The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up (35 page)

Gottlieb, of course, did make it. Before he finally quit not long ago to start his own agency, he very successfully ran the book department, made it to the William Morris board, and achieved major status. At the time, though, I would have shot myself rather than have his life.

Marty Bauer was my first mentor, a terrific agent at William Morris, and a good friend. I spent two years with him as a junior agent, just sitting in his office, listening to him on the phone, and working with his clients. Marty and I fit. But that’s as far as it went. I still didn’t feel like a Morris man. The bureaucracy and the people not doing things the way I wanted them to was too frustrating.

A few years later I came to Los Angeles and worked with Jeff Berg at ICM. Berg is a brilliant guy and a good signer. At the time he represented Bernardo Bertolucci, John Foreman, James Brooks, John Hughes, Michael Mann, Ridley Scott: an unbelievable list. To see him in a room, the way he communicated, his ability to reference a contemporary piece of material and relate it to a classic, was beautiful. His was a fully integrated understanding of the arts and the business, and the psychology of people, and way beyond how the Hollywood game is typically played.

Here’s what I learned. Agenting is “I’m going to sell this. I’m going to sell it, I’m going to sell it, I’m going to sell it!” And yet you’re never
selling,
you’re seducing. That’s this job, this way of life,
all of the time
. It’s never overt. It’s never, “I want you to buy this.” It’s always, “Gosh, I read this script the other day. Yeah, I’m talking to Columbia about it. Oh, would you like to read it? Sure, we can send it along.”

Today I’m a partner at UTA. For some time I ran the training program. I got a lot of satisfaction because it’s the lifeblood of what we do. The irony is that I never went to college, yet in a prospective trainee a good alma mater will definitely get my attention. However, a weak résumé will be overcome by a good interview. The characteristics of a good interview generally include energy, somebody who can make me laugh, who knows something about what I’m doing, who knows something about my company, who attempts to make an impression, or who’s honest. Kids come in and say, “I want to be an agent. I’ve
always
wanted to be an agent. I’ve wanted to be in the entertainment business since I was eleven years old.” I don’t necessarily believe them unless they can tell me specific things about my business to convince me they’re interested in it enough at least to have researched it. I’d rather somebody said, “Hey, I want the job, but I’m scared to death.”

I like that. I don’t like being bullshitted. On second thought, I don’t like being bullshitted badly; I like being bullshitted well.

JEREMY ZIMMER
is a partner, board member, and legend at the United Talent Agency.

PRESSURE, PRESSURE, PRESSURE

OUR JOB IS TO SAY YES

Creative Artists Agency, Los Angeles, 1982

JUDY HOFFLUND

Judy Hofflund was the first woman in the CAA mailroom.

I was the weird one who went to the movies by myself because I couldn’t get anyone to go with me often enough. I saw movies four nights a week, probably, all through high school and college.

I grew up in Encino, went to an all-girls Catholic school in Wood-land Hills, and graduated in 1975. At UCLA I majored in psychobiology. Studying the brain interested me, the woo-woo psychology didn’t. I thought about being a lawyer, but by my junior year the law had become too trendy. I stuck with psychobiology and graduated magna cum laude in 1979.

I wanted to move to Europe for a year. Instead I landed in New York, and I fell into a job at a tiny company, working for two women producers. Until then I had never seen the entertainment business as a business. It seemed, well . . . fun. But I wanted to be in it in a bigger way.

I came back to Los Angeles, stayed with my parents. A guy who lived two doors down had a small literary agency in Century City. He said, “Why don’t you be my assistant? I’ll teach you what it’s about.” Mostly it was a terrible job. He constantly told me how awful I was and how I would never be promoted. In other words, he was an asshole. I also think he was hitting on me. Pretty soon I’d had enough. But one good thing came of it. While reading the trades, I noticed that sometimes an agency called CAA would run huge ads announcing that they had signed some big star. I knew my then-roommate, and still best friend, was dating a CAA client. I wangled an interview. What I didn’t know was that there had never been a woman in the CAA mailroom.

