The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up (63 page)

Adam’s office was right next door to Nick Stevens’s. Nick’s big client was Jason Priestley. His other client, Jim Carrey, was shooting
Ace Ventura
and hadn’t hit yet; he was just the white guy on
In Living Color
. Nick was notorious as the hardest agent to work for. It was high volume, he was incredibly demanding, and he could be a screamer. Sometimes I’d look pityingly at Abram Nalibotsky, Nick’s assistant, because Nick would be throwing something at the glass between them, to get Abram’s attention.

One night, Adam left the office and I was still working at seven-thirty. Nick’s phone rang and, as a courtesy to Abram, I picked up.

A voice said, “Who’s this?”

“Peter.”

“It’s me, Nick. You know, I’m thinking that Abram, I’ve gotta get rid of him. It’s not working out. I don’t think he’s the right guy. He’s fucking up.” Nick’s version of fucking up is probably that Abram dropped one phone call. He said, “You know what you should do, if you’re smart? You should come work for me.”

I said, “Why? It’s good over here with Adam.”

He said, “Tell you why. If you do the job I think you’re going to do, I will become your internal advocate. I’m a very vocal person and I’ve got everybody’s ear here, and I will make sure you’re the next person promoted to an agent.”

I believed him. He was close to Bauer and Berkus and Zimmer. And it seemed like an opportunity. I don’t think Zimmer was thrilled with my moving, but Nick did his number, and I started working for him. It was a whole different world.

Adam’s desk was very civilized. Nick’s desk was a shit storm. It was television, features, people crossing over, character actors who do three or four movies a year. It was Jim Carrey, poised to explode. I started working for Nick in October, and
Ace Ventura
came out in January. Eleven million dollars its first week.
The Mask
was due out in the summer. Jim was now an entity. As a result, Nick suddenly had to raise the level of his own game. In doing so, he felt comfortable allowing me to raise the level of my game, and I took over with some of the younger clients. Occasionally Nick would still throw things against the glass, but because I had everything under control, he treated me in a much more civilized manner.

Nick is as good as they come in terms of being a hard-core, hard-pressure salesman and negotiator. It was great to listen to him on signing calls. He knew what to talk about that was important to them. He listened. Very, very persuasive. Great closer.

But it was more the personal side of things, the way clients would sometimes unload on their agents, that was interesting. You realize you’re in much more than a business relationship. I think Nick actually cared about the personal stuff 90 percent of the time. At least he didn’t just sit there listening on the phone, making jerk-off motions with his hand.

Nick taught me an important lesson. His son was about two years old at the time, and all he ever wanted to do at the end of work was go home to his wife and kid. He said, “You don’t need to go to premieres. You don’t need to go to business dinners. What you need to do is do your job well. If you do your job well, clients will come. Clients will stay with you. You’ll get a good reputation. You don’t have to schmooze.”

WELLS-ROTH:
I finally got out of the mailroom after four months. I wanted Cynthia Shelton’s desk, but Jeremy Zimmer called me into his office and said Jill Hollwager, who was a TV lit agent, wanted me on her desk. Jill was a nightmare at the time. Nobody wanted her desk. She screamed and yelled—and I cried. Nothing I could do was good enough for any of these people. My desk was next to Nick Stevens’s office; his assistant, Brandt Joel, saw how miserable I was. He told me Connie Tavel, a big manager, was looking for an assistant.

The day I left, I met with Jeremy Zimmer. He said, “At least you won’t wake up when you’re thirty-five or my age and be miserable.”

Suddenly I got it. I said, “Are
you
really that miserable?”

It was an unkind thing to say in a sad state. I think he’s a very different guy today.

NAEGLE:
The big lesson was to get the big picture. The big picture was: You had to jibe personalitywise with the person you were working for.

My first desk was Nancy Jones. People said we sounded like each other and had the same mannerisms. She took care of me, would bring me clothes, buy me lunch. That helped because it was really hard to pay for my car and insurance and rent on zero money.

After Nancy I wanted to work for Gavin Polone. I thought Gavin was really cool.

