My relationship to Hollywood is that I’ve had almost every job in it. I started in the mailroom at UTA, where I became a talent agent, then moved to Endeavor, which became WME. I left agenting to be Jack Black’s producing partner at our company Electric Dynamite, and left that dream job shortly after birthing my first child, because my repressed desire to write suddenly didn’t scare me any more. Now I sell a TV pilot here and there, and I write books–a memoir called Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones in 2024, and this new one, called How to be Less Useful: The Joy of Inefficiency–that comes out on election day, November 3 (yes, really).
My life used to be a whirlwind of staff meetings, fancy meals, fancier events, and client pursuits. I have met everyone, I have been to every party, I have worn many ballgowns. It was all as exciting as it seems. But ultimately it wasn’t the right fit for me, so now I mostly hang out at home, writing and hanging out with my family, pretty content. Of course, people ask if I ever miss being an agent, and I don’t, not for one second. I definitely miss my expense account, I say. I also enjoyed signing fresh talent. It was so fun, being the one to introduce someone new to the town, to see the excitement and the job offers bubble up for the first time. But the scene, the deal-making, the flashy lifestyle was only fun for me when it was new. I’m grateful for my years as an agent, which earned me wisdom within an opaque industry, but the longest lasting skills–the ones I’m most grateful for–are in the areas of interpersonal effectiveness.
You can say a lot of things about agents–and people sure do!–but you can’t deny that they exist solely to get things done. “‘I don’t know’ is not an answer!” someone–I cannot remember who—hissed at me as a young assistant, and it was my first lesson in the agent worldview. “You can’t not know. It’s ‘I’ll find out.’” Similarly scrubbed from my vocabulary was “That can’t happen.” In agenting world, anything is possible, and I really do mean anything. If you can’t do it, someone else will figure out how. This was my foundational training, and all it takes to make the impossible possible, I learned, is figuring out how to navigate people– which dials to turn, buttons to press, to achieve a desired outcome. Plus relentless follow-up.
The life lessons piled up from day one. Before walking into a party where there was a client we were looking to sign, a senior agent pulled me aside. You’re good with people, she said, but this is not the time for them to get to know you. Remember, the more you listen, the more they like you. I nodded, smiled, asked questions, and listened attentively. It was the least amount of work I had ever put into a meeting, and it worked. It always worked, because agenting was a job in which it didn’t help to express any needs or wants of my own. It’s a service job, tending primarily to self-focused artists. In my real life, now, my relationships are mostly two-way streets. I foster real communication and deep connection. But honestly sometimes, when I just need to get someone on my side, whether it’s a salesperson or a kid, the old listen-and-win–them-over still does the trick.
Don’t Self-edit. UTA had been the kind of place where a young agent would fear misspeaking or sending a typo in an email, which actually made it a great, if terrifying training ground for never misspeaking or sending a typo in an email (except once: “Ampy Poehler,” 2004). Endeavor was exactly the opposite. I was brand new in a staff meeting when Ari yelled one day. “Why am I the only one talking?” he said “Are you scared of saying something dumb? 99% of the sh*t I say is dumb and I get called a genius for the 1% that isn’t. Just talk.” He did startle me into talking more and more, but it’s something I think about all the time if I feel an urge to pull back on a stream of ideas. Brainstorming is supposed to be an iterative process, and I had somehow been trained to believe that every thought that came out of my mouth had to be fully-formed. I think back to that staff meeting every time I share a half-baked thought at work, or even at home, with my husband (who is amazing at this). “This isn’t the right idea,” I might say “but I’m thinking something in the area of..” so they can build on it and get to a truly great place. It makes for a much more collaborative household.
Don’t stare into the brights. You may not know this: entertainment is not a haven of the well-adjusted, and in a workplace where everyone treated the stakes as life and death, volatility and eruptions were commonplace. I learned quickly that the best approach when anyone came at me with “their brights on” as I called it was to pretend I was running a nighttime errand on Mulholland. Ignore the bright headlights of a personality coming straight at you, and keep your eyes on the side of the road until they’ve passed. Instead of getting dragged into a work conflict, which could have happened ten times a day, I internally clarified my point of view, remembered what I was trying to do, and ignored the mood. This has come in handy with all kinds of work conflict since, but is also remarkably useful when dealing with small children.
