The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up (34 page)

What I try to give to trainees today is an understanding of the business and what it means to have power. There are two kinds of power. Your primary power is your character and your integrity. Your secondary power is your learned skills: your people skills, what you do to make a living, what you learned in college, what you’ve learned in dealing with other people. You must, in order to be totally successful, have control of both sets of power.

If I ask the question “What does it mean to be thoughtfully political?” the answer, other than “Being kind,” is “To think.” Think about what you want. Then think about the people who are going to help get it for you. Then be political and figure out how to make those people happy about giving you what you want. That’s what it’s always been about for me. If you can do that, you can do anything. That is the whole secret to Sam Haskell.

I don’t believe in the pursuit of power. When it is earned and deserved, it’s just there. It’s just got to happen as the result of other actions that you take. Whatever power I have is only because I’ve lived my life the right way, I’ve worked hard, I’ve had character and integrity in everything I do.

I didn’t get into this business to get rich, not that I mind making a good living. I’m in it for the relationships with people I admire and to be able to help people with talent whom I dearly love.

The mailroom reinforced what I believe about life more than it changed me. I make things happen in my life. I planned who I was going to marry. I planned what job I was going to get. I planned which clients I would represent. I plan which charities I’m involved in. I work it all out in my mind, thoughtfully, politically, about how I can make things happen for me and, at the same time, make everybody happy about it.

ROB CARLSON:
When I got into William Morris, I was interested in motion pictures, but a number of people said it was much harder to get promoted in motion pictures. So I made up my mind on day one to be in TV packaging or TV lit. It was the smartest thing I ever did. And by telling everyone I wanted to be in TV, I declared my major. A lot of people don’t and seem wishy-washy.

After three months in the mailroom I graduated to Dispatch. I’d been there a week and a half when I walked by Bob Crestani’s office. He called me in and said, “I’m going to tell you something, but if you tell anybody I told you, I’ll deny it. Sam Haskell’s desk is opening up, and I think you’d be perfect for it. Get over there and see Sam right now.”

I had seen Sam in the hallway and said hello, but I could never get in his office because his assistant made it difficult. Still, I went right over. This time I got in. He said, “It’s good that you’re seeing me, because I may have an opening on my desk. The problem is, you’ve been in Dispatch for only a week and a half. You’ve got to be down there a month before you’re eligible to interview for a desk. . . . But we’ll figure out something.”

A week later Sam announced his desk was available. Everybody went for it because everybody was desperate to get out of Dispatch. In the end it came down to me and this other guy. Part of Sam’s decision was based on a typing test he made everyone take. We had sixty seconds to write Angela Lansbury a congratulatory note for her Emmy nomination for
Murder, She Wrote
. Sam proofread it for mistakes and how clever we were.

I was very lucky to work for Sam. He never asked me to do anything personal, like pick up his dry cleaning. When he went home to Mississippi for two weeks, he gave me and my girlfriend his house. It happened to be over Thanksgiving, and I said, “Sam, I can’t house-sit for you, her relatives are coming.”

“Bring them all over!”

He stocked the house with food. I drove him and his family to the airport, and he let me keep the car for the week and drive it.

Sam was probably the nicest guy you could ever work for. And it rubbed off. When I had his desk, anyone who wanted to see Sam would get in. I wasn’t afraid of their trying to take my job. In fact, I wanted them to take it, because I wanted to be promoted. I’d tell mailroom kids, “Read this stuff, then you can go in and talk to him. Don’t just go in there with, ‘Hey, Sam, I really like the new Ann Jillian show you put together.’ Have something to talk about.”

The training program altered my definition of what an agent was. Just from what I’d read or seen in movies I had this preconceived notion that agents were not always the nicest people and not always aboveboard, especially successful ones. Sam was from the South, he was supernice. I hate to say this, but at the time I wasn’t sure he was going to be a great agent.

But the total opposite was true. Because of his attitude and his personality, his ethics and his family values, he turned out to be probably the best agent in that building, and he did it by being different from everybody else. That was the biggest surprise for me: that you could be that great a person and still be amazing at your job. You didn’t have to be a jerk. You didn’t have to treat people like shit. You didn’t have to treat your assistants terribly. Every night Sam would walk out, and no matter how bad a day we’d had, or if I’d fucked up, he’d say, “Rob, thank you very much, my friend. I appreciate it. Have a good night. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Every night. It’s something I do to this day. When you’re sitting behind that assistant’s desk, not making anything, getting beat up all day long by clients and others, it’s nice to have somebody who cares and understands what you’re going through. I had it and I want to pass it on.

SAM HASKELL
is executive vice president, worldwide head of television, for the William Morris Agency. He’s been with the company for twenty-three years.

ROB CARLSON
is a senior vice president and head of the Motion Picture Literary and Directors Department at the William Morris Agency.

IF I DO SAY SO MYSELF

William Morris Agency, New York, 1979

JEREMY ZIMMER

People
around
the
office
felt
I
was
a
guy
who
would
make
it.
I
shared
that
opinion.

—Jeremy Zimmer

The way I ended up in the mailroom is a great story, if I do say so myself.

I come from a showbiz family, but by the time I was conscious of life, my grandfather, the producer Dore Schary, had long since left Hollywood and was living in New York City.

I dropped out of college. I actually flunked out; I had one semester on the dean’s list and then two semesters when I just didn’t go to school. I was too busy: I ran a couple of parking lots and valet stations around Boston and was also an attendant. I did pretty well. Then, in an attempted robbery, I got stabbed in the chest, a centimeter below my heart. Still have the scar. I was hospitalized for several weeks, then taken to my mom’s house in Connecticut to recuperate. That’s when I finally had time to think about my life and realize I had no idea what I wanted to do with it.

