The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up (46 page)

It turned out that Ed Khouri had been in the same fraternity as me, only at a different college. I thought having something in common would help.

Khouri said I seemed like a great kid but I wasn’t getting in because he had twenty applications to fill two slots that month. I said, “Great. I don’t care to be on a list or in competition. As far as I’m concerned, if you want me, great. And if you don’t, maybe it’s not the right thing for me.” I said it in a nice way.

Next I met with Alan Kanoff, who was in charge of hiring. He asked about my skills. I said I was smart about many things, but my only skill was bartending—which meant I knew how to listen to people and make them comfortable and want to come back for more. I thought I could do that at William Morris, too.

STEPHEN SANDS:
I grew up in Manhattan and went to the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. I started out as an economics major, then took a psychopathology class and became a psychology major. I also ran the concert committee at school, and every Thursday we put on a show for a different population—Deadheads, jazz buffs, African Americans.

When I graduated I didn’t see the connection between my major and business. I called up William Morris in New York—I’d heard through a friend of my father’s that they had a training program—and the receptionist said, “Thanks, we’re busy.”

I said, “No, you can’t hang up.”

The woman said, “Why?”

I said, “Because I’d be good for you.”

“Oh, really? What’s your name? I’ll see if we can squeeze you in.”

Ed Khouri was a character. He kept me waiting, and when I finally met with him he called me the wrong name. He said he’d just come from a lunchtime appointment at the dentist’s office and his tooth hurt. I’d come in full of enthusiasm, with my posters from all the concerts I’d promoted. He said, “Listen, I’ve had a bad day. You have the job. Start anytime.”

It was late spring. I thought I’d wait until after Labor Day. Two weeks later he called and said there was an opening, so I had to come in right away.

HARRINGTON:
The hours were nine to six. We even punched a time clock. The mailroom looked like a set from
Barney Miller
or
Taxi:
a very rundown, blue-collar New York office building utility room with glazed green industrial paint chipping off the walls. Linoleum floor. Outside the window was a wall and a fire escape on the building next door.

ISAACS:
I stood in front of a huge wall of mailboxes trying to learn whose box was whose. It quickly became second nature. So did the realization that I would have to take the word
no
out of my vocabulary. I’d gone from Harvard to sharpening pencils and shit work. But it didn’t scare me. I believed good work leads to good work.

SANDS:
Roberto Tamayo ran the mailroom. He was a strong, virile Latin man who was also a rough-and-tumble soccer player. He fought hard for his trainees and ran an efficient place.

GRUBER:
Roberto Tamayo set us on our path and always put us in our place: “Hey, college boy. Remember you’re not better than anybody. Treat people with respect no matter who they are.” We admired him. He didn’t care what anyone else in the company did, he just cared about how he did his job.

Roberto also knew my scam, which was to get out quickly at the end of the day. As punishment for something I pulled, he gave me twentyfive packages and said, “Here’s your day. Deliver these.”

I said, “But we have a messenger service.” It would have taken me twelve hours. I said, “Are you sure you want to do this to me?”

“Yes,” he said. “Last straw. Do this.”

I took the packages, walked around the corner to a buddy of mine who owned a messenger service, dropped them there, and took the day off.

HARRINGTON:
The mailroom was like a bullpen. You got dispatched to do whatever ludicrous adventure the day held in store. One agent used to send me with a subway token out to Jersey, to the hinterlands, two hours away, to drive his Jag back because it was cheaper to get the car fixed out there than anywhere near Manhattan. That was a typical day. Just stupid, humiliating, idiotic work.

BERKOWITZ:
One trainee had to drive an agent’s white poodle to East Hampton in the agent’s Jaguar, then take the train back to New York City.

HARRINGTON:
The pay was twelve grand a year, gross. But I looked at it this way: If I went to law school, I’d have to
pay
money for four years. At William Morris I got money to go to school, so to speak. But I soon realized that getting in the door was no guarantee of anything other than twelve grand a year.

BERKOWITZ:
It wasn’t easy being broke in Manhattan. I shared a one-bedroom apartment with a guy I didn’t know. It was incredibly awkward, especially if someone had a girl over. He was a First Boston analyst, making forty thousand dollars. I had to struggle for everything
and
eat his leftover Chinese food. I packed my lunch every day for work, and I couldn’t take a cab.

For extra money, I was a waiter at a club during prom season. I’d work until three in the morning and make several hundred dollars in tips. I also worked late at night at the office, chauffeuring the executives around in their Jaguars. A couple of times after I dropped them off I used their cars to pick up passengers and take them around New York City.

HARRINGTON:
One of the senior agents unfortunately didn’t care for anybody but himself. I was his second assistant for a while. Every so often this guy would make me leave the office, go to his apartment in some shitty little building five blocks away, pick up his wife, come back to the office in his Jaguar, drive four blocks to the 21 Club, and sit outside while they ate.
But not in the car
. He took the keys and I’d have to cool my heels on the sidewalk, because he didn’t want to waste gas keeping the car running and warm. Sometimes he sat inside for three or four hours in the middle of the day. I’d stand outside thinking, What am I going to tell my father when he says, “What are you doing there? And by the way, you’re not making any money!”

ISAACS:
The job was the ultimate in ego sublimation, but I was good at it, and it came in handy when I had to chauffeur the president’s wife in the company limo around midtown while she went shopping. Driving a stretch limo in Manhattan in the afternoon is like driving a bus during rush hour. Then I’d put her bags in the car, take her to Le Cirque, and wait. There I was, with my little blue blazer and my khakis and my tie, standing outside, smoking cigarettes with the other chauffeurs in their livery. And I thought I was supposed to be training for something.

