The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up (56 page)

Of course, the agent’s assistant should have done these little jobs, but shit rolls downhill, and the mailroom is the bottom of the hill. There’s a legendary story that illustrates the point perfectly.

One day after lunch I got back to my office to find my voice mailbox was full. The first message was, “Dean, it’s Richard Saperstein, give me a call right away.” Richard was on Rabineau’s desk and was about to be promoted. Next message: “Dean, it’s Richard. Call me
right
away.” I was listening to the third message from Richard when my phone line lit up. Richard. “Dean. How come you haven’t called me back yet?”

“I just heard your messages. What’s wrong?”

“Does someone have a dog in the building?”

“Um, yeah, I think Bill Robinson has a golden retriever. Why?”

Richard said, “Someone’s dog got really sick in front of my door.”

“What do you mean, sick?”

“I mean really
sick
. Like it’s diarrhea or throw-up or both. I don’t know what it is, but somebody’s gotta clean it up.”

I said, “
I’m
not coming to clean it up. Call the mailroom.”

He said, “Can you call?”

“Okay, okay. I’ll get somebody up there as soon as I can.”

PRESS:
Not only was there a trail of shit all through the eighth floor, but the dog went into Jeff Berg’s office while he was out to lunch and shit all over his brand-new carpet. Dean also got a call from Berg’s assistant: “You’d better get a crew up here now. There’s shit all over Berg’s office, and if he comes back and sees this,
he’s
going to shit.”

LOPATA:
I called the mailroom. Ben answered: “Office services.”

PRESS:
We were too proud to answer, “Mailroom.” Dean said, “Ben, listen to me very carefully. Hang up the phone and leave the mailroom now.”

I said, “Dean, what—?”

He said, “Ben, hang up the phone and leave the mailroom now. Do what I’m telling you.” Okay. I had a feeling something bad was about to happen, so I left, pretending I was on a mail run.

LOPATA:
I hit redial. “Office services.” It was Jim Rosen. “Jim, it’s Dean. Hang up the phone and get out of the mailroom as fast as you can.”

Jim said, “Dean, I know I was upset at lunch. I was really blowing off steam—”

I interrupted him. “Jim.
Hang up the phone
. Get out of the mailroom. Trust me. Just go.”

“Dean, I appreciate the sentiment. But whatever it is, I’m going to have to do it. Just tell me.”

“Jim, this is your last chance. Hang up the phone, get out of the mailroom.”

“Dean,
just tell me what it is
.”

“Okay . . . Bill Robinson’s dog took a shit in front of Richard Saperstein’s office and in Jeff Berg’s office. You’ve got to clean it up. Bring a lot of paper towels.”

Later, I heard that my brother, who was interning on Rabineau’s desk, and Cecil Cox, Rabineau’s assistant, had come back from lunch going, “What’s that smell?” They saw it, and my brother said, “I wonder who’s going to have to clean that up?”

On cue, Jim walked by with his head down and a roll of paper towels under his arm.

PRESS:
The hardest thing about being in the mailroom was getting a lot of crap from the young, lesser agents. When one of these little pishers would yell at me, I’d get so pissed off. The idea that I’d gone to college and all my friends were on career tracks while I delivered mail and got yelled at by assholes had started to take its toll. They always wanted to prove their mettle. If the client didn’t get a job, a script didn’t get delivered, they’d kick the guy in the mailroom—sometimes literally. There was definitely some hitting going on. I looked at it like they were testing you on how good an agent you were going to be.

My rule was, if I was going to get yelled at, I was going to get yelled at by the best. That’s why I wanted to work for Ed Limato. I went in with tunnel vision and just worked and worked until I got it. He’d ream me sometimes. Absolutely tear me a new asshole, screaming. But I knew I was getting yelled at by a guy at the top.

