Free PDF The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up, by David Rensin
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The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up, by David Rensin
Free PDF The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up, by David Rensin
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Review
“Entertaining, instructive, and irresistible . . . Readers will feast on plenty of name-dropping . . . and hair-raising accounts of backstabbing.”—Variety“A TERRIFIC BOOK . . . Loaded with great stories, unusual insights, and laugh-out-loud humor. You will love this one.”—LARRY KING“FASCINATING . . . A bracing lesson in the acquisition and exercise of power . . . with a big emphasis on the maxim that what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.”—Los Angeles Times“THE MAILROOM IS A BLAST TO READ. This is the way Hollywood operates—the fun, the giddy high, the espionage, and the wrenching twists of luck and disaster. David Rensin is a master at eliciting the truth nobody else captures.”—CAMERON CROWE“SHAMELESS SCHMOOZING, casting couch know-how, plotting and hustling are all detailed in The Mailroom.”—The New York Post (Required Reading)“FASCINATING . . . [THE MAILROOM] REALLY DELIVERS.”—People“A-LIST HONCHOS . . . DISH ON THEIR RISE FROM PEONS TO POWER PLAYERS.”—US Weekly“This is indeed Hollywood history, more specifically a cogent account of how talent agencies have evolved since [William] Morris was ruled by executives in size 36-short suits. Rensin’s clever use of personal memories as mosaic pieces, arranged in patterns to form an industrywide portrait, is history for grown-ups.”—Variety“Coming from the William Morris mailroom as I have, [I found] this book [to be] the truth of what I experienced. . . . It’s hilarious, a bit crazy, and it should make anyone wonder why people put their careers in the hands of these idiots . . . and remember, I’m one of them. If you have a child, make sure he or she reads this before starting at the bottom—anywhere.”—BERNIE BRILLSTEIN Founding partner of Brillstein-Grey, WMA 1955“A riotous history of all the Hollywood movers and players who came into the industry through the mailrooms of the big talent agencies.”—The Globe and Mail (Toronto)“A worthy successor to Studs Terkel, Rensin delivers not only a riveting history of one of the most powerful springboards in Hollywood but a must-read for anyone with grand ambitions.”—CATHERINE CRIER Author of The Case Against Lawyers“A THOROUGHLY ENTERTAINING ORAL BIOGRAPHY OF A TINSELTOWN INSTITUTION.”—The San Francisco Examiner“Here is the quintessential Hollywood Roshomon. . . . David Rensin has impossibly and heroically channeled Studs Terkel and Harold Robbins all at once. This is a pinball machine clanging secret truths that move and careen as brashly as the movers who blurt their guts onto every shockingly entertaining page. And the best part is that we learn that people who are now very, very rich were forced to do very, very humiliating things to achieve such. What a refreshing equalizer for all of us.”—BILL ZEHME Author of The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin’“David Rensin’s book offers a fascinating look at some of the most powerful people and institutions in Hollywood. It’s packed with entertaining anecdotes . . . cautionary tales, and survival tips for those who dare to try their luck in one of the world’s most unpredictable businesses.”—KIM MASTERS Author of Keys to the Kingdom“As the maven of the mailroom, David Rensin puts forth an often-hilarious glimpse of life at the bottom.”—PETER BART Editor in Chief, Variety“Rensin captures the ambition, manipulative plotting, and hustler mentality . . . in this series of raunchy, realistic interviews . . . making [the] book an uncompromisingly truthful tell-all of what it takes to make it in the movie biz. . . . The stories are amusing, intriguing, and sometimes horrifying, but Rensin, to his credit, never dilutes sordid details.”—Publishers Weekly“An oral history of a crucial Tinseltown institution, related by some folks who make Machiavelli look like a pussycat . . . Edgy, frenetic, and entertaining reports from the room that launched a thousand deals.”—Kirkus Reviews
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From the Inside Flap
It’s like a plot from a Hollywood potboiler: start out in the mailroom, end up a mogul. But for many, it happens to be true. Some of the biggest names in entertainment—including David Geffen, Barry Diller, and Michael Ovitz— started their dazzling careers in the lowly mailroom. Based on more than two hundred interviews, David Rensin unfolds the never-before-told history of an American institution—in the voices of the people who lived it. Through nearly seven decades of glamour and humiliation, lousy pay and incredible perks, killer egos and a kill-or-be-killed ethos, you’ll go where the trainees go, learn what they must do to get ahead, and hear the best insider stories from the Hollywood everyone knows about but no one really knows. A vibrant tapestry of dreams, desire, and exploitation, The Mailroom is not only an engrossing read but a crash course, taught by the experts, on how to succeed in Hollywood.
