Agency Promotion Hazing represents everything wrong with this town

I saw an "EXCLUSIVE" on Deadline the other day that really turned my stomach. This is the story of how one agency told an assistant they were promoting him to full agent. They called him over to one of the partners homes on a Saturday to build a swing set. Then when he showed up, several of the partners performed a "career intervention," (where he was no doubt made to feel incompetent and unappreciated) before ushering him out into the backyard for a "surprise" celebration with his friends and family.

Bullshit like this is precisely what's wrong with this industry. I don't see what's funny about hazing a hard-working assistant like that. And I'm sure the douchebags who concocted this master scheme thought they were so clever that they'd push this guy to the limits of his temper before saying "Surprise! You're one of us now!" but honestly, it's still incredibly mean-spirited. The promoted assistant is still the butt of the joke.

But that's not what elevates the brilliant minds over at this company to the title of "Bitter Script Reader's Asshats of the Week." If you want to conduct promotion ceremonies with all the dignity of Rush Week at Beta House, be my guest. If you get your jollies by pushing someone around just to see if he'll snap, or cry, or whatever, fine... doesn't make you any different from half the assholes in this town. No, what elevates this agency to the most classless operation in town is that someone said, "Hey, wouldn't it be great if we called up Nikki Finke and gave her this story exclusively?"

The Greek system at my college was loaded with assholes - it's why I pledged GDI - but there was at least one element of honor to the hazing: What happened in the house, stayed in the house. I'm sure pledges were made to endure many humiliating things, but no one called up the school newspaper and plastered it on the front page. Sad that this agency lacks the professionalism and maturity that even a 19 year-old pledge armed with ruffies can grasp.

Going public like this pretty much ensures that this whole ritual had nothing to do with the assistant at all. It was ALL about the perpetrators of this "genius" prank. Unsatisfied with merely getting their target embarrassed in front of his friends and family, they had to crow about it to the entire town!

Even so, the prank itself is still pretty tasteless. It's never funny when a boss "jokes" that one of his employees is about to be fired, or deliberately makes him feel like his job is in jeopardy just for kicks. It wasn't funny when Michael Scott did it to Pam in the first episode of The Office and it's not funny in real life.

I almost guarantee that the people at the top in that company are among the discourteous who insist "Thick Skin Required" when putting out job postings for their company. This is a sort of fine print that many in the industry use to absolve themselves of treating those in their employ like human beings. I've known plenty of CEOs and Company Presidents who've been able to get the job done and motivate their employees without resorting to dehumanizing them. What makes some Ari Gold wannabe so special that he can ignore basic human courtesy?

The worst part is that this sort of assy behavior is self-replicating. The abused become the abusers. The victims of pranks like this will turn around and do it to the next guy in five years, reasoning that it's okay because it was done to them. It's the same with salaries. "You're going to work 15 hours a day and take work home every night for the wage of a mere $9/hr. Why? 'Cause 'Fuck you,' that's why! I had to endure this years ago - what makes you so special that you're too good for this?"

Hey guys, how about you quit playing the part of "Poor Man's Ari Gold" in "The Me Story starring Me" and just focus on doing your jobs and appreciating your employees without publicly humiliating them? Maybe you're not all assholes over there, but everything in that article (including the fact it was made public) is exactly what an asshole would do.

I tell you this, though. I'm not going to be querying any of these agents. And I certainly wouldn't waste my time filling their inboxes with increasing worse pitches and made-up queries certain to annoy even the most hardened agent. Not even taking into account I know their email structure is readily available through IMDBPro.

Why he shouldn't HAVE to read your F*ing Screenplay!

I really hadn't planned on writing a response to the Josh Olson screed "I Will Not Read Your Fucking Screenplay." Considering that within a few hours of it being posted it was already being discussed on several other screenwriting sites that I read AND that it got forwarded to me via email at least twice by personal friends, I figured I would have nothing new to add to any discussion. Besides - I agreed with a helluva lot of what Josh said.

