When in Doubt, Spago Calls CAA Connection
Spy magazine’s pseudonymous Hollywood correspondent, Celia Brady, reports in the publication’s April issue that Jay Moloney, assistant to show-biz super-agent Mike Ovitz (head of the Creative Artists Agency) “is a volunteer Spago employee.”
How so? “When the restaurant is unsure just how rude or fawning to be toward some patron whom they do not immediately recognize,” Brady explains, “Moloney regularly gets a call and gives the CAA thumbs-up or thumbs-down on prospective diners.”
“Things like that just get so crazy,” said Mr. Spago himself, Wolfgang Puck, when I asked him to verify this report. “What happens many times is that somebody calls the restaurant to make a reservation and says, ‘This is Donald Sutherland,’ or ‘I’m calling on behalf of Mr. Stallone’--something like that, and we have to check it out. If it’s a CAA client’s name, probably we call the agency to see if they’re really in town or something. That’s all. Everybody tries to make too much of this Hollywood thing with us. You know, one time somebody wrote that I have a social secretary just to keep track of who the studio heads are. If I do, I haven’t seen her. The truth is that we have all kinds of people coming here--doctors, lawyers, other chefs, the mailman. . . .”
OK, so Ovitz doesn’t wear the toque at Spago. Puck did admit, however, that he is on particularly good terms with CAA. “They’re very good customers,” he conceded. “I even designed a kitchen for them in their new I. M. Pei building in Beverly Hills. . . . It’s better that I designed it because if I have to cater a party there, I know that I have everything I need.”
TIP ME A FIN: Calendar colleague Charles Perry, a student of tongues as much as of the palate, called the other day to report that he had been researching the etymological origins of the word tip, in the sense of a gratuity. It has often been held, Perry said, that the word is an acronym for the phrase, “To Insure Promptness.” Stuff and nonsense, says Perry. “In the first place,” he explained, “the word tip has been around for centuries, and acronyms didn’t come into great vogue until the 1930s, with all those New Deal agencies that FDR thought up--the WPA, the NRA, and so on. Anyway, the whole idea doesn’t make sense. If a tip were to insure promptness, you’d give it to the waiter before the meal, not after. If you’re going to bribe somebody, you do it first.”
Instead of being an acronym, Perry continued, the word is old-time thieves’ language, first recorded in 1610, meaning to give somebody something--as in “Tip me a fin,” slang for “Give me your hand.” The word was first used as a noun meaning gratuity, he adds, in 1755.
“I think this is important to remember,” Perry said. “If you think of a tip as a bribe, you’re naturally going to resent it. If you think of it as something you give , it becomes much more acceptable.” And as for those diners who think that waiters’ salaries ought to be paid directly by their employers, Perry added: “People forget sometimes that waiting is a personal service, and that the diner, not the restaurateur, is the one in the best possible position to decide what it’s worth.”
