The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up (66 page)

One day he said, “Listen, the thing about you is, you want to be a literary agent and you don’t even read.”

I said, “What are you talking about? I’ve been at the company for ten months. I read every weekend. I read all of your crap. Are you nuts?”

He said, “No. You are basically illiterate. You’re just a dummy.”

I laughed at him. He grabbed a big purple marker from his desk, went to a wall in his office, and drew a line as high as his hand could reach—and he’s over six feet tall. “Starting today,” he said, “you’re going to have to read clients’ scripts. Not projects that are out there, not specs that come in from random people who want to be represented. People who are on the client list.”

The challenge was that he wouldn’t consider me for a promotion until I had read enough scripts to hit the line on the wall. In other words, I had to read every single person on the client list and know all of their material.

I said, “Wait a minute. I’ve already read at least fifty clients. Can we count those?”

He said, “No, it starts today. I know what you’ve read since you’ve been on my desk, and I’ll talk to Ari and find out what you read for him. If you try to bullshit me and if I find that you’re lying to me, you’ll be fired.” Another part of the deal was that he could pull out a script at any place in the pile and I’d have to pitch it to him in under three minutes. If I couldn’t do it, it would go off the pile. And I had to get it all done by October—five months.

I complained. No other assistant ever had to do anything like that.

“There’s a bet going on in the office,” he added. “Don’t embarrass me.”

The pile slowly grew. I’d fluff up the pages now and then so the stack had more height, but he’d slam them down. He’d knock the pile over if it was crooked, because it swayed as it grew. Sometimes he’d keep me in the office late on a Friday night, having me pitch random scripts. It was painful.

Finally, about September 15, I came in to find that he’d taped up an envelope above the pile that read THE PRIZE. He said, “Don’t you dare touch this envelope. Once you touch the line, if you can get to it by October first, you’ll get the prize.” I still had a good twenty scripts to go. He said, “Don’t disappoint me. I am the only one who bet you were going to make it. If you embarrass me, I’ll be very disappointed.” Of course, there was no way I was going to disappoint Tom.

On Monday morning, October 2, I put my last couple of scripts on the pile. I’d finally made it to the top. When Tom walked in he said, “All right, you did it.” Then he grabbed the prize envelope off the wall and went to the morning staff meeting. About ten minutes later he came out and called the entire office into the staff meeting.

I didn’t know what was in the envelope. I knew I wasn’t going to get promoted yet, because it was too early and there was no space for a new agent. I figured it wasn’t money because it’s not like Tom to do that. That’s too easy and not thoughtful enough. For my Christmas present he’d bought me a black-label Armani suit. It cost $2,200. It remains to this day the most expensive thing I own.

When we had all gathered, Tom spoke. He had tears in his eyes, and right away I had tears in mine. “As you all know, I put Adriana up to this horrible task. I’m really proud to say that she made it. She’s read every single client that we have, and she’s probably more well-read than anybody in the office, including myself. We’ll probably be calling her the Librarian from now on.” He turned to me and continued. “Adriana, I’m really proud, and I want you to have this as a token of my appreciation to you.”

He gave me the envelope; in it was an airplane ticket. A few of the partners were flying to New York at the end of the month for the New York Film Festival. My prize was to go with the partners, stay at their hotel, go to the film festival, then take a drive out to Tom’s country home in Massachusetts for the rest of the weekend.

It was really sweet. I’d been beaten up for eleven months, but I’d made it, and I understood the point to it all. It was a great, if painful, lesson in what I needed to do. And, to tell the truth, it’s very intoxicating for an agent to take an interest in what you have to say. No matter how I complained, I loved hearing “I want you to read this and give me your opinion.” There was nothing more exciting for me than giving Tom my input and then hearing him call someone and talk about the script based on my opinion, as if he had read it himself. Sometimes I’d panic when I realized he trusted me that much. When I’d ask why, he’d say, “You’re here precisely because I believe in your opinions.”

I don’t do anything like this to my assistants, though. God forbid, if I drew on these walls, Tom would have my ass.

STRICKLER: Assistants love challenges. Anyone could walk into my office and see the stack of scripts. It became a matter of pride for her to
get to the top. When she was within eight to twelve inches of the top, I
started to play a trick on her. It was as if she were Sisyphus. She’d go to
the bathroom, and I’d pull out a script and hide it in my desk so she’d
keep reading, but she wouldn’t get any closer to the line. Eventually
she figured that out, and we added those scripts back in. Adriana is a
very, very goal-oriented person. If you told her to run a four-minute
mile, she’d train until she could do it.

Assistants love challenges. My theory is that we’re a service business
and we deal with irrational people, and it is sometimes good to be a
little bit irrational because that’s the world the assistants face when
they get promoted. When you go back to your assistant days, the things
you remember most are the wild, crazy, insane things that you had to
do. They’re your pedigree and the stories you can share later. It’s my job
to provide those memories.

Once, someone had sent us a pair of handcu fs and I handcu fed
one assistant to his chair for about three minutes. I said, “You’re not
working hard enough here!” I think I also gave him the key. He also
had a watch I thought was particularly unattractive. It was bright
yellow. I said, “That’s an ugly watch, don’t wear it anymore.” About a
month later he came back with the watch, so I said, “Come in here.”
We went into the men’s room. I said, “Take off your watch.” He took
o f the watch and I flushed it down the toilet. I said, “When I tell you
to do something, you always do it.”

