So 5 Minutes Ago Read online

  Publicists, as I’ve learned all too well, are at the bottom of the Hollywood food chain. Not because most of them are women, and overweight at that, or young gay guys (there’re just too many powerful gays in Hollywood for that to be true), but because power in Hollywood, like Wall Street, is tracked solely in earnings. Publicists are lowlifes because, unlike agents or managers, they don’t generate income, only exposure. It doesn’t matter whether you represent Brad Pitt or the Olsen twins. Stars pay publicists like they pay a monthly insurance bill, annoying but necessary coverage in case of disaster. Agents get stars work. Managers get stars work and hold their hands. But a publicist is one notch above a maid. Or a nanny. The only people we outrank are journalists, and they don’t register on Hollywood’s seismograph. And the real proof of our stupidity is that we don’t even generate real income for ourselves. Nobody, except the few senior partners in those PR agencies big enough to be acquired by a bigger agency, ever gets rich.

  Sure, in a better world, we’d be as highly paid as lawyers, given all the lying we do on behalf of our clients. A star in rehab is “taking some time off.” If a star’s movie doesn’t open, he’s “trying to push the envelope.” A star who loses his production deal is “transitioning.” A star found naked wandering Sunset Boulevard, disoriented in a cornfield, or picking up a transvestite in a hotel lobby is “suffering from exhaustion.”

  But, in reality, being a publicist put me in the Hollywood food chain somewhere around the level of zebras. Too many of us thundering around in circles, stirring up dust, and generally behaving as noisily and annoyingly as the carnivores expected us to. All I had to do was try not to get eaten.

  I toss the trades aside and turn on my PC. E-mail. Such a great time-suck even if most of it’s just a duplicate of my call sheet, except for the scary gang message from Suzanne marked URGENT. There are also two from Rachel flagged FUCKING UNBELIEVABLE and STILL FUCKING UNBELIEVABLE. Rachel Chapman’s one of my closest friends largely because she’s a publicist and moved out from New York the same time I did. Although she made the jump to the studios, working as a publicist at Fox, she inhabits a no-less-demeaning circle of hell than I do, and her ambivalence about this industry outstrips even mine. I click open hers first.

  To: Alex Davidson

  From: Rachel Chapman

  *&#$!!)-BIG. CALL ME!

  The second message, sent two minutes later, is only slightly less hyper.

  To: Alex Davidson

  From: Rachel Chapman

  GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF THE MICROWAVE AND CALL ME—ON YOUR CELL IN CASE G ALREADY HAS THE PHONES TAPPED.

  At least I’m not the only one who’s paranoid about this merger. About working for G. I decide to live dangerously and click open Suzanne’s.

  To: The DWP Staff

  From: Suzanne Davis

  As you know, the partners of DWP have accepted a most generous offer from our friends at BIG. Of course, this will mean many changes for us all, changes that will be discussed in greater detail in the coming days. But I speak for all of us when I say this is the beginning of a truly remarkable new chapter in our company history.

  Meanwhile—and I cannot emphasize this enough—all DWP publicists are to avoid talking to the press. Doug and I are sending out a press release outlining the deal to the media outlets as well as our clients and studio liaisons. In the future, all corporate communications must be cleared in advance with one of the senior partners. Meanwhile, please join me and Doug in the conference room at 4 P.M. for champagne and cake. SD.

  I log off, too depressed to even troll the wires. I can already hear a high-pitched buzzing outside my door. The nursing home on High Alert. I’ll need more than caffeine to confront my colleagues today. I punch up Rachel on my speed-dial.

  “God,” she snaps when I reach her. “Did they put you under house arrest?”

  “That’d be BIG of them,” I say, pointlessly. “No, just trying to get my bearings. Tell me what you’ve heard.”

  “What I’ve heard? What have you heard? You know G cleaned house when he was at Sony?”

  “Yes, even I know that.” I’m starting to get depressed all over again. “I’m just trying to figure out if we still get to play by Suzanne’s rules.”

  “Are you serious? You’re the ones who got bought out. Shit, Suzanne probably won’t even be there in a year. Two at the most.”