HUVANE:
I drove once and only once. And then, in front of Roberto Tamayo, I ripped up my license. “See this license?”
Rip
. “I don’t have a license anymore. I’m never driving any of these people again—do you understand that?” Roberto was a sweet guy, but I did it because one of the board members’ wives made me drive her car around Bergdorf’s constantly while she shopped, and then yelled at me because I was at the wrong entrance to pick her up.

HUVANE:
A great thing about the New York mailroom was that we rarely made deliveries. But sometimes on crazy days there was overflow and we had to help out.

It was August, one of those days when the humidity matched the temperature. If you walked two blocks, you were gone. I had three packages. My last delivery was at the Plaza, and I was ten minutes late. When I walked in, the client—I’d mention her name, but she still works occasionally—was incensed and wanted me fired. She said, “Stand there,” like I was a little Rottweiler. She picked up the phone, called William Morris, and said, “This . . . this . . .”—she waved at me, and I said, “Kevin Huvane”—“I have a Kevin Huvane here,” like there were
many
Kevin Huvanes and she had just one of them. She said, “He’s made me late, and I would like you to do something about this.” Then she hung up the phone and said, “You can go now.”

I walked back to the office thinking, I’m making two hundred bucks a week and I’m going to get fired because this actress was in a bad mood?

We had time cards at the office, like the Flintstones used. There was a note on my card: “Please see Ed Khouri.”

Ed said, “I heard you were late.”

I said, “Please don’t fire me. I had three packages and I didn’t mean to be late.”

“Stop worrying,” he said. “It’s okay. She complains about everybody.”

Fifteen years later, this actress and I were both at a big dinner, sitting around the table. She looked at me and then asked somebody next to her, “Who’s that?”

“Kevin Huvane. He’s at CAA.” And then I heard my clients being named.

She came over and sweetly said, “Kevin, we’ve met before, haven’t we?”

“You better believe we have,” I said. Then I reminded her—and everybody else at the table—how she’d treated me. She was shocked and astounded. I’m not sure she believed it really had happened, but, as a twenty-one-year-old kid, you never forget the pit in your stomach after something like that.

ISAACS:
Toddy Armhouse was the receptionist on the thirty-third floor. She was in her eighties, an unbelievably crabby, amazing, terrifying woman who’d been there forever and knew everybody. Toddy was really savvy. You couldn’t chat her up. She either liked you or she didn’t.

HUVANE:
She was a tough cookie, a great New York character. She always had a cigarette. Her husband, a dentist, was Abe Lastfogel’s wife’s brother. When she had trouble with her eyesight and had an operation, I was assigned to walk her home every day.

I didn’t know who she was at first. But once David Geffen got off an elevator right in front of us and he shouted, “Toddy! Toddy, how are you?” I knew who
he
was, obviously.

She said, “David Geffen, you son of a bitch. How are you?” I thought it was hysterical. She used to tell me stories about Geffen, for whom she had a soft spot. She’d always say he was “hot stuff.” I never told him that, actually, but those are the words she always used: “He’s hot stuff.”

The thirty-third floor was her domain. Toddy was the law. Everyone was deferential, and I’d never seen that before. If she liked you, you were one of the chosen. Toddy loved me. Even though she was Jewish, I took her to my house at Christmas because she had no family. She used to look at my little brother’s report cards—he’s almost thirty now. If he got A’s, she’d give him ten dollars. When Abe Lastfogel died, she gave me his bow ties from Sulka. I still have them.

HARRINGTON:
An agent named Marty Klein needed a ride home. He shouldn’t be confused with the late Marty Klein who worked at APA (Agency for the Performing Arts), in Los Angeles. That Marty was a nice guy. This Marty looked like a cross between John Larroquette and Richard Nixon—a big, jowly, angry face. Plus he was always in a hurry and very self-centered. He thought whatever he did was the most important thing when in fact all he did was book Sammy Davis Jr. at the Sands before he was chic again. In the scheme of things it was minor business, but he carried himself like he was Ovitz. Klein lived in White Plains, New York, about ten minutes past my town, Bronxville. For some reason he needed a ride home one afternoon, so they told him, “Tomorrow Gerry Harrington can drive you home, take your Cadillac to his house for the night, then pick you up in the morning.”

I took the train to work. That night I ferried Klein to White Plains and dropped him at his house. The whole way he wouldn’t talk to me. From the way he acted, I expected to pull up to a mansion. In fact, he lived in a tiny shack—a two-family, aluminum-sided house. I’ve always believed in looking at the houses of the people who run the company I work at to see if, on the high end, there’s something to shoot for. Is that the best they can do? Do I want that guy’s life?

A couple weeks later, Marty Klein’s desk had a wobbly leg. Two guys from the mailroom were sent to remove it. . . .

MENDELSOHN:
We had a little storage area to the side of the men’s bathroom, and I told Roberto Tamayo that we should move Marty’s desk there and turn it on its side. Roberto said, “No, we’re going to stand it up and put it in the hall, just in the front of the men’s bathroom.”

“Well, somebody’s gonna run into this thing,” I said.

Roberto told me that he was the boss, I was a trainee, and the way it worked is that I listened to him.

HARRINGTON:
They stuck the desk in the corridor, on its end, with the legs sticking out, about ten feet back from the men’s room door—far enough that most people wouldn’t walk into it.

But Marty Klein did. He opened the door without looking up, and
bam!
Bopped himself in the head with the desk leg. He got knocked unconscious.

I was covering the reception desk during lunch. Suddenly I saw Klein wheeled out to the lobby with a bandage around his head. I called an ambulance, which took another hour and twenty minutes to arrive. Only in New York. The whole time, Klein was strapped on a gurney, mumbling profanities.