Moloney’s Road to Ruin Is Well-Traveled Path in Hollywood

What part, if any, did Hollywood’s social excess and heady, all-consuming business play in the apparent suicide of a former star agent who appeared to have it all--money, power, status and youth?

It’s a lingering question following the death of former wunderkind Jay Moloney, who was found hanged Tuesday morning in the shower of his Mulholland Drive house, just two days after his 35th birthday.

Unable to regain his balance after waging an unsuccessful battle with drug abuse for at least four years, Moloney self-destructed.

He dropped out of the Hollywood mainstream in 1996 at the pinnacle of his career, just when he and his close-knit band of agents known as the “Young Turks” were handed the keys to the kingdom of Hollywood’s most powerful talent firm, Creative Artists Agency.

Moloney, who by 30 was earning $1 million a year and was representing the likes of Martin Scorsese, Dustin Hoffman and Bill Murray, joins other recent high-profile figures whose personal demons and inability to cope with the stresses of the Hollywood spotlight ultimately proved a lethal combination.

David Begelman, a former super-agent and Columbia Pictures president whose 1970s check-forging scandal became the symbol of Hollywood corruption, shot himself in 1995 after a series of business setbacks.

Five months later, Don Simpson, one of Hollywood’s most successful producers with such blockbusters as “Top Gun” and “Beverly Hills Cop,” and who was notorious for his fast-living ways, died of a drug overdose.

A number of entertainers from the worlds of movies, television and music, among them John Belushi, River Phoenix, Chris Farley and Kurt Cobain, crashed and burned.

There are also many recovering drug addicts and alcoholics working in Hollywood, some in high positions, and some, such as former CBS Records chief Walter Yetnikoff and personal manager Jeff Wald, who have spoken openly about their struggles.

*

To be sure, Hollywood is no more responsible for driving people like Moloney to take drugs or take their own lives than the post office is for the personal problems of its employees.

Drug and alcohol addiction crosses all economic and demographic boundaries, and people in every profession commit suicide every year.

One industry veteran said: “This is not a cautionary tale for Hollywood; this is about people taking things to excess. There are a lot of people who, like Jay, had enormous success at an early age, but they didn’t self-destruct,” including those who also use drugs and alcohol.

Yet, Hollywood breeds excess and arguably makes it more difficult for certain personality types to resist the temptations of drugs and other easily-had vices. Casual use of drugs is often tolerated or ignored. Indeed, Hollywood historically is very forgiving of bad behavior.

“It’s too easy,” says one recovering drug addict who works in the entertainment industry. “You don’t have to go far to find those things when you’re one of those people.”

Moloney’s friends and colleagues have a hard time pinpointing exactly when the young agent began his downward spiral.

“The dark side of Jay was not readily apparent,” said a CAA colleague. “He was a good actor that way.”

In a 1997 interview, Moloney told Premiere magazine that he started using cocaine in 1995. That was within a year of his alcoholic father’s death and the same year that his surrogate father and longtime mentor, Michael Ovitz, left CAA to become president of Disney.

But Ovitz and many of Moloney’s CAA colleagues continued trying to help Moloney beat his drug habit. Their friend went in and out of drug rehab, living a very fragile existence for the last four years of his life, and more than once had attempted suicide.

Cal State Los Angeles psychologist Stuart Fischoff says that troubled people like Moloney are prone to “turn to external sources like drugs, alcohol, sex or whatever as stress-management techniques rather than internal mechanisms that teach them how to cope with their lives.”

Working in an industry such as Hollywood “that recognizes you as being a highflier,” suggests Fischoff, “keeps you walking that precipice. . . . It’s like being on a treadmill where you’re so hooked into the power, recognition and perks of Hollywood you can’t get off.”

Screenwriter Jerry Stahl, author of the newly published “Perv: A Love Story” and the 1998 autobiography “Permanent Midnight,” which chronicled his years as a heroin addict, said: “The only two times a drug addict needs drugs is when things are going well or going badly. Clearly, Jay went through both of those.”

Stahl, who in the late 1980s wrote for such TV shows as “thirtysomething” and “Moonlighting,” added: “When you’re on top you need it because the expectations are great and the pressures grotesque. When you’re on the bottom, it’s the same thing.”

*

For personalities like Moloney, whose sense of self-worth and self-identity were unsatisfactory, according to friends, having a meteoric rise to the top of Hollywood at a young age was perhaps the worst thing that could have happened.

Several friends wondered whether Moloney was burdened by an immediate success not built on a long career. It may have felt unreal for him to suddenly be working with Scorsese and Hoffman, fearful that he could lose his position as quickly as he got it.

When he was an agent on top of his game, the boyishly charming, handsome and well-liked Moloney always made sure he was at the best parties and movie premieres.

“He was in the center of the room of the in crowd,” says a friend and former drug addict, who recalls telling Moloney when he was trying to kick his habit, “It’s OK to be out, and he’d say, ‘I’m trying, but it’s awful to feel like you’re not in the inner circle.’ ”

Speaking from personal experience, the source also said that going to a Hollywood function straight, when you’re used to being high, “is like fingernails on a chalkboard. The chitchat is hard to take. You see everything for what it is. It’s no longer fun.”

The solution isn’t easy. “You have to change what gets you excited,” the source suggested.

A close friend at CAA does not believe that Hollywood can be blamed for Moloney’s down slide.

“It boiled down to Jay, a guy who had a lot of deep psychological and familial problems. All Hollywood did was turn up the volume and put the spotlight on it.”