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Assistants all over Hollywood work so hard for so little pay. (Which is why there've been so many California government crackdowns on what is tantamount to showbiz slave labor.) Ergo, it's hard to imagine any company trying to get away with paying them less. But tipsters tell me that's what WME is doing. The new agency is "recalculating" the pay for previous WMA assistants (about $13.50 an hour) to be more on a par with former Endeavor assistants (about $9.50 an hour). As one WMA assistant complained to me, "It's depressing to think that my already abysmal pay might go down. That would honestly make the wages unliveable. And infinitely more disgusting knowing the millions of dollars certain agents are making."
WME Pay For Assistants Worse Than WMA
By Nikki Finke | Category: Agents | Thursday June 18, 2009 @ 3:42am
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Not to mention, our new hours are 9-7 – MANDATORY. That’s fine, but don’t cut my pay, assholes. As we were told yesterday, we’re all very fortunate, because endeavor used to work 11 hours a day, all to service ‘The Prince’. Oh, and we’re all very happy about the merger. Right. Thanks Jim, Thanks Irv. Again, Ari shows WHY HE WAS IN TROUBLE at Endeavor. No people management skills. You know what, Ari? I can’t wait for the day you’re broke and destitute.
Llyod is that you?
Yes its true. Assistant pay at WMA or going down to match Endeavor. Also some agents will be told that they need to start sharing assistants so more layoffs coming in the assistant pool. What’s behind this, well thats easy money money money and some greed. The deal to take over WMA was amazing but no guarantee’s in terms of money. The are at least two more rounds of layoffs coming up. One very soon. We hear that the labor commision has been called by some of the fired assistants and agents to look at the unfair labor practice’s. For years WMA held back money on agents pay checks. Well when they terminated the agents the hold back money was not paid and by the way can anyone explain how they decided what was taken out of the hold back money. Thats all a big no no. Ari, and Patrick hold on for a rough ride with lawyers and state commisions. Many are banding together to get what’s there’s
Hey kids – it’s only for a year – if you stay longer than that you are asking for trouble. Make your contacts and move on. Unless you want to be an agent. If that is the case, hustle and get promoted. The whole idea is to be an assistant for as small amount of time as possible…
It sort of strikes me as something akin to the old apprenticeship system. Like the Dickensian blacksmith who feels he has to beat his apprentice harder than his mentor beat him to make up for their own sense of inadequacy.
So you get those who graduated the old assistant-agent system getting the attitude that being paid shit, and worked like rented mules is the only thing that builds the character necessary needed to be an agent. The problem is that it tends to escalate, or to be more exact, degenerate, into worse and worse treatment.
The hours of the NY have been changed. We now work from 9-7. The office used to open at 930 because we stayed so late. From LA we heard that Irv tried to walk into WMA and right into his office but guess what…he was denied entry. Irv what were you looking for, Jimmy, food or KN???? It’s hard to believe that morale could get any lower but it has. The clients are not getting serviced well because agents are worrying about there own jobs. The Miami office has no clue what to expect. They have been told that the evaluation process is in full swing and to cut expenses. More support staff at WMA has been let go. Men and woman who have been with the company for more then 25 years were told bye bye. Ari get his way and his people. Dave’s office wife, Jjill Smoller is in on life support in terms of job security.The boys at Endeavor don’t play that game. Is Jim Griiffin still being be served his breakfast and lunch on a silver platter. Yes this has really happening for many many years. Live Nation Live Nation Ari what’s happening. major confllct of interest. Oh but I’m sure the music clients already no that
More love from the inside coming soon
I was a production assistant at a large, well-known studio in Los Angeles and I was only paid $10 an hour, from which I could barely live off of. I had two roommates, and all of my excess income went to gas for driving around town on studio errands (you’re only reimbursed up to 30% of your gas, if at all, and this was when gas was $4.77 a gallon) and ramen. Thank goodness I managed to get promoted into a technical director-esque position, now I can afford more luxurious food items like Hamburger Helper!
To go from $13.50 an hour to $9.50 an hour is not only ridiculous, but it would most likely cause all of the assistants to have to relocate since they would suddenly no longer be able to afford their current living arrangements. I couldn’t imagine being put in such a position, my heart really goes out to them.
Starting out, I was appalled that CAA offered me only $250/wk (before taxes)to start in the mail room. I got paid twice as much at a smaller agency.
Hello I read your comment and I’m curious to know what life is like as an assistant at a film studio or one of the BIG talent agencies. What can I expect to be paid monthly?…I’m on pace to graduate with my BA soon.
The production assistant on a movie I’m working on now are making $8 and hour (and this is a major movie, by the way; biggest in town,) and this sleazy company even had the balls to factor in the one $8 meal penalty into the rate that they quoted. $9.50 would be a god send.
Oh no, 9-7?!?! What a terrible misfortune for you to suffer. I’ll guess you’ll have to work an average asst day.
At least you still have a job.
What’s funny is that for such a liberal bunch, when push comes to shove you are just like Wal-Mart Ari! You can take advantage of workers who have no place to go, just like box stores can do to lower class people. So when you look Obama in the eye next time, know deep down in your heart that YOU also represent everything that is bad in our country and the greed that has taken down our economy. I hope the extra few dollars an hr you get helps pay for your ten million dollar house or your stupid trips to Newport.
oh boo hoo, the people who do tasks a monkey could do aren’t making enough money. Shut up and work hard and you’ll make more money when you deserve it. I was an assistant in hollywood and worked my ass off for shit money and now I make great money. that’s the way of the world, not just hollywood. these assistants today think that after being on a desk for months they should be making 6 figures. Sorry kiddies, it doesn’t work that way so either stop your whining and bust ass or go back to your hometown and get some lame ass job that all your friends from high school have. Im sure you’ll be the hit of your 5 year reunion because you answered a phone in hollywood.
I just did the math. WME Assistants are being paid 25.00 less per week than I did twenty years ago, when I came to LA to begin my career.
wah. wah. wah. shut the fuck up and get me some coffee.