Know what you want, and go get it. I was so obviously miserable at the end of my agenting tenure that my old boss told me to “Figure out what I wanted my life to look like, and go get it.” It was similar to previous advice I had gotten from her about elbowing my way through a field of competing agendas and personalities, on a messy movie I was covering for casting. It’s not that simple, I told her. But she shrugged. She knew we did hard things all the time. Maybe have a couple of babies, write a couple of books, she said, and I gasped. How dare she! But of course here I am, with my couple babies, and my couple of books. Her vision was spot-on.
Reach out to those you admire. I remember when I had just started at Endeavor and I walked into Robert Newman’s office with a script that I thought might be good to submit to Danny Boyle. Boyle had just won an Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire. Robert was well-liked, with a great client list, and as the new girl I thought it would be a good way to build rapport. He heard my little pitch, handed back the script, said “great, call him.” and had his assistant give me his phone number. Sweaty-palmed, I made the call, and Danny picked right up, thanked me for thinking of him, and said he’d look forward to reading it. Not only was it a lesson in just picking up the phone–what was the worst that was going to happen? I’ve reached out to hundreds, if not thousands, of artists I admire in my career, and almost every time they’ve been delighted to hear from me, even as just a fan. I didn’t understand why at the time, but now that my job is to sit at my desk and just think, a sweet note or call about my work can make my whole day!
A phone call is worth a hundred emails. I learned early on that I could either email back and forth with a producer or studio exec all day, or I could hop on the phone with them and in twenty minutes not only conclude a major piece of business for both of us, but also water our work relationship. My feelings about the phone have only gotten stronger. Need a reservation but they’re all gone online? Call and talk to a human! Tricky problem that the e-help desk can’t figure out? Try calling a person! A friend seems “off?” Call them! Texting is not real friendship. We have an invention that can get ahold of anyone on the planet, and peopIe are still barfing out text on a screen like we’re not all drowning in a bog of text on a screen. And I don’t mean pre-texting to schedule calls, either, I mean just calling people. It’s time we shook everyone out of this anti-phone-call nonsense.
Take the general. Too many people in this town hate a general meeting. I’m not even hiring for anything, they’ll say. Or we already know what we want. I am a huge proponent of general meetings, and still take them, if they’re offered. Because friendships have been made in generals. Romantic Partnerships have been made in generals. Germs of incredible ideas come out when two creative people get together. New roles are written into shows and movies after generals. To say you don’t “do” generals means closing off an avenue of serendipity and connection in a town that can run low on serendipity and human connection.
Learn to create a marketplace. I represented actors, not scripts, but understood the significance of a good bite when a script went out. If one person was interested, you could call everyone else who was interested and create a sense of urgency, which then drove the sale. I am no longer a seller, but I do have to buy a lot of big ticket family-time items. So, for example, when I buy a car, or a mattress, or anything that requires actual salesmanship, I start by getting two quotes from two sellers, and then I let them duke it out. It’s not over until someone is grumbling about what I’m “getting away with.”
Every life has its gifts and challenges. When I was in the thick of it, working with super-famous people–or people who became famous–I got a real education in not-so-green grass. A non-Hollywood friend asked me who I’d exchange lives with, and told me she’d exchange with a top actress. I knew that this woman was about to exit a horrible marriage and was, furthermore, constantly having money troubles not only because famous people have famous people expenses, but because once she made it, her entire family expected to be supported for the rest of their lives. Plus being famous meant she couldn’t go for a walk and get a coffee. I have real, real empathy and horror for this aspect of fame–having seen how their lives and bodies are never really their own again. Of course I know famous people who love being famous, and have figured out a way to do it that doesn’t dismantle their mental health. For me, the public’s complete lack of boundaries would be too high a price to pay for attention. I think about this any time a germ of envy kicks in about anyone else’s life–that vacation, that career, that seemingly–always–calm child. Every single human is dealing with their challenges, and I’m grateful to have my own, relatively low-grade ones.
And yet, nothing is more important than the lesson I still turn to the most, like the time I realized I had to be solo with the kids for a while day while my husband was in pre-production. “Oh man, we gotta get in the car!” I told them. “We’re running late for this thing I found–you’re gonna love it.” “What is it??” asked my husband, understandably curious, as I rushed by, Oh, I don’t know yet, I muttered, I’ll figure something out. He laughed at our receding forms as I yelled out “Everything is sales!”
