The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up (30 page)

Yet in my dreams I would always hear Abe Lastfogel telling me, “This is my family.” That scared the shit out of me.

BRUCE BROWN
founded the Bruce Brown Agency, handling literary and talent.

ALAN IEZMAN
is owner and president of Shelter Entertainment, a management/production company in Beverly Hills.

JACK RAPKE is a partner in ImageMovers, a film and TV production company affiliated with DreamWorks SKG. His productions include Cast
Away
and
What Lies Beneath
.

DENNIS BRODY
is a theatrical talent manager and runs Dennis Brody Management.

ALAN SOMERS
is a founding partner of Pure Arts, an entertainment management company, and its production company, Pure Fiction.

GARY RANDALL
runs Grand Productions. He is a producer under contract to Universal Television and a director. For years he co–executive produced the series
Any Day Now
for the Lifetime cable network.

CHUCK BINDER
is president of Binder and Associates, a management/ production company.

SHELLEY BAUMSTEN WAGERS:
Since fleeing the entertainment industry, she has served as investor relations officer and vice president of corporate communications for a NYSE-listed technology company. She is happily married to a Presbyterian farm boy–scientist–investor.

RICHARD MARKS
is a vice president of business affairs at NBC in Burbank, California.

BOB CRESTANI
gave up his job as worldwide head of television, executive vice president and member of the William Morris board of directors in 1995 to become a media entrepreneur. He is currently CEO of Inter-Content Group. He invests in and builds ventures for cable and new media.

GARY LUCCHESI
is president of Lakeshore Entertainment, a highly successful film production company based in Los Angeles.

THE GUINEA PIG

Creative Artists Agency, Los Angeles, 1976

MICHAEL MENCHEL

Menchel was the first regular mailroom employee hired at CAA.

I grew up outside of Philadelphia. My parents got divorced when I was a sophomore at American University in Washington, D.C., and I decided to use that as an impetus to change my life. In 1974 I packed everything in my Datsun 240-Z and drove to San Diego.

Not long after, my sister, Susie, moved to Los Angeles. One day she asked me to come to an afternoon gathering at Stockard Channing’s house in Beverly Hills. At the party I saw this guy working the guests, talking to movie stars, doing business. I didn’t know anything about him except that he seemed dynamic and not much older than me. Susie said, “He’s an agent.”

“A travel agent?”
Susie
was a travel agent. She explained as best she could.

I introduced myself. His name was Mike Ovitz. We talked about what he did—he was still at William Morris—and I hit him up for a job. Any job. I had no plans for the future yet, but I thought if I could hitch my ride to a guy like that, I’d be pretty good for life. I said, “Listen, if ever you’re looking for a young guy who’d do anything for you, I’m the guy you can depend on.” He seemed appreciative. I gave him my phone number.

A year later I was working like a dog for Budget Rent a Car, jockeying cars back and forth from the airport. One night the phone rang. A woman said, “Is this Mike Menchel? Will you hold for Mike Ovitz?” To be honest, I didn’t get the lingo—“would you hold for”—and I didn’t really remember Mike. But when she said “head of Creative Artists Agency,” I said, “Sure.”

Mike said, “If you’re still interested in that job, I’d like to see you tomorrow morning at eight A.M. for an interview. You’ll meet some of my partners.”

I called in sick to Budget and left San Diego at 5 A.M. I got to Century City early and waited. Eight o’clock came. No Mike. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve o’clock. Finally at a quarter to one I was told, “Mike’s very busy today. You should probably go home and we’ll call you again.”

I said, “You’re nuts. I drove up here from San Diego. I was here by eight A.M., just like he told me. This is a big opportunity for me. I’m going to wait.”

She said, “He’s got a lunch now and he won’t be back for a while.”

About two-thirty Ovitz came breezing through the doorway, looked at me, and said, “I’m glad you’re still here. Come in.

“So,” he said. “You want to be an agent?”

“Always wanted to be an agent.”

