“The Secrets of Hollywood Agency Mailrooms”
Per THR:
Is the next David Geffen here? He started in an agency mailroom, as have countless moguls, as THR introduces today’s apprentices.
There’s a great story about Barry Diller, former head of production at Paramount and founder of Fox Broadcasting Company. Having spent one semester at UCLA, Diller dropped out and landed a gig in the mailroom at the William Morris Agency. In fact, he took a gig none of the other mailroom trainees wanted: the Xerox room. How boring photocopying stuff all day, right? Well, what Diller knew was much of what was Xeroxed was contracts. So each day, he spent hours studying contract after contract. This not only enabled him to learn the inside-out of every studio’s business affairs, it also taught him the finer points of deal-making, a skill-set he used to speed his ascension to the top.
Want to meet some of the future movie moguls now toiling away in the major agency mailrooms? Here you go!
And a classic mailroom story told by former CAA agent Jack Rapke just about sums it up.