Los Angeles Postcard

Tom Joad Does Lunch

By John Brodie, THE NEW YORKER, May 7, 2001 Issue

April 30, 2001

The other day, Peter Benedek, a founding partner of the United Talent Agency, in Los Angeles, walked into the Grill, a Beverly Hills restaurant popular with agents and producers, and noticed something peculiar. "The place was dead," he said. "And it dawned on me: the Grill-O-Meter is down."

On April 10th (a day when the S. & P. 500 finished up 30.79 points), the Grill-O-Meter suffered a nasty correction. According to Michael Goddard, the restaurant's manager (who bears more than a passing resemblance to his father, Mark, who played Don West on "Lost in Space"), the Grill often serves as many as two hundred and ten lunches a day. But on April 10th, he said, "we did a hundred and thirty-five lunches. We had maybe two agents in the whole restaurant. It's the expense-account thing. These guys aren't used to having to pay for their own lunch."

The downturn in the 90210 economy has nothing to do with the Dow or Nasdaq. It's the result of a jittery round of cost-cutting that's been going on in anticipation of a labor action threatened by both the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild. If the writers decide to strike when their contract expires, on May 1st (and the actors follow suit, on June 30th), this could be a summer in which no sitcoms, studio movies, or deals will be made.

On April 15th, International Creative Management froze its expense accounts, so agents there are no longer being reimbursed for the meals they use to ingratiate themselves with buyers of their clients' services. (Exceptions are made if a big deal is in the works or if an agent needs to travel with a major client to a film festival or a première.) On the first of the year, the Endeavor agency capped expense accounts at five hundred dollars per month. And over at the William Morris Agency members of the motion-picture department are now asked to clear their business lunches with their department heads in advance. "We gave a little speech a few weeks ago, the gist of which was: Don't be feeding the town," a William Morris executive said. "Instead of 'Wanna have lunch?' we're suggesting people try, 'Why not drop by the office for a cup of coffee?' ''

At I.C.M., some say that even the in-house refreshments have been scaled back. "They've switched the Evian to Crystal Geyser," one agent complained. (An I.C.M. spokesman denied that the water policy had changed.)

At U.T.A., expense accounts have largely been left alone, but on January 1st board members, partners, and senior agents unanimously agreed to put twenty per cent of their salaries into an escrow account that will be used as a war chest to avoid personnel cuts in the event of a strike. "Sure, I'd be sad if I never got the twenty per cent back," one U.T.A. agent said. "But if it means that everyone is going to stay on board and come out on the other side of this thing—well, I can't compare it to Sir Ernest Shackleton in Antarctica, but it has been a morale builder."

Executives aren't the only victims. Several of the major agencies have thinned their mailrooms and eliminated overtime pay for assistants, which means that a typical mogul-in-training is now taking home about five hundred dollars a week instead of seven hundred and fifty. That's tough, especially since these assistants are the ones who are in the awkward position of having to ask their bosses' prospective lunch partners if they wouldn't mind picking up the tab.

In a city in which business and friendship are intertwined, the cutbacks have provoked a wave of social downsizing as well. One Endeavor agent said, "You take a hard look at your calendar and decide who's expendable."

Published in the print edition of the May 7, 2001, issue.