Notes from The Assistant Job from Hell

Toting my boss’s kidney stones in a Ziploc bag to the lab, my degree in lit/creative writing was really paying off

When I first moved to L.A., I waitressed at two different restaurants. One was A Votre Santé in Hollywood, where customers obsessed over chapatis with no oil, dressing on the side, and dairy-free pies made out of tempeh. (Yeah, they tasted like an old shoe.)

But Flea and Anthony Keidis of The Red Hot Chili Peppers came in every day to order one blue corn banana pancake and one yellow corn blueberry pancake. Read all about Anthony propositioning me over coffee here:

Reflections on 30 years in La-La Land, and why I staymedium.com

The other waitressing gig was at Gaucho Grill in Brentwood, where every night was a decadent Bacchanalian feast. Customers drank Argentinian malbec and ate blood sausage and sizzling provoleta, which is like the calories of three extra-large pizza pies in one tiny little cast-iron pan.

I also had a third job scheduling patients at a physical therapy clinic in Santa Monica. None of these jobs was going anywhere — they were definitely not helping me pursue a career in screenwriting.

So, when my office manager, Mona, mentioned that one of our patients, a writer, and producer, was complaining about his assistant, she asked me if I was interested in working for him. I saw it as my entry into the entertainment business.

Mona got me an interview with George and his partner Peter, (not their real names) and I guess it went well because they hired me to be their assistant.

And speaking of educations, as I walked those five blocks to the lab carrying parts of Peter I would have rather never known existed, I thought, is this really what a degree in lit/creative writing from SUNY Binghamton gets me? I wondered if my parents could get a refund.

We started out in Venice in a little office above the Firehouse Restaurant. Then we moved to a two-story building tucked behind the iconic I.M. Pei-designed CAA building on Wilshire and Santa Monica Blvd. in Beverly Hills. Ours was an unassuming, gray stucco building. The CAA-not building.

George and Peter were all right. They had written and produced some massive blockbusters in the ’80s, but that was their heyday. During the time I worked with them, nothing really got off the ground. They got paid to write things, but the scripts never got produced.

Far and away, the best part about the job was working down the hall from Zac and Jeff, another writing/producing team. They spent their days smoking pot and pitching scenarios for the nerds in the next sequel of their movie, Revenge of the Nerds. They were awesome guys. Zac loved a script that I wrote, and he always encouraged me to pursue my writing. Since I did not work for them, our relationship felt much more equal and friendly.

This is not to say that George and Peter were mean bosses; they weren’t. We got along OK. And at first, I thought the job had a lot of promise.

I loved writing coverage for the books and screenplays that came across my desk. I was entertained by opening letters with headshots from guys in New Jersey who were eager to be cast as mafia extras. And then there were the letters from over-eager stage moms who were convinced that their Tiffany or Madison would be the biggest breakout star since Tatum O’Neil.

George and Peter got paid handsomely to write high-level projects with some interesting producers and directors, including Richard Attenborough. They were open to my feedback, so I started punching up some of their dialogue. They had no idea how to write for women.

So why was this the job from hell? Mainly for these three reasons.

I soon realized that I was punching up dialogue on huge blockbuster movies where everyone was paid obscene amounts of money, except for me. The work I was doing would never be acknowledged.

Sometimes in Hollywood, assistant jobs are a way to pay dues as you move on up the food chain at a production company or a show. However, it was becoming crystal clear to me that this was not that kind of a job. I made $500 a week with no benefits. I would never make much more than that if I remained working for them.

The second problem: In pre #MeToo times, I was fair game for guys to hit on, and George and Peter did nothing about it. They were always trying to raise foreign money for a few of their projects. One of the investors, let’s call him Johann, would come around, walk behind my desk, massage my neck and shoulders and come on to me.

It got to the point where I had to say something to my bosses. Their response was, Rebecca, you should tell Johann that his behavior is making you uncomfortable! Way to have my back, George and Peter.

When discussing the possibility of hiring Winona Ryder to work on a project, George praised her acting, commenting that she expresses so much emotion with her eyes, even in moments on screen where there was no dialogue.

I was about to say I absolutely agree, but when he talked about how he really wanted to fuck her, and how that was also one of her better qualities, I shut up.

And then there were the kidney stones.

Peter had a painful episode passing kidney stones over the weekend which he casually set down on my desk on Monday morning, along with a jug of urine that would need to be brought to the lab.

“Oh. By me??” Was my dolted response. He said yes, please, and he gave me the address of the lab in Beverly Hills.

A week prior, George had given me his stool samples in a tidy puffy envelope which I was asked to bring to that same lab. Somehow that time, the degrees of separation between me and the fecal matter seemed a little more removed. But this clear, Ziploc bag containing the hard deposits made of minerals and salts from inside Peter’s kidneys? If I ever needed to know what kidney stones looked like (I didn’t) I now had a full education.

And speaking of educations, as I walked those five blocks to the lab carrying parts of Peter I would have rather never known existed, I thought, is this really what a degree in lit/creative writing from SUNY Binghamton gets me? I wondered if my parents could get a refund.

Was this how Marty Scorsese got his start in Hollywood? I guessed it was not.

And so I quit. We never had words. They were not bad guys. I just knew if I remained in this role with the blurred lines of “personal” and “professional” assistant, I was not going to respect myself in the morning.

Sometimes it takes a see-through Ziploc bag to give you the clarity you need to demand more from yourself and the people you surround yourself with as you climb up (or traverse) the jungle-gym of your career.