So when I saw the venom being flung at him over at Deadline Hollywood. I was a little surprised. Outside of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Keith Olberman, I have rarely seen anyone so willfully miss the point of something so that they could instead bitch about a completely different issue than the one being discussed. There are a lot of commenters over at DH agreeing with Josh, but a fair number of them are also calling him a "dick" and flinging variations of "Where would YOU be, Josh, if someone hadn't once read YOUR script?!"

Read Josh's article again, people. Pay attention to a few key phrases like, "I was recently cornered by a young man of my barest acquaintance. I doubt we've exchanged a hundred words. But he's dating someone I know, and he cornered me in the right place at the right time, and asked me to read a two-page synopsis for a script he'd been working on for the last year."

And I fully agree with what works out as his central thesis: "You are not owed a read from a professional, even if you think you have an in, and even if you think it's not a huge imposition. It's not your choice to make. This needs to be clear--when you ask a professional for their take on your material, you're not just asking them to take an hour or two out of their life, you're asking them to give you--gratis--the acquired knowledge, insight, and skill of years of work. It is no different than asking your friend the house painter to paint your living room during his off hours."

I'd argue that Scott's house painter analogy isn't entirely applicable to this situation. It's like meeting someone at a party, learning they're a house painter and asking them to come by and touch up some rough spots in your living room for free. For a close friend, maybe that's not an imposition. To ask that of someone you just met - that takes BALLS.

A lot of people invoke "networking" as a defense and say that Josh clearly had to get someone to read his script in order to get where he is. Thus, he's a hypocrite for not accepting every script handed to him in the name of paying it forward. There is an etiquette to asking a favor from someone - both in this business and in the real world. You EARN favors, you're not given them.

Think of it like this. You're at a bar and amazingly, the hottest girl in the place ends up next to you. Through an even bigger miracle, you somehow find yourself in an engaging conversation with her. She's paying attention to you and even laughing at your jokes. You can't believe your good fortune - this sort of thing never happens. So what do you do? Before you've even finished your second beer, you're asking her to go back to your place and fuck. You figure "I might never get this chance again so I might as well go for broke." Then, when she reacts badly to that and starts to give you the brush-off, you decide to take a shot at stealing first and second base because odds are you won't engage a girl this stunning again.

THAT, in essence, is essentially what you are doing when you push your script on a writer to whom you have only the barest connection. Would the hottest girl at the bar fuck you within ten minutes of meeting you? No? Well then why would Steven Spielberg want to read your script after having known you for five minutes? You have seduce the bar hottie, i.e. Steven Spielberg. Cultivate a relationship, get to know them, build up some trust and a repor.

No one likes to feel like they're being used - like you see them as a mere hurdle to leap in your quest to get to the next level. I have plenty of friends who have connections with people more successful and more famous than myself. And I won't lie, when I pass those friends the latest draft of a script, it would be great if they'd come back and say, "Do you mind if I give this to Mr. Big Shot? It's just what he's looking for and I know he'll have his agent working day and night to sell this for a cool $2 million." But I'm also a realist. I know that these people are all trying to build their own careers and that they're not going to be inclined to burn a favor that might be better spent on them. I'm sure that if they thought the writing was really awesome, it wouldn't be an imposition for them to pass it up, as discovering good material might also increase their own esteem in the eyes of their colleagues.

The thing is - I ask these people for their opinions not because I see it as a rest stop on the highway to success, but because I genuinely value their insight. I have a lot of respect for every person I've ever dropped a script on. It's amazing the things that they'll find in my own writing, or the left-field suggestions that they'll come up with that inevitably improve the script.

So when you seem to get that professional "in" don't be so overeager to cash in a favor you haven't earned. Know how to build relationships that might serve you better in the long run. Several years ago, I had such an opportunity placed before me and in retrospect, I could have played my cards a lot better.

But we'll talk about that tomorrow, and we'll kick off a new segment I call: Tuesday Talkback.