The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Ranter

“Here’s the thing,” says David Rosenthal, former television writer and self-styled Hollywood whistleblower. “When you give up a job that’s paying $2.5 million a year, and you write a play that’s full of very foul language, and you do it without preparing your parents for it, some people are going to freak out.”

Rosenthal laughs, picking at his fruit plate over breakfast at the trendy Mercer Kitchen restaurant in New York, where he now lives.

He’s no stranger to freakouts. It has been almost two years since Rosenthal, a member of Hollywood’s inner circle of hot young sitcom writers (his credits include “Ellen” and “Spin City”) deep-sixed his 13-year television career by walking out on a lucrative development deal at 20th Century Fox Television. Since then, the story of his crash and burn--his divorce, his infatuation with supermodels, his disastrous foray as a playwright, his decision to give huge sums of money to women he barely knows--has been repeated so often in both L.A. and New York that it has become something of an urban legend.

“I’m under no illusions,” he says. “I knew when I did this that people were going to think I was crazy. But ultimately they’re going to discover that I’m not. And they’re going to have to look at themselves and think, ‘Huh! Why was I so quick to judge David? What was so threatening about what David did?’ And the answer is because the men who run Hollywood are incredibly greedy people. To them, life is a zero-sum game.

“I remember an agent telling me once, ‘I will stab that guy in the back in a minute for you.’ Well, A) that’s creepy; B) if he’d stab that guy in the back in a minute for me, well, guess what, he’d stab me in the back in a minute for that guy. And I thought, wow, I cannot trust these agents, I will not trust them--they aren’t interested in me, they aren’t interested in what I think or feel, they are only interested in their own ego and their own power.”

Rosenthal pauses to take a breath. “It’s appalling what goes on in Hollywood, it really is. . . . I defy you to get people to disagree with me.”

So begins a three-hour discourse on the evils of Hollywood. David Rosenthal, in case you haven’t guessed, is angry. He’s also willing, eager, to tell you about his anger. In depth. With gusto. It’s a lonely rant, and it probably won’t matter very much in the long run, given that most of Rosenthal’s former colleagues have long since dismissed him as troubled and irrelevant.

Nevertheless, Rosenthal believes that after 13 years in the trenches, he is uniquely qualified to tell us a few hard truths about the TV business.

Truth #1: Hollywood is a cesspool of white male sharks.

Truth #2: Agents are, by and large, “leeches.” They care mostly about money and prostitutes. Truth #3: TV writers can be coarse and horrifyingly misogynistic. They tell bawdy and derogatory jokes at the expense of female colleagues, and sink even lower when it’s boys only. Truth #4: Most executives couldn’t care less about the interests of minorities, which explains the dearth of Asian American or Latino sitcoms on television. Overall, the entire town is riddled with terrible, awful people. Loathsome, in fact.

That’s Rosenthal’s Truth. The question is, do we care? Unsavory though it may be, the hurly-burly world of entertainment bigwigs isn’t exactly Big News in Hollywood. Nor are the number of disaffected writers, directors, actors, you-name-its who have fled the shark tank for safer waters. Some, including the late Julia Phillips, have exorcised their show-biz demons in books; others, such as Robert Altman, work it out through their films. Rosenthal simply wants to talk about it.

Rosenthal’s former colleagues aren’t interested in anything Rosenthal has to say. Most are unwilling to discuss him at all, in fact. The few who are willing to talk do so largely on the condition of anonymity.

From an anonymous agent at the Endeavor Agency: “Why are you even writing this? It’s an old, tiring story. Nobody cares.”

From a former associate at Dreamworks Television: “It’s sad what happened to David, it really is. He was smart. Really, really smart. Maybe too smart.”

From Richard Weitz, one of Rosenthal’s former agents: “I wish him the best of luck.”

From Ari Emanuel, Rosenthal’s other former agent: [Silence] So, then, this is a story about wild success and total failure. And redemption. Sort of.

Rosenthal is a rabbi’s son from suburban lawrenceville, n.j.,whose biggest dream in life was to write successful sitcoms. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in the spring of 1989 and soon afterward bought a one-way ticket to Los Angeles. Through family friends, he landed a job as a production assistant on the ABC sitcom “Anything but Love.”