Where are the CLIENTS in this equation? I don’t do business with companies that I feel are unfair to their own. Totally indefensible to lower the assistant’s salaries. THERE IS ENOUGH FOR EVERYBODY. How about some pressure put on by the clients. You don’t think a few calls to the agents with a little “gosh, I don’t feel comfortable with you because you’re screwing the help” wouldn’t make a difference? Hello….of course it would. Step up people. And boo hoo…put your therapist on speed dial, darlin’.
Not an assistant; don’t even work in film. But, I have to say, I’m working temp as a receptionist for a non profit and I’m making $12 and hour for a 9 to 5 job. And, since it’s a temp job, I know my temp agency is charging the company more than that. Admittedly, this is in Dallas, but I’m struggling to see how any company could see paying it’s lower level employees such wages as a good business model, even if you are treating assistant positions like training positions for greater lucre down the line.
Well, you can always become movie background. That pays $135 for eight hours of work. That’s $16.75 pr/hour. not including paid lunch usually and overtime.
I think McDonald’s pays about that or better right?
average wal-mart greeter gets paid $10 an hour
i was an agent trainee in 1998 at another big Hollywood agency… at that time, we made $350 a week (before taxes) and I usually worked 7:30 AM – 10:30 PM and had to tackle coverage for at least 3 scripts a week at night. No overtime. Pretty standard agency stuff…
Looking back on it, I have realized that the only people that actually succeeded in this environment were the people that were not actually supporting themselves… their parents were and for most, still are! That is the tricky part about this industry – it is not a real career thus you should never expect your paycheck to actually ever cover your living expenses. The industry does not care if you can live on a low wage, it is all considered to be part of a glorious weeding out process. And yes, agencies love to break labor laws. That said, I am thrilled I got out of Hollywood when I did but news like this makes me sad. Good luck to the WME assistants, this has got to be rough…
Oh and do not even get me started on what it was like to be a female trainee at a talent agency – unreal…
I just don’t think it’s right, they’ve fired all these people and had so much payroll come off the books, adding so many clients that will bring in so much more income, to put the squeeze on people who they hope will become the future of the company is wrong and can’t be necessary.
I have always believed that the pay scale for agency assistants is deliberately lower due to the fact that they want to weed out those who do not have the means to survive on just that salary alone.
ari fan, are you really lloyd from entourage? i mean the way you speak bears an uncanny resemblance that i got chills.
Boo Hoo:
Just because you got fucked back in the day, doesn’t mean that’s the way it should be. Your mindset is exactly what perpetuates any broken system… You wouldn’t happen to be in politics would you?
Anyway, if you want to treat your assistant like shit to toughen them up? Fine. You want to make them work overtime 8 days a week? Fine. You want to throw staplers at them because it’s fun to watch them duck? Fine. But for fucks sake, at least pay them enough so they don’t have to live in the ghetto and eat noodles every night before they pass out and do it all over again.
Boo Hoo — you sound like some CAA dickbag. “and now I make great money.” They paying coordinators that much nowadays, huh? I bet you wear an Armani suit, love America Psycho, and wear paste/mold/sculpt in your hair. Prolly drive a 3 series on lease to fit in with the prototypical dickbags.
Unfortunately, I fear you are not the hit of any reunion, much less party.
Yo, Ed Hardy is having a sale this weekend! Get your assistant on that. With your great pay you can buy tons of rhine-stoned shirts to wear at Boulevard 3 while hitting on assistants.
I thought I’d never post on DHD, and man, Boo Hoo, you just rubbed my the wrong way.
Sad that the assistants do more work than some of the agents. There’s one TV lit agent from Endeavor in particular who just likes to brag to people that she is an agent at Endeavor but she doesn’t actually do her job. She’s so emotionally unstable that if you ask her to do any work for you she’ll lose her mind and yell at you for telling her how to do her job! She can’t actually do anything for the clients, nor does she know what the clients are up to and if they’re even working!
So maybe WME should survey their clients on which agents they should let go as I’m sure the clients could in 2 minutes compile a list because they know the people who are doing the work for them and not just kissing ass of the higher ups in the break room.
I like that comment about Ari – a big cuddly liberal with his brother’s boss and then he screws his own company hires worse than AIG. U are simply a liar Ari – but hey, U look at that as a virtue. One day U will answer for what U’ve done… In the meantime, assistants, suck it up! This town is full of shitheads – I know, I worked for some of the biggest, and I’m still around.
re Comment by Former Assistant — June 18, 2009 @ 7:45 am
Yes, I too was an assistant about that time and they are making less and working more. I shared an apt in the Hills with a friend and we paid about $400 each per month. Try that now and see what you get. Nada. Plus a car, insurance? You’re fucked.
Agree with other commenter to get in, make connections and get out. However, it’s far more difficult these days because all the development jobs at studios or production companies with housekeeping deals have all but disappeared. Seriously, where do assistants go now? There is no more industry.
Kiddies, a bit of advice from a wise former assistant. Get the fuck out. Get into an industry that is growing, rather than shrinking. Get some course work or experience in anything involving new media, emerging tech or gaming. The agency world will continue to shrink as the talent pool will continue to get smaller as agencies don’t want to invest in growing talent. Plus, you’ll be a fuck of a lot happier.
Or, don’t take my advice and be a slave, get an ulcer, get fucked over, sell your soul and your clients, get an STD and die young and poor.
If you don’t like then leave the industry. Babies. Seriously suck it up or go home!
Typical Hollywood leftist Democrats, they love voting for Socialists and sympathize with Communists, then they treat their staff like farm animals and slaves. The hypocrisy is laughable. They are the true greedy slime.
Assistants on Film/TV Productions make way less than that and have far worse hours. Since most of them don’t get paid overtime they end up working for less than minimum wage as well as less than the PA’s. It’s unfair but it’s been that way for a while now, nothing new here. Every year the pay seems to go down.
wow, Boohoo, just coz you were a slave doesn’t mean others need to be. Fact is, its against the law. Period. Assistants are not slaves for you to lord over, what hypocrites agents are. slavery went out of style centuries ago. It’s time for assistants to unionize!
I like BriteBlonde1’s “idea” on how to fix things, regrettably it has no basis in reality. Why?
Actors, (and writers and directors for that matter)no matter how big or small on the food chain ever bite the hand that feeds them.
