bad that in the midst of my power trip, I’d forgotten that I had never been the one calling the shots. I must admit, I’ve been feeling a bit lost since all this happened. However, let me just throw this out there: I had a fascinating chat with Nicole Kidman a few years ago, in which she had a few amusing things to say about porn on the Internet. And I understand she’s been in the news a bit lately. . . .

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Craig Tomashoff is a Los Angeles-based writer.