He looked at me askew. “You know what an agent does?”

“You’re an agent, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I want to do what you do. I don’t know what exactly, but if you teach me how to do it, I’ll do it. I’ll work here forever. This is a far cry from Philadelphia. I could’ve been a shoe salesman.”

The whole time he never apologized for making me wait. Today I’m sure it was intentional, part of my training. I would have waited fifty hours, as long as I got hired.

Next I met Mike Rosenfeld Sr. and Ron Meyer. Both told me I’d have to be there first thing in the morning and about the late hours I’d keep. They explained how tough the training program was—at William Morris—and that I was the first trainee at CAA. I was the guinea pig.

The story about CAA is that at first the partners didn’t have desks. They worked off card tables they’d brought from home, with their wives as secretaries. By the time I got there, they’d moved to Century City and had offices, but it was still a very young company. The corporate culture was just coalescing. You had Mike Rosenfeld in blue jeans. Michael Ovitz always wore a suit. Ronnie was in blue jeans. Rowland and Bill wore suits and ties. They all owned Jaguars with license plates that read CAA and their initials. They were together all the time. They went out en masse.

The first thing I did was buy a Pitney Bowes postage machine. A week later the mailman brought back all the mail I’d sent and asked me if I recognized it. I said, “Yes.”

He said, “Well, you bought a mail machine, but you never bought any postage.” Everybody thought it was funny except for Mike Ovitz. He thought my ineptitude made us look like a rinky-dink operation.

There were compensations. I delivered a script to Yvette Mimieux. I rang and rang her doorbell, but nobody answered. I walked around the house and kept yelling, “Miss Mimieux? Miss Mimieux?” When I got to the backyard, there she was, lying naked by the pool. I ducked behind the gate and knocked loudly. She put a towel around her, said, “Hellooo?” When our eyes met, she knew.

When I got out of the mailroom, I was assigned to Bill Haber’s desk. I would rather have been in Vietnam walking on land mines every day of my life than work for him. If the mailroom was hard, working for Haber was impossible. He’s a very particular, demanding, and brilliant man. Nothing I could do was ever right for him. He threw things: pens, pencils, once a chair. He had a riding crop with which he hit his chair and his desk. When he came too close to me with it, I’d tell him to cut it out, but he never did. What was I going to do? I couldn’t quit. My inspiration was Michael Ovitz. Every day I’d walk down the hallway, and he’d look at me and see that I was either close to tears or I had steam coming out of my ears and I was going to kill Haber. I’m not saying I didn’t learn or wasn’t trained well, just that Haber and I were ill suited.

Once, I had a bad stomach flu. I was home because I couldn’t leave my bathroom. About one in the afternoon the phone rang.

A voice said, “Hi! Is Mike Menchel there?” I recognized the voice.

I said, “This is me, Bill.”

“So, they told me you were sick.”

“Bill, I am
so
sick. A stomach flu. Or maybe something I ate. I don’t know.”

He said, “You having diarrhea?”

“Yes, Bill.”

“You throwing up?”

“Yep.”

“You doing it in the bathroom?”

“Yes.”

“Your bathroom at home?”

“Of course.”

“You know, we have bathrooms here at CAA.”

“I know.”

“I would advise you to put on a suit and tie and be here by two o’clock—or don’t ever come back. You can throw up in our bathroom.”

I was perspiring, aching, and ready to vomit any second, but I trudged into that office. I presumed he was serious about it and never had reason to think otherwise.

Ovitz would always pass through my cubicle to walk into Bill’s office, and as he went by I’d say, “I’m here because you inspired me to be here. But I don’t need crap like that,” and cock my head in Haber’s direction. “I’ll be a shoe salesman. I’ll work at See’s Candies. I’ll go back to Budget Rent a Car. A job’s a job.”

“A job is not a job,” Ovitz said. “This is a great job. Don’t quit this job.”

