William Morris

"Almost everyone at William Morris started in the company’s mailroom. After a year or two, trainees were sent to secretarial school for shorthand, or “speed writing.” They came back as an agent’s secretary. If they did well at that, they became an assistant, then a junior agent, and finally a senior agent. It could take three years to become a junior agent and four more to start signing your own clients as a senior agent—and more than 80 percent of the trainees washed out along the way. The way you got ahead at WMA was nepotism: everybody was somebody’s nephew. It was an old, soft, corrupt place. I didn’t know anybody, so I needed another way to stand out. I told the head of personnel, “I have a proposition for you. I think I can learn all I need to know to become an agent in 120 days. If I can’t, I’ll give back everything you paid me.” I was agenting him, and he knew it. He broke out laughing. “That’s the craziest thing I ever heard,” he said. “But I’m going to hire you. You start Monday.” My salary would be $55 a week. I said, “I’d like to start tomorrow.” I showed up at 7:00, two hours early, to learn my way around the building. At 9:30, we received our assignments for the day. A few senior trainees snagged the plum jobs as substitute secretaries, which gave them the chance to impress an agent. The rest of us piled into company Volkswagens to make the morning mail runs to studios, networks, lawyers, and clients. There were three routes: the Valley, Hollywood, and Beverly Hills. Before the days of fax or email, all business not handled by phone was conducted via hand-delivered memos and contracts. Our bags were full and heavy. There were twenty mailroom trainees, which meant I had nineteen rivals for advancement. I set out to finish my route in half the allotted time. Mapping out routes with my spiral-bound Thomas Guide to the city’s roads, I played a game I called Keep On Moving. The trick was to avoid red lights. I got back to the office before noon, way ahead of the rest, for any errands my bosses needed in-house. They dispatched me to accounting or legal, where I learned the ins and outs of the byzantine company. People came to rely on me. Soon they stopped sending me outside Beverly Hills, and raised my salary to $75 a week. I was embarrassed by the low pay, embarrassed that I could take Judy out only to Mexican restaurants, which were the cheapest. You could get a five-course meal at Casa Escobar, on Pico, for $3.95: two dinners, two beers, and a tip and we were out for $16—slightly more than I was making in a twelve-hour day at William Morris. But Judy gave me the line I’d use later when I recruited people to an entry-level job at CAA: You’re investing in your life."

"happened to his children. Quickly I said, “Yes, we’re all fine here, but… will you do me a favor?” He said, in his Talmudic, solemn way, “Of course, my son, of course I will.” “I want to work in the mail room at William Morris.” Thomas, at that time the agency’s biggest client, said, “That’s easy. Can I go back to my massage now?” The next day, I was called by the head of personnel at William Morris. He ever so politely asked me to come in whenever convenient. I said, “How about now?” Thirty minutes and a few desultory questions later I was hired. And just like that my life began."

"I wasn’t really working, I was studying. I had the world’s greatest entertainment “library” at hand—the William Morris file room. It was a huge place with hundreds of metal file cabinets that housed the entire history of the entertainment business. I found excuses to disappear into it and deeply read every file from *A* to *Z*."