A lot of actors (although not the brightest) have a survivor’s sense of which side to route for, and trust me they will choose to stay silent for their own selfish reasons rather than support an assistant 100 out of 100 times.
True story: used to make $15 and (then more) in high school working at a Whole Foods.
Even still, it makes a lot of sense to accept the slave wages and work this close to Hollywood central nexus of packaging power.
It’s like grad school, except tuition is free and living expenses are (almosted) covered.
Anyone who actively wants to be an agent deserves to suffer for as long as possible.
In the old days, there were two tracks: agent trainees, who made $300/wk gross, no benefits, and professional assistants, who started at $450/wk and got benefits and regular raises.
I spent a year at a major agency. Six months in the mailroom, six months on a desk. I have since worked at 2 broadcast networks and a major tv studio. Compared to working in tv, being at the agency was like working at the Special Olympics every day. For all the BS about working thirteen hours a day, most of the agents sit around playing video games, planning extravagant vacations, yelling at their assistants, and trying to figure out where to have lunch. If you’re a writer, you can be about 98% sure that your lit agent has never read a single word you’ve ever written, and instead relies on the opinion of a $300/wk recent college grad.
About a decade ago, when I was a senior programming exec at FBC, I stopped talking to agents. For the following ten years, I spoke to agents maybe once a week, and they were usually talent agents and it was usually some BS actor-prima-donna issue (”My client forgot that she has to fly to London to present an award.” “OK, I’ll talk to the producers about jiggling the schedule around. When is this?” “Tomorrow.”) I got my pitches and specs from managers and producers; I filled open-writing assignments by calling my favorite writers at home.
In my humble opinion, and in my own experience (which may be unique, and, let’s face it, I’m never going to be president of a network), agents are completely superfluous and should be avoided wherever possible.
I agree 100% w/ Abe LastFogey. Boo hoo is a D bag and probably had daddy paying rent while he was an assistant.
Most assts I know are barely scraping by since LA has such a high cost of living. It’s not a matter of paying your dues when you have to go into debt to pay for groceries. Most assts already “pay their dues” by working around the clock and get treated like shit.
I think the old hollywood Dbags have instilled a horrible system and it keeps getting worse even the cost of living keeps increasing. It starts with the agencies, then production co’s think they should be able to get away with paying assts what the kids in the agency mailrooms start with. so gross.
Dear assistants,
I feel for your plight. I know many of you. Complaining will not do anything, action does.
I barely could live off an assistant wage, but I was smart enough to realize I could sell talent grids to survive at as much as $200 to rival agencies and management companies – and occasionally brokering deals for rolodexes that I stole while as a floater. (So understand, if you’re as morally bankrupt as your bosses, you too can eek out a living wage)
But I digress….
The only thing Ari and senior management respond to is leverage. As assistants, you have plenty.
1) Ari, let this be a warning, your home phone number is going to be posted EVERYWHERE. Why? Because I’m asking every assistant who dislikes this move by management to do so. Go ahead and change your course of action, or you’ll have to change your phone number every two weeks if you want to get any sleep at night and function as an executive.
2) Letter writing campaign. I promise any one of you assistants that ICM or CAA will foot the bill for postage if you all get together and create a letter to this effect sent to every WME major client (on WME letterhead):
Dear Denzel Washington,
This week WME announced plans to cut assistant salaries 30% causing us to fall further below a livable wage. Many of us are already struggling to make ends meet and with this large wage reduction, many of us will have to leave the business of working tirelessly on behalf of clients.
Please call Ari Emanuel at (XXX) XXX-XXXX and ask that during this time of much suffering in the economy, that he maintain assistant wages at a livable level.
Sincerely,
WME Assistants
(You’re all more accomplished letter writers than I am, but you get the basic idea… Hit em where it hurts, the clients)
3) Unionize / Walk out. Not sure if you all have the balls and tenacity to do it, but Unionize. Call up one of the guilds to help you. If you’re lucky, you can make it a closed shop and start getting paid better than supermarket baggers! And watch Ari try to explain to big brother Rahm at the White House that he is fighting against a Union. The right Union organizer would have a filed day with this one.
Point being, you have more power over this than you might think. I hope you’ll stand up to being pushed around by your millionaire corporate oppressors, aka Ari.
-R
PS: Dear Ari… This is morally repugnant to do to your corps of assistants – though the verdict already seem to come in that you have no morals.
Considering the average assistant works barely a year before leaving, you couldn’t wait for attrition and just have the $9.50 apply to new hires? Besides, its not like you haven’t crushed morale to the point that a slew of WMA assistants want to move on as soon as their year is up.
The assistants who work there know what they are getting into. They could get a less “glamorous” job that pays well where they were treated decently but they choose not to because they are chasing their own version of money, greed and fame. Now they want to work at the most egotistical agency in town. And now that agency says–we will pay you even less! And now these assistants still want to work there. If they asked the assistants to pay them for the privilege of working there–there would probably be takers.
Writer’s assistants, director’s assistants – same pay, same hours, far worse implications, being that their employers are all members of the industry’s labor unions. Shouldn’t they treat “the workers” better than they do?
Seriously, Nikki, as long as comments are monitored, it’s really repulsive that you’d post an anti-Semitic comment.
What I remember most fondly about working at an agency was the humiliation. And memories like that are something you simply can’t put a price tag on.
Sadly pathetic. I hope everyone, including the people over 40 are contacting the EEOC for inhumane treatment and instating a suit against the company. Most of the assistants are doing the job of their lazy bosses who are too busy chatting on the phone with friends or out getting mani/pedis, haircuts (not Gaby) or schmoozing at the grill.
Jim Wiatt has managed to mangled and crush a company over 100 years old and Ari will just step over the bodies left behind.
Shame on all of you for the demise of WMA as an institution. I hope all of these assistants creep into your dreams at night and haunt you from today forward.
I hope to see your karma come back around as your black hearts will explode.
complain all you want, but there are thousands that would take your job working at a top 4 agency. yes, you make shit in the mail room, but if you last you’ll get a raise after 12 months … and get another bump after another year … and then another. when you’re an assistant to a partner or dept head the rules don’t apply to you … you can negotiate another bump … you get overtime. assistants who have managed to last and figure it out are making more than baby agents and creative execs. those are the ones who aren’t bitching and those are the ones that are going to get promoted b/c they’ve figured it out. keep your heads down and work your asses off (and eat leftovers from meetings to save money).