Within a year he was hired as a staff writer. There he came to the attention of “Wonder Years” creator Neil Marlens, at the time one of the most influential producers in television. Marlens liked the kid, thought he was funny. By age 24, Rosenthal was heading the writing department on Marlens’ new sitcom, “Ellen,” starring Ellen DeGeneres. At 26, he was on his own, developing comedy shows for Jeffrey Katzenberg. By 27, he was writing for “Spin City.” By 28, he was running the show. Four years later, he married a fellow “Spin City” writer and was the owner of a five-bedroom home with a pool. He had a convertible Porsche and new job at Fox Television, where he was paid $2.5 million to, as one former colleague says, “think funny.”

Rosenthal, in other words, was a young man living The Dream. Then he woke up and decided his life was meaningless.

What propelled Rosenthal into his downward spiral was the sudden realization that all he really wanted from life was to have sex with supermodel Heidi Klum, an occasional guest star on “Spin City” whom Rosenthal describes as “the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.”

He found Klum smart, sensitive, sweet, beautiful--yet another revelation, given that, as an industry man, Rosenthal had previously thought of beautiful women as “pieces of meat.” He would marry Heidi Klum, he realized, if only she weren’t already married. The idea of that was too much for him, so Rosenthal decided the sensible thing to do was to quit Fox, divorce his wife, sell his Porsche and give more than $1 million, in $52,000 grants, to 20 young women, several of whom he’d never met, but whose artistic pursuits he believed in.

He labeled this giveaway a “scholarship program” and called it “The Creators.”

Rosenthal then wrote a play which he called “Love” and laced it with so much profanity that it carried an NC-17 rating. In it, Rosenthal outlined his views on sex, marriage, sex, monogamy, even more sex, and his desire to have sex with Klum. Rosenthal sent “Love” to Emanuel and Weitz, his agents at Endeavor. They balked and promptly dropped Rosenthal from their client list. He also sent a copy to his father in New Jersey, who briefly had Rosenthal committed to the psychiatric unit at UCLA Medical Center.

“Most kids rebel when they’re 15 or 16. I waited until I was 33,” Rosenthal says now. “But it was worth it.”

Last spring, Rosenthal moved to New York, where he produced “Love” as an off-Broadway play. It previewed last Sept. 13--two days after the World Trade Center attacks--opened Sept. 20 and closed shortly thereafter thanks to universally miserable reviews. (New York magazine called the play “inane”; CurtainUp, an online theater magazine, considered it “repetitive and tiresome” and suggested the playwright find a professional to listen to his problems rather than “asking amateurs to pay.”)

Rosenthal remained sanguine. “I knew it was going to bomb,” he says today. “But it was my attempt at being honest. It’s my truth.”

But now it’s a warm february morning, the kind of day that draws the lissome young women of Soho outdoors. Rosenthal sips his tea in one of Mercer Kitchen’s corner booths. Dressed in a gray turtleneck sweater and jeans, he is checking out women, trying not to be obvious. A blond in a long coat and sunglasses whooshes past our table and out the front door. Rosenthal whips his head around.

“That’s Meg Ryan,” he says. “I love her.”

He considers running out on the street to say hi. Then he pauses. He’s never met Meg Ryan, he admits. So he lets the moment pass.

This, too, is all part of Rosenthal’s New Truth. Since moving to New York, he has tried to be “real,”--as best as he can. He finds the anonymity of New York City a “huge relief” after the incestuousness of Hollywood, and in keeping with that spirit, he has banished all reminders of his past life. He has neither a cell phone nor an e-mail address, and claims not to own a computer.

He walks the streets of Manhattan in self-imposed exile, writes (longhand) in cafes, takes in the museums and claims to have seen every movie in town. He is “reassessing.” He frequents local bookstores and sits in Central Park. Recently, Rosenthal took a long walk in Queens--he isn’t sure where, exactly, but wherever it was, there was a really cool coffee shop. “To me, New York represents the American Dream,” he says. “It’s awesome.”