I started campaigning for Ed Limato’s desk on day one. I knew his assistant, Dan Cracchiolo, wanted out in order to produce. I started working for Dan in the morning and ingratiated myself to the point where, when I knew he was ready to announce his departure, I was the choice to take his place. The clincher came in a most atypical way. When I was alone in the mailroom, one of the assistants came downstairs and dashed into the supply room. I heard a bang, and then I didn’t hear anything. I walked back and the girl was on the floor, passed out. She wasn’t breathing. My heart beat very fast, but I had taken a CPR class, so I got her breathing again. Then I called 911. By the time my friends came down from the mail runs, the fire engine was there, the paramedics, everything.

Dan Cracchiolo said to Ed, “Ben’s perfect for the office. And by the way, he just saved a girl’s life.”

“Okay,” Ed said, “Okay, then. Come on!”

PRESS:
I had just started working for Ed Limato when Dean came to me and said, “Have you seen the hot new chick in the mailroom? You’ve gotta check out this girl.” I made an excuse to go down, and through the slats I saw this gorgeous woman, Paula.

LOPATA:
Actually, Ben called
me
on her first day and said, “Who’s the new girl?” She was totally not his type, or mine. I’d grown up on Long Island, and she was exactly the Jewish American princess type I was getting away from. I said, “Oh, that’s Paula.”

He said, “Make it happen.”

I said, “I’ll see what I can do.” The truth is that I was working so hard, I didn’t even try to be friends with Paula right away.

BESIKOF:
Dean’s a very to-himself guy and I’m very “Hi, I’m Paula.” When we first met I acted like I knew Dean: “So, tell me about yourself.” By the end of the conversation he said I was the little sister he never wanted. He couldn’t shake me off.

LOPATA:
I told Ben that Paula had a boyfriend. He said, “That never matters.” In fact, things weren’t perfect with the boyfriend. Paula would tell me all her problems. She’d complain about the guy. I’d say, “I know someone who would treat you like gold and would appreciate you.”

BESIKOF:
Every time I’d tell a joke, Dean would say, “You know, you have the same sense of humor as Ben Press.” Or “Did you ever talk to Ben Press about that?” It was always Ben Press, Ben Press. I sort of thought Ben was cute, but I wasn’t really
that
into him. Plus I knew that although a lot of people ended up getting together in the agencies, when you start to date it’s different. Then one day I took an attractive female temp around with me and introduced her to everybody. I noticed the way Ben looked her up and down and I thought, Now I really don’t like this guy.

PRESS:
Because he was in administration, Dean worked it so that Paula got assigned the mail routes on Limato’s floor.

BESIKOF:
I was doing a last-minute delivery to Ed Limato’s office. Ben came out and, very Ben, said, “Stay a minute!” I didn’t have to stay. I always had a lot of attitude. But I knew that he kind of had a thing for me—and, finally, I was curious.

LOPATA:
Little by little, Paula jockeyed for Ben’s floor. Then she and the mail cart starting coming back late. I wouldn’t bust them, but everybody would say, “Where the hell’s Paula? We’ve got to get the packages out.” I’d call Ben: “Hey, Ben, is Paula up there with you? Can you get her back down here, she’s got some mail to take care of.” It just started happening.

PRESS:
Sure enough, one thing led to another, and we started dating. We kept it very quiet. That sort of thing was frowned upon. It was considered a distraction from work. That meant not even going to parties and premieres together because the company wanted us to focus on the talent, not each other.

LOPATA:
The next thing I knew I got a phone call from the two of them. It was so sappy, saccharine, and disgusting that I wish I’d taped the call. It was like, “Well, it’s all your fault. We’re on our way to Santa Barbara for the weekend.” They were giggling and laughing. “We’ve got twenty scripts in the back, but we don’t care. We’re getting a room at the Biltmore.” That was it. And then tragedy struck. . . .

[CONTINUED . . . ]

PRESS:
I was still brand-new, and Ed Limato was having dinner with David Geffen at a club called Numbers. Limato called me on his way over there and said, “Kid, I forgot my cigarettes. I need them.”

