The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up (33 page)

Schultz said, “I’m not making him an agent after seven months. He’s got to work for me.” He already had a secretary, so he took me on as his second. I love him now, but then Shelly was an intimidating guy. A screamer. Some people emulate what they see; I went the opposite way. I don’t think in twenty-three years I’ve raised my voice a dozen times.

I didn’t have a territory to book. I handled his clients and the overflow of paperwork. Whatever crap came out of that office would fall on me.

That summer Shelly booked an arena tour for the Bay City Rollers when their new record came out. But it was 1979, they were over, and the tour proved it. A thousand tickets sold in twelve-thousand-seat arenas. It was horrible. But the band would not back out. They knew it was the end, and their attitude was, “Fuck it, let’s just take the money.” And agents had the clout to hold the dates in; nobody could cancel, because God forbid you canceled on ICM.

Shelly knew the band should come off the road, but he couldn’t convince them.

I’m not embellishing this story: I was the day-to-day guy on the Bay City Rollers, talking to the tour manager and doing all the paperwork. Shelly called me into his office and said, “I’m giving you a plane ticket to Louisville, Kentucky. Go meet with the band. Convince them to cancel this tour. If you convince them to cancel the tour, I’ll make you an agent. If you don’t, don’t come back.”

On the flight I tried to think of every conceivable way to talk the band out of their tour. But if I’ve learned any lesson from being an agent, it’s that if you
listen
to the client,
they
will tell you what they want to be told. So ask a question before you make a statement.

When I got to Louisville, I went right to the hotel, to the suite where a couple of the guys were hanging out. The tour manager introduced me. They said, “If you’re here to talk us into canceling the tour, go home now.”

“No,” I said. “I’m here to tell you to stay on the road. Let’s take the money. You need moral support.” They embraced me, and we spent the whole day together. “Screw the promoters,” I said. “Your record company’s an asshole.” They were looking for anybody to be a compatriot.

As I watched the show I realized that instead of a teen fad band, the guys wanted to be serious musicians. They could never be, but that’s all they wanted someone to tell them. We went back to the bar. The gloves came off. “You’re a really good band,” I said. “What’s happened is criminal. You’re more than just a pop act.”

“You’re right. We’re more than that.”

“But if you’re going to have any chance of being legitimate musicians, you don’t want to leave this trail of blood. If you take all these promoters down, no one will ever give you another shot. Come off the road, make a real record—a real rock record—change the name of the band, and let’s start over.”

It hit them: “That’s what we should do. We don’t want to kill all these promoters. We want a career.” They played one more date, then canceled the tour. I went home, and Shelly made me an agent.

The band went into the studio and made a record. I booked them on a tour of all the punk clubs on the Elvis Costello circuit. It didn’t work, but I did my part.

SARKES:
I was talking to Bernie Brillstein not too long ago and somehow George Shapiro’s name came up. I said, “Where did you guys know each other from?”

He said, “Are you kidding? George and I were in the typing pool together at William Morris.”

I thought, Typing pool? Holy shit! There are so many overdressed twenty-two-year-old agent wanna-bes now; the time when it was a gentleman’s business is gone. Even for me there was nothing that compared with what it was like for them. And today’s young agents and trainees have no sense of the history. I know only a small group at CAA who call legends like Robert Evans and Richard Zanuck and ask if they can get together for dinner because they want to learn the history.

Otherwise I wonder—if two guys in the mailroom today run into each other in ten years, will they even feel a bond because of how they started out?

GEORGE QUENNEVILLE
is director of facilities at the New York office of ICM. He’s been with the company nearly thirty-five years.

ROB LIGHT
is head of the Personal Appearances Division at CAA and a member of the board of directors.

LEE KERNIS
left the entertainment business after ICM and worked on Wall Street for seven years as a commercial real estate broker. In 1989 he returned to entertainment and opened a personal management business in New York, then the same in Los Angeles with Tim Sarkes.

JAIMIE ROBERTS
is a prominent music-business attorney and partner in Liebowitz, Roberts, and Ritholz, based in New York.

JOEL GALLEN
is a producer-director in television and film. One week after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, he executive-produced and, in Los Angeles, codirected
America: A
Tribute to Heroes
, a telethon broadcast on all the major networks, as well as independent and cable channels. It raised $150 million, and Gallen won an Emmy. Previously he majored in producing specials, among them the
MTV Video Music Awards
(1989–1993), the
MTV Movie
Awards
(which he still does every year), and various music specials (featuring Santana, Mariah Carey, Dixie Chicks). He also executive-produced Ben Stiller’s movie
Zoolander
. Gallen’s feature film directorial debut,
Not Another Teen Movie,
was released in December 2001.

TIM SARKES
became an agent at APA in New York in the Personal Appearances Department. In 1994 Kernis and Sarkes became management partners, representing clients such as Cheri Oteri (
Saturday Night
Live
), David Cross (
Mr. Show
), Andy Richter (
Late Night with Conan
O’Brien), Steven Wright, Robert Schimmel, and Dave Foley (The Kids in the Hall, NewsRadio). In November of 2001 Kernis and Sarkes moved their business to Brillstein-Grey Entertainment, where they are now managers.

THOUGHTFULLY POLITICAL

William Morris Agency, Los Angeles, 1978, 1989

SAM HASKELL, 1978 • ROB CARLSON, 1989

SAM HASKELL:
My family wanted me to go into medicine, but I wanted to be in California, in the entertainment business, from the time I knew there
was
an entertainment business.

In the late sixties and early seventies I went often to the little movie theater in my hometown of Amory, Mississippi, and watched movies all afternoon. I also watched lots of television and read
TV Guide
and all the fan magazines. I made it a point to educate myself about the Academy Award nominees and would see all the nominated movies.

