I figure the LA economy could not survive without the dozens of actors, wannabe directors, and writers that take day jobs, lose day jobs, quit day jobs for a time, then return to another day job. One friend replaced an actor who just left his waiter job – the actor who left was Woody Harrelson. (whoM I later met but we’ll talk about that when the time comes) For accuracy purposes, that could have been in New York though, probably same economy based on wannabe show biz folks.
The boring job was only part time and my search for another part time job wasn’t looking too good. I almost took on a job as an office manager in the afternoons but it was across town and I figured I was wasting all this time with two part time jobs and wasting gas money by traveling all over. Plus, it wasn’t a show biz job.
Then I got the job offer that seemed golden. A real show biz office. They distributed and produced movies- top movies. Okay, they mostly just sent them to Italy but still. I told them I could speak Italian but never studied it so I couldn’t write. They forgot that important fact later.
So I thanked the nice office but said I had to go. They thought it was awful of the other office to make me work right away, and that was a warning that they might not have the best scruples. So I left and after the weekend I was on the Italian Job.
The first thing I learned was that you had to dress your best, especially the day one of the most powerful people in Hollywood came over for a meeting – Jeff???? Of ICM talent agency. It also meant I was out of money to buy a new office attire wardrobe before I even had the chance to make any money.
The two bosses who started the company and a few other big wigs were gone in Italy the week I started there. They were at a conference called MIFED. It’s a market where countries buy movies to show in their country. It became my goal to go there – a ticket to making it in Hollywood, I thought.
The second thing I learned was that Hollywood has a very abusive past. The other two, nice, office assistants warned me that everyone gets abused then they become the boss and abuse. I thought this was nuts. They told me to watch the movie Swimming with Sharks with Kevin Spacey. I did. It is dead on.
So, when all the bosses and big wigs came back I saw how mean they could be. The woman near my office would yell at me for not knowing how to unpack her bags from MIFED because you were just supposed to use telepathy. She was always rude to me. But I didn’t take it too personally. She was rude to everyone. Even the guy who came in to fix our fax. I wanted to yell at her to leave him alone, he didn’t have any aspirations of making it in Hollywood and was doing us a favor by fixing our machine.
The boss and I never interacted. He had his own assistants who he abused. He asked the office manager to buy some pens, then called him into the office and threw the pens at him saying “These are not the fucking pens we need for this office.” Again, no need to take it personally. When his son called who was having trouble in the Beverly Hills elementary school he yelled “Don’t ever fucking call me at work.” But, I also found out, we were always working. 9-5 was an illusion. And no lunch breaks.
So after putting $1000 on my credit card for a new wardrobe (suits and jackets and skirts), I got fired. It was only a month but they had gone through a receptionist a month. That’s what I was. Yes it was hard to photocopy a script in their crappy 50 pages at a time photocopier machine and the phone kept ringing. But the incident that set it off was when the sweet Italian accountant (again those lower on the totem pole or without big Hollywood dreams are the nicest) was out to lunch one day (she got lunch), the boss wanted to dictate an Italian letter to me instead. I sent word back to him across the long Century City office that I couldn’t. It would look like a first grader, that’s how bad my written Italian was.
So I got some temp jobs. That’s what everyone does. I was even shocked to meet an actor at the temp office. He would get unemployment between acting gigs. I’m not sure what I think about that since it’s such a temperamental type of career. Isn’t space between jobs what the whole thing is about, especially as an actor?
The temp agency sent me all over and I learned a lot. Just like at the Italian Job, I learned all I could. Read every script, saw how they analyzed the scripts through script coverage, how they packaged movies to sell, etc. I don’t mean plastic, I mean finding actors and directors and packaging it for producers and distributors to put money in.
During my time as a temp, I got to work one day at a commercial agent’s office. The directors who wanted to make an ad, faxed drawings of what they would shoot. I even got to work a day at NBC studies in George Clooney’s office. Unfortunately he wasn’t there. In fact, no one was and the phone didn’t ring. I didn’t have much to do. But I touched everything – the chairs, desks, staplers, batman poster of himself, notebooks, etc. since he probably had touched it. I called my sister and said “Guess where I am?” She was his fan at that time, since this was his office for being on the hit show ER yet it was obvious he didn’t use it much.
Whenever I was somewhere exciting like NBC studios, I made sure to walk around. I ate at the commissary and some people came in talking loudly and some were wearing bathrobes. One complained about his head injury make up. I knew from the tour I took the year before of the studios and had met that nice page, that they filmed soap operas here. I was excited to figure out these were the actors, eating lunch, just like me. I think I was mostly in Hollywood since I’m a big dorky fan/groupie to anyone famous.
I was still looking for a job since I wasn’t getting that much work as a temp – they take the temporary part seriously. It was getting near Christmas so at least I could go hide out “visiting family” for a few weeks. I had an interview on a Friday at Universal Studios. It was for an assistant job to someone in the International Department. After the interview I walked around. Hey, I was already here. So I walked the back lot and saw that they were setting up for their Christmas party. Hmm, I think I’ll stay and meet someone important.
I hung out in their commissary all day until finally it was night.
The trams that they use for the tours where you see Jaws and feel an earthquake were now filling with employees. This studio is huge so they have lots of employees. I saw that they all had a sticker on to show they were supposed to be on the tram. I didn’t have a sticker, since I wasn’t supposed to be there. So I walked and tried not to get run over by the trams. It was a windy day and a cold walk.
I got to the party part, by the sets of New York, Court square i.e. Back to the Future, Europe, etc. A security guard asked about my badge. I acted surprised, “It must have fallen off”. He didn’t seem to believe me but said I should talk to the people at the table. The friendly lady there totally believed my story. I was in.
It was a great party to sneak into. One moment I was eating nut balls in New York, the next I walk over to Europe and grab the gingerbread man. They had top notch choirs singing Christmas Carols – one was even a gospel choir with robes and all singing on the steps where Micheal J. Fox got zapped to the past.
I sat down for the dinner and started talking to the woman next to me. She asked where I worked. I said I don’t, I snuck in. She said “with guts like that, you’ll make it Hollywood”. That made my year. She had worked in the biz for years, in the music side of things and had met the Beatles and Elvis. Wow.
I got to take a tram back, at least, and drove home tired after a long day of not work.
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