Let There Be Light
LET THERE BE LIGHT
BEANIE
Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death.
— AUNTIE MAME
1980
On July 16, 1980, nineteen-year-old Beanie Rosen, who had graduated college a year early, began her career in a windowless storage room adjacent to Personnel, filled with metal file cabinets, and tucked away in the furthest corner of the third floor of the Sylvan Light Agency. The room was bare but for a Wells Fargo Bank calendar from 1978, and in the upper left-hand corner, an air-conditioning vent, where a wad of dust and dirt stubbornly hung, refusing to be dislodged by the wisps of air.
“Barely enough to breathe,” Ollie had said, promising to get the vent cleaned.
But Beanie didn’t mind or notice. She had a job at the Sylvan Light Agency.
Still living at home, Beanie quickly fell into a routine, rising at 7:00 A.M., getting dressed and ready to go by 7:45, taking the canyons over the hill, fighting rush hour in the Swinger, and usually arriving by about 8:30/8:45, parking in the employee lot just off Wilshire.
She’d walk in her clogs the three blocks to the agency, and once there, change into Jelly high heels and neon-red opaque stockings. She’d quickly learned to raise her skirt length, tease her hair, show décolletage, and wear lip gloss.
“They like the lips shiny. And red,” Hawkeye told her on that first day. And though Beanie, who was practically in another zip code, rarely saw anyone who could appreciate her shiny red lips, she glossed them anyway, just in case, and buried herself in the mind-boggling minutiae of filing paperwork.
And there was a lot.
The motto at Sylvan Light, literally written on the bottom of each piece of stationery, was: “Put It In Writing.” Light had taken that philosophy from his days at William Morris. It was the law of the land. And each agent obeyed the law. Every request, idea, suggestion, had to be typed and memorialized, with a copy sent to Central Files.
There were no exceptions.
Every morning she was greeted by a seemingly endless supply of interoffice memorandums; everything from travel requests to termination papers, all recorded in triplicate by secretaries using carbon copy paper in their Selectric typewriters. Anything she could want to know about anyone, not only in the building but in the industry, was laid bare in front of Beanie like a beautiful banquet of spin, with flowery words and hidden agendas, inside jokes and outside braggadocio.
TO: Staff Worldwide
FROM: Norman Seamus
SUBJECT: Well, hello, Dolly!
I am happy to report that after a brief visit with ICM, Carol Channing has found her way back home to us at Sylvan Light.
And then there would be the memos applauding the memos.
Nice to have you back where you belong,
or
Dolly is coming home again to stay!
One memo could spawn a hundred and thirty replies, all of which would be filed under the subject matter, in this case, “ Re: Carol Channing. ”
Four times a day, mailroom boys would do their third-floor runs, depositing close to five hundred interoffice envelopes, many of which came through the New York pouch, each containing correspondence that needed to be opened, sorted, and filed. On any given day, there were between one thousand to fifteen hundred memos, contracts, letters, that in order to be filed, first needed to be sorted… and read.
Which meant, to anyone with a functioning brain, that the Central File tsunami looming in front of Beanie Rosen held riches beyond her wildest dreams. All she had to do was dive in and swim through the mind-fucking, ego-stroking politics necessary to not only survive the boys’ club, but to thrive in spite of it. “Every wave is another opportunity to learn how to get the yes,” her father had told her. “If it knocks you down, learn the lesson, so the next one won’t.”
And the lessons, like waves on a beach, kept coming, washing up daily treasure.
It was a bonanza of information that told her who was most vulnerable and who was most valuable.
“If you need to navigate a maze,” Barry Licht had said, “study the rats who are running it.” This position that she’d co-opted out of desperation wasn’t the dead end Barry had forecast, but rather a gold mine he hadn’t seen. “Your biggest opportunity,” her father had advised, “may be right where you are.”
And it was.
Every morning she was greeted by the inner workings, the petty gossip, the personal and confidential exchanges between all the men in power; what they said aloud, what they whispered privately. It was an instruction manual, a behind-the-scenes glimpse of grandstanding, posturing, and survival. Beanie pitied the ignorant, studied the shrewd, and learned the game from the bottom up.
She’d spend days analyzing the idiosyncrasies of each agent, the jealousies between them, the hierarchies, the egos, and the backstabbing.
TO: Mike Barron
FROM: David Levy
SUBJECT: Hasselhoff
I heard Cush is losing him. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
It was a baptism less by fire and more by words. Everything was memorialized and filed, even the inside jokes.
TO: Phil Carter
FROM: Len Greenberg
SUBJECT: Five Easy Pieces
Six if you count Mike Barron’s new girl…
No matter your position within the agency or what you were writing, everyone copied Central Files. It was almost involuntary. So, if the president of Sylvan Light, Harvey Khan—“King Khan” to those trying to curry favor—wanted to have someone fired or promoted or transferred, he’d Put It In Writing.
And if it was personal and confidential, his girl would put it in a P&C envelope and circulate. That way, only the sender, his secretary, the recipient, his secretary, and the file clerk were privy. Which meant that young Beanie Rosen, now a member of that elite group, was, by proxy and position, given instant access to the inner workings of the most powerful agency in the entertainment industry. And that was how she found out, a month into her job, that Sydney Lonsdale, head of the literary department and the person with whom Barry was trying to curry favor, was being fired.
“You need help,” she told Barry the next morning at the food truck.
