I Don't Have a Happy Place (11 page)

Gotham
-based
= New York City–based

Not to worry, you will catch on quickly but, if you're lost, ask a fellow assistant because . . .

4. No agent will talk to you.

5. It's no longer Robert De Niro, it's Bobby. And
Marty
Scorsese and
Sandy
Bullock and everyone's best pal,
Jimmy
Caan.

When I first started at the SuperAgency, an awful agent/creature was running the show, a Hydra of sorts. And, just as the Greek myth suggested, when one head got cut off, two more grew in its place. Word came from HQ in Los Angeles that our boss had been set free and, until further notice, two senior agents would temporarily take over—one Hydra gets ankled, sprouting two new heads of talent. This new thing was a creature so powerful that it caused assistants to hide in their cubicles or scurry to the bathroom to weep.

Had I been in a movie, audiences would have seen a greenish sky looming over Forty-second Street, cockroaches and rodents running to get the hell out of the area. Something wicked—well, two things wicked—this way came. The audience would shout warnings at the screen: “Get out of there!” “Run!” But who listens to moviegoers who yell at the screen? Instead, I stayed at my desk, reminded on a daily basis of my stupidity, incompetence,
and general dislikability.

My direct boss was a comedy agent. Mind you, she represented young stand-ups way before stand-ups made any real money on television, so she wasn't taken seriously and also suffered at the hands of the new boss ladies, whom I'd come to regard as Roald Dahl's infamous duo from
James and the Giant Peach
, Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker. If you are not familiar with these aunts, one was rail thin and the other a roundish ball, and they were the relatives forced to take young James in after his parents get eaten by a rhinoceros. They watched over him, sure, but they were mean, abusive, and never let the young boy out of their sight to play with other children. Agent Sponge and Agent Spiker were, to put it plain, hideous to us. They were the agents you see in movies but don't believe really exist. Calling us names, pitting us against one another, throwing the contents of our desks across the office. Sponge and Spiker seemed to take great pleasure in the insults they hurled our way, the mind games they played on us. It was degrading.

In fairness, I was still a lackluster employee, complete with bad attitude and lazy work habits and a real talent for stirring the pot, but they treated every assistant this way, even the ones who made an effort. We knew better than to tattle on Sponge and Spiker, especially to their clients, who loved their agents loyally and somehow found their unctuous personalities delightful. The upside was that it bonded we lower-level employees. We were tight, a band of not-so-merry assistants, and I, the most miserable and aggravated of the bunch, led this group daily to our two-dollar beans-and-rice plates at the dive across the street, where we'd spend our entire lunch hour dissecting each mean thing said to us that day, picking apart Sponge and Spiker limb by limb like a group of four-year-old boys with a handful of daddy longlegs. It just made us feel better.

In the spring of 1986, we'd learned that two high-powered
agents had been poached from William Morris to breathe new life into the SuperAgency. The assistants whispered about it in the bathroom, wondering whether these new agents chose these positions or left William Morris to
spend more time with their families (
slanguage synonym for
ankled
). No matter, in our eyes their arrival ruffled Sponge and Spiker, and that was good enough for us.

The office was not nearly big enough—literally or figuratively—to hold our new SuperAgents. Reshuffling ensued. Sponge and Spiker let everyone know they were staying put. SuperAgent One looked around the place, to see which room was grand enough to hold him and his deal making. As he paced the office we were already mushrooming out of, his assistant walked behind him, surveying the scene. You could tell she meant business in a way none of us did, due to her smart slacks and serious glasses. You knew by just looking at her focused eyebrows that she'd never slum by the Xerox machine to waste time or complain. SuperAssistant walked with purpose, her headset (with dangly cord) always on her head, ready to plug into any phone at a moment's notice should one of their top-shelf clients call in or, more importantly, if her SuperAgent felt thirsty or needed the air conditioner turned up a degree.