  “See, you have heard something,” I say irritably, yanking my hair into a ponytail and anchoring it with a pencil. Most days I loved Rachel’s no-bullshit attitude. But not today. “All I know is they’re still working on the contracts, we haven’t even seen the new offices yet, and I have my first meeting with Troy this afternoon. But there’s cake and ice cream at four.”

  “Oh God,” Rachel says, and I can tell she’s trying to be sympathetic. “Look, I’ll make some calls. There’s someone I know at Sony who survived G’s reign of terror. I’ll call you in a bit.”

  “Nonfat with an extra shot.” Steven parks the familiar green and white paper cup (grande) on my desk. “What’d I miss?”

  “Nothing,” I say, peeling off the lid and immediately burning my tongue. “Just read Suzanne’s e-mail and was deciding which ‘media outlet’ I was going to call.”

  “I have Richard Johnson’s number on speed-dial.”

  “We all do. So, what’s the mood in the hive?” I say, nodding in the direction of the hall. “Am I the only one who’s going to miss little Camp Estrogen Patch?”

  “What can I say?” Steven says, taking a slug of cappuccino. “Size matters. They want to be BIG.”

  I love Steven. He can’t write, but no one can in Hollywood, and he’s incredibly disorganized, but he makes me laugh, which hardly anybody does out here. An entire industry devoted to entertainment and nobody has a sense of humor. But Steven can get me to laugh. Like that week after I hired him and he started answering the phone in an English accent, which pissed off Suzanne—not because his accent was obviously fake, but because the craze for English assistants was about five years out of date. Then there was his Anna Wintour phase, when he wore sunglasses for a week to celebrate the fact I got Vogue to do a story on one of my creakiest clients, a director who hadn’t had a hit in years but who was good friends with Tom Ford. I also love Steven because even though he inherited a pile from his lover, and lives in a fabulous house up in Coldwater Canyon, he still comes to work every day.

  But I draw the line at pity.

  “I can’t be the only one who doesn’t want to have a boss who’s shorter than me and wears a rug.”

  “Look, you knew you were the odd man out when you joined this aging sorority,” Steven says, launching into his get-a-grip speech that he uses on me when I’m feeling sorry for myself. “With any luck you’ll get a nicer office, colleagues your own age, and you’ll just deal with the new contract. Besides, none of the clients are going anywhere. They’re not that ambulatory.”

  He had me there.

  “You’re right. The clients aren’t going anywhere,” I say, taking another hit of coffee.

  “With our client roster we actually need to stock the office with a defibrillator. Just like the airlines.”

  “You can be in charge of shaving their chests, since you’re already the expert.”

  Steven waves me off. “We can roam Hollywood just waiting for stars to have a breakdown and then revive them. Courteney Cox is having a panic attack because Jennifer Aniston is having a bigger career than she is. John Travolta is having a breakdown because all his movies, not just the ones about Scientology, are tanking.”

  “Hey, I like John Travolta.”

  “Of course we’d have to have a special vigil outside Charlize’s house for the time when everyone wakes up and realizes she’s just a talent-free ex-model.”

  Steven has hated Charlize Theron ever since she was mean to him at a photo shoot. Actually, she’d been patronizing and bossy, which didn’t actually count as mean in Hollywood, but Steven was still miffed that she’d calle
d him Steve and asked him to walk her dogs.

  “I still can’t believe she did that,” he said.

  “Her assistant was busy yelling at the caterer for putting too much pasta in the vegetable salad.”

  “I’m waiting for the day when Charlize goes into cardiac arrest because Harvey Weinstein stops returning her calls.”

  “Stop. We could do this all day.”

  “Let’s, and then we’ll go for drinks.”

  I’m starting to get annoyed.

  “Okay, forget the clients and forget BIG for a minute. I need ideas for my pitch to Troy this afternoon. I mean, I have to land this guy before I can fix his image problems.”

  “Well, what’s his movie?” Steven says distractedly, picking up Variety.

  “He doesn’t have one. Not yet. That’s the problem. Remember “Blow Your Mind” Games?

  “I still think the only thing wrong with that was the title. I mean, anyone looking at Troy isn’t thinking about blowing his mind.”