He always bought a breakfast burrito before the morning run, and she had been waiting there to talk to him since he hadn’t returned her calls. This was P&C information, and she knew she’d get fired for repeating it, but she had to pay him back somehow, recalibrate the scales.
She pulled him into the side alley, wet from being hosed by some gardener or janitor perhaps, washing away the night’s secrets. It was, after all, Beverly Hills, where everything was beautiful on the surface.
“Lonsdale’s being fired,” she said quickly, spitting out the bad news, as if the words themselves couldn’t wait to land. “I read it in an interoffice memo between Harvey Khan and Nate Rosenthal.” Nate Rosenthal was CFO at Sylvan Light. If someone was being fired, he had to be notified. “They think he’s a dilettante,” she said. “Overpaid, not a team player. They’re going to promote Fundtleyder.”
“Fuck,” he said, grinding his cigarette onto the clean asphalt. He had bet on the wrong horse. “Fuck,” he said again. Beanie could see the wheels turning in his head, trying to figure out his next move.
“Hold on,” Beanie whispered urgently, “there’s something else, something better. Way better. But it’s a secret, I mean, really, really secret.”
“Go on,” he said, annoyed at himself for betraying his interest.
Then she spilled the beans, or as her father would say, “the Beanies,” telling Barry that Phil Carter, head of the rock and roll department, now called “Personal Appearance,” was going to be given a trainee.
“It’s part of his renegotiation,” she explained. “They aren’t going to tell him until his contract is up, November first. His lawyer asked for him to have a trainee, and they’re saying no right now. ‘If we give it to Phil, then we’d have to give it to everyone else,’ blah blah blah. But that’s just a ploy,” she told Barry. “They’ve agreed amongst themselves to give him the trainee. He just doesn’t know it yet.” She let it sink in.
“So, he’ll fire his secretary?” Barry asked.
“No,” explained Beanie. “He’s going to get a secretary and a trainee!” This also was big news. Huge. No one above the first floor had a secretary and a trainee. “They’ll give it to him instead of paying more money.”
He took this in. “Wow,” he said, leaning against the building.
“So,” she continued, “if you act quickly, you know, volunteer to read for him, or walk his cat, or whatever he needs, he can think that it’s, you know, genuine, that you’re that good a guy. I mean, how could you possibly know what he doesn’t even know yet?”
Barry cracked a smile.
“I couldn’t.”
“Right,” she said, letting the monumental news land.
Barry looked at her.
Damn, she was good. Beanie had already learned not only who the players were but how they played. But could she have made it up? Was she leading him down some wrong, twisted road, just to mess with him further? Perhaps she was an officer of his father’s army, a foot soldier strategically placed to lure him back to Chicago, the NFL, and his loosely called fiancée Marci Goldklank, with her two-bedroom condo plus den that her zayde, who wanted nothing more than to see his shayna punim happily settled, had bought her as a pre-wedding gift. The thought made him shiver.
“How did you find this out?” he asked.
“I told you, I read it in an interoffice memo,” Beanie said.
“Bullshit,” Barry said, emphasis on shit. He knew there were thousands and thousands of interoffice memos, and the idea that she would happen to read the one memo that was about the one person that he most wanted to work for was too much of a coincidence. He walked away.
Beanie, not comprehending, followed. “It’s true,” she said.
“Really?” he asked, turning on her. “Out of the millions of memos, you happen to read one about Lonsdale getting tossed? Gimme a break,” he said, heading for the food truck.
“No,” she shouted. “I read them all.”
And that stopped him.
Most file clerks, including Barry in his brief stint, just read the subject matter, filed the memo, and moved on. No one could possibly read every single memo.
Except Beanie Rosen.
And as remarkable as it sounded, he realized that it had to be true. This ball of genius energy, not yet twenty, who had graduated UC Berkeley early with honors, read every fucking memo she came across.
“Holy fucking shit,” he said, smiling.
She let out a relieved breath. “Good, right?”
“No,” he said. “Great.”
Phil Carter’s client list included everyone from Cheap Trick to Guns N’ Roses to David Bowie to Blondie. And Barry Licht had six weeks before anyone else in the training program would know that Phil Carter was getting a trainee to work his magic.
Initially he went to Phil’s office, introducing himself, telling Phil how much he admired not only his amazing client roster, but Phil himself, having done a deep dive on his background. He casually offered assistance should he ever need any help, any time. “Anything,” Barry stressed. Phil, impressed, thought the young man was authentic, insightful, and had good taste. After all, Barry liked Phil, and Phil liked Phil.
“Sure, kid,” Phil said, appreciating both the attention and the deference. “I’ll be at the Troubadour tonight with some friends covering the Eurythmics. Show up. But not dressed like that,” he added, smiling.
That night, Barry, dressed casually in Sergio Valente jeans, a T-shirt, and brown suede Ferragamos, did everything from bussing the tables to making sure Phil and his ever-expanding guest list had everything they needed.
The next night he did the same thing at The Roxy for Linda Ronstadt, that weekend at the Hollywood Bowl for Guns N’ Roses, then the Whiskey a Go Go for the Ramones, and at the end of October, the Forum for Pink Floyd. Barry had a natural talent for making friends fast, greasing palms, working doors, pulling strings to make sure wherever Phil went, it was smooth sailing.
By the time Sylvan Light officially announced that Phil Carter was getting a trainee, the position had been filled.
The other trainees never had a shot.
Barry Licht found his way to a desk, and Beanie her way to redemption.