My interview with Gavin was memorable. He said, “If you make one mistake, I’ll fire you. Can you handle that kind of pressure? If you’re not here when I call, if you miss one call off the phone sheet, I’ll fire you. Do you understand that? Does that scare you? Are you going to act like a little girl? Are you going to cry when I yell at you? Are you going to complain to your mom? Are you going to be able to do this?”

I said, “Yes. Yes, absolutely.”

I’m not going to lie: I almost peed in my pants. I was thinking, Of course I’m going to make one mistake. It took a while before I realized he was just trying to scare me. But Gavin hired Wendy Casaleth instead of me. Wendy was very glamorous, and I was tortured every day that I wasn’t chosen. I went to work for Gary Cosay instead, who was great.

Wendy got married and left after about eight months. Then she sued Gavin for sexual harassment.

When I finally got promoted Gavin delivered the good news. He said, “We’ve all been talking and we think you’re going to work out. But in case you don’t, we’ll fire you—and you shouldn’t take it personally.”

HEYMAN: When we merged with Inter Talent we no longer had a list of B-actors, but real talents. Sixty performers. I knew we’d be expanding even more, so I cornered Judy Hofflund in the elevator and told her that she had to hire me. She said, “Great,” and I worked for her for two years.

Judy was very cool, very hyperefficient. She learned her style from Ron Meyer, who had learned his style from Phil Weltman, who learned his style from whoever—maybe Abe Lastfogel. I learned techniques that I’m sure had been passed from generation to generation. This is why no one should be bothered to hear “Oh, my God, you’re an assistant! You’re a secretary, making three hundred dollars a week, working twenty hours a day. How can you do it?”

You say, “Well, Barry Diller did it, Mike Ovitz did it, every single person who has reached any height has gone through some version of that process.”

BOWEN:
It took me five months to get out of the mailroom. It’s taken me years to admit that it took me that long. I couldn’t come to terms with it.

Peter Benedek was my first desk. In a sea of sharks, Peter is the dolphin. He said I’d be promoted in a year. Two years later I was still waiting. I had moved from his desk, a partner’s desk, a step down to work for Risa Gertner. Risa didn’t give a shit about my future. She just wanted me to watch her back.

Then I moved to Jeremy Zimmer’s desk. I loved listening in on Jeremy’s phone calls. He was hysterical. Jeremy liked to have an audience. The bigger the audience he had, like a good comedian, the funnier he could be. Negotiating a deal, he could twist people up like a pretzel. Getting a date, he could be a maestro.

Jeremy was also going through a divorce and an early midlife crisis. My job was to help him negotiate his own life. That was how I finally learned to be vicarious, to truly think, live, eat, and sleep whatever my boss did. Otherwise, how else are you going to stand three years of answering phones with an Ivy League degree under your belt? When everybody else is making six figures, how else are you going to survive if you don’t take the job personally?

KIM:
I wanted Gavin Polone’s desk, and he had promised it to me. But when his desk opened, Wendy Casaleth, who had worked for Jay Sures, complained, “I’ve been working in the Television Department for eight months. It’s not fair if I don’t get a chance.”

Gavin called me and said Wendy was having a big fit. He didn’t want to hire her, he wanted to hire me—but he felt he
had
to give Wendy the opportunity. He offered me Jay Sures’s desk. I said fine. He walked me into Jay’s little office in the corner and said, “Jay, this is your new assistant,” and walked out.

While I was on Jay’s desk I had to make a decision about law school. I’d gotten letters about declaring for the next year and I had ignored them because I didn’t know what to do. I asked the USC law school dean of admissions if I could defer another year, and she said no. So, on the spot, I said, “Well, I guess I’m not going.”

I hung up, and reality sank in. For the first time, working at UTA really became serious for me. I felt like now I
had
to succeed. I come from a very traditional Korean family—you’re either a doctor or a lawyer, and everything else is a joke.

After a few months on Jay’s desk the whole Wendy sexual harassment thing went down; she left the company. Gavin walked over and said, “Do you want to be my assistant now?”

I said, “Yeah.”