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Product details
Paperback: 464 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books; Reprint edition (February 3, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0345442350
ISBN-13: 978-0345442352
Product Dimensions:
5.4 x 1 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.0 out of 5 stars
47 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#152,982 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
For some reason, when I picked up David Rensin’s The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom up, I just expected it to be a book-length exhortation for the chronically un-motivated. It may have had elements of that, but it was so much more. The book focuses on the William Morris Agency’s widely imitated sink-or-swim mail-room training program for agents. For Hollywood buffs, it is a history of Hollywood (and to a lesser extent, show-business New York), not only from the “bottom up,†as billed, but from the inside out. Life lessons abound with hilarious (and sad) stories of savvy cutthroats (the mailroom boy who edges a long-serving agent’s secretary out of her job), screw-ups and hyperventilating basket cases who washed out. The special challenges faced by women and minorities in the program are sensitively addressed (with insights from one-time trainee-secretary Helen Gurley Brown, among others). The role of nepotism and connections in unmistakable (e.g., George Burns’ nephew), but interestingly it emerges that sometimes the nepotism worked out in spite of everything (George Burns’ conscientious nephew). and at other times resulted with the agency being stuck with lazy, entitled incompetents (Doris Day’s son). Dirty little secrets emerge, such as why WMA and other agencies started requiring college degrees (to avoid hiring minority applicants) in a business where street smarts, cunning, ruthlessness and what might be called “emotional intelligence†were and still are infinitely far more important than traditional “book smarts.†Hilarious tales of adolescent and 20-something males walking in on naked or scantily clad actresses) and pranks (e.g. letters with forged signatures from top agents, hired call girls posing as reporters, and even gluing Doris Day’s son, Terry Melcher’s shoes to the floor, since apparently he couldn’t be bothered to wear them) alternate with insight into the world of show-business agents and the entertainment industry in general. The most important life lessons I took away were (1) that if you want to succeed in any endeavor,. you must be willing to start at rock-bottom, however much humiliation and grunt work that inevitably entails; formal education and superficially impressive-sounding academic degrees are no substitute for grit, determination and what Rensin would term “intestinal fortitudeâ€; and (2) oh yes, in the world of Hollywood agencies, as in most other areas of life, a-holes almost always finish first!
What made Ivy League educated young people want to slave in the mail room for ungodly hours for barely sustainable wages, be screamed at constantly, cater to the whims of some very eccentric people, make deliveries in all hours of the day and sometimes night, run demeaning errands and in their spare time, read and "cover" scripts for the powers that be? Well, for the chance to be entertainment agents, to make piles of money and hobnob with the stars. This is the story as told by the successful ones like David Geffin and Mike Orvitz about what it took and really why you had to start there. It was a postgraduate course in how to be a winner in Hollywood and New York. The book covers it all from the early days to post 2000 with entertaining vignettes based on many many interviews. This seems to have been a labor of love by the author and it shows. You will laugh at some of the antics and learn some great tips about how to get ahead in this industry and perhaps anywhere.
I love entertainment business books and this one does not disappoint. Unless you're in the biz, which I'm not, almost all of the names will be unfamiliar. This book has no story. It's a known fact that a way into the entertainment industry is to work in an agency's mailroom, eat sh*t, and hope for your break. This book is a series of interviews with the former mailroom attendees on the good, the bad, and the mental make-up of the wannabes struggling to get out of "mailroom jail". It's funny, informative, and one of those books you can't put down.Many industries have a proving ground. In investment banking we put them on as a trading or sales assistant hoping they will pick up the lingo and learn on the fly. But the agency mailroom seems to be about feeding egos of senior agent's with much more screaming, yelling and attention paid to personal chores. They do mention many of the nice agents as well as the agents who were best at teaching the mailroom guys. My favorite stories are about CAA because it is next door to my favorite hotel the Peninsula and because of the Mike Ovitz aura. Mike doesn't come off particularly well in the book but partner Ron Meyer does come off as a particularly sharp and nice guy.The positives and negatives of the mailroom run from taking your bosses stool sample in the doctor to having nude actresses answer the door. I also enjoyed the stories of the CAA mailroom which had a particularly high level of paranoia. I had met media mogul and former agent, Mike Medavoy so it was interesting seeing his son's quotes who was eventually fired due to information leaked to his father.If you have any interest in the business side of Hollywood, you'll like this book. Other books of interest would be "Wannabe" about an MBA's attempt to succeed at the low levels of Hollywood, and Lynda Obst's book "Hello, He Lied" about her journey from journalist to producer.
Good history book about days long gone. I wasn't in the scene, but good to get a sense of how old Hollywood worked. The stories of mail room workers delivering large checks to the stars, and being encouraged to listen in on all calls was interesting.
At first I wasn't impressed. This is just a bunch of name dropping, I thought. But as I got into it I came to love the stories, the variety of personalities, and the life lessons.
It becomes very repetitive. What a horrible world to live in. Interesting, nonetheless. I bought it used and got a nice copy of a hardback which I gave away after reading.
From the real men and women who started at the bottom and made it to the top and beyond. There is some backstabbing as they all aspire for the same jobs but also the camaraderie of everyone being in the bottom of the barrel trying to get out as fast as possible. Some make it and some don't. A must-read for anyone contemplating becoming a Hollywood agent.
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