MICHAEL MENCHEL
didn’t quit then, but he left CAA in 1999 to work again with Ovitz at Artists Management Group, which went out of business in 2002.

THE WILD EAST

International Creative Management, New York,
1978–1981

GEORGE QUENNEVILLE, 1969 • ROB LIGHT, 1978 • LEE KERNIS, 1978 •
JAIMIE ROBERTS, 1978 • JOEL GALLEN, 1979 • TIM SARKES, 1981

ICM
was
the
Wild
West.
The
idea
was
beg,
borrow,
and
steal—just
don’t
get
caught.

—Lee Kernis

LEE KERNIS:
I knew when I graduated from the University of Maryland that I wanted to be in show business. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be an agent, but I had heard the story of the MCA mailroom kid who supposedly picked up Marlon Brando at the airport and ended up being his agent by the time he dropped him off at the office. I thought maybe I’d also meet a star who would say, “Hey, you’ve got it on the ball. You want to work with me, kid?”

I managed the comedian Rich Hall, whom I’d met in college, so I decided to contact Jack Rollins, who managed Woody Allen. After five or six calls he came to the phone. Rollins is like a Damon Runyon character; he had the cigar, and even on the phone you could hear him spitting in the background. I had an act and therefore something to talk about. He said to see him when I was in New York.

To thank him for the meeting, I brought a cake from Cake Masters. Why? What does your mother say? “Bring cake.” In Rollins’s waiting room I kept looking at the cake box, embarrassed, like, I can’t give him this; it’s ridiculous. Then all through the meeting he kept staring at the box. Finally he asked, “Who’s the cake for?”

“My mother. I’m going out to New Jersey.”

“Really? What kind of cake is it?”

“Black-and-white cake.”

“Hmm. I like black-and-white,” he said. Even with the opening I still couldn’t summon the nerve to say, “This cake is really for you.”

A year later I asked for a job. They didn’t need me, but when I applied for the training program at William Morris and ICM, Rollins said, “You can use my name.” The first to set up an interview was Arthur Trefe at ICM. He was head of Personnel.

JAIMIE ROBERTS:
My real last name is Rifkin. My grandfather, Harry Rifkin, booked nightclubs and was familiar with all the agents. My dad, Roy Rifkin, was a manager. He handled the Shirelles, Flip Wilson, the McCoys, the Strangeloves. He and my uncle, Julie Rifkin, had a record company, Spring Records. Today my brother is in the record business; my cousin Steven Rifkin owns Loud Records. And yet my father tried to discourage me from getting involved in show business. Seems hard to believe.

Like Lee Kernis, I went to the University of Maryland. I graduated summa cum laude and planned to be a psychologist. I even received grants from the National Science Foundation. But after graduation I decided to go to law school.

During my sophomore summer I was offered a job at a very prestigious Wall Street firm, as well as a mailroom job at ICM. Show business was not my goal, but I thought it wise to check out all my options. I met my dad for lunch at the Friars’ Club to ask for his advice. He was there with a guy named Jerry Brandt, a former William Morris agent who had, with my dad, produced
Gotta Go Disco,
Broadway’s first disco musical. I said, “Dad, I really don’t know what to do.”

He said, “You have the rest of your career to be a lawyer. Give ICM a try.” The implication was that only while I was still in school could I get away with the
humiliation
of working in a mailroom. Jerry explained that he’d started in a talent agency mailroom himself at GAC, and that when he worked at William Morris, he’d met David Geffen and convinced him to be in the music business.

My father talked to Jack Green, who ran the International Department at ICM, and I met with Arthur Trefe.

TIM SARKES:
I wanted to be in the record business and interned at A&M Records, but when I got out of George Mason University in 1981, the record business was in a downturn. I sent résumés anywhere entertainment-related: record companies, concert promoters, book publishers, talent agencies. I never heard anything back. Finally I called Arthur Trefe at ICM and said, “I’ve sent in three résumés over eighteen months. Either you haven’t hired anybody, or you have and you haven’t given me an equal shot.”