I did try to be a doctor because of my parents, but by the middle of my sophomore year in premed I was miserable. This caused a huge problem, particularly with my father. Sometimes being in show business seemed like a far-fetched dream, but I still dreamed it.

I moved to Los Angeles in the summer of 1978 to go to law school. I thought it might be a way to get into the entertainment business. To help my plan, I tried to get in touch with Ruth Englehart, head of business affairs at William Morris. I called a few times a week, and her secretary would never put me through. Finally, on the Friday before Labor Day, Ruth answered the phone herself. When she heard my accent and that I wanted to meet and talk about law school and the agency business, she saw me that day.

At Ole Miss I’d performed in several concerts and had produced a couple of plays. Ruth knew that I had a basic understanding of actors, producers, writers, and directors. She spent almost three hours with me and by the end of the meeting said, “You’ve got everything it takes to be an agent. Do you know what an agent does?” I’d read some books, one of them Garson Kanin’s
Hollywood,
when I was about sixteen. Kanin wrote that during the thirties and forties. The only agent Louis B. Mayer would allow on the MGM lot was Abe Lastfogel because he had character and integrity.

I said, “Well, what do I have to do?”

She said, “First of all, dismiss the whole idea of law school. And you’d need to start in the mailroom.”

My last interview was with Walter Zifkin, the chief operating officer at William Morris. He said, “You’re actually too tall to be an agent—but I guess I have to overlook that. I’ve been getting all these reports on what a nice kid you are. But don’t you think this is going to be a culture shock for you? You’re this white-bread, gentile kid from Mississippi, coming to Los Angeles to work for a primarily Jewish company in a primarily Jewish, liberal business. How and why do you think you’re going to fit in?”

I told him the following story.

I was raised in a Southern Baptist church. We had a fire-and-brimstone preacher who, every Sunday, said, “If you don’t believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah and Jesus was born to save your sins, you’re going to hell. Everyone.” It’s that sort of thing you see on the televangelical shows. One Sunday over lunch I confronted my mother, who was deeply spiritual and deeply religious. I was nine years old.

I said, “Mom, why is it that Mr. Smith, in the front row of the church every Sunday, who is mean to his children and gets drunk and does all these terrible things but proclaims to be a Christian, is going to heaven? And Mrs. Siegel and Mrs. Rubenstein, who open their stores on Christmas Eve and give all the poor black children coats and shoes, are going to hell?”

My mom said, “You’re right. As long as we all believe in God, we’ll all go to heaven. We must all lead our lives to be good people, and Mrs. Siegel and Mrs. Rubenstein are excellent examples.” They were the only two Jewish families in town, and they had to travel an hour to get to a synagogue somewhere else.

Zifkin hired me on the spot. I’d let him know that I held no prejudice and embraced all faiths. I am a Christian and I believe in my Christianity, but I don’t believe that other people are wrong for not being like me. We all base our religious feelings on blind faith. It’s what our parents taught us and what their parents taught them, so who’s to say anyone is wrong? As long as we believe in something.

Six years later Walt Zifkin took me to lunch. He said, “I want to tell you something. I almost didn’t hire you that day. But after you told me that story, I realized I had to give you a try. I realize now what a mistake I would have made if I had not hired you.” That was the supreme compliment of all time.

I started in the mailroom on October 23, 1978. I was there with kids who had silver spoons in their mouths, kids who were sons or nephews or grandsons of people in the business, kids who had plenty of money. My salary was $125 a week. I had to get a job at Universal Studios on the weekends, on the tour and in Professor Bloodgood’s Olde Tyme Photography Shoppe, taking pictures of European tourists in funny costumes, to make an extra $100 a week so I could pay my rent. I worked seven days a week for a year. I didn’t have the finest car. I didn’t have the nicest clothes. But I always knew that I
would
. I knew that I could make it happen for myself.

At William Morris I dedicated myself to being the first to volunteer for the most menial of chores, from being the best pencil sharpener to the best Xeroxer. Other mailroom guys would actually sit on their butts and watch me do this. Fine with me. I knew hard work would be noticed. I was an Eagle Scout. I’d played football. I knew what it was like to be part of a team. I knew what it took to please a superior. I believed the only way to be promoted was to be willing to read three scripts in a night and get back with typed-up synopses the next morning. Or be willing to take the mail to Marina Del Rey on a Friday night, when everyone was leaving for their dates.

Instead of following examples, I set the example, and I think those who followed me benefited greatly. That doesn’t mean a good work ethic didn’t exist in the mailroom before me—but in my class no one worked as hard as I. I had to, because the mailroom is the armpit of the agency and I wanted to get out.

I believe, philosophywise, in the following: We spend the first couple of decades of our lives trying to figure out who the hell we are. Some people never find out. They keep searching and searching and searching. Or they’ll be different people with everyone. Never any consistent presentation of who they are. But if we can realize by our mid-twenties who we are, we have to ask ourselves this question: Do we
like
who we are? If the answer is yes, then we should spend the rest of our lives maintaining who we are.

If you think about it, it’s that maintenance of self that is constantly attacked, challenged, or compromised on a day-to-day basis—not just in the business, but in life. It’s what gives you the hills and the valleys. But if you can maintain who you are, then you become a magnet of consistency to which all the inconsistent elements spinning around in your little hemisphere are drawn. Those elements—the clients, people in the office, your family—want to know who
they
are. Your consistency can bring the same to their lives, and if it does, they’re going to want to stick with you.

It worked for me. After nineteen months I was promoted to agent. As for the people who didn’t work hard, they were still in the mailroom. I was right and they were wrong.