  Now I’m seriously annoyed. “This town is filled with a million pretty boys but it doesn’t mean they can open a movie.”

  “Okay, okay,” Steven says, dropping Variety. “But shouldn’t his new agent land him a movie and then you can promote him? I mean, even Demi Moore knew enough to stay out of sight until CAA conjured her comeback.”

  “Thank you,” I say, grabbing the Variety. “But in these troubled times, we need all the clients we can get, even if we have to fake it.”

  “Okay,” Steven says with a sigh. “You know the drill. Just call some editors. Tell everyone he’s been writing a novel. He’s just back from an ashram. Or Nepal. Call US. They’ll do a story on anybody. Will he talk about his time in rehab? Or call InStyle and stick him in some rental house in the hills with some borrowed dogs and framed pictures of family members. He has a foster child in Uruguay!”

  “I know, I know,” I say, waving him off and pulling on my headset to attack my call sheet. “I just have to convince this guy he won’t wind up like Luke Perry.”

  The rest of the morning is chewed up with calls. I confirm the stylist appointment for Saturday, turn down an editorial request from My Generation, AARP’s new “celeb” magazine, and another one from Reader’s Digest—deftly fielding all queries about BIG. I hear myself using synergy a lot. I spend a half an hour going through an arduous cover negotiation with Marie Claire for their “aging” issue, followed by a conference call with a studio marketing exec about their fall release schedule, which amazingly includes a few of our clients.

  When Peg, Troy’s manager, calls at eleven-thirty to say Troy can’t make the meeting at lunch but wants to meet at seven at the Chateau, I am both annoyed and relieved. At least I have a few more hours to come up with a game plan. Or a few more hours to put off coming up with a game plan.

  I have Steven order my usual take-out Cobb salad and iced tea and spend lunch going over my pitch. After staring at his credits long enough, I decide Troy needs to lose the sex-stud image and go for steady and reliable. Like Rob Lowe did with his comeback-from-the-sex-scandal gig on The West Wing. And Robert Downey, Jr.’s return from the Big House, playing the doe-eyed swain on Ally McBeal. It’s perfect, a new image but not that much of a stretch. Playing a Gary Cooper type will also help solve Troy’s off-camera tendencies to blurt out whatever crosses his pot-addled brain.

  I’ve even gone so far as to work up a mock photo shoot: ranch, blue jeans, pickup truck, and lots of animals. Make that baby animals. Lose the girls in short cutoffs and their dazed “do me” gazes, and stick Troy on a hay bale holding a lamb or a calf. Might be a nightmare to actually shoot, but that isn’t my problem. If only Westerns were still hot. Still, it could work. Troy—the Classic American Hero.

  Hey, it worked for Tom Cruise—and talk about baggage.

  2 . . . and Farther Down

  I’m feeling very on my game when 4 P.M. and the BIG staff meeting rolls around. When Steven and I wander in at exactly four-ten, the room is packed. Amazing, since these command performances usually elicit a flood of no-shows. Suzanne and G are nowhere to be seen, but among the denizens there’s the usual flouncing of hair and nervous sidestepping of mules and the hissing sound of Diet Cokes being pried open. On the conference table there’s a giant sheet cake decorated like Variety’s front page with the headline BIG DEAL FOR BIG-DWP in black icing. At least there aren’t any balloons.

  “I forgot to wear my estrogen patch,” Steven hisses, scanning the crowd.

  “Be a good boy and work the room,” I say. “I’ll get you a Coke.”

  I thread my way to the table, murmuring the usual pleasantries as I squeeze between the bodies. Control Freak Sylphs and Earth Mother Endomorphs and almost all of them north of forty, which in Hollywood is a citable offense. I’m five-five, weigh 125, still have the same unruly brown hair God gave me (plus a few non-God-given highlights), and am at least a decade younger, so where I fall in this house of cards is anybody’s guess.

  “So, I hear ten years is the cutoff for equity positions,” Sandy says, right at my elbow, startling me so I spill my Diet Coke. Sandy’s one of the lifers. Blond, and radiates steely self-interest. I trust her as much as I trust Martha Stewart. I’m about to launch into my “synergy” speech when I hear another, friendlier voice at my back.