I met with Ray Kurtzman. I said, “Look, I will wash windows and wax floors. I’ll wash cars. But I need to come in as a trainee, not a secretary. I need you guys to know that I’m going to prove to you that I’ll go the distance. You may decide that I can’t, and that’s okay, but I need the chance.”

Ray was discouraging in his curmudgeonly way. He said, “You don’t really want this job. We pay you nothing. We make you work terrible hours.” He was also asking himself—and struggling with—these questions: Can a woman deliver heavy film cans to a client at ten o’clock on a Friday night for a Saturday screening? Can a woman really go to questionable areas of town to deliver things at night? The idea that being a woman might be an issue never entered my mind.

Midway through my meeting with Ray he said, “Excuse me,” and went to get Ron Meyer. I didn’t know who he was except that he was charming and I really liked him. That Kurtzman brought him in signaled to me that the interview was at least going well. We talked more and they both smiled at me. I said I didn’t want to interview anywhere else. I really had my sights set on CAA. Kurtzman said they didn’t have an opening at the moment but might soon. I walked out convinced they would hire me. I wrote a follow-up letter and reiterated my interest.

They didn’t hire me.

I was disappointed but didn’t want to dwell on it. I called a friend who owned a restaurant in New York and said, “I can’t be a waitress in Los Angeles, but I need to work. Can I work for you?” I slept on the floor of a girlfriend’s apartment, and I worked at the restaurant for a while.

One night a guy from Paramount TV, one of my few friends in the business, called me. He said it was that time in New York when the networks picked their new series. Everyone was in town. Paramount—and this is really going to date me—was having a party at the Algonquin Hotel to celebrate the final season of
Mork and Mindy
. He asked if I wanted to go.

I was in heaven. At one point I went into the bathroom and wrote down the names Rowland Perkins and Mike Rosenfeld. They were CAA TV agents at the party. I planned to send them letters telling them how much I still wanted to work at CAA. When I came out, I noticed a guy across the room staring at me. I smiled and he came over and introduced himself. “I feel like we’ve met before,” he said. “I’m Mike Ovitz.”

I shook his hand, and instantly all my enthusiasm spilled out of my mouth. I told him how CAA was the only place I wanted to work, that it was an incredible company, that I’d read all this stuff. I had done a little homework, reading every magazine and newspaper article that had been written about these guys, so I knew a bit about what was happening at CAA. We got into a pretty lengthy conversation.

Mike was as excited about everything as I was. He was energized and brimming over with confidence. I was rapt, the kind of innocent person he could be enthusiastic around. Even as the party thinned we were still talking in a corner. He seemed like a normal guy.

At the end he asked for my phone number in New York. He said, “You’ll hear from us,” then, “Good-bye.” I don’t remember the exact sequence of events, but very soon afterward Ray Kurtzman called and said, “Can you start tomorrow?”

It was a Sunday night. I packed up fast, took the red-eye out, and started work at CAA that Monday.

On my first day I realized I was the only woman in the mailroom. It was awkward. Mike Wilson, a TV agent, had a really long phone cord, so he could literally pace the hallway outside his office. I walked by carrying a bunch of scripts, and he yelled, “Hey! Are you the mailroom girl?” Everybody could hear. I was embarrassed. Occasionally I encountered the “Let’s not ask Judy to do that” stuff—say, if a typewriter needed to be moved. But the typewriter wasn’t that heavy. Otherwise, I didn’t pay attention to being “the” woman and was determined simply to do the job. I think the bosses told the guys I wasn’t supposed to do night runs, but I convinced them I’d be okay. Everyone would have hated me if I were the only one going home at eight o’clock without having something to deliver to a faraway location. Today being the first may forever be part of my bio, but it’s embarrassing.

The very first mailroom job—always given to the lowest person—was the Century City delivery run. Eric Carlson took me out on Century Park East and started pointing out where everything was: the law firms, Johnny Carson Productions in the Twin Towers, where to pick up the overnight ratings first thing in the morning. Right then Mike Ovitz drove up in his black Ferrari and turned into the parking structure. My first thought was, Here’s the guy who, three nights ago, I spent so much time with, and he was so fantastic, so charismatic and interesting, and smart and passionate. So I went, “Mike! Hi!” and waved. Eric was shocked. “Do you
know
him?” I said, “Well, I met him.” Mike gave me a cursory glance, so cursory that it surprised me. I didn’t believe I had some special bond with him, but whatever had happened in New York was gone. Just gone [
laughs
].

