Part of the resentment toward me and my salary is that I don"t have a mortgage on a home in the Valley and three kids who have to go to private schools and a wife who spends at Saks, and you never know when you"re going to lose your job in this business. Say, we"re having a convivial drink among peers and we start grousing. I"m not allowed to grouse with the best of them. They say, "Oh, you? What do you need money for? You"re a single woman. You"ve got the world by the b.a.l.l.s." I hear that all the time.
If I"m being paid a lot of attention to, say by someone to whom I"m attracted, and we"ve done a job and we"re in New York together for a week"s stretch, we"re in the same hotel, suppose I want to sleep with him? Why not? Here"s my great double standard. You never hear it said about a man in my capacity-"He sleeps around." It would only be to his glory. It"s expected, if he"s there with a model, starlet, or secretary. In my case, I constantly worry about that. If I want to, I must be very careful. That"s what I"m railing against.
This last shoot, it was an exasperating shot. It took hours. We were there all day. It was exhausting, frustrating. Between takes, the camera man, a darling man, would come back to where I was standing and put his arms around me. I didn"t think anything of it. We"re hardly f.u.c.king on the set. It was his way of relaxing. I heard a comment later that night from the director: "You ought to watch your behavior on the set with the camera man." I said, "Me watch it? f.u.c.k that! Let him watch it." He was hired by me. I could fire him if I didn"t like him. Why me, you see? I have to watch.
Clients. I get calls in my hotel room: "I want to discuss something about production today that didn"t go right." I know what that means. I try to fend it off. I"m on this tightrope. I don"t want to get into a drunken scene ever with a client and to literally shove him away. That"s not going to do me any good. The only smart thing I can do is avoid that sort of scene. The way I avoid it is by suggesting an early morning breakfast meeting. I always have to make excuses: "I drank too much and my stomach is really upset, so I couldn"t do it right now. We"ll do it in the morning." Sometimes I"d like to say, "f.u.c.k off, I know what you want."
"I"ve had a secretary for the last three years. I hesitate to use her . . . I won"t ask her to do typing. It"s hard for me to use her as I was used. She"s bright and could be much more than a secretary. So I give her research a.s.signments, things to look up, which might be fun for her. Rather than just say, "Here, type this."
"I"m an interesting figure to her. She says, "When I think of Women"s Lib I don"t think of Germaine Greer or Kate Millett. I think of you." She sees my life as a lot more glamorous than it really is. She admires the externals. She admires the apartment, the traveling. We shot two commercials just recently, one in Mexico, one in Na.s.sau. Then I was in New York to edit them. That"s three weeks. She takes care of all my travel details. She knows the company gave me an advance of well over a thousand dollars. I"m put up in fine hotels, travel first cla.s.s. I can spend ninety dollars at a dinner for two or three. I suppose it is something-little Barbara from a Kansas farm, and Christ! look where I am. But I don"t think of it, which is a funny thing."
It used to be the token black at a big agency was very safe because he always had to be there. Now I"m definitely the token woman. In the current economic climate, I"m one of the few writers at my salary level getting job offers. Unemployment is high right now among people who do what I do. Yet I get calls: "Will you come and write on feminine hygiene products?" Another, involving a food account: "We need you, we"ll pay you thirty grand and a contract. Be the answer for Such-an-such Foods." I"m ideal because I"m young enough to have four or five solid years of experience behind me. I know how to handle myself or I wouldn"t be where I am.
I"m very secure right now. But when someone says to me, "You don"t have to worry," he"s wrong. In a profession where I absolutely cannot age, I cannot be doing this at thirty-eight. For the next years, until I get too old, my future"s secure in a very insecure business. It"s like a race horse or a show horse. Although I"m holding the job on talent and responsibility, I got here partly because I"m attractive and it"s a big kick for a client to know that for three days in Montreal there"s going to be this young brunette, who"s very good, mind you. I don"t know how they talk about me, but I"d guess: "She"s very good, but to look at her you"d never know it. She"s a knockout."
I have a fear of hanging on past my usefulness. I"ve seen desperate women out of jobs, who come around with their samples, which is the way all of us get jobs. A lot of women have been cut. Women who had soft jobs in an agency for years and are making maybe fifteen thousand. In the current slump, this person is cut and some bright young kid from a college, who"ll work for seven grand a year, comes in and works late every night.
Talk about gaps. In a room with a twenty-two-year-old, there are areas in which I"m altogether lost. But not being a status-quo-type person, I"ve always thought ahead enough to keep pace with what"s new. I certainly don"t feel my usefulness as a writer is coming to an end. I"m talking strictly in terms of physical aging. (Laughs.) It"s such a young business, not just the consumer part. It"s young in terms of appearances. The client expects agency people, especially on the creative end, to dress a certain way, to be very fashionable. I haven"t seen many women in any executive capacity age gracefully.
The bellbottoms, the beads, beards, and sideburns, that"s the easy, superficial way to feel part of the takeover culture. It"s true also in terms of writing. What kind of music do you put behind the commercial? It"s ridiculous to expect a sheltered forty-two-year-old to antic.i.p.ate progressive rock. The danger of aging, beyond touch, out of reach with the younger market . . .
