The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up (65 page)

An hour later he walked up and said, “We have an over/under bet on how long you’re going to stay. Three months is the time limit. I want you to know, I bet against you. Let’s see how quickly I can make you cry today.”

I said, “You want me to run your operation in an effective manner, right? How does it help you if you bet against me? You’re trying to sabotage me, but if you do,
your
life becomes worse. I don’t understand the logic.” I had come from a very logical place run by very clear-cut rules and regulations that all seemed to make sense. But here . . . I had no idea what I was in store for. None, none, none.

I was lost on Ari’s desk. I had hardly used a computer mouse. I’d never worn a phone headset, and I dropped waiting calls at least six times. I knew Ari would verbally pummel me, and I resigned myself to it, waiting for the hurricane to hit land. It didn’t start out as a screaming match, but it quickly became one. Michael leaned over and said, “Why don’t you just take five minutes? Whatever you do, don’t let him break you. Don’t let him see you cry.”

I excused myself, went into the mailroom, my safe haven, and stood there talking to myself in the mirror: “Whatever you do, don’t get upset, don’t cry. Don’t cry.” But as I kept repeating the words, I worked myself into a frenzy. I was angry and frustrated because I didn’t know how to do anything. Then I heard Ari yell from down the hall: “Where the hell is she?”

He burst into the mailroom, grabbed me by the arm, walked me back to his office, and said, “It’s not that fucking hard!” He sat me in his chair. He sat in my chair, looking like a complete buffoon because he’s three times as big as the desk. He put on my headset and played assistant, rolling calls, the whole time saying, “It’s not
that
difficult!”

Suddenly I couldn’t control the tears. They poured down my face. “Listen, it’s not that tough,” he said quietly. “I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

That night I picked up my girlfriends from San Francisco at the airport. They were all excited because they’d heard I’d just been promoted to a desk. When I showed up they said, “Is it great? We’re so excited!” I just looked at them and burst into tears. I told them what had happened, and they were, like, “This is an outrage! This is criminal!”

I spent the rest of the weekend wondering whether or not to show up on Monday. There was no point in putting up with the craziness if I wasn’t determined to succeed. The more I thought about it the more I knew not only that I’d show up but that he’d never break me again.

Are some of the things done to teach you? Absolutely. Are some of them done just to fuck with you? Sure. Yes, absolutely. They want to get a sense of what you’re made of. If they don’t think you’ll survive, they’d rather weed you out immediately. They don’t want to waste their time, or your time, frankly. The added pressure at Endeavor was that the company was new, the partners were young, and they had everything on the line: everything to lose and, they hoped, everything to gain. They wanted people they could bring up and mentor and make their own. It was very important who they’d let into an upstart, highly precarious operation that everybody else in the agenting business wanted to fail.

Monday morning I was at my desk at 8:00. I’d been told that if I got there at 8:01 there would already be three messages because Ari would call and hang up, or leave a bad message: “Why the fuck aren’t you there?”
Click.
If I got there at 8:02, there’d be six messages. When Ari came in, he said, “So, are you going to cry today?” I looked at him and said, “I want you to know something: You will never beat me again. Ever. I’m better than you and I know it. You don’t scare me. You will never break me. I’m glad you had your fun. But that was it. Since I hadn’t officially started last Friday, I’m not even going to let it count, as far as you and me.”

“Right,” he said. “We’ll see.”

Of course I kept dropping calls. And I didn’t know who anyone was in town. He’d say, “Get Bernie Brillstein.” I’d say, “Who’s Bernie Brillstein?” All of a sudden, there was a huge book on my desk, a history of the business over the last ten years, so I’d know who all the people were.

