The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up (51 page)

Typically, all I could think was, Get off me. Get me outta here. I thought he was just sentimental, in another world. Living in the old days. Okay, I was blasted, but everything he said made me feel like, Jesus Christ, I cannot stand this guy. What a clown. To him it was an interesting bit of Hollywood history, but at the time I couldn’t give a shit.

Of course, in hindsight I respect the man, the moment, the intent, and the history of William Morris much more. Like Norman, being an agent is the
only
job I’ve ever had, and even though it’s been just fifteen years, I can also tell the difference between now and then.

WOODS:
I was at Hillcrest County Club, making a drop-off. I saw Abe Lastfogel, the guy who built William Morris as we know it, with an agent I knew. I went over and said hello, and he said, “Sit down!” Mr. Lastfogel started telling his story, about how when he was a kid he could have worked for a tailor or for the William Morris talent agency booking vaudeville. He chose William Morris
because it was a couple
stops closer on the subway from his house
. He didn’t say that he loved show business, just that William Morris was a few stops closer on the train. If he’d gone to work for the tailor, would he have become Levi Strauss? I wonder how often anyone thinks of that.

JAFFA:
Emile Schelette was Mr. Lastfogel’s driver. One day Emile was sick. He called in and said, “I need someone to replace me. I want Jaffa. He’ll know how to handle Mr. Lastfogel.”

I sat at the desk and got my instructions. “He’ll walk in about this time. The phone will ring about ten minutes after he arrives and it will be Colonel Parker. Put him through. Present Mr. Lastfogel with the list of movies playing in Westwood and he’ll tell you which he wants to see. Drive him there and back. And most important, do not let him eat any candy.”

I said, “Great. Fine. I’m there.” I was a little nervous.

Mr. Lastfogel marched in. He had a certain gait. He held his lapel, and his other hand moved like a toy soldier’s. It was incredibly endearing. I gave him the trades and set up everything for the morning. Ten minutes later the phone rang. I answered. “Mr. Lastfogel’s office.”

A gravelly, brusque voice said, “It’s Colonel Parker.”

Mr. Lastfogel picked up the phone. They talked for about ten seconds.

Then I showed him a list of the movies that day. A couple had WMA clients, but he picked
Christina F,
a German movie about a girl who gets hooked on heroin at a rock concert. I was horrified. I said, “But Mr. Lastfogel, these other two have our clients.”

He said, “No, no, no.”

I got the car—a big black Cadillac—and pulled it around the front. A couple of older secretaries walked him out, concerned about this kid taking care of the boss. He decided to sit in the front seat with me, and they were floored.

As we drove he started talking. “How long have you been at the agency?”

“About seven weeks.”

“I’ve been here a little bit longer. About seventy years.”

I said, “That’s a long time.”

He said, “Where you from?”

“Texas.”

“You know what? I knew a guy from Fort Worth, Texas. What was his name?”

I thought, Who would he know from Fort Worth? The only older, famous person I could think of was the guy after whom the TCU [Texas Christian University] football stadium is named, so I said, “Amon Carter?”

“That’s it!” he said. And he meant it, because he told me an Amon Carter story.

I dropped him off in front of the gigantic Village Theater in Westwood and asked, “Do I need to pay for you?” He turned around and didn’t say anything. I watched him stroll right past the ticket booth, right past the usherette, right past the ticket taker. I guess they all recognized him.

I parked the car and walked into the lobby. It was 11:15 A.M., and deserted. I heard this “Psst! Psst!” I looked around and there was Mr. Lastfogel, standing at the concession counter.

He said, “Go find us some seats and I’ll get us some . . . candy.”

I said, “You know what, Mr. Lastfogel? I don’t think I’m allowed to—”

He looked me right in the eyes and said, “
Go get the seats
.”

The theater was a cavern. Empty. The sound was too loud. Mr. Lastfogel walked in with a Nestle’s Crunch bar the size of a Chihuahua, a big Coke, and a double popcorn. What could I do? I didn’t know what was worse: to piss him off or for him to die in my care.

