I Represent Sean Rosen (3 page)

There actually is a special show-business language. I've been learning it. Last year, my parents asked me what I wanted for Christmas, and I said a subscription to
The Hollywood Reporter
. I've been reading it every week.
The Hollywood Reporter
is a magazine about show business, the business part of it. It talks about movies and TV and music and games, sometimes theater and books. When you subscribe, you get it online and also a paper copy. I like the paper copy because when you read it in public, people in show business know you're in show business too. Actually, that hasn't happened yet. There aren't many people in show business where we live.

You might be wondering why someone named Sean Rosen is getting Christmas presents. Actually, my dad is Jewish and my mom is Catholic, and we celebrate everything, more or less.

“Hey, Sean!” It's my mom, yelling from the kitchen. “Telephone!”

Only one person ever calls me on the old-fashioned phone. Javier. His family moved here from Argentina last year. They still talk to their relatives there all the time, and I think when you make a call from here to Argentina (on a phone, not Skype), it's more expensive if you call a cell phone. I don't know for sure because I've never called Argentina. Anyway, Javier always calls me on the house phone.

I picked up the phone in my parents' room. That phone doesn't have a cord (the kitchen one does), so I could have brought it back to my room, but I like talking on the phone while I'm lying on my parents' bed. It's nice and big, and I can roll around.

Javier was calling to see if I want to play football. The first time he did that I actually went. I like him, and people don't ask me to play football very often. It turned out he meant soccer, which I like a tiny bit more than football. Javier says I could be good at it because I run pretty fast and my feet are sort of big. Unfortunately, I just don't like it that much.

Javier is still learning English, and I don't speak Spanish (I take French), but I like talking to him. It's kind of like a word game. Part of the game is figuring out what he's trying to say, because he doesn't know certain words or he mixes them up or he says them in the wrong order.

The other part of the game is figuring out how to say things in English so he'll know what I'm saying. It's fun, but when you're on the phone, not looking at each other, not able to act things out, it's like you're playing the same game but you jumped to a higher level.

I said to Javier, “Unfortunately, I cannot play football because I am working on a very important project.” I think it helps not to use contractions like “can't” or “I'm.”

My mom walked in just as I was getting up. I started smoothing the covers, but I can never get it to look like it does when she makes the bed. Neither can my dad. She started smoothing the covers herself. “Why don't you invite Javier for dinner?”

“He's playing soccer.”

“Then he'll be extra hungry.”

“Are we having fish again?”

“No, Sean. I got the message. But I bet Javier loves fish.”

I have no idea whether Javier loves or even likes fish, but anyway, I really want to get this agent thing taken care of. If we don't have a guest, dinner will be shorter and I can still make calls, because it's earlier in California, where most of the agents are.

On my way out I said, “Let's invite him another time. I have too much homework tonight.” I don't like lying to my mom, but I actually didn't. What I have to do
is
work, and I'm doing it at home.

After dinner (lasagna), I tried getting in touch with some other agents. None of them wanted to talk to me. None of them even spent as much time telling me no as Delilah did.

Maybe I gave up on managers without knowing enough about them. I spent a little more time on the internet doing research. You know, not just Wikipedia.

Actually, Wikipedia isn't a bad place to start. I know Wikipedia isn't the total truth, but who says an encyclopedia in a regular library is the total truth?

When I was young, I had to do a report on Brazil. In the encyclopedia in my school library, the article about Brazil was exactly three pages long. Two hundred million people live in Brazil. It's a huge country, just a little bit smaller than all fifty United States. It's been around a long time. Are there really only three pages' worth of things to say about Brazil? Are those three pages the total truth about Brazil? No.

Here's what I learned online. Agents get 10 percent of what you earn. So if a big entertainment company pays you 10 million dollars for your idea, your agent gets 1 million and you get nine. Managers get 15 percent. So if you have an agent and also a manager, out of that 10 million, you only get 7 1/2 million. For
your
idea. What do they even do?

According to what I read, agents and managers advise you. They negotiate the contract. They help guide your career. I guess I want those things. Even if I don't, I'm never going to get 10 million dollars from that big entertainment company for my idea if they won't even let me tell them what it is.

S
eventh grade. What can you say? There's a law that says I have to go, so I go. I try to make the best of it, but some days that's not possible. Like today. I didn't feel like being in school, and I especially didn't feel like going to French, so I went to the Publication Room to pretend to work on the e-yearbook. I'm one of the editors.

I'm having a problem with my French teacher. It's really bothering me because I like French a lot, and this is making me not like it.

I like French because it's like a secret code. You see the words on a page, and not one single word sounds the way it looks.
Renseignement
. That means information. You could look at
renseignement
for a million years and you would never guess how to pronounce it. Only people who know the code know how to say it and only people who know the code know what you mean.

My mom speaks French. Sort of. She learned it in high school. She was always a very good student, and she knows the right way to say every single letter of the alphabet in French. Unfortunately, she pronounces every letter of every word so perfectly that it never actually sounds like a person talking.

You wouldn't think so if you met him, but my dad also speaks French. I only found out last year. My mom told me that my dad's family lived in Paris for a year when he was a kid. My dad never speaks French anymore because it reminds him of his dad. I never met that grandfather. He died before I was born. My dad is still mad at him about something.

