I heard a racial slur. It was directed at me.
There’s this taco restaurant that my partner and I frequent in Los Angeles. Some nights, when we walk to a bar and walk home, we’ll stop in and have a late night snack. (Of course, this “snack” involves burritos the size of a grown man’s forearms, with a side of rice and refried beans.) A couple weeks ago, we stopped in and sitting there was Carlos Mencia. After losing David Chappelle to his apparent mental illness and subsequent internal collapse, Comedy Central hired Carlos Mencia to be the “new” equal-opportunity comedic offender of all races. Great. So, he was there, slumped in a chair, his eyes glazed over from a late Saturday night. His wife or girlfriend or friend–I don’t know who she was–was with him.
We walk in, I see him, and–in the style of a season Angeleno–I take a mental note, but do not betray my knowledge of his celebrity status with any outward signs of overenthusiastic recognition. My partner and I order our food and directly proceed to inhale it.
Upon leaving, Latino fans of the show have stumbled into the restaurant or have noticed that that is–in fact–Carlos Mencia. They’re fawning over him and taking pictures of him on their cell phone. He is politely posing, but his eyes told a different story. It looked like he wanted to be saved.
We walk towards the door. The moment I pass in front of the fan, the flash goes off. I walked in front of the camera. A mistake. No big deal.
The fan says, “Sigh. White people.”
I immediately turn, “Why do you have to be racist?” I ask.
The fan doesn’t respond.
I take two steps and turn towards the door. I turn to Carlos and look directly at him. Referencing the racial slur, I say, “I’m not a racist. Why do you put up with it? See that African American? My partner of over five years. This fan? This must be a great legacy to have. This is what you produce.”
I know it’s not his fault that a fan of his is an asshole.
I once heard my boss give ridiculously inane and completely unnecessary notes to an Academy Award-winning screenwriter.
This was back in a previous life of mine, when I toiled for 16-hours a day working in all the glitz, glamor, hell, and brimstone of Hollywood. I spent 2/3 of my waking hours making other people rich and other people famous and helping others on their path to realizing their own Hollywood dream.
Which was fine with my because, by the end of my run in Hollywood, I realized that the dream was only a thin illusion and that most people in the industry were unhappy in their friendships, relationships, and their own skins.
But there were days when I thought I should walk off my job, out of of the door, and out of the industry forever. (I’d usually end up staying.)
The day I heard my boss give a ridiculously unhelpful note to an Academy Award-winning writer was one of those days.
In my job, I worked in development. To those who don’t know, ‘development’ is the term for taking a script or a book or a newspaper article and turning it into a movie. To those who do know, ‘development’ is an old English word for “fucking up the original source every step of the way.” (We’ll use the latter concept as a working definition for the rest of this story.)
I remember the day clearly. It was a Monday and I was in my office on the studio lot. We had received the final draft of the script from the writer the previous Friday. My boss took the script home to read and make notes on for the weekend.
Now, this writer was one of the most incredible, honorable, courteous, upstanding men I ever had the pleasure of working with. Months later, when the writer and our company parted ways, I was the only one who received a ‘thank you’ note from him. I’ve kept it to this day.
The project he wrote was based on a marginally interesting and totally obscure book about an even less interesting and more obscure figure in the Civil War (who, by the way, was a confederate soldier. Tough sell).
The script was incredible, but the movie would be unremarkable because–well–the life of this soldier was unremarkable and the original book was unremarkable and the battles and conflict in this man’s life were unremarkable. But the script was solid.
The weekend comes and goes and Monday morning arrives. The man who lived in the rural area of Northern California was heading down to Los Angeles for meetings. He drove (he never flew) and he did not own a cell phone (nor was he ever interested in buying one).
The day starts with a phone call from him looking for my boss. I tell him that she’s unavailable. To most, ‘unavailable’ means that a person is not accessible. In Hollywood, ‘unavailable’ means the person is avoiding you as though you were Death coming for them during the Great Plague.
He understands. It’s early. She’s not in yet. The man then proceeds to call me at every rest stop and gas station between Los Angeles and Northern California. And each time–under strict orders from my boss–I have to tell him that she’s “in a meeting,” “not available,” or “just left for lunch.” With each deflection, I can hear him becoming more and more frustrating before he finally yells at me, “You guys are harder to reach than the fucking KGB!”
After successfully avoiding this writer all day, my boss finally gets him on the phone…where she proceeds to make “suggestion” after “suggestion” on each page.
I was listening to the call in disbelief and I thought to myself, “Now, I only understand that it is one more than you have, but this guy does have an Oscar.”
That was the day that I heard my boss give crappy and unhelpful notes to an Academy Award-winning screenwriter. All in an attempt to justify her own professional existence.
Can you see why I left the industry?