Rosenthal uses the word “awesome” without a trace of cynicism. Now 34, he exudes boyish wonder. He is genuinely excited by things most New Yorkers find simply annoying, including the feel of the subway rumbling beneath a movie theater, or the “village” (read: insanely crowded) atmosphere of Soho.

And yet, as much as he loves New York, Rosenthal hasn’t left Hollywood, not really. To leave means to move on. Rosenthal hasn’t. He has become an agent for social change--or so he’d like to think. His mission is to shame Hollywood executives into becoming more inclusive of women and minorities, both in the boardroom and office suites, and in terms of programming.

“You know, the one thing that really resonated for me throughout my entire tenure in Hollywood was the degree to which women are disrespected,” he says. “It was a shock to me.”

It’s not surprising that the full dimensions of real-life gender politics might have eluded a boy who became a player as young as Rosenthal did. When he furrows his brow, the affectation makes him seem at once anxious and sweetly naive.

“So I got to sit and listen and watch and observe what goes on behind closed doors when the only people in the room are rich white men. And when it’s only rich white men they’re terrible. They’re smug, they’re arrogant. And they’re misogynistic.”

He details a few choice remarks made by TV writers at the expense of female colleagues, including his ex-wife. He seems truly repulsed. “I just saw all these women get eaten alive by the men and nobody cared, and there was nothing anybody could do about it because it was so insidious. And it’s so much a part of the culture of television. The environment that women have to go through to get to [any high position] is completely unacceptable.”

Championing the cause of women in Hollywood is a noble idea, though Rosenthal has no discernible plan of action other than to discuss the inequities of the entertainment business with anyone who’ll listen. What he does have is money. He has, or so he claims, enough money to live comfortably for the rest of his life. It has provided him with a New Yorker’s dream: a spacious apartment in a hip neighborhood, and the ability to leave the city, as he did in January when he jetted off to Hawaii on the spur of the moment.

It also has provided 20 women with their dream: $1,000 per week for a year to create art--any kind of art, from writing to painting to acting. There is no quid pro quo. There are also no prerequisites, other than that one must be female with a desire to create and no real opportunity to do so.

“At first, I was like, ‘What?’ ” says Creator scholarship recipient Erica Clare, a 31-year-old actress. She was an office manager on Rosenthal’s floor at Fox Television. Many Creators came from the assistant pool at Fox, she says. Others were recommended--sight unseen--through friends.

“It all happened within a couple of days. A friend called me and said David wanted to give money to women so we could pursue our art, and he was looking for diversity,” says Clare, who is African American. She was floored. “He seemed to be very angry that Hollywood was such a boy’s club and that women didn’t have the same chances as men.”

After some thought, she decided to take Rosenthal up on his offer. “It wasn’t as if there was any selfish motivations. I’ve seen David with people, and he’s incredibly generous. I actually think David is kind of compelled to be generous.”

Clare used the money to regroup and focus on her acting. She hasn’t gotten her big break, yet. Then again, she’s decided she never wants to be an office manager again, nor take any job that she doesn’t love. Ever.

Other recipients feel equally liberated. “It’s not about money, it’s about shaping a young woman’s perspective. And it did change my perspective,” says one 28-year-old woman, who asked that her name not be used. She’s a songwriter and feels that Rosenthal has given her “a room of one’s own.”

“All I’m saying is if you’re going to give the opportunity to somebody in our culture, young women are a great place to start,” says Rosenthal. “I really benefited from the system. I got totally rewarded for my work and my effort and I felt the system was open to me. Now I want women and minorities to feel the system is open to them.”

Maybe that’s Rosenthal’s point. Maybe that’s enough. Maybe that’s why he wants to talk so much, because maybe the more you’re hated, the more people talk about you. Hatred breeds controversy. Controversy means discussion.

Is Rosenthal crazy? “Ask women,” he suggests. “Some are going to say, ‘Yeah, that guy is totally nuts and I completely disagree with everything he said.’ Or the women are going to say, ‘You know what? He has a point.’ I have a point. I will shame them. Absolutely.”

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Janet Reitman is a freelance writer based in New York.