Anyway, I really like speaking French, and I used to like French class. Last year my teacher, Mademoiselle Fou, decided she wanted to put on a show at our school. She set up the auditorium stage like a French nightclub, and kids from her classes were waiters, entertainers, or regular French people at the nightclub. There was a big sign over the stage that said L
E
B
ISTRO
, which was the name of the nightclub and the name of the show.

She asked me to be the host because she said I have the best French accent in the school. I ended up spending a lot of time working on that show, and after a while it felt like too much time. Mademoiselle Fou is one of those teachers who tries to be friends with students. It's fun at first, then it isn't.

The real reason she did
Le Bistro
is that she likes to sing. She kept saying she was channeling Edith Piaf, a French singer who had a terrible life. I'm not sure what channeling is and none of us ever heard of Edith Piaf, but listening to Mademoiselle Fou sing songs in French at every rehearsal was giving
me
a terrible life.

I kept trying to help Mademoiselle Fou make the show better or even just shorter, but each time I made a suggestion, she would pat me on the head and say,
“Non, chéri.”
(“No, sweetheart.”)

The best thing about
Le Bistro
was meeting my friend Brianna. She was in Mademoiselle Fou's other French class. For
Le Bistro
, Brianna thought up her own character, Dominique, a famous Paris fashion model. Every ten minutes during the show, the paparazzi (sixth graders) started flashing their cameras, and Dominique model-walked across the stage wearing sunglasses and different clothes. Then Mademoiselle Fou would come out and sing one more long song in French.

Here's some advice. If you don't like a show, don't tell the people in it that you liked it, or you'll probably have to sit through another one. People were really bored at
Le Bistro
last year, but everyone told Mademoiselle Fou it was good because they didn't know what else to say.

So of course there's going to be another
Le Bistro
this year. Brianna is going to New York next week to shop for outfits. I told Mademoiselle Fou I'm not going to do it this year. She didn't believe me for a long time, but now that she does, she's really mad.

She never calls on me in class, even when no one else knows the answer. She mostly stopped looking at me, which is good, because when she
does
, it's like I kicked her dog. She doesn't actually have a dog.

When I got to the Publication Room, there was no one else there, so I didn't have to pretend to work on the yearbook. I tried to figure out what to do about French. It's depressing. I decided to think about my career instead.

That's a little depressing too. Nothing is happening.

M
anagers don't have websites. Maybe they don't want people bothering them. People like me, I mean. Kind of like the agents. If you're not already famous, they're not going to try to make you famous.

I had to learn about managers from other websites. That's how I picked the manager I want. He manages Gina Gillespie (not her real name), an actress who is really, really good. She's completely different in each movie she's in. She's in a lot of movies, but she's not super-famous. Maybe because each time you see her, you think you never saw her before.

Maybe it's good that she's not so famous. Because then you'd know all this extra stuff about her real life. And the next time you see her in a movie, you'll be thinking about all that extra stuff. She won't seem like a new character anymore. Just that actress who's the girlfriend of so-and-so. So I guess what I like about her manager is that Gina Gillespie keeps being in movies, and we don't know whose girlfriend she is.

I think about being famous. A lot, actually. There are some good things about it. If you're famous, you get to meet other famous people. It's like a big, fun club. It doesn't matter what you're famous for. You can automatically meet any other famous person you want to meet.

Look! There's a picture of the President, a football player, and a beautiful movie star. They're laughing together, with their arms around each other. What are they laughing at? What do they talk about when they're together? Being famous?

There are famous people I'd like to meet. I think. I've never met a famous person, so I don't actually know. I might want to wait until I'm famous myself. Because what could I say to them that wouldn't sound exactly the same as what everyone else who isn't famous says to them?

Maybe this manager can help me get the exact right amount of fame. And if I only have a manager, and not both an agent and a manager, I'll end up with 8 1/2 million out of the 10 million dollars for my idea. By the way, 10 million dollars is just a number I made up. I actually think my idea is worth much more than that.

So far, a letter didn't work and neither did phone calls, so this time I decided to try an e-mail. I don't use e-mail much. My grandmothers like it. They write these really long e-mails. You can tell that they're just kind of talking into the e-mail, and thinking that when I get it, I'll sit down and read the whole thing. I try to, but I always get distracted somewhere in the second or third paragraph.

I used to just stop when I got bored, but my grandmothers always ask me questions about things they say in their e-mails. So now I make myself read the whole thing, even it takes five tries.

And they have these crazy e-mail addresses. My mom's mom is Mary Lou. Her e-mail address is MaryWho@______.com. My dad's mom is ThornyRosen@______.com. I think they think they're funny.

Martin Manager (not his real name) doesn't have a website. I looked for him on Facebook. I thought I'd recognize him because I saw a picture of him online with Gina Gillespie. He looks a little older than my parents.

One of the reasons I don't go on Facebook very often is that my one grandmother (Thorny) is constantly posting things. She's always mad about something, and we're all supposed to sign a petition or write a letter to complain. Or else she tells you really personal things. It's embarrassing. But maybe she thinks my podcasts are embarrassing.

Martin Manager isn't on Facebook. I used an online directory and got a phone number. I took a chance that it was actually him, and that it was his office and not his house. I called and asked for his e-mail address, and the guy who answered gave it to me. He probably thought I was a woman producer.

Dear Martin Manager,

I don't know you, but from what I read about you, I like the way you do things. I think you're doing an excellent job with Gina Gillespie.