The part I hate-it"s funny. (Pause.) Most people in the business are delighted to present their work and get praise for it-and the credit and the laughter and everything in the commercial. I always hate that part. Deep down, I feel demeaned. Don"t question the adjectives, don"t argue, if it"s a cologne or a shampoo. I know, "cause I buy "em myself. I"m the biggest sucker for buying an expensively packaged hoax thing. Face cream at eight dollars. And I sell and convince.
I used Erik Satie music for a cologne thing. The clients didn"t know Satie from Roger Williams. I"m very good at what I do, dilettantism. I go into my act: we call it dog and pony time, show time, tap dance. We laugh about it. He says, "Oh, that"s beautiful, exactly right. How much will it cost us?" I say, "The music will cost you three grand. Those two commercials you want to do in Mexico and Na.s.sau, that"s forty grand. There"s no way I can bring it in for less." I"m this young woman, saying, "Give me forty thousand dollars of your money and I will go away to Mexico and Na.s.sau and bring you back a commercial and you"ll love it." It"s blind faith.
Do I ever question what I"m selling? (A soft laugh.) All the time. I know a writer who quit a job equivalent to mine. She was making a lot of money, well thought of. She was working on a consumer finance account. It"s blue collar and black. She made this big stand. I said to her, in private, "I agree with you, but why is this your test case? You"ve been selling a cosmetic for years that is nothing but mineral oil and women are paying eight dollars for it. You"ve been selling a cake mix that you know is so full of preservatives that it would kill every rat in the lab. Why all of a sudden . . . ?"
If you"re in the business, you"re in the business, the f.u.c.king business! You"re a hustler. But because you"re witty and glib . . . I"ve never pretended this is the best writing I can do. Every advertising writer has a novel in his drawer. Few of them ever do it.
I don"t think what I do is necessary or that it performs a service. If it"s a very fine product-and I"ve worked on some of those-I love it. It"s when you get into that awful area of hope, cosmetics-you"re just selling image and a hope. It"s like the arthritis cure or cancer-quackery. You"re saying to a lady, "Because this oil comes from the algae at the bottom of the sea, you"re going to have a timeless face." It"s a crock of s.h.i.t! I know it"s part of my job, I do it. If I made the big stand my friend made, I"d lose my job. Can"t do it. I"m expected to write whatever a.s.signment I"m given. It"s whorish. I haven"t written enough to know what kind of writer I am. I suspect, rather than a writer, I"m a good reader. I think I"d make a good editor. I have read so many short stories that I bet you I could turn out a better anthology than anybody"s done yet, in certain categories. I remember, I appreciate, I have a feeling I could . . .
POSTSCRIPT: Shortly afterward she was battling an ulcer.
THE COMMERCIAL.
JOHN FORTUNE.
He is thirty-six. He has been with an advertising agency for eight years. "I started out in philosophy at Princeton . . ."
I am what is called a creative supervisor. Creative is a pretentious word. I have a group of about six people who work for me. They create radio commercials, print ads, billboards that go up on highways, television commercials too. Your purpose is to move goods off the shelf (laughs): your detergents, your soaps, your foods, your beers, cigarettes . . .
It"s like the fashion business. There"s a look to advertising. Many techniques are chosen because they"re in vogue at the time. Then a new look will emerge. Right now. a kind of angry stand-up is popular. A guy who"s all p.i.s.sed off up there and he says, "Look, other products are rotten and ours is good-buy it or I"ll kill you." The hortatory kind is in fashion now.
It"s an odd business. It"s serious but it isn"t. (Laughs.) Life in an advertising agency is like being at a dull party, interrupted by more serious moments. There"s generally a kind of convivial att.i.tude. n.o.body"s particularly uptight. Creativity of this kind flourishes better.
They"re aware that they"re talking about little bears capering around a cereal box and they"re arguing which way the bears should go. It"s a silly thing for adults to be doing. At the same time, they"re aware the client"s going to spend a million dollars on television time to run this commercial. Millions of dollars went into these little bears, so that gave them an importance of their own. That commercial, if successful, can double salaries. It"s serious, yet it isn"t. This kind of split is in everybody"s mind. Especially the older generation in advertising, people like me.
I was a writer manque, who came into advertising because I was looking for a way to make money. My generation is more casual about it. Many will be writers who have a novel in the desk drawer, artists who are going to quit someday and paint. Whereas the kids coming up consider advertising itself to be the art form. They"ve gone to school and studied advertising. There"s an intensity about what they do. They don"t laugh at those little bears capering around the cereal. Those little bears are it for them. They consider themselves fine artists and the advertising business owes them the right to create, to express themselves.
And there"s a countertendency among young people. The other day I was challenged by someone: "I find this commercial offensive. It"s as if you"re trying to manipulate people." This kind of honesty is part of it. But he"s in the business himself. His bread is in the same gravy. Though the older ones start out casual, they become quite serious as they go along. You become what you behold. You turn into an advertising man.
My day is so amorphous. Part of it is guiding other people. I throw ideas out and let them throw ideas back, shoot down ideas immediately. In some ways it"s like teaching. You"re trying to guide them and they"re also guiding you. I may sit with a writer and an art director who are going to create a commercial-to sell garbage bags, okay? A number of ideas are thrown out. What do you think of this? What do you think of that? Last year we tried this. Don"t make it that wild. We stick, say, to a family situation.
