The list goes on and on and it will get longer. Fearless prediction from moi: eventually we will add a certain actor from my hometown to this roster of sexual predators. I know way too much about the guy for him not to get charged with groping and more. Unless, of course, he hasn't paid off his past victims ahead of time.
But I digress. The news has been ugly from both Hollywood and Washington DC as if this behavior is new. Spoiler alert: it's not.
Of course, in my own little world down here on the E list of show business, you're very conscious of this stuff. Hey, you need to be very careful and that shouldn't be as hard as some people are finding it.
Case in point. When we were putting together a cast for our current project, we targeted a particular actress for the lead. I knew her work and thought she really had the right sensibility for what we were trying to achieve. Because we were developing "out of the box," we were not dealing with those wonderful wall builders called agents and managers. So we decided to approach her on Facebook.
But I was very sensitive that it would look creepy for me...a guy...to troll after her on social media. So I had our associate producer...a gal...make the initial approach. And when our actress said "yes, we should meet over lunch," I made sure the same associate producer come to the meal. I was that concerned about the actress' sensitivity.
So I was overly cautious and wanted to be totally upstanding. Hey, you guys mentioned at the top, how hard is that to respect somebody?
Oddly enough, amidst all the dirty stuff that's been coming out the past month, I am actually laughing. Oh, not at the despicable nature of it all. That's not a ha ha matter. Nope, I am thinking about how I saw this all before.
If you wanted to be really appalled by sexual shenanigans and the like, all you need to do was follow me in one of my first jobs. As an audience researcher about 30 years at Westwood One Radio Networks. Oh, they're still in business but a very different company now. It would have to be. Because, back in that day, Westwood One...and the network radio industry in total...made Harvey Weinstein look like Mister Rogers. And it was a publicly traded company, to boot. Amazing.
Back then, WWO (as we used to abbreviate it) specialized in national radio programming from the rock and roll world. We produced concert tours of the hottest of the hot. It was a happening place. You name the rock star. We probably had them under contract.
The management team was full of young hot shots who would be called hipsters in today's jargon. And, as I think about what this lowly kid saw play out in front of him, I could write a book...or several blogs.
At one point, my cubicle was close to the reception desk. If that person was away, I frequently signed for packages from messengers. They were all "soft" envelopes. After three or four signatures, I knew I was unwittingly enabling the transport of cocaine for some of our advertising clients. Hell, I saw somebody open one in front and the white powder was certainly not Coffee Mate.
That was the drugs in the rock and roll world and yes, there was also plenty of sex. Some of the sales managers acted like frat boys with rulers. A lot of the women on staff were obvious targets. Most fought off the advances. Some did not.
There was one girl in my department who gave it away freely. After two whiskey sours, she could be yours. And I watched this soap opera play out time after time. At one sales managers meeting in New York, she got so drunk that the powers that be took turns carrying her drunken skeleton from one room to another.
Charming.
At a sales meeting in Los Angeles, I caught her at the cocktail lounge necking with one of the sales guys. I started to walk away but she called me back. She was desperate for me to interrupt them. When the guy was out of ear shot, she whispered in my ear.
"Please stick around. He's acting like I'm his exclusive date for the meeting and I would really like to be with XXX."
All of a sudden, I was the heroine's best friend in an X-rated Archie and Veronica comic book.
Now when the head of sales took up with her, there was reason for her to get his approval on some audience data once a month. She'd go to his office, the door would close, and we would not see either of them for three hours.
After she left the company shortly thereafter, we assigned the audience approval task to a young guy right out of college. He'd return with the necessary sign off ten minutes later.
Now, a few weeks later, my boss was in the process of hiring a new assistant. When the head of sales saw her in the reception area waiting to be interviewed, he hightailed it down to my boss' office.
"That's the one you need to hire."
Forget about whether she was qualified. It was clear we needed to hire her. PS, they had an affair for the next two years.
And the hits just keep on coming.
A new female sales person lasted a grand total of two weeks. After sitting in on a sales meeting where one of the managers announced that a certain idea "didn't get him stiff," she resigned.
At another sales managers' meeting, a prostitute was engaged to accost one of our unsuspecting supervisors who was walking behind the group a block away. She was offered 100 dollars for the initial contact and promised 500 bucks if she closed the deal.
Hmmm. There was another time where, around 11PM on a Friday, two employees were chasing each other around the reception area naked. It wouldn't have been so bad if the building guard hadn't spotted them on his surveillance camera.
I could go on and on and the ugliness gets more pronounced. Oddly, I talk to old friends who worked at competitive radio networks at the time. The same stuff was going on there, too.
Obviously, the culprits are not just men, but women as well. The girl in my department, for instance, didn't put up too much resistance. In fact, she'd probably sleep with a Swifter mop if it could buy her a bourbon sour. But, as an aggregate, it set up a nasty culture that I still, to this day, remember.
So, guess what? The Hollywood and Washington nonsense is not all that new. It's just that folks are finally recognizing it for what it is.
Dinner last night: Arclight salad.
No comments:
Post a Comment