October 22, 2002

POND SCUM ENTERS THE HOLLYWOOD FOOD CHAIN

by Dan Dunn

The first time I rang, after one of those just-too-long pauses, he "wasn't in." So I left a brief, casual-yet-firm message on Mr. Fong's voice mail. Eight frustrating days and four unreturned calls later, I called again and finally got someone on the line who identified herself as Mr. Fong's assistant.

"He's not available right now," she hissed, her voice dripping with contempt. "You'll have to leave your number."

"I've left my number too many damn times already," I counter-hissed, my patience wearing thinner than Billy Bob Thornton on a three-month protein diet.

"I'm sorry, who did you say you were WITH?"

"With? I'm not WITH anyone, and what difference does it ... look, could you please just explain to me WHY Mr. Fong is unfailingly unavailable?"

"Mr. Fong is in a meeting."

Sure, L.A. has its challenges. Homicidal traffic. Corrupt cops. High rent and earthquakes. Hordes of people who dress better than you. It all goes with the town. But nobody should have to take this kind of abuse.

"Mr. Fong," I told his assistant, "is always in a meeting. Everyone in this damn town is always in a meeting. Tell me - because I'm new here - is anybody in Los Angeles capable of ... of ... of doing anything without having a meeting about it first?"

"Sure," she sneered. Click.

Hey, did I mention Mr. Fong is my dry cleaner? Check that. Mr. Fong is my Hollywood dry cleaner. That does not, of course, necessarily mean that he's located in Hollywood, any more than I live "in" L.A. (Santa Monica is it's own city, now isn't it?). It's a case of attitude outranking geography. But being a Hollywood dry cleaner does mean that Mr. Fong takes meetings all day long. I'm sure these include important concept development sessions with the screenwriter who drives the delivery truck, the actress who works the steam press, and the producer who parks cars at the restaurant across the street. All of whom, incidentally, would likely ignore my calls as well, if the opportunity presented itself.

This pervasive snubbishness stems from the commonly-held notion that, at any given moment, ones standing in the Hollywood community can be measured in direct proportion to who you can afford to not call back. It's a brutal food chain, and the only possible reason I've not called my mom back for, wow, must be going on two weeks now.

Another example: I have it on good authority that up until recently, Michael Ovitz spent years alone in his office, only taking calls from his banker and a team of personal fashion consultants. Now, however, after four Ovitz-backed TV series all bombed in one mean season, Jan-Michael Vincent gets Mike on the third ring.

"The call back is how you let people know what kind of leverage you‚ve got in this town," said my friend and quasi career counselor Wendy, who was recently elevated to the rank of junior executive at a cable network. Wendy celebrated her promotion by waiting nearly three days before returning a call to former "Two Close for Comfort" star Jim J. Bullock. She likened my stints as a rather successful newspaper columnist in Aspen and Phoenix to being a big fish in a little pond.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. And now that I'm in L.A., I'm just a little fish in a big pond, right?" I grumbled, making a mental note to remove the "fish" line from the dialogue in my latest screenplay, Fun Things To Do With Mud.

She shook her head.

"No? Well, what am I then?"

"Pond scum. Don't take it personally."

"Pond scum?"

"Yes," she said in a voice reserved for telling 12-year-olds they didn't make the team. "But we're going to change all that. People are going to start calling you back soon enough. Hell, someday they'll even call without you having to call them first."

To that heady end, Wendy passed on a screenplay I wrote to an agent friend of hers - a real hotshot, who recently started his own agency after several years of grooming at UTA or CAA or ADD .... someplace like that. She told me he was going to call me, and that his name was Fisher.

"What's his first name?" I asked. "Or should I just call him Mr. Fisher?"

"No, silly. Fisher is his first name."

I tried, unsuccessfully, to suppress a giggle.

"What's the matter? Haven't you ever met a guy named Fisher?"

"I grew up in a tough neighborhood in Philly," I told Wendy. "Abandoned crack babies have a better survival rate than a boy named Fisher. With a name like that, he would have been snowballed to death in preschool."

"You best be nice to Fisher," Wendy advised. "He's big-time. He can really help your career."

No reason to ask the obvious question: If Fisher was so big-time, what the hell was he doing calling me? Perhaps his doctor told him he wasn't getting enough pond scum in his diet. It didn't matter. The only thing that did was that I had finally arrived in Hollywood. Somebody was calling me. And soon.

When the call finally came, you can bet I was doubly impressed that it came from Fisher's secretary, who then patched me through to Fisher's cell phone. Apparently, there is a sub-category in this Hollywood Phone Call food chain that has to do with the actual pushing of the buttons and "where" you take the call.

For instance, anyone talking "first-look" deals through a mouthful of McNuggets is likely slipping down the ladder. If, on the other hand, you get someone on the line who asks you to hold on while he adjusts the palm frond waving rate of the nubian boys in his suite at the Peninsula, well, you might be getting somewhere.

"So a couple of thoughts on your script," said Fisher, the sound of rush hour traffic in the background. "First off, my friend, you gotta lose the strip club ... why not a nice restaurant instead?"

"Well," I replied, "I set it in the strip club because ..."

"JESUS CHRIST, YOU #@%&!!$# MORON!"

"Excuse me?"

"Sorry. Some asshole just cut me off on Melrose," Fisher said. "Look, bottom line, I think we've got something here. Maybe the restaurant won't work. But you've got 'mud' in the title, maybe we can set it in a dry cleaners."

"A dry cleaners?"

"Yeah, my development partner would love it. Great guy named Fong, runs a little joint on the Westside. His delivery guy is a great touch-up script doctor and ..."

A better man would have hung up. Instead I told Fisher that it was sure a small town and I was tight with Fong's secretary, and in fact thought she was a bit hung up on me. I made a mental note to add that "hung up" line to the Mud script and listened to him until he lost signal mid-sentence near the 405.

When he called back, I let it ring five times before picking it up.

Practicing.

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Dan Dunn lives in Santa Monica, CA. He's formerly a staff writer for Talk Soup and contributor to Saturday Night Live. His work appears regularly in GQ, and he likes to wear panties. For more, check out Dan's "Sweatshop Boy" column at College Times .

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