The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up

In Hollywood they like to say that every American has two businesses—his own, and show business.  The fact is, in show business, maybe the most ruthless of all businesses, many of the good and the great—Barry Diller, David Geffen, Michael Ovitz, Bernie Brillstein, Mike Medavoy—are veterans of one part of the ambition factory, the only school for show business: the talent agency mailroom.

“The Mailroom” is based on David Rensin’s bestselling oral history book, The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up.  The book collects hundreds of voices belonging to training program graduates—and some dropouts, too—of William Morris, Creative Artists Agency, United Talent Agency, International Creative Management, Endeavor, GAC, CMA, IFA, and others.  The story covers 65 years.  Everyone talks about what it was like to start at the bottom of the show business ladder, dreaming of the top—all of which involves surviving day to day in this virtual Hollywood boot camp. 

From the ego-killing grunt work to the ego-thrilling sense that the sky’s the limit, the minute you start in the agency training program you’re traveling in another dimension, between light and shadow, on a journey worthy of a “Twilight Zone” episode. 

There’s the signpost up ahead.  Your next stop: the Mailroom—the industry’s greatest launching pad.

The American Dream, of course, is that anyone can become anything.  To become anything in Hollywood, to succeed in show business by really trying, the most enduring path to behind-the-scenes power and position runs through—right: a talent agency mailroom.  There are other routes of course, but none are quite so romantic or romanticized, or part of the cultural lexicon, or so deeply embedded in our can-do mythology that when someone says, “I started in the mailroom,” we instantly know what they mean.

“The Mailroom” is a portrait not only of an actual place—many places—but of a culture. It’s about ambition, accident, serendipity, dreams lived and dreams broken.  It’s about a process, a hall with many doors, a journey, a rite of passage. It’s about Hollywood, and it’s not about Hollywood at all.

“The Mailroom” is being co-produced with Broadway Video and Mark Krantz Productions.