Going back to school didn’t appeal to me. I was eighteen, nineteen. Distracted. It’s not too hard to figure out by what. It
wasn’t
art collecting. Girls, psychedelics, other recreational pastimes. I also didn’t want to go back to the parking lot. The money was good, but I was scared. And it was not a great way of life, sucking exhaust fumes for hours in the heat. I knew that wasn’t how a nice Jewish boy should spend the rest of his life.

During my convalescence my grandfather called and said, “Are you ready to get serious?”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean,” he said, “is that you’re a complete fuckup. Are you ready to get with the program?”

“Absolutely.” I respected him, and I could tell
he
was dead serious.

“Great,” he said. “Then, you’ll go into New York City and meet a man named Nat Lefkowitz at the William Morris Agency. You’ll wear a suit and tie and be very polite.”

“Yes, sir.”

Nat Lefkowitz was a rather small fellow and was difficult to understand because he mumbled. Today I can’t remember a word spoken in that interview. But I had on my game face. There was only one bit of a fudge involved—I don’t know to what degree I lied and to what degree we all looked the other way. I hadn’t graduated from college, a prerequisite of the program. I may have said, “Yeah, I went to BU,” but I didn’t
really
answer the question.

I interviewed with Steve Pinkus, who, it turned out, was Lefkowitz’s son-in-law. Pinkus’s biggest client at the time was Secretariat, the race-horse. There was a big picture of the stallion on his wall. I didn’t know what he did as the horse’s agent, but Pinkus had a big office, so he must have been doing something. Then I met with Ed Khouri; he actually hired me, but it was already a fait accompli.

As I’d walked through the thirty-third floor for the interview, my impression of the agency had been, Wow! This is nice. The day I started work, my opinion changed. I went to the thirtieth floor. There was no carpet. The hallway was dimly lit. I walked the length of it, heard the clatter of machines, saw some trash, turned right at the last door. There was the mailroom.

My grandfather had told me, “When you first walk in, step over the threshold with your left foot. It’s good luck.” I did as he told me, only to have some guy who could only be defined as crusty but lovable, sort of a Lou Grant with a more florid complexion, come forward and say, “Huh. So you’re the new Chinaman?” His name was Ray Wilson, a retired fireman. He ran the mailroom. I presume by “Chinaman,” Ray meant I was the new guy who was going to come in and work his butt off for next to nothing.

He said, “Okay, here’s what I want you to do. Take off your jacket.” I took off my jacket. He handed me a stack of packages. “Okay, first go to Fifty-third and Seventh and drop this off. Then to Fiftieth and Sixth and drop this. Then take the uptown train . . .”

Ovid Odil and Roberto Tamayo—two professionals—also helped run the mailroom. Ovid was a crazy, drunken Jamaican who would send you down to the liquor store to buy him a two-dollar bottle of wine. Roberto Tamayo would watch the hot-shit Jewish kids come in and out, and two years later be delivering
their
mail. We had to “agent” Ray Wilson and Ed Khouri, but not Ovid and Roberto because they were cool. They just wanted to have fun every day, like us.

As tough as it sometimes was, the minute I walked into the mailroom, I felt like a duck in water. I knew where I was and how to operate. It felt completely comfortable. The work was hard, tedious, frustrating, but there wasn’t a moment of, “Oh, my God, I don’t know how to do this.” I got it. I was around the best agents, I understood what they did—and more, that
I
could do it. I learned osmotically. I absorbed a great deal.

The mailroom was competitive, but I didn’t really notice. If you’re strung the way I am, and the way most successful agents are, you make a competition out of going to the grocery store. To me it felt natural. Now I’m calmer, but I used to have a reputation as a wild man. I used to be, um . . . highly aggressive.

I was in the mailroom less than six months. Originally I wanted to be a book agent, but the people in the Literary Department were reluctant to give me that opportunity, primarily because my mother, Jill Robinson, was an author and was represented by a competitor. They were afraid I’d steal secrets and give them to her agent. At least that’s what Owen Laster, who ran the department, told me. But Owen also took me under his wing and tried to help me. I finally got the opportunity to work in the department on a trial basis, for a woman named Joan Stewart. I sat at that desk and in a week got only fifteen or twenty phone calls. A few were from her husband, a couple were from Tiffany’s. I knew I could never work in publishing. I’d go out of my skull from boredom.

Then a shared desk working for Fred Milstein and George Lane opened in the Motion Picture Division. During my interview I noticed Milstein’s chair was broken. The ball bearings were out, and I watched him roll around uncomfortably. When he went to lunch, I went to the mailroom, took apart a chair in the supply area, extracted the ball bearings, went upstairs, and put the ball bearings in Fred’s chair. I left him a little note: “I fixed your chair.” He hired me.

Owen Laster’s assistant, Robert Gottlieb, wanted to be my mentor and my friend. He’d ask me to meet him for lunch; we’d walk around the Central Park Zoo and eat peanuts, and he’d tell me all about how the business worked. It was nice, but he didn’t really have what I wanted. It was 1979 in New York City. I was out every night. Drugs were good for you; so was sex. You didn’t die from either. Disco was cool and punk was just starting. You could do anything. Gottlieb had a different life. He was definitely a nice guy, but he was married, and we were too dissimilar for anything to take hold then.

Gottlieb was the definition of a Morris man. To me, then, it meant a guy who wasn’t destined to really make it. What the agency liked, traditionally, was a guy who looked like he would be happiest being there for fifty years. I once said—and I regret having said it—that at the Morris office you could die at your desk and they’d still keep handing you a check. If you had a lot of style and flair, it made them nervous. If you were too ambitious, they were, like, “That’s not how we do it here.”