She was at once hateful and enviable. We felt silly in her presence, as if we didn't take the nature of the buying and selling of actors seriously enough. SuperAssistant had a super show-biz attitude—her work was the most important, most serious work of all. She was taller, cut from a better cloth, and at the end of the day she found the lot of us ridiculous. SuperAssistant was Pac-Man buzzing along the maze, we the Pac dots she ate to get to the next level.

SuperAgent One eventually decided he'd move into the oversized conference room, the only area large enough to contain the
lot of us comfortably. There was a rarely used mini–conference space, stuffy and crowded, one that barely fit six chairs, and you couldn't get in or out without knocking something over. This was now our only place to meet, with clients or with each other for the officewide weekly council. It was the least impressive room we had. It was also where my agent was moved, told she'd have to vacate the premises any time any meeting needed to be held by anyone in the entire office. The real estate of it all spoke volumes, letting my boss know they thought her work was comedic—but not in the good way. They took away her view and her desk and her pride and, surprisingly, her assistant: I was to start working for SuperAgent Two, effective immediately.

“We're gonna make a lot of people a lot of money and have a lot of fun doing it,” said my new boss, SuperAgent Two. I sat across the desk from him, per his request, as he unpacked the boxes he'd had messengered over from the William Morris Agency. Removing three oversized drums of vanilla protein powder, a case of protein bars, and one red binder, he placed them on a shelf overhead. The final check of the box produced a Rolodex, with one thousand teeny white index cards neatly fanned into place. He didn't bark at me for help. Instead he flashed his expensive teeth, then asked for my opinion on some wall-art placement, movie posters he'd had framed, autographed by clients. This behavior was SuperAgent code for
I will not demand you pick up my dry cleaning or the pieces of my personal life, just maybe the odd lunch—not that I really eat food—when we're too busy making deals together. We are pals here. Equals, even. I plan to learn from you as much as you learn from me. I am the cool parent
. I was dubious of his nature, believing it was a gimmick, something to reel in clients and disorient producers. SuperAgent Two was Good Cop to the rest of the agency's Bad.

I was the only assistant whose desk was positioned in her supe
rior's office. This station left me little wiggle room to slack off or talk to the other assistants freely. I spent a lot of time by the copier or the other cubicles and most of my day involved the phone, just like in my two previous jobs, but in real show business this was called
rolling calls
. Your boss gives you a list of numbers in a certain order and you do the actual dialing for him, and when the designated person answers, your line is “I have SuperAgent Two for (insert important show business name here).” If I wasn't on the phone, I was typing up submissions or organizing files or calling actors to check their availability and desire to audition for certain jobs. It was basic assistant stuff but the agents made it seem like open-heart brain surgery performed on the president of the universe.

The two things that kept me going in this line of business were (1) my fellow not-so-merry band of assistants and (2) the information. I loved knowing what movies were coming down the pike, what television pilots got picked up, which producers were nightmares. I even liked chatting with the actors on the phone, especially SuperAgent Two's clients, because they, for the most part, were lovely and fun and flirtatious and took the monotony out of the day.

Now officially three years into real show business (and five years into sort-of show biz), I wondered every day when I would move up the ladder and become a junior agent, even though I'd done nothing except the time to deserve it. But it was the goal, after all. I was finally making a few bucks (although it was very few), so when was I going to make a difference? In the back of my mind, I still longed to be discovered, even at the SuperAgency. Sometimes I'd have to put an actor's audition on a videotape if they couldn't be in Los Angeles in person, and I'd do my very best reading, still hanging on to the possibility that a producer or director would hear my excellent work and ask who the reader
was and hire me to be in the movie. If I went to a Broadway show, I waited for an actor to get the stomach flu, believing a stage manager would run over to the house seats I sat in and ask me to take over. I was ready, Mr. DeMille. But, until that happened, I felt the least show business could do for me was bump me to Junior SuperAgent so I could make some deals and get my damn note cards already.