  “Howdy, stranger.”

  It’s male, straight, and not wholly unfamiliar. I try vainly to place it but, given my surroundings, I give up and turn in its direction with a smile plastered on my face.

  Charles. Charles! Jesus, what is he doing here, not that I don’t welcome a friendly face. A longtime DWP publicist out of the New York office, Charles is Stan Woolfe’s most trusted deputy and the office’s most senior agent after the founding partners. I met him during my first weeks at DWP when I worked out of the New York offices on West Broadway before moving to L.A. He seemed nice enough, but those weeks had been a blur and I can’t recall thinking much about him one way or another. I can’t even recall if he’s married, although given that he looks to be in his early forties with a few creases around his startling green eyes and some rather stylish streaks of gray in his dark brown hair, one would assume so. I haven’t seen him in almost three years and, frankly, have no memory that Charles was so . . . so . . . well, comforting-looking.

  “I see, Ms. Davidson, you’re one of the last to arrive. As usual,” Charles says with a grin as large as my own. “This won’t do. Not when there are BIG people waiting. So to speak.”

  Jesus. A good-looking straight male and a sense of irony. How could I have been so oblivious to Charles back in New York? Maybe it’s another Hollywood miracle. You become so inured to all the mutant males here you forget there are actually nice guys in the world. Nice guys who smile at you without it seeming like a come-on and whose starched blue shirt and soft brown herringbone jacket and green rep tie—Christ, a tie? When’s the last time I saw one of those?—make the world seem worth living. Like a weekend sail off Nantucket. Or opening presents on Christmas morning. Or a cab ride through Central Park during one of winter’s first snowfalls.

  “Yes, well, I don’t suppose I could convince you I got lost,” I say, and I feel my cheeks flush.

  “Actually, I think you took a wrong turn off Broadway,” he says, his smile deepening. “By the way, how is Hollywood treating you?”

  “About the way it treats anybody. With great indifference.”

  “That’s not what I hear,” he says.

  I’m about to ask him what he means, what exactly he means, and of course why he happens to be here and not in New York, when there’s a commotion at the door. Suzanne and G, looking like the bride and groom. Except she’s taller. There are also two blondes. Bridesmaids. Or maybe G’s bodyguards.

  “Thank yew—everyone—for such a great turnout,” Suzanne says, quickly moving to the center of the room. She’s in another one of her white suits, and with her short, gray-blond hair and Southern drawl that she refuses to lose, she could pass for Tom Wo
lfe.

  Great turnout? Yeah, like any of us could have not showed for this dog-and-pony show?

  “I know a lot of yew have already met Doug,” Suzanne drawls on. “But we wanted to officially welcome all of yew—all of us—to BIG-DWP.”

  There’s a brief round of applause followed by a buzzing that I realize is G addressing the crowd. I have to stand on my toes to see him. With his big head, tiny body, and orangey Bob Evans tan, he looks like Mr. Potato Head. Only with a better tailor.

  “I look around this room and I have only one question,” G says, a smile gripping his face. “How did I get so lucky?”

  Lucky? G is being unbelievably patronizing, but a titter of laughter sweeps the room along with a few self-conscious glances. I look over at Charles to see how he’s taking all this but his face is unreadable. Well, he’s been a publicist longer than I have.

  G runs a hand over his hair and plunges on. “I mean, I look at this group of amazing women,” he says, turning to Suzanne, who’s grinning like an idiot, “and I wonder why we didn’t join forces before. Can anyone tell me?”

  There’s an awkward silence like he’s actually waiting for someone to answer him. “Well,” G finally blurts out, raising his plastic glass of Coke. “All I know is we’re going to make one beautiful agency.”

  There is a smattering of applause and I feel a hand creeping across mine for the Coke I’m holding.

  “Word is you get nada,” Steven breathes into my ear. “Too new.”

  “Already heard that piece of good news,” I say, yanking the Coke back. “Equity cutoff positions or whatever they’re called.”

  “Well, have you heard the contract’s a killer?”

  I whip around.

  “Publish or perish, my dear.”

  “We’re already on commission,” I whine.