Jill Smoller. How if the F did she ever make it. She’s Dave’s office wife and Serena’s baby sitter. Too bad she lost Michelle Wie – she got to travel on her dime too. Take a look at what dollars she generates on an annual basis. The income wouldn’t even pay an assistant for one week. Dump her and you’d be able to give every assistant a salary which would at least coverthe cost of living.
@Abe LastFogey I’ve got to stand up for Boo Hoo.
“you wear an Armani suit, love America Psycho, and wear paste/mold/sculpt in your hair.” He might not, but I do. Love AMERICAN PSYCHO. Wouldn’t be caught dead in Ed Hardy tho… the two looks are mutually exclusive.
And what does that have to do with anything? Assuming he’s not full of shit, he’s proof that there the agency=grad school system works.
Oh, and for the record, if the Bateman thing wasn’t cool, Fox wouldn’t be doing MONEY NEVER SLEEPS.
I would love to run into BooHoo in a dark alley.
Abe LastFogey, I couldnt agree more. It’s really sad that this is happening…how can you not agree. But instead we get douchetalk from BooHoo, who obviously suffers from penis envy.
Just what is the percentage of assistants who actually go on to better jobs within the same agency? What’s the actual promotion rate at the majors? Assistants, do the math before you buy the bullshit. What is it that you actually LOVE about the business that cannot be found in another business? The talent? The product? Be real. I toiled in entertainment for 10 years and you know what? It’s just a business filled with lousy bosses, shitty content and crappy pay. It’s a lousy job market but try to find another industry that can use your talents and appreciate you with benefits, retirement, flex spend and…hold the phone…A FUTURE! Get out before you get too old, too bitter and your translatable skills are no longer translatable. I left entertainment, had to take a step back to gain experience in another business (albeit entertainment oriented). Couldn’t be happier not being yelled at by people who should be in mental institutions, have miserable track records and worse profit margins. And the pay is better. Stop acting like the abused wife and open your eyes. It’s not going to get any better. You’re never going to get a union…cripes, JUST what this town needs…Seriously, I WAS you. I know what I’m talking about.
Still better than the 9.2862 Marvel is shafting their employees with, and only 30cents /mi.
If you don’t like it then quit. A busload of new kids willing to do your job for free shows up in Hollywood every hour.
Seriously, if you don’t like it… go home. Half of you are being supported by mommie and daddie anyway.
Try living the life in my heels…. graduated college a few years ago, worked production in NY for 3 years, moved to LA (had to start all over getting my foot in the door)to work in the industry out here and I’m still struggling money wise, but career wise. I work my ass off everyday. I’ll come in at 7 am if need be for my boss, and usually I do… I’ll take the pay cut until I get somewhere… and you know why?? because I want it. I’m in the industry I want to be in…
So either take what your given and make something out of nothing or get the fuck out.
Correct me if I’m wrong – but I believe that if you work over 40 hours a week – and 45 hours is more than 40 – you are entitled to overtime….especially in an assistant position – who’s looking into that
Here’s the deal. No one is forced to work for a major talent agency. In fact, anyone who has gone through the interview process knows that they try really hard to convince you that you don’t want to do it. That it sucks and never gets better, even when you get promoted.
You do the job because there is something driving you to play in the entertainment or agency game.
If the pay is not suitable, go get another job. Most likely you have considerable connections, an Ivy League degree or a shitload of tenacity. I highly doubt there will be an issue finding a job that pays decently.
As a former agent and current producer, the only thing that I see from these people complaining about the pay is a desire NOT to do everything it takes to find success in THIS business. And let’s be clear, putting movies and television shows together requires everything you’ve got to make it happen, especially in the current climate.
And for the record, I paid my own way through the agent training program with a shit-ass car, a small rented room and Campbell’s soup for dinner. It’s tough, but not impossible.
Let’s not lose sight of the fact that everyone working at an agency as an assistant is holding on to a very specific ambition; to acheive success in entertainment. It’s very easy to leave an asst gig at an agency.
So, Endeavor can’t create a successful business of its own so it plunders a juicy target instead, picking off the riches and leaving a dead carcass.
This is supposed to be admirable? Much easier to plunder and destroy than it is to, you know, successfully create something of value.
Agreed with “BriteBlonde1″ that there is enough for everybody. This biz is fast going the way of the dinosaur. The obsolescence isn’t caused by the internet, it’s caused by business pirates. The internet simply arrived on the scene and is providing an intriguing alternative by necessity.
The pillagers are likely flattered when they are called “shitheads” and compared to sharks, etc. To that mentality, success is measured by the degree of the screw-over. The testosterone pathology continues to hijack the economy and kill everything in its path.
This pirate mentality needs to be stigmatized not revered. It is ruinous and not admirable. Much easier to destroy and plunder than actually create something. Fortunately, perceptions are shifting that way.
Business greatness is based upon a sustainable business model with a product or service of value. It is not who can act like the biggest animal and exploit the most.
The entertainment biz is dead, kids. It hasn’t been fun or sexy for some time. Don’t flog the dinosaur. There are so many new enticing industries springing up.
I worked as an assistant in the early 80’s for a small agency. I believe I started at $225 per week but the funny thing is $175 was “salary” and then I’d get $50 per week for “expense reimbursement” so they wouldn’t have to tax it. (or pay employer’s share)
Looking back I don’t know how made it on that little money, but I always looked at as more as getting graduate degree in the entertainment business. I’m sure I learned more about the industry in the two years I worked there than I would have attending film school and I got paid. Being an assistant is a great education but it’s definitely not a long term career.
The one exception used to be Broder-Kurland-Webb where there was never any pretense that the assistants were going to be agents so they paid the assistants a very decent wage. Mr. Broder is a class act. The good old days…
Comment by former wma’er — June 18, 2009 @ 10:28 am
Completely agree with “former wma’er”’s advice. If you do not get out now, at least have a solid back-up plan and/or expiration date. And that plan should not be moving in with your parents but another career path that seems interesting and (god willing) lucrative!