Let"s have a big family reunion, right? We"ll use fast motion and slow motion as our visual technique. A reunion right after dinner. They"re outside, they"re at a picnic, right? Grampa"s in the hammock and so forth. Everything"s in slow motion. But when it comes time to clean up, things go pretty fast if you use these garbage bags. Everything begins to move in fast motion, which is a funny technique. Fast motion tends to distance people from what they"re watching. I didn"t like it. I thought it lacked focus. You have to set things up. You have to characterize everybody, grampa, uncle . . . You don"t have the effective relationships clearly marked in the beginning. You have to do this in a commercial that may be only thirty seconds. Sometimes you"re writing a play, creating a vehicle. You begin with a human problem and then you see how it"s satisfied by the product.
The way you sell things is to make some kind of connection between the attributes of the product and what people want, human needs. Some years ago, there was a product called Right Guard, an underarm deodorant. It was positioned at that time for men. It was not going anywhere. A copywriter noticed that it was a spray, so the whole family could use it. He said, "Let"s call it the all-family spray." There was no change in the product, merely in the way it was sold. What any product is selling is a package of consumer satisfactions. A dream in the flesh or something.
A Mustang is a machine that was designed with human fantasies in mind. It"s not just a piece of machinery. Somebody did a lot of research into what people wanted. That research went into the design, very subtly into the shape. Then the advertising came along and added another layer. So when a person drives a Mustang, he"s living in a whole coc.o.o.n of satisfaction. He"s not just getting transportation. With detergents people are buying advertising. With cigarettes they"re buying an image, not just little things in a box.
They"re all very similar. That raises the question: How important is advertising? Is there a justification for it? It"s a question people are asking all over the country. I myself am puzzled by it. There"s a big change going on right now. The rules are becoming more stringent. In another five years you"ll just have a lawyer up there. He"ll say, "This is our product. It"s not much different from any other product. It comes in a nice box, no nicer than anybody else"s. It"ll get your clothes pretty clean, but so will the others. Try it because we"re nice people, not that the other company isn"t nice."
I enjoy it actually. I think any kind of work, after a while, gets a kind of functional autonomy. It has an intensity of its own. You start out doing something for a reason and if you do it long enough, even though the reason may have altered, you continue to do it, because it gives you its own satisfaction.
It"s very hard to know if you know something in this business. There are very few genuine experts. It"s a very fragile thing. To tell somebody they should spend ten million dollars on this tiger that"s gonna represent their gasoline, that"s quite a thing to sell somebody on doing. Gee, why should it be a tiger? Why shouldn"t it be a llama?
The way, you see, is by being very confident. Advertising is full of very confident people. (Laughs.) Whether it"s also full of competent people is another question Coming into a meeting is a little like swimming in a river full of piranha fish. If you start to bleed, they"re gonna catch you. You have to build yourself up before you"re gonna sell something. You have to have an att.i.tude that it"s terrific.
I say to myself, Isn"t it terrific? It could be worse-that"s another thing I say. And I whistle and skip around and generally try to get my juices moving. Have a cup of coffee. I have great faith in coffee. (Laughs.) There"s an element of theater in advertising. When I"m presenting the stuff, I will give the impression of really loving it a lot.
It"s amazing how much your att.i.tude toward something is conditioned by what other people say about it, what other people"s opinions are. If somebody who is very important starts to frown, your heart can sink. If you"ve done this a couple of times, you know this may not be the end of the world. He may have noticed that the girl has on a purple dress and he hates purple. Meanwhile you have to continue. You get yourself up. Some commercials require singing and dancing to present. It"s like being in front of any audience. When you begin to lose your audience, there"s cold feet, sweat.
He"s not happy with the way the bear"s moving. You don"t know why he"s unhappy. Clients have different styles. They can"t articulate it. They begin to thrash around. You have to remain calm and figure out what"s bothering him. Then you light on it and say, "We can change that." And he says, "Oh yeah? Then it"s okay." Occasionally we present to people who are crazy.
Originally I was a copywriter. I sat in a room and it was very simple. I would go to the boss and he"d tell me what he wanted. I"d go back to my room and try to write it, and get mad and break pencils and pound on the wall. Then finish it and take it in to him, and change it and change it, and then I"d go back and write it over again and take it in to him and he"d change it again, and I"d take it back. This would happen thirty or forty times and then we"d move to another man. He"d put his feet on the desk and change it again.
Now that the burden of work is greater, I take home less. I"ve gotten more and more good at erasing things from my mind. That"s why I leave myself little notes on the typewriter. I just got back from a three-day weekend and I can hardly find the office. (Laughs.) I erased it completely from my mind. I think it"s a sign of health. When you"re doing creative work, you should think about it all the time. When you"re doing administrative work, you should think about it as little as possible.
There"s the contemplative mind and the business mind. The good businessman is always willing to make decisions on incomplete evidence. I came out of a whole contemplative mode. It was hard for me to learn that you have to make a decision. Advertising is terrific for spot decisions. I think I make more decisions in a week than my clients make in a year. I"ve changed a lot, I think.
