Back in the seventies when I was new to the teevee business, I'd occasionally run into a writer I knew who more or less lived to piss on the achievements of others. He wasn't a bad guy when he wasn't doing this but he was always doing this.
The guy had some sort of insecure competitive streak in him that always had to "top" you; like he'd always ask you what kind of car you were driving. It didn't matter what you said because whatever you said was a boneheaded choice on your part and you should have consulted with him first because if you had, you wouldn't be driving that piece o' crap you bought.
He'd always ask you what you were working on…and you could have told him the best, highest-paying job in the business and he'd tell you he'd turned it down because the money was shit. That kind of person.
Most of you never heard his name because I don't think he ever worked on a successful or respected show. Even as he was telling you that you'd accepted a job that was beneath him, he was working (probably) for a lot less on a show three stations below whatever you were working on. And he was wearing a toupee that Quincy Magoo could have spotted as a shag carpeting remnant from the 99 Cents Only Store.
But he still thought he was topping you. And the odd thing about the fellow was not that he always thought he was "winning" when he wasn't. It was that he was winning "competitions" that he made up and you didn't know or care about.
Back then, a lot of Show Biz revolved around "the trades" — two almost-daily newsletters that everyone in the field subscribed to or at least glanced upon often. They were The Hollywood Reporter and Variety and they still exist as online sites that matter a whole lot less than they did when they were on paper. The guy — the one I'm writing about here — would always ask me if my name had appeared in them yet.
No, it hadn't. I was working but no, my name hadn't appeared in either yet. Neither had his.
Then one day, his did. I don't know what for. I didn't see it. But my phone rang shortly after and I was surprised, first of all, that he'd located my number and secondly that he said, "I've been waiting for your call." From there, it went like this…
ME: Was I supposed to call you?
HIM: You most certainly were.
ME: What, may I ask, was I supposed to call you about?
HIM: If you were any kind of gentleman, you'd have called to congratulate me on getting my name in the trades before you did.
He was miffed when I told him I hadn't noticed his name in the trades and disbelieving when I told him I didn't even look that closely for my name in those papers. Clearly in his head, there existed some sort of primal competition — so obvious that we didn't even have to agree on it — where we were dueling to see which of us could have our names in the trades before the other. It's very easy to win when you make up the contests, especially without telling the other person. He also thought I must be devastated to have lost this battle I'd never known existed.
It's so important to some people to "win," even that way. Success is insufficient without a loser so you can say, "I beat him."
In later years, I heard from others that he'd told them we'd had a contest to see who'd been mentioned first in Variety and/or Hollywood Reporter, him or me, and that I'd lost. And not only had I lost but I'd been such a sore loser that I didn't even call him to admit defeat.
I don't understand this but I am very sure that I won one contest with him that he didn't know about. His obituary has already been in the trades and mine hasn't. I don't think. I haven't checked lately.