I also recommend getting out of LA whenever you hit your expiration date… amazing how silly that industry is from a few thousand miles… not to mention the cost of living, oy.
Good luck!
@typical
Yup, those guys are sick towards female trainees.
The sickos aren’t just the agents, but the trainees as well, especially if you’re the token female who also happens to be smarter than, and ultimately more successful than, them.
If true this story just reinforces the image that Tiffany’s has been taken over by K-Mart.
The sounds of the pissing and flushing away of a hundred year old brand name are still echoing throughout Hollywood.
Go work at Gersh if you want to be an agent. Pay is great, people are pretty nice all around and the hours USUALLY aren’t terrible. Good benefits as well.
Nicely said former wma’er. What a loser business. It’s shrinking by the minute. I was an assistant at a talent agency. I also left the business and have never looked back. It was the best decision I have ever made. You only have one life kids, spend it wisely.
When Ari came to the NY office there was a grand meet and greet in which he, standing on the 16th floor, addressed us gathered in the 15th floor lobby. It was very fascist dictator addressing the masses.
He had the audacity to say that this great, new gleaming entity was “not about the clients, not about the buyers… It’s about YOU…” meaning us WHO WERE ABOUT TO BE FIRED OR HAVE THEIR PAY CUT BY A THIRD.
I do believe I am done with a business whose pinnacle of leadership is someone who could be so specious.
Stop complaining …gotta pay your dues
Assistants – have a sick out.
Seriously. It’d be great to see these agents try to handle their own desks all day long. Fucking weasels.
Note to the Dept. of Labor and Brother Rahm: Ari & Co. have been getting away with MURDER for way too long by underpaying people to have the “privelage” to work at Endeavor/WME. This is ILLEGAL. Ari should be thrown in jail with the common criminals (as should Carol Katz the HR Monkey)…You could make more money working at McDonalds than at WME! And they will never pay you for the massive amounts of overtime you put in!
whatever you pansy assistants. i do more than you and make less…
I am contacting the dept. of labor and the EEOC. I’m over 40, and this is just devastating to us. And I’m other support staff, not an assistant. This is inhumane treatment. Ari is the biggest idiot on the planet if he thinks treating people like shit will make us all ‘work harder’. Bullshit. We have families and lives outside of work, at least we did. Ari is no better than the Walton’s of Walmart, who I think may actually care about their employees more than he does.
A lot of good people are going to leave. You don’t notice us now, because we do our jobs damn well. But believe me, you’ll notice when we’re gone.
Why doesn’t the repped talent at WME say something about this? Seems to me that one word from their top actors or directors in defense of these poorly paid young assistants could make a big difference. Let’s hope the agents they work for help them out with some $$$$.
or be resentful and think that you run the company, quit , start ur own nothing company and learn the hard way that you really are just that, an assistant working for yourself.
Pay your dues, build your relationships, and be honest. It does all come back at you. LOL. i see it everytime from the top
and yes, I made shitty coffee and rolled calls for many years. Plus I baby sat on weekends.
Ari…..Limousine Liberal, Cadillac Communist, Mercedes Marxist, Learjet Leninist.
Why don’t the assistants go back to school and learn a new field that pays more. Am I missing something?
To the insensitive idiots who are telling the assistants suck it up – please grow up.
Imagine, college educated assistants coming in to work at 730am and leaving at 8 sometimes 9pm everyday because their desk is at such high volume, being told non-chalantly that their overtime, which they use to barely scratch by with rent + student loans, will be now reduce EVEN MORE…
.
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. This isn’t a marriage,its a bloodbath like someone said in another post.
wow … and this is what america has come to. people arguing about who works more ridiculous hours for less money.
Most of the people that work at agencies come from money anyways. Stop complaining, mommy and daddy will still pay for your apartment and bev hills and the benzo…
Great, the cheap company I work for now has the, “at least we pay you more than WME” card to play.
$9.50/hour to start? To learn? With Zero experience? Get fired and live on the Obama plan @ 450/week. Better yet, try acting. Jack Nicholson said it takes 20 years to make it. I’m going on 25. Still living on unemployment between jobs, when or if they ever come. No health insurance. No game. It took me 11 years and 30 plays that I did for free in L.A. 99 cent theatre plan to get my big break. Which never lead to anything. Still doing free plays. Am I complaining? No. Not on your life. We all gotta die of something. Might as well die doing what you love. Good luck. Get out if you hate it. No crying, whining, complaining or bitching. No one cares.
I hope Ed never intended to have a significant other or children.
WME assistants have every right to be frustrated with their situation. The financial crisis predicted to last YEARS will stall upward mobility and prevent lateral movement to another job. As a result, WME can hold their assistants hostage, and justifiably so if it’s for the good of the company and its investors. Welcome to capitalism.
My advice: leave WME and get a real job. Look at your bosses. Are they happy? Are their families happy? Do they respect one another? That’s you in a few years. You’re not going to change the game, so why not participate in something more meaningful or satisfying?
If you’re doing it for the money, and only the money, then best of luck to you.
My degree is from a party school near Mexico because that’s what I could afford.
My parents gifted me the wealth of ambition and work ethic to succeed. I’m connected because i made connections..i don’t fear nepotism-i consider it network packaging.
Ditch your car and ride MTS- isn’t going green the thing to do anyway ? I bet your agency will even pay you to do this. Mine does. 120 dollars saved monthly.
Hang up your ties after you wear them instead of dry cleaning them needlessly. Shop around for less expensive dry cleaners.
Stop drinking alcohol and getting tables at lame LA and Vegas clubs..
Ditch your iPhone- you’re chained to your desk so much anyways. ( i still have mine because i’ve made my budget cuts)
Rent cost? you can move further away but i moved to WeHo from thai town and pay less now.
Make sacrifices. Be creative. Band together with other broke ass assts and enjoy this time of corporate “hazing”. I’m glad my agency does this as an initiative.
It’ll be a good story to tell one day when you humbly say …you’ve made it to the top.
Or you can continue to complain– meanwhile – agents and execs are paying more attn to the assts coming to work with a positive attitude.