Often the products are pretty much the same-which is why there"s advertising. If the products were very different, you wouldn"t need the skill you do. In some way, I think, advertising is very good for any writer, because of this whole image-making thing. Before, I had a tendency to get very word-involved. It"s very like when you program computers. It"s breaking everything down in this strange new way. Then you learn it and it becomes natural to you-seeing pictures instead of arguments.
I"m glad I didn"t go into philosophy. I don"t think I have the right personality for it. I think it involves talent. Also, it involves a language that fewer and fewer people can speak. Finally, you"re speaking to yourself. Advertising is a more social business, which is also frustrating. I"m not sure I"m happy in advertising, but I don"t think philosophy would have been heaven for me. I think I"d rather write-movies or books. For some reason I don"t do that.
Advertising"s a fashion business. There are five stages. "Who is this guy, John Fortune?" The second stage: "Gee, it would be great if we could get that guy, what"s his name? John Fortune." The third stage: "If we could only get John Fortune." The fourth stage: "I"d like to get a young John Fortune." The fifth stage: "Who"s John Fortune?" There are no old writers.
There"s a tremendous threat from young writers. So much so that old writers just aren"t around. When an older writer gets fired, he just doesn"t get another job. I think there"s a farm out in the Middle West or something where they"re tethered. I don"t know what happens to them.
You should start moving when you"re about thirty-five. If you"re not in a supervisory position around then, you"re in trouble. By the time you"re forty, you should be a creative director. That"s the guy with a lot of people under him and n.o.body over him on the creative staff. But there"s only room for a certain number of people who tell other people what to do.
They"re all vice presidents. They"re given that t.i.tle for business reasons. Clients like to deal with vice presidents. Also, it"s a cheap thing to give somebody. Vice presidents get fired with great energy and alacrity. (Laughs.) And they get jobs doing public relations for Trujillo or somebody. Or they go out and form their own company which you never hear of again.
There"s a kind of cool paradox in advertising. There"s a pressure toward the safe, tried and true that has worked in the past. But there"s a tremendous need in the agency business for the fresh and the new, to differentiate this one agency from another. Writers are constantly torn between these two goals: selling the product and selling themselves. If you do what they tell you, you"re screwed. If you don"t do what they tell you, you"re fired. You"re constantly trying to make it, fighting. The struggle that goes on . . .
It becomes silly to some people, but poignant too. You see people fighting to save a little nuance in a formula commercial. There"s a type called "slice of life." Somebody I know called it "slice of death." It is the standard commercial that starts out in the kitchen. Two people are arguing about a product. "How come you"re getting your wash so white?" "I use this." "How can that be as good as this?" "Because it contains . . ." And she gives the reasons why it"s better. It follows the formula. People are forced to write it because it"s effective. But you see people fighting for some little touch they"ve managed to work in. So they can put it on their reel and get another job. Somebody will say, "Aha, look at the way it worked there." You want the thing to be better.
People at parties will come up and denounce me. There"s a lot of paranoia about the power of advertising. They say we"re being controlled, manipulated. Sometimes I enjoy playing the devil"s advocate, so I"ll exaggerate it: "We take human needs and control them." (Laughs.) I have an active fantasy life-not during the workday, because it"s coming at me so fast. Many of my fantasies have to do with the control of society. Very elaborate technological-type fantasies: a benign totalitarianism controlled by me.
Actually, my career choice in advertising, which I"ve drifted into, is connected with the fantasy of power. I have a sense of slowly increasing power, but the limits are very frustrating. I feel I want to do more, but I feel restraints within the system and myself. I think I hold myself back more than the system does. The system is easy to work within if you"re willing to, if you"re smart enough . . .
What would our country be like without advertising? I don"t know. (Laughs.) It would be a different country, I think.
POSTSCRIPT: At a pub in mid-Manhattan frequented by advertising people, he said, "I have a recurring dream in which I"m a stand-up comedian. I"m standing on a stage with a blue spotlight on me, talking. I begin by telling jokes. Gradually, I begin to justify my life. I can"t quite see the audience. The light becomes more and more intense. I can"t remember what I say. I usually end up crying. This dream I"ve had maybe three, four times."
ARNY FREEMAN.
He is a dapper sixty-three. He appears a good twenty years younger. He has been a character actor-"I am a supporting player"-in New York for almost thirty years. He has worked in all fields: on Broadway, off-Broadway, radio, television, and "a few pictures here and there.
"And suddenly you become-a friend of mine auditioned for a TV commercial. They said they wanted an Arny Freencan-type. He said, "Why don"t you call Arny?" They said, "No, no, no, we can"t use him. He"s been used too much!" I was overexposed in TV commercials.
"I didn"t do commercials until about "62, "63. Actors didn"t do commercials. Beautiful blondes, Aryan models, six feet three, did commercials. A friend of mine told me, "They"re starting to look for people who look like people." This one time I went down, they were looking at people all day. I happened to hit them right. One of the guys said, "He has a French quality about him." It was for Byrrh, a French aperitif, which is similar to Cinzano."