The first two hours that Monday I let him yell at me. Not after. From then on, if Ari yelled at me, I yelled right back. When Ari said, “Fuck you,” I’d say, “You know what? Fuck
you
.” If he said something smart to me, I’d say something smarter. If he said, “God, your hair looks bad,” I’d say, “Yeah? You’re balding.” It immediately became a tit-for-tat. One day he threw a highlighter pen at my head in the middle of a call. I ducked. I took a stapler and chucked it back at him. I was far enough away that he saw it at the last second, flying in his direction. He had to dive off his chair onto the floor. He popped back up and looked at me like I was insane; I did a little dance and laughed.

Ari and I kicked the shit out of each other, and boy, was it fun. More than fun, it was
complete love
. Not
that
kind of love, but the kind where he knew he had an equal he could fight with who would fight back. Once I even dreamed that we put a wrestling mat, instead of carpet, in the agency, and that he and I would have it out. In retrospect, that’s really sick, but hey . . . that was the frame of mind.

Ari taught me a lot. How to never let them see you break, or reveal your real emotional state or the cards you’re holding, because then you lose all leverage. It doesn’t mean that you can’t be human. Ari is the most loving, softy, sensitive man ever, and that’s the interesting thing about him. I just had to get to that place with him, and the people who know him well know what I mean. Ari continued to kick the shit out of me as his assistant, and I was on pins and needles the entire time, but the difference was that I knew he loved me. I got Ari—and he knew it. He was a big Bazooka freak, too.

Ari cares less about the details and more about the big picture. He is always outside the box, always going beyond. Whatever level he thought he should be at, he always went ten steps forward. He also taught me that there was nobody I couldn’t talk to, couldn’t call, couldn’t ask out to lunch. He said I had just as much right, just as much to say, and just as interesting a point of view as somebody who had been in the business for ten years. Ari read sixteen magazines every weekend and would tear out different articles, tack them with Post-its: “Put this CEO on my phone sheet, figure out how to get his number.” If Ari talked to the CEO of a major company, even someone completely unrelated to the entertainment industry, and if I was busy doing something else on his desk, he would snap his fingers and point at me, like, “Listen on the call. Pay attention.”

He might say, “I read about you over the weekend. I just started a new talent agency, and I think there are some things we could do. I’d love to take you to lunch.” It would be a two-minute conversation, and pretty easy for someone to say okay to. Even if lunch wasn’t for six months, Ari wouldn’t care. Once Ari got in the door, he’d be able to charm the pants off pretty much anybody. Ari has no fear, and that is so invaluable.

I worked five really tough months for Ari, and look back with the fondest of memories. Then it was time to move on. I
wanted
to go. Also, we had decided that every six months,
all
the assistants would change desks, in order to learn different sides of the business. Each of the partners had something valuable to teach.

I had always wanted to be in features, so I went to Tom Strickler’s desk.

Ari and Strickler are best friends. In some ways they’re exactly alike, and in some ways they’re completely different. They were both part of the Young Turks at ICM: good-looking, aggressive, powerful agents that everybody had their eyes on. Same age. Grew up together in the business. Disciplined. The differences: One is a Democrat, one’s a Republican. One is very people-oriented, one is very book-oriented. One is very book-smart, one isn’t.

Ari loved me, but that didn’t matter to Tom. Tom hated me, and he was very open about it. He didn’t know me, and he didn’t like that I was some random, Rick Rosen “I knew her from childhood” hire. He told me—and tells me still—“I didn’t like you and I wanted to get you fired. I used to tell Ari that I was going to make sure you got fired.”

He took me on, though.

STRICKLER: I did it with a sense of humor. I probably said, “It’s my job
to make sure you bomb out of here, because I don’t believe in you and
I’m going to prove it quickly.” She would smile and say, “Okay, go for
it.” Mind you, she loves telling that whole story.

Tom is one of the best teachers in the business. Where Ari was all big picture, Tom is meticulous with detail, incredibly anal. Ari can have shit all over his office—piled magazines, everything. Tom is completely immaculate. There are no loose papers on his desk. In fact, having a paperless office was his big thing. He doesn’t want anything in his in-box.

