The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up

by David Rensin

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345442350
• ISBN13: 9780345442352
• Release Date: February 2004
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 464 Pages
• Weight: 0.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up

Anyone that wants to be in the agent or management business should read this book. David Rensin provides a compulation of agents starting from the ground up (in the mailroom).This book truly inspired me to work harder, never give up and provides great ideas for anyone trying to run a successful agency.The downside is that there is alot of nepotism here. Find out how certian stars became stars because Uncle so and so was an agent or a lawyer for, etc.

Witty, informative anecdotes of the low rung on the ladder

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.

A Wild Ride from Start to Finish!

Pick up the book and open to any page, this stuff is hilarious, shocking, and all true. I kept asking myself: Ohmigod, did these people know they were being interviewed for a book?? From the outrageous ways these power brokers got their starts, to the hazing rituals they inflicted on each other, to the stories they tell about their famous clients, THE MAILROOM is a must-read for any film or television buff, and especially for the closet power broker in all of us.

The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up

I've always had an interest in the backrooms of Hollywood and assumed all the power people who are there got there because they knew someone, or through typical nepotistic routes. While this may be true some of the time, we learn in this absorbing, funny, and insightful book that there are more ways than one to skin a cat in the business of Hollywood. Rensin definitely did his homework and then some. He tells us in the introduction that his aim is to tell the stories of how the big-timers got where they are today, and he does so with fanfare; there are fireworks on every page. The book is organized by decade and agency so you don t have to go back and forth trying to remember who is who and who came first. This is a great oral rendering of the movers and the shakers of tinsel town. I look forward to this writer's next topic.

FAST, FUNNY, OUTRAGEOUS MUST-READ

I haven't even finished reading this book and already I love it. I know Hollywood isn't like any place else in America, and this just makes what it's like to start at the bottom in Tinseltown all the more fascinating. At the same time, these kids who went through the mailroom share much with all of us. Everyone has to start somewhere, and in the end the experience isn't all that different.You won't believe some of the crazy stuff these kids had to endure and survive while learning how to play the game. I love the story about delivering the, uh, stool sample. And the one about how David Geffen kept from getting fired by faking a letter from UCLA saying he graduated. And the ones about hoping to deliver stuff to pretty young actresses, or crashing the company cars out of total frustration. It's endless. And mind-boggling. And really frank. A history of Hollywood also comes through. In the beginning, behind-the-scenes people got into show biz for the glamour, to rub elbows with the stars and be dazzled; then it became about the power and money and business. Or maybe it was always like that, only the perks became accessible to more than just the top layer, which is why Harvard law grads and Wharton MBAs began to forgo huge corporate salaries to push a mail cart for $400 a week -- or less. The Mailroom paints a stunning picture of ambition -- with lots of humor and humanity -- and best of all, the author just lets the people speak for themselves in this oral history. It's truly a book that shows instead of tells.