I did this commercial in "64. A thing called Byrrh16 on the Rocks. I have a citation. They have festivals for commercials. Isn"t that laughable? (Laughs.) It won five international awards-in Cannes, in Dublin, in Hollywood, in New York, in London. The G.o.dd.a.m.n thing was a local commercial. I walk in the bar and ask for Byrrh on the rocks. Everybody turns and laughs and looks at me. The bartender . . . It was played in every station, day and night.
This commercial became so successful that I couldn"t walk down the street. I now know what it"s like to be famous, and I don"t want it. I couldn"t walk down the street. I"d be mobbed. People would grab me, "Hey, Byrrh on the rocks! You"re the guy!" They"d pin me against the wall and the guy would say to his wife, "Hey, look who I got here!" I once got out of the subway at Times Square and a guy grabbed me and slammed me against the wall. (Laughs.) Crowds of people gathered around. My wife was terrified. They were all screaming, "Byrrh on the rocks!" Because of that little TV box.
They don"t know your name but once they see your face, you"re so familiar, you belong in their home. It really was terrifying, but I enjoyed it very much. It was great. It was like being a short Rock Hudson. (Laughs.) Sure, there"s a satisfaction. I like a certain amount of it. I enjoy having people say complimentary things. I"m a gregarious person. I stop and tell them anything they want to know about making commercials, about the business and so on. But at times it does interfere with your life.
I took a vacation. I went down to San Juan. There"s n.o.body in San Juan but New Yorkers. I wouldn"t go to the beach. The minute I stepped out, somebody would say, "Hey! Hey! Don"t I know you? Ain"t you the guy . . . ?" In the early days of live TV they couldn"t figure out where they knew you from. Some guy would say, "Hey, you from Buffalo?" I"d say, "No." "Well, G.o.dd.a.m.n, there"s a guy in my home town looks just like you." I"d say, "Did you ever watch "T Men in Action" or "The Big Story" on TV?" "Oh yeah! You"re the guy!"
I came out of a movie house one day. I hadn"t gone more than few feet when two guys moved in on me, pushed me against the wall. I thought I was being held up. They flashed badges. They were detectives. One said, "Would you mind coming back into the lobby?" I said, "What for?" "We"d like to talk to you." So they moved me back and there was a woman, screaming, "That"s him, he"s the one!" Somebody had stolen her purse in the movie house and she fingered me. I played a gangster on TV in those days. The boss would say, "Hey, Shorty, do this." And I"d say, "Yeah boss." They were all alike. I asked the woman if she had seen "T Men in Action" on Thursday. This was Sat.u.r.day. "Oh, my G.o.d," she said, "That"s where I saw you." (Laughs.) The d.i.c.ks couldn"t do enough. They drove me home in their car.
People still come up to me, even to this day. They"re generally very polite. They say, "Excuse me, I don"t mean to impose, I just want to tell you that I enjoy your commercials very much." Every once in a while I run into somebody who says, "I saw you in The Great Sebastian,"17 or, "I saw you in Cactus Flower." But everybody doesn"t go to the theater. Everybody has television.18 People ask for my autograph on the street, anywhere. Quite often someone will say he saw me in such and such a play. But it"s really the commercials.
I"m a working actor. If you want to work, you have to do everything. To me, acting is a craft, a way of life. I have never been obsessed with the sickening drive inside to become a star. Possibly it"s because I came into it very late in life. I was thirty-seven years old when I became a professional actor. I was a little more realistic about life. I knew the percentage of somebody who is five feet six and a half inches tall, who is dark and ethnic looking. The chances of becoming a star were quite remote. I"ve conditioned myself not to want it, because the odds against it are too great.
Since I came to New York, I"ve never been out of work. I"ve had only one relatively poor period, because my face became too familiar in television commercials. Where it got kinda lean, you begin to wonder if maybe you"ve gotten too old or whether you"re worn-out. Through all these years, I went from one thing into another. I"d finish a play, there"d be a movie. In-between there"d be TV plays, there"d be commercials. I"ve signed with an office, all they do is TV commercials. Financially I"m not concerned. I have a little better than a hundred grand in the market. I want to go live in Mexico, but who wants to stop working?
"When I first came to New York I did what everybody else did. You took your pictures, you got your eight-by-ten glossies, and you called up or you wrote a letter, and you made an appointment to see an agent or the casting director. I"d write a letter and I"d say, "This is my picture. This is what I"ve done. I would appreciate an interview at your convenience." Invariably I"d get a letter back saying, "Come in on such-and-such a date." After you"ve done that, you"d drop a note saying, "I"m just reminding you, I"m back in town, I"m available." Now it"s all done through agents.
"I"ve never submitted to any kind of cattle call. Some agents will call all the actors they know and send them down. So there"s hundreds of actors scuffling, trying to get in. I have an appointment at a given hour. I"m ushered in and treated with respect. What governs your getting that job-so many things over which you have no control. Often they say, "Gee, he"s fine for the part." They get a different star and you"re put into juxtaposition to him. Suddenly they say, "Instead of using Arny, we"re gonna get a big fat guy." These are the vagaries of the business. You learn to live with them. With a financial cushion it"s easier, I suppose." (Laughs.) If you"re not a star, there is humiliation and degradation-if you allow it to happen to you. People who do the hiring can be very rude at times. You don"t find that too much in the theater, because the theater still has a certain nicety to it. You find it in TV commercial casting. They"re deluged. Many people, having seen the commercials, say, "h.e.l.l, I could do that." You take a guy playing a truckdriver. So a truckdriver says, "h.e.l.l, I can do that." It"s always been an overcrowded field simply because there was never enough work for actors. Residuals, that"s the thing that"s kept actors going through the years when there wasn"t any work.