I’m sure I bought him a new one. I hope I did.

I hoped to get promoted that Christmas of 1996, but I’d only been with the company for a year and five months, including the mailroom, and that’s not a long time. Tom gave me my bonus and my review and said, “Just know you
will
get promoted. There is a space for you here. But David Lonner and Adam Venit just joined us, and there are a lot of changes going on. It looks like it will happen after April fifteenth. You’ll be fine. It’s only four months away. Don’t fret.”

I masked my disappointment completely—as I’d been taught.

We had our first Christmas party at Ari’s house. Tom got up and talked about how the company had changed and how unbelievable the changes had been. And then he said, “Tonight’s a special night for another reason. Tonight we’re going to promote the first agent from our training program.” My heart sank.

Tom said a few words more about how proud he was of this person, going on and on. We all looked around the room at each other. Then he called me up. He handed me a package. It was a metal plaque with my name and the names of all the agents I’d worked for. To this day that moment still makes me cry.

For the next seventy-two hours, my feet didn’t touch the ground. That night we all went out dancing, including Tom and Ari. We must have been out until three o’clock in the morning. I held that plaque all night long, and so tightly that I cut my hand and there was dried blood all over it. Whenever I think of that night now, the image of all the sweat and blood I had to put into becoming an agent is still perfect.

Tom still gives his assistants a hard time. But these days trainees who want his desk seem to make a point of coming to me to say, “I want to go to Tom’s desk. Tell me what it was like.”

So I tell. All of it.

ADRIANA ALBERGHETTI
is a motion picture lit agent at Endeavor, handling writers and directors. She is the first trainee to make it out of the Endeavor mailroom, and she still chews Bazooka gum: original, not sugarless.

STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

Creative Artists Agency, Los Angeles, 1994–1996

ALLEN FISCHER, 1994 • COURTNEY KIVOWITZ, 1994 • JIM TOTH, 1995 •
MARK O’CONNOR, 1996 • BLAIR DICKERSON, 1996 • DEAN STYNE, 1996

When
you’re
in
the
mailroom,
you’re
positive
that
there
is
a
movie
to
be
made
about
your
life.
Why?
You
cannot
believe
what
your
life
is
like,
and
you’re
sure
no
one
else
could
believe
it
either—so
it
has
to
be
a
movie.”

—Courtney Kivowitz

ALLEN FISCHER:
I grew up in Beverly Hills and went to school with tons of kids whose parents were in the entertainment business. My best friend’s father managed Kenny Loggins, so we’d go to shows, but most of all I loved to watch the guy in the suit, running around taking care of things in the background.

During my junior summer at the Wharton School I got an internship at CAA. It seemed like every week Ovitz was on the cover of
Time
or
Newsweek
. Ovitz used to say that he wanted to hear a deal a minute being made, and that’s what it felt like in the offices.

The next summer I worked for the late Jay Moloney when one of his assistants was on vacation. It was amazing. Every day I came in excited and scared shitless because I didn’t know what was going to happen. I talked to everybody I’d grown up loving. Sometimes Marty Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Bill Murray were on all my phone lines simultaneously. Moloney was energetic and incredibly charismatic and smart, and I was the cocky kid playing Hollywood Guy.

To get into the training program, I went through five interviews in one day. I answered all the questions right. My two summers had paid off. And unlike many others, I knew what I was getting into.

COURTNEY KIVOWITZ:
I grew up in Dallas and went to the movies to beat the heat during Texas summers. Of course, I ended up wanting to be in the movie business. I went to film school at UT Austin and majored in critical studies. I did an entire thesis on how you could track Rob Reiner’s movies. After an internship in London with an agent who worked out of his living room, and another in Los Angeles, I interviewed at all the agencies. I even had a speech prepared, a monologue, as if I was doing an act: “The truth is, I think a lot of people come into this room and don’t have an idea what an agent is or what an agent does. I’ve had these two very different experiences in London and Los Angeles and I’m totally willing to stop my life, go down to the mailroom, and work my way through. I know it’s not easy and I know it’s not as glamorous as people think it is. . . .”

The process at William Morris moved very slowly. At UTA Jeremy Zimmer kept me waiting for about forty-five minutes. When I finally went in, he said, “So, why do you want to be an agent? No, you know what? Don’t even answer that. I know: You want to be an agent because . . .” and he went into this twenty-minute conversation so he could listen to himself talk about why
he
was doing what he was doing. He never looked me in the eye, and then he said, “You’re never going to make it here. You won’t be able to compete. All of our trainees went to Ivy League schools, and I don’t think it’s ever going to happen for you here.”

I said, “I don’t think it takes going to an Ivy League school to get this job done,” and walked out. I had ten interviews at CAA. It was clearly the best agency and my top choice, anyway.

JIM TOTH:
When I graduated from Loyola Marymount, I had a roommate who worked for
Buzz
magazine. He was my only conduit to show business. It was 1992 and the height of Mike Ovitz as “the most powerful man in Hollywood.” I asked my roommate questions and read articles and decided I wanted to be Ovitz. My friend totally discouraged me. He said everybody in the training program was a Harvard MBA or had a law degree. So I blew it off and became a stockbroker. Then I lived with a girl who, after college, wanted to get into Hollywood. She put out feelers everywhere and ended up working for CAA. After one day she called me and said, “You have to come and work here.” That was it.