Early in the movie, Mr. Lastfogel leaned over to me and said, “Strange picture.” In the rock concert scene, sure enough, the girl started to shoot up. As soon as she put the needle in her arm he said, “Okay, I’ve seen enough.”

It was a very sunny day. We walked to the parking lot and I went to the kiosk to pay. While dealing with that, I could see Mr. Lastfogel by the car, hunched over, scratching at his crotch. Scratch, scratch. I didn’t know what had happened, and I feared the worst. I paid and walked over. I could see that he had Crunch bar all over his pants.

I said, “Did you get some chocolate—”

As soon as I said that he straightened up and grabbed his lapel like nothing happened. He was a complete stone face. I opened the door for him. This time he wanted to sit in the back, and he wouldn’t talk to me. He started telling me stuff like, “Two hands on the wheel . . . Turn on your blinker.” As I drove, we played this game: Whenever I looked in the rearview mirror, I could see him staring back at me; whenever I looked forward, I could see him out of the corner of my eye, scratching at the chocolate. When I looked in the mirror, he bolted up again.

Back at the agency I wasn’t sure what to do. I asked, “Can I get you anything?”

“No,” he said. “I want you to go home.”

“But I have to go back to work and—”

“I want you to go home.”

I went to the mailroom and said, “Mr. Lastfogel has dismissed me for the rest of the day.” I guess he just wanted to get me out of the way, in case I might tell someone. Or maybe he wanted to protect me because he knew he wasn’t supposed to have any candy and I’d get in trouble. I never found out.

JAFFA:
I was running up the stairs when I saw Clyde Ravenscroft, who helped run the mailroom, behind me. I turned around and sucker-punched him, like I was going to hit him in the stomach—but didn’t. He reacted by grabbing his chest instead. When I looked up I realized it wasn’t Clyde at all, but Rock Hudson after his heart surgery. I said, “Mr. Hudson, I’m so sorry, so sorry.” He grimaced and said, “It’s okay.”

RABINEAU:
I made a classic mistake my first week. Standing in front of the building with a box of some shit, I saw Lenny Hirshan also standing there, playing with a little kid. Lenny was probably in his fifties. I walked up and said, “Mr. Hirshan, your granddaughter is really cute.” He said, “That’s not my granddaughter, that’s my
daughter
.” He hated me the rest of the time I was there.

ADELSTEIN:
My car broke down on Sunset, in front of the Bank of America, in West Hollywood. A black girl walked up to me and said, “Hey, you want a blow job?”

I said, “Nah, I’m working.”

She said, “Wait. Are you Marty . . . Adelstein?”

What? I said, “Yeah? . . .”

She said, “You don’t remember me. I was in your health class at Venice High School. What are you doing?”

I said I was in the William Morris training program. She said, “I used to have a drug problem, and now I’m trying to get it together.”

COHEN:
Jordan Baer was a very gregarious, energetic guy. One day he said, “Let’s go to Vegas—right now!” We jumped into my car, a little two-door, sporty Audi, in our ties, and got toothbrushes there. My aunt and uncle owned a cheap motel in Vegas, and we scored rooms for free. After the third or fourth trip, David Lonner, who had also come along, finally admitted that he hated Las Vegas but that he went for the car rides. They were classic. We made lists of the top ten movies, the top ten
Twilight Zones,
the top ten women we’d like to sleep with. People started hearing about our trips and, next thing we knew, there were sixteen of us, then sixty. We had to rent a bus.

RABINEAU:
Marvin Pancoast ran the copy machine downstairs. He wasn’t in the training program, just the Czar of Copy, a tall, skinny, effeminate guy who was friendly but could be pretty officious. Once, my car broke down and he drove me to pick it up. Little did I know our Marvin would wind up killing Vicki Bloomingdale. So bizarre. Now he’s dead. Died in jail, of AIDS.

JAFFA:
Stan Kamen’s new assistant was chosen by his outgoing assistant, never by Stan. Jim Crabbe worked for Stan, and Edson Howard was on the morning desk, campaigning hard to be the new assistant. I wanted it, too, and became Johnny-on-the-spot for Mike Simpson, who had worked for Stan before Crabbe. I also ingratiated myself with Crabbe. I got the job. We had all sorts of expressions for working in that office. Cary Woods, who followed me, used to call it “under the volcano.”