I recently auditioned for a thing I"ll know about Monday. We go to Florida to shoot. It"s a comedy thing. He"s the king of gypsies and he"s talking about this particular rent-a-car system of trucks. There was a fella ahead of me who had a great handlebar mustache and a big thick head of hair. He looked like the most gorgeous gypsy in the world. (Laughs.) My only hope is that this guy couldn"t read-and he couldn"t. So I went in there with all the confidence in the world, "cause I do all these cheesy accents. My agent called that they were all excited. I"ll know on Monday.
I have one I"m shooting Tuesday for a bank. They called up and said, "Do you happen to have a derby?" I have one but I"ve never had the nerve to wear it. So I went to the audition with the derby on, and I had a pinstriped gray suit with a weskit. I was exactly what they wanted. I vacillate from little French or Italians, little maitre d"s to an elegant banker to a wild gypsy. These accents-in radio they called it "Continental."
Thursday I went up to Syracuse, another fella and I. We did a commercial for a little home snow plow. We"re out in this freezing, bitter cold. We spent from eight in the morning till five at night out in the snow. We were neighbors. He was shoveling snow and I came out of my garage, very dapper, with a derby on. I flip up the garage door and bring out my little machine and push the b.u.t.ton and it starts. I do a debonair throw with the scarf. As I pa.s.s him with my little motorized snow cleaner, he looks up and I give him an up-yours, one-upmanship. And that"s the commercial. We had a h.e.l.l of a good time all day long. You would think it"d be murder in the cold snow, but we enjoyed it very much. The difference between this and theater is it"s over in one day and it"s more pinpointed. But it"s still acting.
I used to think to myself, This is not a life. A man ought to be something more important, ought to be a doctor or a lawyer or something that does something for other people. To be an actor is to be a selfish person. It"s a matter of ego, I think. Many actors make the mistake of thinking this is life. I have in recent years found my work somewhat meaningful. So many people have stopped me on the street and said, "I can"t tell you how much I enjoy what you"ve done." If, for a moment or two, he can turn on his TV set and see you in a show or a commercial and it makes him a little happier-I think that"s important.
I think of myself as someone who"s rational, who isn"t wild-except when I get certain comedic things to do. It is something bigger than life. It"s still rooted in truth, but it"s just a little bit larger. Rather than play comedy with a capital C, I love to find the qualities in a person, in a character, that are alive and human-even in a commercial.
RIP TORN.
He came to the big city from a small town in East Texas. Because of some manner, inexplicable to those who hire actors, he has been declared "troublesome." Though he has an excellent reputation as an actor, he has-to many producers and sponsors-a "reputation" as a person.
"I have certain flaws in my make-up. Something called rise-ability. I get angry easily. I get saddened by things easily. I figured, as an actor, I could use my own kind of human machinery. The theater would be the place for my flaws to be my strengths. I thought theater was kind of a celebration of man, with situations that reflected man"s extremely comic and extremely tragic experiences. I say, "Yeah, I can do that. That"s the way I see life." Since I feel, I can use my feelings at work. In a lot of other types of work I can sweat-I sweat as an actor-but I can"t use my feelings. So I guess that"s why I became an actor. But I found out that"s not what they want. (Laughs.) They want you to be their Silly Putty."
Actors have become shills. I remember doin" a television show, oh, about ten years ago-I haven"t worked on network television for about eight years. I was smokin" a cigar. I was playing a Quantrell-type character, so I had a long Cuban cigar. I got up on a horse and we had to charge down a hill. It was a long shot. The director and the producer both hollered, "Cut! Cut! What"re you doin" with that cigar in your mouth?" I said, "I don"t naturally smoke cigars, but I"m doing it for the role. They didn"t have cigarettes during the Civil War." They said, "You don"t understand." I said, "Oh, now I do understand. But this isn"t a cigarette program." The sponsor was Pontiac. But this show had resale value. They didn"t want a Civil War character smoking a cigar because they might resell it to a cigarette company and my act might damage their commodity. They insisted I get rid of the cigar. We"re nothin" but G.o.dd.a.m.ned shills.
An actor is used to sell products primarily. There"s good money in that. More than that, actors have become shills for politicians, even for some I like. I remember one of them talking of actors as political commodities. They want an actor to be the boss"s boy.
I don"t have any contempt for people who do commercials. I"ve never been able to get even that kind of work. A friend of mine gave me a name, somebody to see. She said, "You"ll have to shave your beard." This was long before beards and long hair were "in." I said, "It"s only a voice-over, what difference does it make?" She said, "You won"t get in." So I went up to read a Brylcreem commercial. There must have been forty people in the control booth. There usually are about five. It was as if everybody from all the offices of the agency were there. I didn"t get the job. They came to look at the freak. I went around and read about three or four commercials. They liked what I did, but I never got any work.
