|
TRICKSTERS AND HUCKSTERS: SHOW BIZ ARCHETYPES
by Addison De Witt
“The Operator”
“If you hire me to represent you, you will see your income skyrocket,” says the Beverly Hills attorney, a slick operator, if there ever was one. But this isn’t just any tanned, Gucci-loafered gladhander trying to seduce me into joining his exclusive club of entertainment industry clients, it’s the Big Kahuna, Don (“You’re not just getting lawyer, you’re getting the whole package”) Biederman. For all the fabulous new connections he’s promising to make for me, all the elbow-rubbing he assures me I’ll be doing in the corridors of Hollywood power, all he’s asking for in return is a measly five percent of my income. Sure, I’m already paying my pale, Armani-clad agent ten percent, but for just five percent more, I will “see my income skyrocket.” No mere agent has ever promised me that. Seduce me, baby! I have finally arrived.
When my agency informed me that they could no longer be legally responsible for their clients’ deals and I would have to hire an attorney, I was less than thrilled. I did realize, though, that as my career was progressing my contracts were getting more complicated, so I reluctantly set up appointments with a few recommended show biz lawyers. The first couple were kind of stiff and formal – they’d probably be OK, I thought. The third was too highly-charged and intense and, frankly, terrified me. She took me to lunch, which was a mark in her favor – but was there something about her office she didn’t want me to see? The fourth was a genial sort, described by one colleague as “a real mensch,” I might actually be acquiring a new friend if I signed up with his firm.
But Don Biederman (not his real name) was everything I was not. What I lacked in confidence and assertiveness, he would make up for in spades. I knew we’d probably never be buddies, but I was looking for someone tough and persuasive to represent me, to be the bad guy, when necessary. And, as he pointed out himself, Biederman was more than a lawyer, he was a power-broker, he put people in business together, he made connections. I’d been too much of a people-pleaser, a pushover, and where was it getting me? But with this guy leading the charge – Hollywood, watch out! What Don Biederman promised was the kind of power and prestige I thought was beyond my grasp.
Ah, power and prestige. As James Hillman aptly points out in Kinds of Power (pp. 120-123), “Prestige in psychological language is the vanity of narcissism – to be admired and therewith to shore up one’s shaky sense of worth. Notice that prestige is not to be worthy of admiration or to earn it, but simply to be assured of personal worth by externalapprobation...” The word prestige itself “comes from praestigia, delusion, illusion like a juggler’s trick, leading to the meanings of deception and imposture. We have the illusion of power without substance...Inside this persona there may be no one at home, or only a weak comedian playing the Wizard of Oz.”
My first lesson in this very kind of prestige came within days of hiring Don Biederman, when I was invited to his annual Christmas party at his Brentwood mansion. I was immediately impressed not just by the curbside valet service and the sheer size of the house, but by the no-expense-spared attempt to recreate the Hallmark Christmas of a Jewish lawyer’s dream. Tables teeming with luscious turkeys, roasts, hams and all the trimmings, uniformed waiters anxious to pour you wine, carolers who looked like they’d stepped out of 19th Century London, and actual Hollywood stars (“Isn’t that Donna Mills having her palm read by the Gypsy Fortune Teller in the corner?”).
As I gingerly began to mingle among the movers and shakers, my host appeared and put a chummy arm around me and proudly announced as he surveyed the scene around us, “See, Buddy...this is what you bought into.” A little blunt, yes, even crass, but who could argue with his point? His world was now my world. And even as his lack of subtlety mademe chuckle inside, I liked it. He introduced me to one of his partners, who looked me in the eye and quietly told me, “I’ve been in this business for 16 years, and it’s people like you who make it all worthwhile.” I knew it was total bullshit, but he was bothering to bullshit ME, which made me feel pretty important.
On this cloud of euphoria, I proceeded on the career track I’d been on before I’d met Don Biederman. He consulted with my agents when my future deals were made, he made notes in the margins of my contracts. My income wasn’t skyrocketing...yet. But I was prepared for Biederman to work his magic.
About a year went by, during which Biederman continued to imply that he was cooking something up for me. There were disturbing signs, though, in the meantime. For one example, he let a simple off-Broadway theatre negotiation that should have taken a couple of weeks drag on for eleven months. I came to realize that though he had no expertise in this area, his pride would not allow him to admit it to me, so he just screwed it up. I had to get another lawyer to clean up the mess.
One day, he took me to lunch. When the waiter arrived to take our order, Biederman looked across the table me at me and asked, “What’re you gonna have, Big Guy?” All right, I told myself, this guy is not supposed to be your buddy, he doesn’t know bubkes about the theatre, but he’s a shark and he’s going to have Hollywood beg to do your bidding.
At lunch he announced that he wanted to make a big deal for me with another client of his, a television producer I’d worked with in the past. This producer, Biederman informed me, had agreed to make me a partner in any new venture we embarked on together. I wouldn’t just get my usual writing fee. Or even just a producing fee. I would share in the profits. I was going to be a player. And why was this happening to me? Don Biederman, of course. “See, Buddy, didn’t I tell you?”
The deal itself seemed to take months of negotiation, but finally it was nailed down. One day, I got a call from my agent about a project with this same producer. The project was intriguing (a dramatic true story, a ground-breaking civil-rights case), I took a meeting, it was a lovefest, we were finally going to be in business. Then my agent calledwith the terms of the deal. I was dumbfounded to learn there would be no partnership, no profit-sharing. Just my usual writing fee. “I don’t understand,” I told my agent. “I have a deal in place. We’re going to be partners. Don Biederman put it all together. Just ask him.” My agent said he’d make a few calls and get back to me. And so he did. The producer knew NOTHING about any such deal, didn’t know what my agent was talking about, there was never any such deal, never even any mention of a deal. Don Biederman hadn’t returned my agent’s calls.
I tried to stay calm as I called Biederman myself. Obviously, there was some kind of confusion which he could easily straighten out. But Biederman was “at a meeting”. Biederman was “on a conference call.” Biederman was “out of the office.” And finally, Don Biederman is “in Europe on a family vacation.” In my attorney’s absence, I was forced into the awkward position of having to make a decision of whether to do the project or not. I wrestled with my conscience: This was an important civil rights story – was I going to turn it down over the issue of money? Hadn’t I been trying to build a career based on doing work that mattered?
In the end, I took the job...and fired the lawyer. Unable to reach him on the phone, I wrote him a letter, explaining why I was terminating his services. A few days later, he left a message on my answering machine: “I’m sorry you feel that way, Buddy. I wish you all the luck.”
In the years since, to my knowledge, Don Biederman has continued to operate as before, with his reputation intact. As Hillman points out, “The risks entailed by doing something and failing at it may cost prestige and may keep the person who is intent on prestige from doing much at all. When prestige is the motive, the less you actually do, the more likely success.” (121).
Work Cited
Hillman, James. Kinds of Power. New York: Currency Doubleday, 1995.
(Back to Columns index)
|