He walked into Jay’s office and said, “Hire a new assistant,” and walked out.

Gavin was a partner, he made over a million dollars a year, he had a Ferrari. But he went to every TV taping, he went to every meeting, he signed people, he serviced people. He believed what he believed, whether you agreed or not. He lived by a code of ethics he created for himself and followed without exception. He never expected anyone to do anything he didn’t do. And because he did it all, there were no excuses. It left you no room to slack off.

I got promoted in February 1994. I was twenty-three and the youngest agent at UTA at the time. In the press release, Gavin’s quote was, “I believe Rob Kim will be the greatest agent who was ever born in Seoul, Korea.”

He belittled me to the very end. [
laughs
]

SHEINWOLD:
After David Kanter I worked for Marty Bauer. I pursued that, embarrassingly so. Elyse Scherz, an agent here now, was his assistant at the time. I say this with love in my heart, because she’s a really good friend, but she did everything in her power to give the desk to someone else. So I did the most embarrassing thing: I made this little book of pictures of me. I came into the office one weekend with a friend of mine from film school and he took a picture of me in a sleeping bag at Marty’s assistant’s desk, the idea being “I’ll work long hours.” Then me fixing a car, and me in a karate outfit. My friend played a dead body in that one while I did a kick. It was dumb, but I got the job. I gave it to him as a gift and he said, “Anyone who would do this is obviously interested in the job.” And retarded [
laughs
]. I recently found the book. First I lamented how thin I was, but then I was, like, What was I thinking?

Working for Marty was amazing. We didn’t do a lot of
work,
but that’s where I learned some of the most valuable lessons ever. For instance, how to get him a room in Vegas, no matter what, because he had said, “I never want to hear the words ‘No, I can’t do that’ from you.”

I went to Jeremy Zimmer next. He was the fount of all learning. I worship Jeremy. He is brilliant. He always knew how to say something funny that was still a knife in your heart. He taught me how to be an agent. He’s a genius at it.

This is bad, but [
sighs
] I think that primarily the reason he hired me was that I worked for Bauer. Jeremy was going through his divorce at the time, and I had a lot of really cute friends. I think he thought if he hired me, I could set him up on dates. In fact, I probably intimated that I could, just to get the job. Whatever it takes, right?

KIM:
My first year at UTA the Christmas party was at Typhoon, at the Santa Monica Airport. It was employees only. No spouses or anything. The last party I’d been at was a fraternity kegger. This was an open bar, with food and everything. People got really, really drunk.

I sat with David Kramer, who was having a drink with Gail Fanaro, who had just become an agent. He was confessing his love for her—but like I said, we were all drunk. Behind us were Judy Hofflund, David Schiff, and Marty Bauer.

I heard Judy Hofflund ask her table, “What’s a body shot?”

I turned around. “Body shot?”

“Yeah. What is a body shot?”

I explained that you put salt on a woman’s neck and she holds a slice of lime in her teeth. You lick the salt off her neck, do a shot of tequila, then bite the lime that she’s holding in her teeth.

Judy said, “Oh, let’s try one.”

I said, “Nuh-uh, Judy. I can’t do a body shot with
you
.”

She said, “No, no, it’s fine. I want to try it. It sounds cool.”

I said, “Judy, if you promise me I’m not going to get fired, I’ll do one.” All the partners sat there, looking at me. She laughed. “I promise you’re not going to get fired.”

I ordered a shot of tequila. I dipped my finger in the tequila and wiped it on her neck. I poured salt on her neck. I licked the salt off her neck, did the shot, bit the lime out of her mouth. I looked over her shoulder and saw people’s mouths on the floor. Even Gavin’s. Judy loved it. The rest of the night I was flying on cloud nine. I was the center of attention.

The next day I got a call from Judy’s husband, Tom. “So, I heard something about you and my wife last night at the Christmas party.” We joked about it a little bit and I hung up relieved. The second year I got a call from Tom the day of the Christmas party. He said, “You know, it’s around this time of the year that I begin to hear your name around my house. I just want you to keep in mind: Judy’s a mother and my wife.” Just kind of giving me shit.