When I got promoted to head of the mailroom, my speech to the people who worked under me was simple: “Our job is to say yes.”

The day I found out I was being promoted to assistant, they didn’t say who I’d be working for. Then I got called into Ron Meyer’s office. He said, “So, I wondered if you’d like to work with me?” I was excited and delighted. He’d never had a trainee.

Ron’s secretary, Linda Mentor, did most of his personal stuff. I made phone calls with him all day long. I did it for another nine months. I learned a tremendous amount from Ron: how to be decent, to tell the truth, to treat people well, to return phone calls.

Lots of people think the agenting business is like that movie with Kevin Spacey and Frank Whaley,
Swimming with Sharks
. That’s not my personal experience. Ron was the exact opposite of the Kevin Spacey character in
Swimming with Sharks
. Ron was also the pacifier. He was always the one to make everything okay. He’d be embarrassed to ask me to go to the shirtmaker to pick up his shirts. He’d ask so sweetly, and I would do anything. But Ron could also be very tough; God forbid a name was left off the phone sheet and someone didn’t get a return call. Then it was brutal. He would remind me for days, “Did you forget anyone today?”

I really loved working at CAA. They were really good to me. But I also realized, early on, that I wasn’t a very good employee. I didn’t like people telling me what to do. When I was twenty-nine, I left CAA to form my own agency, InterTalent.

JUDY HOFFLUND went on to form InterTalent Agency, part of which later merged with UTA, where she ran the Talent Department. She is now one of two owners of Hofflund/Polone, a management/production company representing clients such as Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh, Sally Field, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Alan Rickman.

FOR THE LOVE OF MIKE: ASSISTING MICHAEL OVITZ

Creative Artists Agency, Los Angeles, 1982–1983

STUART GRIFFEN, 1982 • DAVID “DOC” O’CONNOR, 1983

STUART GRIFFEN:
My dad died when I was fifteen. He was a school principal. My mother was a psychotherapist. I told them I wanted to be in the music business, but they wanted me to go to college. I won: I dropped out when I had only five classes left. But after trying the music business for a few years—and making a six-figure salary—I realized it wasn’t for me. Instead I got a job with Irwin Winkler, who was in New York making a movie called
Author! Author!
I drove him around in a Lincoln Town Car. The salary was $250 a week. Irwin had gone through the William Morris mailroom, and when the movie wrapped, he suggested I come to California and do the same. We set up interviews at CAA, ICM, and William Morris, and he let me stay in his guest house.

I met Jeff Berg at ICM on March 5, 1982, the day that John Belushi died. Berg was kind of distracted, and the ICM training program wasn’t really set up at that point. Norman Brokaw at William Morris was a ridiculous interview. A little guy sitting behind a big desk, he epitomized the old guard. He wore presidential cuff links because he represented Gerald Ford. He talked about himself the whole time, and I had maybe three or five minutes to say something. He asked me, “Do you know who Lynda Carter is? She’s in the next office; we’re just signing her to a ten-million-dollar deal.” I was, like, Who wants Wonder Woman? I want Bill Murray.

When I met with Ray Kurtzman at CAA, the big question was “What do you want to be?” If you said a producer or a director, they wouldn’t hire you. I knew to say “Agent,” even though I saw the agency business as a means to an end. Ray sent me to meet Ronnie Meyer, who was great friends with Irwin. They hired me.

My mailroom class included Tony Krantz, Mark Rossen, and Judy Hofflund, who was the first woman trainee hired by the company. She was a bulldog. Cute, and she knew it. Nice, but very focused. There was a lot of infighting—not in a bad way—but you knew you had to watch your back. I was this older New York guy who didn’t have to worry so much about money, who knew the game before he got there. My go-getter attitude scared some people.