I don"t know, maybe you don"t bow to them correctly. If I could learn that certain kind of bow, maybe I"d try it. It"s like the army. There"s a ruling in the army called "insubordination through manner." You don"t do anything that could really be said, "I"m gonna bring that man up on company punishment. I"m gonna throw the book at "im." It"s his manner. He"ll be saying, "Yes sir" and "No sir." But there"s something within his corporal being makes you say something in his manner is insubordinate. He doesn"t really kiss the golden spot in the right way. There"s something about him. In a horse you say, "He hasn"t quite been broken." He doesn"t quite respond immediately to command or to the reins.
Years ago, when I worked in Hollywood someone said, "You don"t understand. This town is run on fear. You don"t appear to be afraid." Everyone has some kind of fears. I don"t think the ant.i.thesis of love and happiness is hatred. I think it"s fear. I think that"s what kills everything. There"s nothing wrong with righteous anger. But if you speak straight to them, even the sound is strange. I don"t know how to deal with this . . . I went to a party. A big producer gave it. It was alongside the pool. Must have been 150 people there. They had a diving board up in a tree. I remember when I was a kid, I could dive off a thing like that and do a double flip. Somebody said, "You never did that in your whole life." I said, "I guess I could do it now." He said, "That could be arranged." They got me some trunks. I said, "We might as well make a bet on this. I"ll bet you a dollar." I should have bet him a grand. All the people at this party watched me. I got up there and I did it. The guy very angrily gave me a dollar and n.o.body would speak to me the rest of the night. It was as if I"d done some offensive thing. He was some bigwig and had meant to humiliate me. By showing him I wasn"t bulls.h.i.tting, I had committed some social gaffe. I should have taken the insult and said, "I guess you"re right." I was never able to do that.
A few years later, I was reading a Pan Am commercial. The man who wrote it came out of the control booth and said, "I remember you. I remember you around that pool in Hollywood. You thought you were pretty big in those days, didn"t you? You don"t remember me, do you?" I guess he was one of those who didn"t talk to me that night. He said, "You may not think artistry hasn"t gone into the writing of this material. I want to tell you that twenty lines of this commercial has more thought, more artistry, more time spent, more money spent than is spent on your usual Broadway play." I said, "I believe you." Then he said, "Give us a voice level, please." I said, "Pan Am flies to-" He cut me off. "When you say that word "Pan Am"-" I said, "I"m just giving you a voice level. I"m not giving you a performance yet." So I tried again. And he said, "Not much better." He just wanted to cave my head in. Do you think he was getting even for my social gaffe? (Laughs.) Me being me?
Who"s running things now? The salesman. You must be a salesman to reflect that culture, to be a success. People that write commercial jingles make more money than people that write operas. They"re more successful by somebody"s standards. That somebody is the salesman and he"s taken over. To the American public, an actor is unsuccessful unless he makes money.
At my grandfather"s funeral, one of my uncles came forward and said to me, "No matter what you"ve become, we still love you. We would like you to know you have a place with us. So why don"t you stop that foolishness and come home?" They look upon me as a failure.
The myth is: if you do commercials and you become financially successful, then you will do artistic work. I don"t know who"s ever done it. People say, "You"ve had your chance." I was offered over sixty television series. But I always looked upon "em as shills for products. I was always told, "If you go ahead and do this, you will be able to have the theater. You will be able to do the roles you want to do." I know of no one who was able to do the other work he felt was his calling.
A lot of young actors come up and say, "I have respect for you because you never sold out." I"ve sold out a lot of times. We all have to make accommodations with the kind of society we live in. We gotta pay the rent. We do whatever we can. I"ve done jobs I wasn"t particularly proud of. You do the best you can with that. You try to make it a little better for your own self-respect. That"s what"s changed in the nature of work in this country-the lack of pride in the work itself. A man"s life is his work.
Why, you don"t even have the kind of carpenters . . . He says, "Aw, f.u.c.k it." You know they"re not even gonna countersink something when they should. They don"t have the pleasure in the work any more. Even in Mexico, there was something unique about the road work. The curbing is not laid out by machine, it"s handmade. So there"s little irregularities. That"s why the eye is rested even by the curbing in Mexico. And walls. Because it"s craftsmanship. You see humanity in a chair. And you know seven thousand didn"t come out in one day. It was made by some man"s hand. There"s artistry in that, and that"s what makes mankind happier. You work out of necessity, but in your work, you gotta have a little artistry too.
EDDIE JAFFE.
I can"t relax. "Cause when you ask a guy who"s fifty-eight years old, "What does a press agent do?" you force me to look back and see what a wasted life I"ve had. My hopes, my aspirations-what I did with them. What being a press agent does to you. What have I wound up with? Rooms full of clippings.
Being called a press agent or a public relations man is really a matter of how much you get paid. You could say he"s an advocate in the court of public opinion. But it"s not really that deep. It"s a person who attracts attention to his client. I project myself into another person"s place. I say to them, "Why can"t you do this?" Or that? Bringing up all the ambitions I"d have in their place. The one thing every press agent must do is get a client. If you don"t get a client, you"re not a press agent.
