Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman (32 page)

But the Scumbag Squad’s tactics got to me; I
did
feel like a loser turncoat. So I only asked for one year’s salary. The HR woman scoffed, but said she’d get back to me on Monday. When she faxed me Lilly’s offer, they hadn’t budged—it was still only four months. Patrick Sweeney and several pals who had graduated from law school but don’t practice kept pumping me up. “Fuck ’em, Reidy! Don’t give in! Make ’em pay through the nose!”

Alone and hung over on a Saturday afternoon… the doubts took hold.
Am I a total scumbag? Should I just walk away and not cause Lilly any problems?
Awash in self-loathing, I cracked. I dialed the number on the HR woman’s card; I was ready to accept their deal.

I got her work voice mail. Of course she wasn’t at the office on a Saturday afternoon. Had she given me her cell number, I would’ve gotten her on the phone and told her I’d take their deal. Can you hear that gigantic whooooshing sound? That’s the “Whew!” I let fly every time I think how close I came to giving in.

On Monday morning, I called my father. He could tell I was nervous about the whole thing and was still wavering. Rich Reidy didn’t hesitate. “They’re screwing you over. You can always get another job. You’re Jamie Reidy!”

The HR woman called at the appointed time. She said the higher-ups had declined my counteroffer. Either I took the $34K, or I left them no choice but to can me. My mouth dried out. Sweat sprang from my forehead. I cleared my throat.

“Then I guess you’re firing me.”

She didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “Jamie, are you sure you want to do this? Everyone will know you got
fired.”

I paced around my room, my head pounding.

“I’m sure.” I could almost hear her shrug. And that was it.

I sat down on the floor. I blinked a lot.
WTF? I’m Jamie Reidy. People like me. I don’t get fired, I get
hired! I took a few deep breaths.

Then I picked up the phone and called the Associated Press.

On Tuesday, March 29, the AP put a story on the wire with the following headline: Lilly Fires Ex-Pfizer Rep over Book. If I had tried—really put my mind to it—I could not have come up with a better headline. That article appeared in almost every paper in the country. And I appeared live on CNBC’s
Power Lunch
that day.

The results were immediate; the book skyrocketed up Amazon’s rankings. The peak I saw was #71, but my friend Matt Smith spotted it at #57, which was higher, he pointed out in an e-mail, “than that book about bees that every chick has!” Matt added, “You just became a funnier
and more attractive man.”

I exited the CNBC studios on a high. My cell phone blew up with congratulatory calls and texts. Several friends inside Lilly HQ called, whispering their messages. All of them basically said the same thing:
Nobody is working! Everybody in this building watched your interview and now keeps talking about it. Everyone wants to know, “How much did this asshole want? Why didn’t we just pay him to go away?”
Pfizer issued a one-sentence statement and simply repeated it over and over. “We don’t know if this book belongs in the fiction or nonfiction section of the bookstore.”

Funny, dismissive, brief. And totally brilliant. When a reporter read that quote to me, I thought,
I’m screwed.

And then Eli Lilly’s spokesman Philip Belt started talking, and he simply wouldn’t stop. Belt repeatedly bad-mouthed me to the press with a personal tone so vitriolic I had to double-check to make sure I hadn’t ever dated his wife, sister, or daughter. My mother became upset at the negative light in which Belt portrayed me. That made me angry.

Until a reporter told me, “This guy is making you money!”
Uh, excuse me?
“Pfizer handled this the right way: Issue one comment, let it blow over. This Lilly guy keeps throwing gas on a dying fire. If he’d just shut up, the media wouldn’t care anymore. But because he keeps saying things about you, it makes us think there’s more to the story.”

I appeared four more times on CNBC, once on CNN, and twice more in the
New York Times.
Thank you, Phil Belt!

In June 2005, I spoke with Charles Randolph, a screenwriter (
The Interpreter)
who wanted to adapt
Hard Sell
into a movie. We hit it off, and I liked his ideas, so Charles became “attached” to the project as a writer-producer.

Charles made the rounds of Hollywood pitching his vision for the movie. Megaproducers Scott Stuber (
The Break-Up, Role Models)
and Mary Parent (now the chairperson of MGM) immediately snatched up the rights, changing my life forever.

In mid-2008, the project got a huge boost when A-list director (
About Last Night, Glory, Blood Diamond)
and Oscar-winning producer (
Shakespeare in Love, Traffic)
Ed Zwick came on board to direct. Now all we needed was somebody to play me.

My always-supportive friend Maureen—2009 Cresskill High School teacher of the year—called to mention, “Danny DeVito is available.”

In June 2009, I got an e-mail from my sister-in-law Clare. She demanded to know why I hadn’t told her that Jake Gyllenhaal had signed on to play “Jamie” in the movie, now titled
Love and Other Drugs.
Clare had heard from a friend who had learned the news from
perezhilton.com
. It was more than a little embarrassing to explain
that while I knew Jake was in negotiations to take the role, none of the producers had let me know the big news. That’s me—always in the loop!

My guy friends were much more excited to learn that Anne Hathaway would be playing “my” girlfriend in the movie.

By the way, there is
no
truth to the rumor started by some Notre Dame friends that Jake had to shave his head to play me. I had hair when I was twenty-eight, damn it! FYI: Jake does have dreamy hair.

On Friday, September 17, 2009—aka The Greatest Day of My Life—Ed Zwick yelled “Action!” on the set of
Love and Other Drugs.
This meant two things: (1) my name would be immortalized on screen by an Oscar-nominated actor, and (2) I just cashed the largest check of my life.

The resulting sigh of relief emanating from my parents’ home in New York registered on Richter scales in Southern California. My father told me, “I dunno what your mother is gonna do with all this newfound time on her hands, now that she doesn’t have to go to Mass every day to pray for this movie to get made!”

In October, the producers flew me to the set in Pittsburgh—thank you, Pieter Jan Brugge!—for what became the best five days of my life. And there wasn’t even any drinking involved.

Throughout the week, crewmembers pulled me aside to tell me, “You know that
this
doesn’t happen, right?”
They’d wave their arms in the direction of Jake dressed as a drug rep, implying,
You know that people don’t write nice little books that nobody ever heard of, and then have those books turn into major motion pictures starring one of the acting giants of his generation as you, right?
“You know how lucky you are?”

I did. And I do. Sometimes I still can’t believe this is happening to me. It might not even sink in until I’m walking down the red carpet, the flashbulbs reflecting off my bald head blinding all of Jake’s fans.

Fox 2000 has scheduled the premiere of
Love and Other Drugs
for November 24, 2010. When a nobody author sells the movie rights to his book, the contract stipulates that he only gets two tickets to the premiere. Like I said earlier, I’m taking my mother. And praying I can schmooze my way into a bunch more tickets for my brother, sister, sister-in-law, girlfriend, lawyers, agent, etc.

Studios are notoriously tight with premiere tickets. This is gonna take some serious selling on my part.

Think I still got it?

Notre Dame grad and former U.S. Army officer Jamie Reidy “carried the bag” for Pfizer from 1995 to 2000, and he described his experiences in
Hard Sell
. He has since published
Bachelor 101: Cooking + Cleaning = Closing
, a cookbook and lifestyle guide for idiot single guys just like him. He lives in Manhattan Beach, California, where he writes screenplays. Now he needs to start selling them.