Scramble of the underlings

THE mailroom at the William Morris Agency is famous as a boot camp for nascent hustlers. Stories of shenanigans there and at other agencies have long been known to people in the movie business, passed around and kept close. Now that agents themselves are celebrities, it’s probably inevitable that David Rensin’s “The Mailroom” should appear. Compiled in the manner of oral histories, it’s a collection of agency war stories. Wide interest in such an undertaking is assumed here, probably because Hollywood movies have become so mind-numbingly predictable that the weekly grosses have more drama. As a result, the public has developed a taste for the personalities on the business side. Michael Eisner’s corporate troubles are more interesting than, say, Ashton Kutcher’s movies.

I wouldn’t be surprised if some punter started selling Agent & Executive cards, a version of the baseball cards that come with bubble gum. I’ll trade you a Jeff Katzenberg and a Barry Diller for your out-of-print Mike Ovitz.

Being a “trainee” in the mailroom is an opportunity to work astonishingly long hours, racing from Pasadena to Malibu delivering scripts and checks or pulling a mail cart through the offices of a big agency. All this is endured with little pay in the hope of “getting on a desk,” which means answering phones and, crucially, being allowed to listen silently to conversations with clients and buyers and run endless menial errands. Trainees half expect some drill sergeant agent, angry that his diet soda has four ice cubes instead of three, to shout, “OK, Missy, drop down and give me 50 push-ups.” Rensin tells how one trainee had to take an agent’s stool sample to the doctor, another had to get ice to Johnny Carson when he was traveling on the Nile. Agents live by a code: Never say no to the talent. Consequently, they tend to be very demanding of their own servants.

Trainees revel in cheating and tricking their employers. One example among many Rensin cites: Manager and producer Marty Adelstein, a trainee at William Morris in 1983, tells how Steve Rabineau, now a prominent agent, taught him the ropes.

“He took me to ... pick up deli for meetings. He explained ... how to doctor the invoices. If you ... bought three quarts of tuna fish, you’d change it to five and take two home.” Longtime manager Jeff Wald, a trainee in 1965, explains how he supplemented his salary: “I sold grass in the mailroom on the side.” These former junior miscreants are now cavalier about dated gossip of their personal celebrity encounters. It’s enough to make a fellow mistrustful of agents.

There’s a fabulous sense of self-importance about all this. “Working for Stan Kamen (a William Morris grandee of the past) was like clerking for a Supreme Court Justice,” says an unnamed producer. Kamen was a very good agent, but he was rarely confused with, say, Justice Brandeis.

The most famous mailroom story of all is about David Geffen, a William Morris trainee in 1964. Geffen tells Rensin he got the job by lying about having a college degree, which by then was required. When it was about to catch up with him, he had UCLA stationery made and sent a letter to the agency declaring himself a graduate. Perhaps reflecting on that long-ago misdeed, Geffen says, “I don’t think the rules of ambition have changed. If you want to succeed, you’d better not care too much what other people think about what you’re doing.”

There are few examples of probity, yet Sam Haskell, the head of television at William Morris, gives this counsel to trainees: “Your primary power is your character and your integrity.” In this book, at least, Haskell is out there alone. An instructive story comes from Barry Diller, a trainee at William Morris in 1961. “My great strategy was to take what was seen as the worst job in the building -- photocopying.... I’d collect things to copy, along with as much of the file room as I could carry, and hole myself up ... reading through the history of the entertainment business as seen through every deal, every development, every contract.... I read their entire file room.”

One assumes that in his youth, Diller got up to at least the occasional mischief, but now that he’s in his 60s, he has the sense to leave those tales to others. Even if he hasn’t told the whole truth here, Diller’s famous focus must have been apparent 40-odd years ago.

(A note of disclosure: I know many of the people in this book. Several have represented me, I’ve worked for some and been in business with still others.)

The editorial voice in this history is in the selection of quotes. There’s no scene-setting or description. It’s all in the spiels, arranged to suggest a conversation -- as if groups of speakers were in a room recalling the past. Because the only characterization is in the dialogue, most voices seem disembodied and often similar. Rensin, who has written other books, including “Where Did I Go Right” with Bernie Brillstein, is enterprising and industrious, but the result this time can feel archival.

Still, patterns emerge, and Rensin gives a sense of the business over the last 50 years from the POV of the mailroom. Over and over, nepotism helped smooth the way and open doors. Everyone seemed to be somebody’s nephew. In recent years, the Brooklyn-white guy bias has given way to a wider world of women, minorities and others who don’t seem born into show business. Many have been to fancy colleges. The ones who went to Harvard mention it frequently.

Just as I was growing weary of prideful tales of half-baked banditry, Rick Jaffa, who was in the William Morris mailroom in 1982, tells a beguiling story of driving Abe Lastfogel, a legendary figure in the agency business for 70 years and who began as an office boy for William Morris himself. The regular driver was unavailable and young Rick was recruited to take the elfin Mr. Lastfogel in his big black Cadillac to a movie in Westwood, to stay with him and, above all, not to let him eat candy. Rensin gives Jaffa all the space he needs to tell the story, which is believable (well, maybe tweaked a little). While Jaffa was parking that Cadillac, Lastfogel got hold of a “Nestle’s Crunch bar the size of a Chihuahua,” and the resulting mess was bound to cause trouble for his earnest young driver. The story of driving Lastfogel and cleaning him up would make a small movie in itself. As for Jaffa, he’s out of the agency business. He’s a screenwriter now.