WOODS:
Stan’s desk was the only desk at William Morris where you were pretty much guaranteed a promotion. I began to understand it all when a producer told me that working for Stan was like clerking for a Supreme Court justice: Knowing that, I focused on nothing else.

JAFFA:
I had to choose between Cary Woods and Bryan Lourd. Bryan and I had a weird connection because his mother had gone to a school in Texas that I’d played football against. But Cary worked harder. And Cary actually came out and asked me for the desk. He took me to dinner and said, “Listen. I’ve busted my ass. I know Bryan is great, but I really want it.” So I told Bryan that Cary was going to get the job. Bryan got offered another desk, went into TV, and obviously did fantastically well.

WOODS:
Rick also knew that if he didn’t bring in the right guy, Stan would have no problem with Rick suddenly becoming an assistant again. I reassured Rick: “There’s nothing Stan can do to me that would make me leave the desk. I’m going to be here no matter what he does, and that means you’re going to stay in your office and be an agent unless he fires me.”

Six weeks after I started working for Stan he still hadn’t said one thing to me of a personal nature, but eventually the ice broke between us because Stan got very sick. He worked out of his house in Malibu. I drove there twice a day, to bring his mail and his phone sheet. I’d stick around and make some calls for him. He didn’t want people to see him—he was losing weight and all—but I was one of the few allowed close. That created a bond that I’m not sure would have happened if it had been a more typical working situation.

Stan’s illness felt like a tremendous amount of responsibility. He was universally respected in the community. Clients kept calling; they knew he was sick. I did as much as I could to navigate some to other agents who could help, but I had to be careful because there were certain clients Stan wanted to talk to up to the end.

I worked for Stan a little over two years. He told me about a year and a half in that I should start thinking about finding somebody new because he wanted to promote me. At that point I had so much to do that the idea of bringing in a green kid from the mailroom and giving him to Stan felt like abandoning ship. I told the William Morris board I was going to prolong the search until Stan “was better.” That’s the way that I phrased it, and they knew that I meant better . . . or not. They were appreciative and told me so. I just hung in there.

I didn’t realize Stan was going to die until the end. Nobody knew. AIDS was a recent phenomenon, and I didn’t know any more about it than anyone else. Not that anyone around Stan ever used the word
AIDS
. He had “lymphoma.” The question is whether he knew what he had. I can speculate, but he never said the word
AIDS
to or in front of me. Stan was not out of the closet.

I was Stan’s last assistant and, as such, subject to the speculation that I’d be “the next Stan Kamen.” I downplayed it as much as I could. It would be like playing center field and saying you’re the next Mickey Mantle. You don’t want to go anywhere near it. You just want to do the best that you can, and hope that you’ve learned a lot, and do a good job. Bobby Murcer followed Mantle, and although I think historically he was thought of as a disappointment, he had a pretty good career.

TOLMACH:
I got my desk after I did coverage for Bob Crestani on a script called
Devil Jocks from Hell High
—a B-movie about Satan’s football team. Crestani’s client loved the coverage. “That makes me look good,” he said. “That’s what this is about. You did a good job.”

Crestani was promoting his assistant and said, “If you want this job, I’ll pull you right out of the mailroom. I’ll have to break a company rule. This isn’t supposed to happen, and a lot of people are going to be upset, but I’m betting on you. Don’t fucking disappoint me.”

I said, “I have no plans to disappoint you.”

LOURD:
Larry Auerbach’s secretary, Heidi, asked me to cover Larry’s morning desk, a tradition that had been all but wiped out because it was too competitive. Then, out of nowhere, she said she was moving to New York in four days. I’d been in the mailroom for six months and I begged Larry for the job. He pulled lots of strings, and I got to skip Dispatch. One of my proudest accomplishments is never having driven a car for William Morris, and as a result, I don’t know how to get home now.