At that time all assistants’ desks were right outside the agents’ offices, and the agents’ offices were all glass, so you could see inside. The week before Tom’s assistant quit, he did something that pissed Tom off, so Tom moved the assistant’s desk inside his office. It’s the last thing an assistant wants, to be completely under a microscope. Outside, you can get away with the shit that falls through the cracks, the stuff you hope your boss will never remember. When I started I said, “So, now we’ll be moving the desk out?” I articulated every word clearly. Just as clearly he said, “No, I think I’m going to keep the desk in here, so you and I can be next to each other every day. I’ll be watching everything you do.”

“That isn’t fair,” I said. “I think it’ll be better because I’ll be able to communicate . . . ,” or whatever bullshit excuse I came up with.

“No. Every day it’ll be you and me, and I expect to see you at eight o’clock.”

Our chairs actually touched, on an angle. It was like an L. He had an architectural drawing table, with a really tall seat, and I was lower, so he could look down on everything I did.

Tom worked really, really hard. He said—and it’s something I hear myself saying now to my assistants—that he worked his ass off and he’d never ask me to work harder than him. By putting it that way, he made sure I could never feel like I was the one being put through the wringer. Who was I to complain?

Despite his declaration of hate, Tom and I immediately got into a very jokey, friendly relationship. Very quickly we started to go one-on-one with each other. It was all about who could be louder, who could be more obnoxious, who was going to strangle whom. At times it was a very physical, visceral kind of thing.

Tom would pull my hair if I was on a call. He’d kick my chair and whisper, “Who is that?” I could only give him the “Shut up, I’m trying to do work” look. He was so involved with my every move that it became suffocating. “Any paperwork? What is this? Why haven’t we got money on this?” He’d always try to unsettle me, on purpose, to see how I would handle it.

Tom is an intellectual. He tries to get into your head and manipulate you. When Ari tried it, I could see it coming; with Tom, there was much more stealth, in the sense that he would plant seeds and haunt you. He wouldn’t yell unless he got really pissed, and when he did it was really scary. A twenty-minute speech about why I’d disappointed him would leave me crushed.

All I did was work. Except for making friends with the other assistants, I didn’t date for two years. I lived at home because I couldn’t afford an apartment. After being out of the house for years, it was a major step backward. It was even impossible to exercise because I had to be at my desk at eight o’clock, period, and stay there until eight o’clock at night. At home, I read scripts and wrote coverage. Anyone would be spent.

Sometimes when I could muster the energy I’d go to assistant functions, usually on a Wednesday or Thursday night, at a local bar. There I’d befriend people from the other agencies, the studios, and producing houses. There’s a network of assistants who end up having more information than anybody, because they’re on their bosses’ every call. Assistants are powerful people. They hold the keys to their boss. They can drop you from the phone sheet. They can push forward something you need, or not.

My life was Tom and Ari’s life. They were dependent on me professionally and personally. I knew more about what was going on in their lives than they did. I used to wonder how they were able to live and not know what they were doing that night or that weekend. I used to think my life was so hard because I didn’t
have
a life, because I’d given up my life to make sure I could figure out how they could manage their lives. Then I realized that, as the agent, you give up your life for thirty clients’ lives. I had it easy. It only gets worse.

When I had been Tom’s assistant for about five months, he decided that he was going to put me through the wringer unlike anybody else.

Every weekend he would read scripts, and so would I. It wasn’t unusual to take home from eight to twelve scripts and to write about some of them, too. Then I’d have to pitch them to him in under two to three minutes each. That is the toughest thing to learn. It’s difficult enough to be concise about character and story, but Tom would call the office every morning at 8 A.M., giving me no time to go over stuff at lunch, and have me go through the whole list. If I started to ramble on, he’d say, “No, no, no. Give it to me in under two minutes. Start again. Go.” That would make me even more nervous, and of course I couldn’t go on. The scripts I couldn’t nail he’d save until Friday, about six-thirty at night, and say, “Okay, let’s talk about that one. Now pitch it to me.”