Making A-List, But Checking It Twice

I was hanging out the other morning at my favorite newsstand, Current Events, in downtown Manhattan Beach, when a young man strode in with an unusual sense of purpose. He was handsome, when one took a second look, in a gentle way (the younger son, the future small-town banker with a heart). He had curly reddish hair and a square face with a wide, even mouth. He scanned the magazine rack, then turned to the counter with 10 copies of the Hollywood Reporter.

Urgently, he asked my friend, Kay Nam, a quietly attentive woman who runs Current Events with her husband, Tom, where he could get another five copies. He wanted 15. Kay reached for the phone behind her and called another newsstand to see if they had them. As eager to be impressed by new success as anyone, I asked: “You in there?”

He smiled sheepishly and said, “No, not me.” It was, he demurred, someone where he worked. “Oh,” I said, watching, still curious. The covers of the Reporters he’d placed on the counter bore a photographic collage of smiling, well-coiffed women, with Oprah front and almost center. The headline over their heads announced “Women in entertainment” and--in blood red--”Power 100.”

Being my usual nudgy self, I asked: “So where does she rank?”

He glanced at me with a wider yet still-sheepish smile and reluctantly said, “I haven’t looked.”

“You’d want to, wouldn’t you?” I asked. “If she’s in a good mood, you’d know why; if she’s in a lousy mood, you’d know why. Is she a good boss? Or the type that’s, you know, hard on assistants. You are an assistant, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I’m an assistant,” he said.

“And you’ve been sent out to grab a stack of these Hollywood Reporters for your boss because she’s ranked in there, right?”

“Something like that.”

“And you’re not even curious whether she’s considered the 10th or 90th most powerful woman in Hollywood?”

“Yeah, I guess I’m curious.”

“You’re an assistant where?” I asked.

“David Kelley,” he said.

“Good place to work?”

“I really like it. I think I’ve lucked out,” he said, with growing enthusiasm. “I hear you can have some bad experiences as an assistant, but they treat you really well at David Kelley.”

“It’s your first job?”

“Yes, and I don’t think I could be in better circumstances.”

“What do you want to do in the business?”

“I want to write.”

“Good,” I said.

With Kay on hold while someone sought more copies of the Power 100, the assistant’s face opened with anticipation of his future: “It’s the kind of place where they don’t want you if you are only going to be an assistant. They want people who really want to do something, and you believe it, that if you write something they’re going to look at it.”

One ear to the phone, leaning on the counter with chin in hand, Kay said: “C’mon, let’s look. Where is she? What’s her name?”

He wouldn’t yield her name. He kept smiling that uncomfortable sweet smile. With an obvious combination of dread and nervous pleasure, he turned those pages, from the first to the 10th most powerful woman in Hollywood, from the 11th to the 20th. The most highly ranked (Stacey Snider, chairman of Universal Pictures, was No. 1) won full pages, with big photographs. Starting at No. 3 (Julia Roberts), four of them have to share one page. He slowly turned from the 20th most powerful woman to the 30th.

“I don’t think I should go any farther,” he said.

“Oh, go on,” I urged. “Have a little courage.”

“I don’t think I want to,” he said. But Kay and I egged him on, and on we went, from the 30th to the 40th, from the 40th to the 50th. A few others gathered, and we watched over the kid’s shoulder to see how this turned out.

He rushed through the glossy pages, now, as much to get this over with as anything. He still looked pained, and he still smiled. I imagined that he might identify with his less and less powerful (it seemed) superior; but, of course, there could also be that grain of schadenfreude buried behind his genial face, of the truly powerless for someone who is powerful, yet possibly less powerful than others.

We still didn’t know what this subject of the Reporter’s power hunt looked like. I reexamined the magazine cover, where the separate women appeared in a composite scene like very well-dressed head cheerleaders from different teams, or star models from various countries on the cover of a catalog. A hush fell as we soared into the 60th-plus range of the most powerful women, past Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling (No. 56), past Martha Stewart (No. 57).

Starting at No. 61, 10 women must share a page, each getting a photograph the size of a postage stamp. Small handfuls of words detailed their careers as writers, actresses, directors and producers. Truth be told, it seems like an impressively selective list: Only at No. 80, did he turn past Barbara Walters.

Finally, I saw his eyes stop at No. 87.

“That her?” I asked.

He nodded.

“That’s her?” I repeated. I pointed to the picture: “That’s the 87th most powerful woman in Hollywood?”

“Uh, huh,” he relented.

She had remarkably strong-features (a Scandinavian royal; the Midwestern mother of 10) and dark-streaked blond hair cut short above an open, black collar. She was, the Reporter reported, Pam Wisne, president of David E. Kelley Productions. She reigned as “the senior creative and development executive at David E. Kelley Productions and was also a producer on all three of Kelley’s shows: ‘Boston Public’ and Emmy-winners ‘The Practice’ and ‘Ally McBeal.’”

Though my journeys through the rugged landscape of TV programming generally keep me hugging the tamer paths of CNN and PBS, I’d visited “Ally McBeal” and, certainly, “The Practice.” I knew these shows had ranked among the most popular on TV. I even felt a degree of creeping outrage on Wisne’s behalf for having been placed so far down the list. I also wondered what to think about the journalism of ranking and the notion of power as the end-all of a person’s professional humanity.

“She looks nice,” I said to the young assistant: “Is she?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Do you think she’ll care that she’s ... 87?”

“I guess she’ll care. I don’t know.”

Kay hung up and told him where to find the other copies of the Reporter. He paid as quickly as he could, gathered up his Reporters and left us at a near-run out the door. I remained curious. What did Wisne think about being the 87th most powerful woman in Hollywood? At home, I phoned David Kelley, which has planted an outpost of Hollywood in Manhattan Beach. Stacey Luchs, who oversees publicity, told me that she, not Wisne, had sent the production assistant for the magazines, as part of her routine of gathering company-related news. She worried that I might cast Wisne as a vain powerful woman abuser of a Hollywood lamb. “In Pam’s case, that could be not be further from the truth,” she said.

My phone soon rang with a call from another publicist, Susan Hober, of the Los Angeles public relations firm of Shepley, Winings, Hober, whom Luchs had asked to field my request to speak with Wisne, and to find out what, exactly, I was up to.

Hober told me that Wisne was “not a self-promoting person” but an executive whose overriding concern was “about the work and letting the work speak for itself” and that she would not be speaking to me. I argued that one of the prizes of power was the chance to pose your own way of seeing yourself against how others insisted on seeing you. But Hober said Wisne was too busy with meetings to ponder my questions about the ups and downs of gender and power.

Which left me back with Kay Nam, at Current Events a day later. A rush-order of the Power 100 had resupplied the rack. Kay, who has a warm style behind her cash register, said she’s used to seeing the faces of some people who appear in the magazines she sells walk through her door. “I get powerful and famous people who come here,” she said. “But the 87th most powerful woman in Hollywood,” she mused. “That’s very good.”

And you could tell she almost believed it.