The Time I Temped For A Major Movie Studio
“I know I wasn’t supposed to go to Uncle Steve’s house, that’s what his security man said and I know that it was wrong. But I’m an actor, I needed to get him my headshot, I’m just trying to be a working actor. Didn’t mean to do anything wrong. Just trying to get ahead. You know?” This from a middle-aged man, his voice husky with the hair dye he must be addicted to — just to touch up that grey, you know — and I didn’t know which button to push, which answer to give.
“I just wanted to say that I was sorry.”
And nothing to say to that but “I know you are. I’m sure it’s fine. I’m sure it doesn’t matter. It’s okay.”
“I know I wasn’t supposed to go to his house…” Near tears, now. “I just need that break.”
“It’s fine. You don’t need to apologize. I’m sure he understands.”
I have no idea if Uncle Steve understands. I hope he does. I hope he remembers sneaking onto lots, lying his way into soundstages. I hope he remembers what it felt like, to peek in.
“Thank you,” he told me, before hanging up. So very polite.
Sometimes, they weren’t polite. Not because they were bad people — but because the desperation overrode manners. One man was frustrated both by my inability to recognize his name — Douglas Ara Call — and the fact that he needed to talk to Uncle Steve because of that Oscar he won. “Who do I talk to? I won it already. I won the Oscar. But my parents, they’ve blocked me from getting any money since I was five years old. How do I go about getting that money? My parents have kept me from it. They’ve been very naaaaaaaughty.”
He was my first proper crackpot, and out of curiosity I tried to keep him talking, ask him what year he won the Oscar. What he won it for. But he wouldn’t say, just asked to talk to Uncle Steve, over and over, and finally there was nothing to do but say “I’m sorry, and good day” one last time before releasing the call.
You don’t hang up on phone calls, when you’re using the switchboard box. You release them. Like working in a pound.
I started picking up more and more calls one morning because Iris was tied up on her line with an endless call. I knew it wasn’t personal because she wasn’t whispering in Spanish, and because she kept saying things like:
“Women are from Mars, men are from Venus?”
“What’s a wop?… Oh.”
“Well, if it’s yours, why don’t you just–”
“I thought you were quoting Destiny’s Child. That’s Mary J. Blige.”
“The cosmetic lady?”
“I don’t know what that is — the cereal? Oh, that explains it all.”
“No, you would like to think so.”
Finally, a long hum of silence, punctuated by “yes” and “hmmm?” until she finally hangs up. “He was on a calling card, and he ran out of time.”
“What’s his deal?”
“Don’t know, but I’m going to lunch. So you’ll probably be able to talk to him soon.”
Sure enough, he called back half an hour later, his Jersey-thick accent asking for Stacy, the fake name I heard Iris give him. He was slightly upset at not being able to speak to her, but quickly plunged into his business of winning me over. He asked me to be on his side, to help him take back the company from a man named Joe Banano, who’s “the don, God.”
“I could be your worst nightmare or your best friend,” he promised over the sound of the wind, the traffic roaring by his pay phone. “If you work with me, you’ll be making a hundred grand a year.”
I propped up my feet and settled in for a long conversation. Over the course of twenty minutes, Frank Schmidt Jr. told me all about his life: adopted by Madonna and then abandoned in 1986, thrown in jail by a jealous ex-lover’s boyfriend, dating Eminem. Eminem was only one of his boyfriends.
He wanted me to promise to stay in the office that weekend, to help him get things back on track. The heads of the company weren’t there anymore, he knew I knew that, they’d been kicked out by Joe Banano. “You know our technology, you know what we have, you’re our staff. I need some f–king money, I need to be put up in a hotel, and I need some staff to stay this weekend so that I can stay in touch.”
I asked where he was, and he told me he was living on the street in Toronto. He was cold. He was using another calling card.
“I need a private jet to take off from Orange County. Have Mark be a f–king man and face me and apologize and beg me for forgiveness. He set me up and he threw me in jail!” This was, I was left to infer, a reaction to Frank hooking up with one of Mark’s boyfriends. But I had no proof.
He said he was about twenty, and his voice sounded older but I’m not good at guessing that sort of thing. So I kept asking little questions about when he’d been thrown in jail, when he’d been abandoned by Madonna. He sang a few lines from “Papa Don’t Preach” to prove that he’d been the mistake she’d made in 1986. I wanted to ask if Madonna was his real mother or adopted mother. I wanted to ask how thick his coat was. I instead asked him why, apparently, Joe Banano had no interest in Paramount.
“Why no Paramount? No Paramount because it’s in the motherf–king skullbook. Joe Banano doesn’t want no f–king Paramount because of the paramedics.”
Finally, Frank cooled down somewhat, worn out by the repetition, his righteous anger. “I’m a young guy, I’m not a dickhead, I’m not an asshole,” he told me. And I imagined him, crouched over the phone on the cold street. I crafted a mental picture, kept it in my mind when he cursed at me. I tried to give him sympathy, because it was the only thing I had on offer.
A dead moment of silence on his end, and when he came back it was resigned. He begged me to accept a collect call. His new phone card was no more, worn out totally by my questions and his rants. Mostly the latter.
His voice, raw and broken. One last plea: “You have no idea. It’s magic, what you have there.” And maybe he wasn’t wrong about that.
If you’ve never had the chance to visit the Dream Factory, know that it’s pristine, a place where the fountains always bubble cheerfully, a place where the sunsets are always beautiful. Employees talk softly over their free gourmet lunches, take pictures in front of the sculptures. The mood is similar to a small-town college campus, on early Sunday mornings. Everyone just moving through their paces. Utterly convinced that this is where they’re supposed to be.
To come to this place one morning and spend forty-five minutes talking to a young man on the street, pleading with you to send the company jet to pick him up, because he needs somewhere warm to sleep that night…
For Uncle Steve, for five days, I was a gatekeeper. Holding the common folk at bay.