Shout out to former WMA HR Rod : Thanks for being such a condescending jerk that I didn’t get hired at WMA. Amazing how life works.
Learn..network..have fun..you didn’t get paid to do this in college.
Ed,
They’re entitled to complain all they want. I’ve seen how hard these assistants work and the UNBELIEVABLE workload some of them have – in some cases doing the majority of the work for their incompetent shit agents. The workload/pay ratio is PATHETIC. This is where the complaint has true resonance. Assisting an agent at one of the busiest and most prolific agencies in the world deserves the pay reflective of the workload – just as any job does. Anyone wonder my McDonald’s pays such shit? Their workload is a fucking joke.
true story. there is a top agent in this town that drove a used Mail Truck as a trainee and even into his first few years as agent.
If you WANT IT, you do what it takes…
make your own luck, make your own success, and stop complaining. when your name is on the door, pay your assistant 100K a year. i bet you wont
I love the takes of both former wma-er and Mr. X; not just assistants but anyone in the industry (or any other) who is at all conflicted about their true passion for the particular career track they’ve chosen would do well to heed those words and the sentiments behind them, lest they wake up one day when it’s far too late to change anything – fucking miserable and ashamed over having wasted a life, one lived without a moral compass or a clue.
On the other hand…
I can only speak intelligently of my own experience, which is that my producing partner and I have a rule we live by as much as is humanly possible in this business: “no assholes or divas allowed”. This applies to casting, crewing, hiring new reps, etc. And obviously we have to grade on a pretty steep curve sometimes*, but getting that notion into the conversation as early as possible in some way has generally served us well, and I highly recommend that you try it – when you have enough game to pull it off, that is. Your mileage can and will vary, but if effectively presented it’s magic.
* when we were younger we’d hoped to rule out “batshit crazy” also, but hey: ultimately we like to work, so…
Still better than the $8/hour (no overtime) at Abrams. And just try asking for a bump after a year
If you allow yourself to stay in situations where you are struggling financially so that you can do what you love or think will lead to what you love, that is perfectly fine, but please do not broadcast it expecting the world to hand you a trophy for withstanding poverty.
It’s bearable for about a year. If you’ve mastered your job, and are still not getting noticed, or relationships are not budding, you are not going anywhere in the agency. Hence, you are not going to be an agent. Move on. It is very difficult to switch industries after more than 2 years at an agency as an assistant…. people in the real world don’t take you seriously. Especially if you have a grad degree coupled with 3 years of agency experience, you look like a fool.
anything below 10.75$ an Hr FT, officially puts you below the poverty line of 22K a yr. Radicalize in today’s day and age.
Love it or leave it.
From the remarks to this post, it is obvious Hollywood, in particular the Agency system, is perpetuated by a repeating cycle of greed, bitterness and oppression. I find it interesting that these are same qualities that caused the fall of on of the great industry icons, WMA and its famed Agent Training program. So all of you posting the “too bad” speeches. Careful, that’s the same attitude WMA HAD!
And lets be totally honest here: the reason why most Agencies and Agents treat there assistants like shit is none other than JOB SECURITY. Most Agents don’t know there head from there ass and have only been trained in the art of “It’s a pass.” Frankly put: It’s not a good business decision to have your mid six figure investment being out shined by the recent grad assistant.
what a bunch of pussies. everyone who’s saying that assistants do most of the work for agents are delusional. you roll calls (and probably drop calls), you set meetings, you do expenses. as trivial as it seems, you’re learning valuable multi-tasking skills that are imperative to being a good agent while learning who’s who in this game of hollywood. agents you’ll are constantly juggling multiple clients at different levels for a scarce amount of jobs. are there assistants out there that really think they could call the network, pitch clients and make deals? that’s about as likely as a flight attendant landing a plane. shut the fuck up, listen, network and learn. you’ll get there if you want it badly enough. i dare anyone of you to walk out … you’ll be replaced quickly and if the floater who took your job doesn’t stick, the next one will. here’s a little secret for all of you whiny bitches: AGENTS WERE ONCE ASSISTANTS!
Hollyweird — if you left the business and never looked back, why are you commenting on this blog?
Cunning Anonymous Asst — great post. A slight difference in attittude is what gets someone promoted or referred to the job they’re interested in. Which is the whole point right? I don’t ever remember anyone saying that the point was to become an assistant, make a comfortable living and coast for 30 years…
i appreciate everyone’s sympathy with the plight of WMA assts, but…. we former endeavor assts lived on this salary for years. it’s a liveable wage, about $28k a year considering how much overtime we have to put in (not all of which is credited), and to the extent that anyone should get your sympathy it should be us for having missed out on the thousands of dollars in extra wages the wma assts got prior to the merger
To all my fans out there, I’m just a normal guy with a family who lives a normal life. I grew up in the midwest, paid for my own college by working and with the help of student loans. When I started working out here I held two jobs, one on the weekend and my agency job (and btw, I’m not an agent, I figured out quickly that I didn’t want to lie for a living, used them for what I needed to make the next step and got out).
I just don’t believe all the “i can’t make my rent” whining. Maybe you can’t afford the place you are in, maybe you waste too much money on clothes and drinks and other things.
No one said being successful is easy. There is such a thing called “sacrifice” that many Gen Y’ers don’t seem to be familiar with. You don’t start out at the top.
And one last note, all of my assistants I’ve had I’ve championed within and outside of my company, one was even promoted within my company. Just because I believe in hard work doesn’t mean I’m abusive. Hopefuly, I am preparing my assistants to be successful in wherever their passion lies.
Oh please. If you want to eventually become a bottom-feeding, parasitic agent that lives off of the talent of others, then you have to pay your dues and put up with the humiliation.
Ummm …. step back people.
I have a friend who is a professor at UCLA. She was just given a pay cut. Is she upset about it? Not as upset at the alternative (being furloughed).
This situation is how you perceive it. The alternative is a game of russian roulette. Would you rather all take a slight pay cut, or keep your rate but have another round of firings.
As so many above have said, the assistants are very fungible and there are 800 people standing in line behind each one for the job. People walking off or quitting will be a benefit, not a loss. The new people will be more than happy to take the reduced salary, and they won’t grouse about it.
