In Service to the Stars : ‘Kato’ Kaelin Made Them Famous--the Would-Be Actors Who Toil as Personal Assistants

We may never know what the jurors in the O.J. Simpson trial think of prosecution witness Brian (Kato) Kaelin. But as far as Hollywood is concerned, the verdict is already in: He’s hot . . . this minute. The 36-year-old, Z-movie bit-player (who can forget him in “Hail Caesar”?) and celebrity “house guest” has become a household word.

In fact, personal assistants--the gofers who cater to the stars’ every need and whim--are now, thanks to Kaelin, known as “Katos.” Although technically Kaelin was never hired as a personal assistant, he nonetheless fulfilled many of the functions typically associated with the profession. According to those who have labored in this Hollywood specialty, being a personal assistant is often one of the most brutal and thankless jobs in the film industry. But thanks to Kaelin, the personal assistants to the stars are now in the spotlight.

As with “D-Girls” (script readers), “Golden Retrievers” (savvy studio executives) and “the ‘Bu” (Malibu), there’s no way of knowing exactly how this nouveau noun slipped into the Tinseltown lexicon. Among most personal assistants, it’s a less than welcome moniker. “I’ve heard the term,” says Jonathan Holiff, a former assistant to actor Alan Thicke. “Quite frankly I take it personally. It takes real skill to run a celebrity’s life.

“It’s very difficult to find people to do this sort of work because there’s no real job description. Assistants are called on to do everything. That often means you’re a de facto agent, manager, friend, extended-family member and Jack-of-all-trades. Kato Kaelin, a celebrity assistant? Are you kidding?”

It’s hardly surprising that Holiff, founder of the Assn. of Celebrity Personal Assistants (ACPA)--a nonprofit organization servicing the needs of such service personnel--should take umbrage at the likes of a non-pro like Kaelin. It’s equally unsurprising to find Kaelin himself complaining (on a recent edition of “A Current Affair”) that “helping someone out doesn’t make them a caretaker or a nanny.”

Maybe.

On the other hand, Kaelin lived in Simpson’s house, walked and fed his dogs, baby-sat his kids, and (most telling of all) rode along with him to McDonald’s for takeout.

In other words, he executed many of the key duties most in demand by stars who have come to believe that their agents, lawyers, business managers, secretaries, housekeepers, gardeners, hairdressers, dress designers, relatives, spouses or lovers just aren’t enough.

“It’s amazing what some of these stars want from the people who work for them,” says a former publicist who has observed the gofer phenomenon from the sidelines for many years. “Some stars--Paul Newman for instance--don’t use assistants at all. Then there are some who seem to have reached a point where they can’t even pick up their mail. Suddenly everything has to be done for them. And there are people out there who are perfectly willing to do it.

“I know of one actress,” she continues, insisting on anonymity, “who had two assistants vying for her attention day and night. She played them off against each other constantly. Once she made them wax her legs. I know of one star who runs through people like Kleenex. She makes her assistants take her old, ripped pantyhose back to the stores to exchange them for new ones, making them claim she was sold defective merchandise. I know of another actor who froze stark still during an interview waiting until one of his three assistants came over to remove a hair that had fallen on the sleeve of his jacket. Oh, there are a million stories.”

Indeed there are. And there are any number of people willing to tell them, provided that their remarks appear without attribution. Talk is an occupational hazard in Hollywood, and “non-disclosure agreements” for “Katos” is the coin of the realm. One false move and a chatty Kato might never eat an Egg McMuffin, much less lunch, in this town again.

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On the other hand, there are the success stories.

“I remember being a little tenuous about working with her at first,” recalls Ron Holder, who became the personal assistant to actress Whoopi Goldberg eight years ago. “I’d never been around anyone like her. I’d never met anyone that hip. It’s not even an employer-employee thing with her anymore. We’re buddies.”

Unlike most assistants, Holder works out of an office rather than Goldberg’s home--a feature he says is an enormous help to getting his job done. “I know that a lot of people have their assistants every waking moment. I don’t think that’s necessary. I have a fax that goes to her every day with reminders and messages of all sorts.

“Most people who do this have other agendas,” Holder admits. He doesn’t. “I was a little older when I came to work for Whoopi. I worked for many years for a television producer. So I was a little older than most assistants. I was ‘settled’ in the business. I don’t envision myself going anywhere else.”

Of course, for every Ron Holder who has made his job work, there are scores of others whose jobs never evolve beyond a short brutal stint in the business. But that does not discourage other Katos who work to get a leg up in Hollywood.

You can catch a glimpse of their world in Blake Edwards’ 1981 love/hate letter to Hollywood, “S.O.B.,” in which Stuart Margolin violates every non-disclosure agreement going by using information on his boss, Julie Andrews, as a means of getting himself set up as a producer. That a Kato would have a chance to leap so high may seem a fantastic cinematic device, but Hollywood reality is much stranger than its fiction.

At best, Kaelin might have expected bit parts on television through his connection with Simpson. But since the double homicide, he has gotten a photo session with famed photographer Anne Leibowitz, television appearances, a possible book contract and maybe a feature film or two, says David Crowley, his representative at the Lee Solters public relations agency.

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Where Kaelin goes from here is an open question. But in the executive suites of Hollywood, hot and cold running Katos are still the rule. Often hired right out of business colleges and film schools to do their bosses’ bidding, they’re kept in place by the proviso that they’ll get a shot at the mogul fast track if they survive dealing with their bosses.

“It’s kind of like a hazing process,” says writer-director George Huang, a former Kato to the studio set whose film expose of that world, “Swimming With Sharks,” is set to open mid-April. “Hollywood is a boys club and they treat the assistants the way frat brothers treat pledges. They force you to do the most incredibly degrading stuff.”

Produced for under $1 million by this 27-year-old economics major who Katoed under the likes of such mini-moguls as Barry Josephson and Joel Silver, “Swimming With Sharks” recounts the adventures of an executive Kato (Frank Whaley) who kidnaps his tyrannical boss (Kevin Spacey) and forces him to undergo the same indignities he has suffered.

“A lot of the script came from personal experience, and a lot of it came from sessions I’ve had where assistants would sit around and kvetch and moan. You know--’Guess what my boss made me do today?’ I collected these anecdotes thinking that they would make an interesting book. I turned them into a film instead.

“It’s a brutal system, but it works,” says Huang, who is often given to laughter when recounting the indignities he and others have suffered. “Anyone who’s an executive now was at one point or another a personal assistant to some other executive. It’s like this: Aaron Spelling produced Larry Gordon who produced Joel Silver. You want to laugh when these guys say to you, ‘If I can’t trust you with my laundry how can I trust you with anything else?’ But it’s true.

“So it becomes important to know how to find that special Christmas gift, or dig a bonfire at your boss’s beach house, or make sure his girlfriend is wearing the right dress to a party. It can get really petty though.”

Of course, there’s the upside. “You learn who the players are,” Huang says. “You develop relationships. If you do well by your boss--putting his calls through, making sure he gets tickets to this or that--it’s going to serve you later on in your career. They’re not going to forget that. Of course, once an executive finds a good assistant, he doesn’t want to let him go. One boss said to a friend of mine, ‘You can’t leave now! You just got the right mix of cream and sugar in my coffee!’ ”

Still, Huang thinks that for all the success of executive Katoism, the time may be ripe for a change. “You know, this whole Kato Kaelin thing has got a lot of people thinking. Everybody is becoming wary of just how close their assistants get to their lives. I think in the future you’re going to be seeing a lot more people in Hollywood doing things for themselves. Man, what a concept!”