I didn’t want to do it, but I got the cigarettes and the directions and drove to Numbers. I thought it was like Spago, but Numbers was a little off the beaten path. West Hollywoodish. Drove up and told the valet guy, “Leave the car here, I’ll be very quick.” I walked in and down a spiral staircase. I entered a room with nothing but men. I thought, Oops, we’re not in Kansas anymore. All eyes turned, and I saw Limato in the corner with Mr. Geffen. I walked up and said quickly, “Ed, here’s your cigarettes, I gotta go.” I ran up the stairs. The car peeled out.

That was when I knew this job would be
very
different from Washington, D.C.

Working for Limato was like life in a time warp. He’s truly the last of the great—and he’ll kill me for saying this—old-time agents. He treats his clients like his own children. He’s got pictures of them at home on his piano: Richard Gere, Mel Gibson, Michelle Pfeiffer, Denzel Washington. Even people who have left him, like Nic Cage and Anthony Hopkins—he still has their pictures up. As good as Bill Clinton is as a politician, Ed Limato is better as an agent. It’s natural. It’s not cerebral. It’s literally in his blood.

Limato became my mentor. He took great pains to explain to me why something was happening and he was always open to questions. I always called it a professor-student relationship. To this day, it’s still professor-student. He calls me “kid,” and even though I’m not working at the same agency with him, I still have this very endearing feeling. I’m lucky because most people did not have this experience. They worked with people who trained them and then turned them out to the next desk.

I’d get into the office at six-thirty in the morning and leave at eleven-thirty at night, and I worked on Saturdays. I was exhausted and hated those days when he’d say the office wasn’t working as well as it could. Sometimes I was moved to tears because it was my life, and my life was completely Ed’s.

Those were the times I was glad I’d partied in the mailroom.

LOPATA:
Ben, Paula, and I became good friends. We’d go out together, along with my girlfriend at the time. And then the worst thing happened: Ben and Paula broke up. I would spend lunches with her crying to me, “I don’t know what I did. I don’t know what happened.” And then I would spend drinks or dinners with him, after work: “I don’t know what happened.”

My attitude was, “Get back together or shut up already, but you two are driving me crazy.”

Then Paula went from despair to anger and the two of them hated each other.

BESIKOF:
We broke up because his family had a problem with me. They are conservative Jews from New York, and here Ben brings home an outspoken Jewish girl from the entertainment business, which, at the time, they were still waiting for Ben to leave. And I’m from California. In their mind that combination was just unheard of. Also, I might not have been deferential enough. I’m not certain that’s what they thought, but it’s how I felt.

My friend Elizabeth Fowler, who also worked for Ed Limato, heard the call come in from Ben’s parents. Basically what they said was—and I knew this because Elizabeth and another girl, Amber, eavesdropped— “We don’t think Paula’s the girl for you.” They could tell we were serious. They said, “You should rethink this. You’re making a horrible mistake.”

Ben had always listened to his parents, and he panicked, not knowing what to do. He called me up and took me out to Dominick’s, where we went a lot. We sat across from each other and he said, “We need to break up.” What? Literally out of the blue. Fifteen minutes earlier we’d been holding hands, and now I’m thinking, This guy’s breaking up with
me,
and I wasn’t even sure if I was gonna date him in the first place? Forget it.

But I was devastated and shocked. I really liked Ben. I asked why he wanted to break up, and Ben wouldn’t tell me. He wouldn’t admit he got a call from his parents. Little did Ben know that Elizabeth and Amber had told me everything.

The worst part was that Jim Wiatt’s office—where I was floating— and Ed Limato’s office were close to each other, so Ben and I had to stare at each other all day long. And we still had to talk to each other on the phone for business three million times a day. Meanwhile, if Ben gained five pounds, some woman in the office would call me up and say, “Don’t you think Ben looks fat today?” We had a whole circle against Ben, and everybody knew everything.