The Mailroom : Hollywood History from the Bottom Up

Rating:
Summary: Wild Amazing Real Stories of working for the Agents
Review: I listened to the book on tape of The Mailrooom. Different mailroom employees from different Hollywood & New York Agencies give their stories of what it was like to work in the Mailroom and learn to be an Agent. The book starts with some of the older Agents who began way back when Agencies were first formed. Interesting stories about the stars of the 1950s all the way up to present times.
I really liked the stories of the pranks some of the mailroom employees would play on eachother. And some of the horror stories when they made mistakes on the job are really amazing.
The Mailroom is an interesting and amusing book about the inner workings of the Entertainment Business. The stories of how the mailroom employees make it to the top to become Agents are a real lesson in how the industry works.


Rating:
Summary: SO?????????
Review: A Studs Terkel-like verbal history of the role of the talent agency in Hollywood; with a particular focus on the Mailroom where the movers and shakers get their start. The book is a never ending compilation of interviews with the men who made it after paying their dues in the servitude of the Mail Room. For those in the industry it is probably fascinating lore. For me, it was one big bore.

Rating:
Summary: SO?????????
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Witty, informative anecdotes of the low rung on the ladder
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Hilarious. Brutal. True.
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: I'd rate this one 15 stars if I could!
Review: If you have an interest in the entertainment industry, this is an absorbing must-read, absolutely fascinating from cover to cover, the kind you don't want to put down. Can't recommend it highly enough!

Rating:
Summary: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up
Review: You don't get what you deserve in life, you get what you negotiate.

This is the first quote in the book and I cannot tell you how many times I have used this in the past month. This book looks at the entertainment industry from the earliest days of William Morris (1930') through the collapse of the studio system, to the "young turks" of CAA until today. The author speaks to a varied group of people who went through the system. Many survived and stayed in entertainment business and some moved on to other things. What I most enjoyed about this book was that it didn't just cover the famous (Geffen, Diller, Ovitz) who rose out of the mailroom, but it also covered those who helped create the system that these people who control what we watch today came out of. For the number of people interviewed and covered, this book was excellently edited for flow and did not double up too much on stories. Very readable and informative. After reading this I pulled out my copy of "Swimming with Sharks" and watched it again with the new feeling of an insider.