What’s the big deal? Find another job if you don’t like it. Otherwise, suck it up.
The avg. dominos delivery driver makes between 14 and 18 dollars per hour
this is nothing like walmart.
the majority of assistants are only buying booze, and you know, other stuff, with their salaries as their rich parents are footing the bill for their climb to the top.
many are ivy league graduates who CHOSE to work there. Most walmart employees end up working there to feed their families and because a walmart job is the best they can find.
quit crying and roll some calls!
It’s not slavery if it’s voluntary. It’s called a supply curve. Apparently there are no high-level skills required, or they would have to pay more.
No one’s forcing people to work there. If you’re working there for money then you’re in the wrong position. If you’re working there to learn the trade then accept the trade-off and stop looking for hand-outs.
Seriously, as someone who has been looking for an in into the entertainment business for the last 10+ years I would take their jobs in a heartbeat. Stop complaining, I would love to be where you’re at.
I would work for $1.00 if I could work for the Prince. Everyone should have my attitude.
I was a assistant at a large agency that paid shit and treated me like shit. I worked hard got promoted and left after a year. The moral of the story is that I make so much more money at a small agency, I have freedom and its a happy environment. We have people who have left the big agencies, its only a matter of time that people are going to get sick of the bull shit and they are going to crumble.
I’m a former assistant that stayed too long – don’t do what I did, hang in there, be loyal, do a good job and hope these people will reward you someday.
Don’t be naive. Do it and move on.
What gets my goat about most Hollywood Slime like Ari is when they are at fundraisers for Chocolate Jesus, drinking champagne, slapping each others back and pretending they’re all about the “little guy” and the Democrat party ideas. Bullshit.
The reality is, when it comes to money, they are no better than Republicans. It’s money they worship and they will crush anyone to achieve that. Soulless scum that Karma will take care off in the end.
I feel terrible for those people getting their salaries cut. It is almost impossible to survive in LA on $10/hr., even with mad overtime and roommates. Alot of talented people are going to choose between feeding themselves or their cars.
Pressure Cooker level rises a few more degrees…it’s gonna be a dirty black summer.
Supply and Demand crushes you from both sides.
A huge number of 20somethings create a great demand for that “special something” which NYC and LA supply in a fixed (and even decreasing) amount – which means each 20something must be willing to “pay” more (in the sense of lower salary, worse work conditions, etc) for access to that “special something”.
On the other side, as the NYC/LA job demand curve in no way supports the 20something supply curve, the price will be significantly depressed.
Enjoy!
If you don’t like the pay, get a real job working in construction or something.
I live in Houston, have a normal 8-5 job, make very good money, have a low cost of living, gas is cheap, and I can carry my Glock with me (in Texas, the good guys don’t just shoot back…often we shoot first). Why wold anybody ever want to live in southern Califiornia?
Whether it’s liveable or not isn’t the issue, formerendeavorasst. Employees have come to rely on their weekly salary. The fact that employees will loss 30% of their monthy budget is tough. We all live paycheck to paycheck and carefully plan our rent and student loan payments and all the other monthly bills around the paycheck. This is potentially devastating.
It also brings up the inequity involved in this merger. WMA has been taking it up the ass from day one. Almost 200 employees have lost their jobs including those in the mailroom. Ari hasn’t spread out the pain. WMA has been taking 99% of the hurt. Now he wants to cut 30% of the WMA assistants paychecks while he hordes the 100+ million of WMA money. That’s money/investments that has been accumulated over the years with the help of hardworking WMA assistants.
The wrong this to do is to cut the WMA asstitant salaries. Ari’s gonna have to eat this and raise the pay of his Endeavor assistants and cut back on overtime.
If the board chooses to cut the WMA assistant salaries, Ari’ll be making a statement that he’s trying to eradicate all of WMA, since some assistants might need to look for work elsewhere.
Ari has shown no equality to the WMA employees. He knows it and the only way he’ll ever be able to get rid of the acrimony that’s brewing is to just push everything that’s WMA out.
But if Ari cuts his own salary 30% in solidarity with the WMA assistants, he might prove to have some empathy.
$9.50 an hour? $9.50? Ari, I’ll pay you $20.00 just to kiss my ass. How about it? $20.00 for 3 seconds of work? Come on please? Pucker up for $20.00.
Boycott the movies of their actor client, until they raise the pay. These actors gas on a “living wage” while exploiting the proletariat.
Just a side note to consider: WME has a New York office as well. There is no way on God’s green earth you can live off of that in NY. It’s tough enough in LA I’m sure, but no matter how many budget cuts you make, its impossible to survive on that in the NY Office.
ARI, good for you! It sounds like 99% of the people love you… so I guess your contribution to change in the last election had to do more with changing your staffs wages — WOW some change alright — maybe we can get a bailout, too — oh, I don’t really think we can — not the way you mega rich skip out on taxes — again, your contribution to change during the presidential election was real effective — you know the majority of us are going to make it out of here someday! Hopefully we’ll be better off because we learned from you how NOT to treat others…
It’s stunning how many comments are from the Hollywood brainwashed. The fact of the matter is, this town gets away with MURDER each and every day under the idea one is ‘lucky’ to have a job in this town. When in truth, some of these agents/producers/actors et cetera should be SO LUCKY to have someone with half a brain helping them run their day (because, we all know how hard it is to drive down the street, get a cup of coffee, make a few phone calls, and open the mail).
God forbid these same ‘wealthy elites’ in this town oh I dunno…spread some of the wealth, so that their assistants who are not Trust Fund Babies (and more often than not, lazier and dumber than they are) can actually eat a decent meal and get a half-way night’s worth of rest…so they can move ahead as many have commented and actually make a livable wage. People like Ari make me sick — because they have twisted the idea of Capitalism to mean that THEY get all the fruits of another person’s LABOR simply because they’re the ‘boss’.