The occupation molds your personality. Publicity does that to people too. Calling an editor on the phone, asking favors, can be humiliating. Being refused a favor disturbs me, depresses me. That"s why I could never resign myself to being a press agent. Many are not aware they"re being turned down. They wouldn"t develop colitis like I did. That"s the way I act, emotionally, with my gut. That"s why I went to the a.n.a.lyst.
He"s been at it for forty-two years. He has worked for comedians, singers, strippers, industries, governments, evangelists, and families of dead gangsters. "Press agenting covers a mult.i.tude of sins."
When he first began, "I went around to these guys" offices. Most of them were gone. The landlord said, "Hey kid, want to make ten bucks? Find out where they moved, they stuck us for rent." About 1930, I looked in the phonebook under press agents, there were maybe eight or ten. Now there are pages of them. Here I was at the beginning of the industry and I wound up a little behind where I started.
"Some con men sold me a concession at Billy Rose"s Fort Worth Frontier Centennial. I lost my inheritance, a couple of thousand bucks. That was "36. To avoid being arrested for vagrancy, I said, "I"m a press agent." They couldn"t prove I wasn"t. So I became a press agent."
While I was working a carnival in Norfolk, Virginia, I got a client, Adrienne the Psychic. The guy who owned the theater had a brother who was chief of detectives. He inspected the wh.o.r.ehouses and put a leaflet on every bed. I said, "Do you have any crimes you can"t solve?" They"d just arrested a guy who confessed. He was in a jail fifty miles away. He gave me the guy"s name. I went to the Rotarians and they said they"d have Adrienne as the guest of honor if she could solve the murder. So I coached Adrienne. She said, "Don"t tell me. I"m a psychic." The editor of the paper was all set to give us the front page. A guy in the audience asked her the question. She gave the wrong initials and I didn"t get a G.o.dd.a.m.n line. I got the name for her but she wouldn"t take it. Some psychic!
I made a deal with Margie Kelly, the stripper. I took her to the World"s Fair and arranged for her to call de Valera from the Irish Pavilion. I was going to get tremendous s.p.a.ce in the Daily Mirror. Unfortunately the editor was Irish. He saw the spread: Stripper Margie Kelly Calls de Valera. He said, "I"m not gonna let any broad use Ireland and de Valera to get s.p.a.ce." We didn"t get a line.
I handled Margie Hart. I made her the poor man"s Garbo. Margie was a redhead. So I went to Washington to pet.i.tion the postmaster to show George Washington on the stamps with red hair. I was getting pages everywhere. When Margie was getting in the thousands, she didn"t want to pay me. I had to sue her. So I decided to retire.
It was fun doing publicity for strippers. I got fantastic s.p.a.ce for a girl named Babette Bardot. A college professor did a study of strippers. We announced that Babette was going to do a study of college professors, to find out what their hang-ups were. She wrote to the SEC asking permission for a public offering to sell stock in herself. She said she had exposed her a.s.sets very fully. We got quite a bit of s.p.a.ce with that letter. I decided there"s a direct relationship between s.e.x and our economy. So I sent a stripper down to Wall Street. She said the economy"s getting better because they mobbed her.
From strippers I got into a thing called Roller Derby: h.e.l.l On Wheels. By mistake we were booked in the same arena with a revival meeting. I tried to make a compromise-to have them go in jointly: h.e.l.l On Wheels and Save Your Soul. No go. I started getting into more conventional PR. I"ve handled accounts from Indonesia to U.S. Steel.
During the first World"s Fair I handled the Iceland Pavilion. We were opening the pavilion. I looked over the commissioner"s speech: how much dried herring and goose feathers they import to the U.S. each year. I said, "This won"t get you in the papers." So I added a line. This was at the time of the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis. So I said, "Here"s to the Reykjavik-Washington Axis. Iceland is prepared to send troops any time to defend Washington. (Laughs.) We hope Washington feels the same way about us." That got in all the papers. It was forgotten for about two years. Cordell Hull gets a call one night from the Mirror, "Did you know the U.S. has a treaty to defend Iceland from the Germans?" Hull said, "What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?" The Mirror had a headline about it. The Washington Treaty was based solely on my little publicity release.
Your ego affects the economics to publicity. I once handled Billy Daniels. I handled him when he was at the bottom of the ladder and when he was at the top. He said, "I"d like to make a new deal with you-pay you five percent of my income." He"s getting four thousand dollars a day for ten days. My G.o.d, five percent of that is two thousand bucks. Great. But guys told me, "Billy Daniels! He hasn"t paid his last six press agents." I said, "You don"t understand. I"d rather not get two thousand dollars from Billy Daniels than get seventy-five bucks from a guy who pays me." It"s the idea that you"re making two thousand dollars. That"s part of the magic, the lure of the thing.
I didn"t really start making any money until I went to an a.n.a.lyst. He said, "You gotta come five days a week." I said, "I can"t afford to." He said, "That"s the first problem we"ll solve." He went into the reasons for my not making any money. Being a publicity man is a confession of a weakness. It"s for people who don"t have the guts to get attention for themselves. You spend your whole life telling the world how great somebody else is. This is frustrating.