One morning at the end of April, I was called into Spiker's office. Occasionally, one of the agents would pick up the phone and let you know they needed you and you'd have to walk into their office so they could tell you the same thing they very well could have just told you on the phone, but it was a great show of power to have us jumping in and out of our chairs, standing at attention in front of their desks. SuperAgent Two was at a meeting out of the office and I was minding the store, as he'd asked. When I arrived at Spiker's door, I saw Sponge sitting on the guest couch inside. My scalp began sweating.
They are firing me
, I thought.

“Get in here,” said Spiker. “Look, you've been here awhile now.”

“Three years,” added Sponge.

This is going to take forever
, I thought, desperate to flee. I stood, working my thumb cuticles, ready to be
ankled
, probably not before they read me a long list of all my shortcomings.

“We're going to give you your first deal,” said Spiker through her thin lips and toxic face.

“It's for my client,” said Sponge. “So mess it up and die.”

They laughed like it was the best joke on the planet. Spiker put her head in her hands and I saw a red sore on her scalp. Sponge lifted her porcine legs off the floor as she laughed. They told me that SuperAgent Two was aware of the deal I'd be making for them, that
he
supported the decision, and that it was a
theater gig.

In the SuperAgency world, film deals were the best, then TV, then Broadway. About ten rungs below that were the regional theater jobs, and they only submitted actors to the top ones. About twenty-seven rungs below that were the odd touring companies that they made fun of, drawing straws to see who would take the lead on them. This is the deal they gave me. But no matter, it was a deal. If I made this one properly, I'd get franchised—meaning I'd be able to negotiate SAG deals and be an official junior agent. It was my moment. All that Sondheim singing and pretending to be Liberace on the bus, all those hours filing and walking the city hoping something would happen to me, led to this. My very first deal.

The job was for a B-list client, one who used to be a series regular on a decent sitcom. The gig was for a tour of
Death of a Salesman
at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Florida. It was my understanding that after its run at the Playhouse it would tour the rest of the state, followed by a national tour and eventually hit Broadway. And although Hal Holbrook was starring as Willy Loman, no one had high hopes. It was a theater project—in Florida and this is why it was given to me. You don't cut your teeth on a Bob Redford picture, I was told. For a brief moment, while they were describing the deal, I thought it might be some twisted joke, like Carrie being asked to the prom. I hoped I, too, had telepathic ways to collapse the SuperAgency before they spilled the pig blood on me.

“They are offering him eight hundred dollars a week,” said Sponge. “Which is fucking ridiculous.”

“Totally,” said Spiker.

They both looked at me and I could see that they needed me to do something, I just didn't know what. I nodded. Sponge and Spiker looked at each other and cracked up at my expense.

“Okay, genius,” Sponge said. “You are going to tell the producer that you find that number insulting. That this actor was a very successful part of a very successful television show, that they are fucking lucky to have him. You say that you'd take two thousand a week. Plus a nonshared dressing room. And a case of Perrier.”

This was the New York minute in which I realized I wanted nothing to do with any of this. I didn't want to make this deal. Or any deal. I had no interest in being an agent. I had trouble asking a storekeeper to break a dollar for quarters, so how was I going to ask some real live theater producer for a sum I found ridiculous? In my eyes, that actor should have been delighted to get a job offer in the first place. It's not like he worked all the time, or ever. Half the time the agents turned down jobs before consulting with the client because they'd found the money insulting or the role beneath them or the project too piddling. I never really paid attention to what they were saying because all I had to do was Xerox and mail stuff. Now I was in the game. And for the first time in eight years, I found the game completely ridiculous. I was all about the show and wanted nothing to do with the business. Business gave me hives.

•   •   •

The call was to take place the next morning. I spent the remainder of the day at my desk with my head down, trying to figure out how to get through it. Whose big idea was this, anyway? I wondered if I could quit just to avoid the call. Sponge and Spiker, against their will, told me I'd be franchised after I made my first deal. It's what all the assistants wanted, what I thought I wanted, but now no longer wanted. What I wanted, I realized, was to leave my
Gotham-based shingle
, to
spend more time with my family
. Please
ankle
me. I will be a terrible
ten
percenter
.