Better Him Than Me

As cynical as I can be about the Hollywood scene, I have to admit that like so many other people, there's a part of me that always wondered what would have happened if I'd had the courage (or stupidity) to move out to Los Angeles and give a career in show business a try. This week, I picked up a book by a guy named Everett Weinberger called Wannabe, which pretty much showed me what likely would have happened.

This is the tale of a Stanford MBA who had an early crisis of conscience and knew he wanted to pass by the world of Wall Street and high finance to go to LA to become a creative executive. His tale of what happened to him and didn't happen for him during that quest is heart-wrenching reading on several counts. One, you feel sorry for the man. The other, you feel frightened that such a powerful and influential business is run by soulless creatures that could never have a crisis of conscience... because that would require a consience to begin with.

We follow Everett from being screamed at and rejected by his father for wasting his life and very expensive degree on something as flaky as Hollywood, to the pathetically little, sparsely-furnished apartment he sub-leased in which he would spend his days and nights calling and writing calls and letters that would get promptly trashed unread. We learn such degrading Hollywood unwritten rules such as, you never... ever get seen talking to anyone in a position lower than yours in social settings. Even a rabbi who once made a documentary would return Everett's calls.

Most astonishing in the book is that when he was treated as less than human, that was not the exception, but the complete norm. One example has an executive with Michael Douglas' company making him wait in the lobby for 30 minutes. The exec flew out of the building toward the parking lot saying to Ev, "Walk with me!" Ev finally broke the awkward silence by asking how he liked attending Columbia. The exec snapped, "That's not the kind of question you ask a guy who's about to get in his car!" A put-off Everett said, "Well what do you ask?" "You say nice car... can I have a job." With that the exec sped away leaving Everett standing alone in the space that once held the exec's Jag. He was a complete stranger. Have you ever treated your worst enemy that way?

There are numerous instances of his temping under the personal assistants to these monsters, in which the assistant set up Everett to get fired, or let him get fired for their mistakes. Status quo. If you began to succeed a little, someone would quickly take offense and make sure you were finished off as quickly as possible. Top to bottom, turnover is a weekly, not yearly thing. One particular such personal assistant was a girl named Tracy who worked for Frank Wells of Disney. Gorgeous...and pure venom.

It wasn't the lack of a break that led Everett to give up the search, or even the degradation of one temp job filled with abuse after another. In time, Everett came to see just how insecure, damaged, pathetic, and empty even the most successful execs were. He began to see that even if he could become one of them, the thought of becoming one of them became so distasteful that he was able to walk away, and look back with no regrets... leaving Hollywood to eat itself. The telling moment was when, on his way out of town, he bumped into Tracy... alone... eating at a Jack in the Box... unemployed. So for any of you, like me, who always wondered what would have happened had you gotten into the business, the answer is, we'd have lost the real you forever.

You truly must sell your soul and become one of them if you're ever going to make it there. And what an expensive success that is. Like Woody Allen said, "Hollywood is dog eat dog. It's worse than dog eat dog... it's dog doesn't return other dog's phone calls."

mike@smug.com

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