Hey, good for you Ari and the rest of your greedy ilk — I hope you’re having fun counting all of the money you’ve made off the backs of others under the guise of ‘paying dues’. Guess what you bunch of spineless, gutless, smucks with apples…not everyone was born with a silver spoon in their mouth. Not everyone can afford to live in a one room Beverly Hills apartment and drive a new BMW and wear Hugo Boss everyday while making shit wages. Not everyone got into a plumb school because their family happened to donation millions to the new library; so you think they’re ’smart’ when in fact, they’re dumber than you. Not everyone is a craven brown-noser with f-you money in their pocket (so they can somehow impress you fickle assclowns when they tell you to suck it…only to then turn around and get their job back because they have Laker skybox tickets and access ‘escorts’ so you figure, “hey, this kid is alright to stand up to me and then make it up with a shameless gift like chicks and b-ball tix”).
Yet why should I imagine Hollywood being more equable than the rest of this screwed-up (by both political parties) nation? One that for far too long, has propagated the idiotic notion that it’s perfectly fine for roughly 90% of the wealth to be held by less than 1% of the citizens because someday YOU too will be rich and when that happens, YOU don’t want those so-called ‘losers and lazy nitwits’ taking YOUR money. So please spare me the feigned outrage Hollywood and realize you’re no better or worst than any other industry that pays the actual WORKERS far less that you’d, the MANAGEMENT would be willing to spend to make sure a dog is fed and properly cared for in a shelter.
I agree with Mr. X @June 18, 2009 @ 11:26 am 100%.
Anyone who thinks the agency world has some long term value is kidding themselves. I am a writer and yes, even after I sold my script my agent still never read any of my new work even though he was sending me out. It was a joke everytime I went to the offices. They were all looking at internet porn instead of getting me jobs. Thank God I am producing now and I have no need for these people.
It’s obvious that we are living in a time of upheveal. Real estate agents, mortgage brokers, travel agents… are any of these people useful in todays world? At one time they controlled information… but in 2009…
Information flows easily, through PDFs, facebook, blogs etc. and the job of an agency is superpeflous.
Look at the caliber of people that are “trainees”. They are simply not up to par as in the 80s and 90s. I shutter to think these people will be next in line for a studio job or even greenlighting. These are MBAs and frat boys who think Star Wars is an old movie. Their lack of ability of script development, talent picking, the history of the business, coupled with their arrogance is startling.
So goes the agency world. It served a purpose but WME is smart and knows their window is fading.
Your lower wages should be a clue — you skills are NOT VALUABLE ANYMORE. If you are a lifer, like the 40 year old above, you are delusional. The agency gig is a apprenticeship at best.
Oh… and 10%? For the future, think 5% or less. That is about the amount of work agencies do these days and talent is wising up.
i guess they can get away with this since there are so many ‘hangers-ons’ who will accept this miserly treatment in exchange for being close to the famous and celebrities..
when people decide they wont work for peanuts just be be near celebrities, and get a job at a truck-stop gift shop in fargo North Dakota instead,.. wages will go up in the hollywood industry.
the fame-addled, moth-like creatures flittering about to be near hollywood will never take the gig at a truckstop, and they deserve nothing better than the 9 bucks hollywood gives them. you are paid probably more than you are worth, considering that there are a thousand folks just as qualified waiting to take your spot at any moment, since they are as fame-addled as you are.. you are paid all that you are worth.
I don’t know how anyone who works in Hollywood has any respect for the actors bringing in millions who then turn around and diss capitalism and spout their looney liberalism. What gives? And then to pay these people wages at the poverty level. In most peoples book this is called “Hypocrite with a capital H…..exactly why I have no respect for these loons (and I had know idea they expected everyone around them to live with their parents). If these hollywood actors could go any lower in my book they sure earned it.
why don’t you a-holes get a real job instead of serving coffee and picking up laundry.
It does not matter what arena one finds to work in…education, film, legal, private,government, tech,
I teach all my clients one very important lens:
YOU ONLY GET WHAT YOU ALLOW
I used to pick cotton when I was a kid for $5 a day.
I got my ass outta there, got myself a little education
and moved to L.A. to write movies.
Sold my first screenplay for fifty grand, and this was
back in the early 70s when that kind of money meant
something.
Spent 35-years working in the biz as a screenwriter, and now live on a ranch with my horses, in relative
comfort.
But before the first script sale came parking cars, and
hoping tables, and tending bar, and driving cabs. Having people shit on you, and look down their noses at
you, and snap their fingers at you, for starvation wages.
But I knew if I could get through what the settlers in
Jamestown in 1607 called The Starving Time, that I would eventually get to the place I wanted to get to.
And I did…
If you can’t take the hoping tables or parking cars part of your career, don’t ever expect to own the restaurant or the parking lot.
As we say where I now live, Cowboy up, and just fix the fucking fence, you’ll get the cattle later.
Change you can believe in, baby!
Isn’t it typical!!! The biggest liberals in town who show up at every Obama fundraiser are downright cruel and oppressive to the “little people.” What a bunch of hypocrits!!! I guess they assuage their collective guilt about how they make their millions from exploiting their workers by attending a liberal event at the Four Seasons or the Penninsula. Working for an average Republican businessman would be a dream compared to working for liberals in Show Business (trust me, its true).
If you choose to stay in conditions that cause you to struggle financially, because you love what you are doing or expect to make your way to your dreams one day, that is perfectly fine. Just do not boast about this, expecting the world to hand you some sort of trophy for being poor.
I think most of you are MISSING the point… everyone knows that asst pay sucks… I dealt with it myself as a former WMA’er (I was on a desk making $675 wk over 4 years ago). But if you are hired for a job and promised a certain salary, its unfair to cut it back by almost 30 percent!! Its a breech of the agreement the asst’s had when they accepted said position. Every asst there will have a drastic drop in their quality of life (which was not good to begin with!) It would have been simpler for them to make the new rate apply to new hires only. I wish you all the best… may you all do you year and run far far FAR away.
Not all assistant’s have “rich” parents; I know my assistant son does not. I have read all of the comments and agree that the main point is not what the Endeavor assistants make versus what the WMA assistants make- The Endeavor assistants agreed to those terms when they were hired. The WMA people accepted their jobs at a different salary and planned their lives ( student loans, rent, etc.) around that.As a fervent democrat, longtime Obama supporter, and naive person, I too agree that simply attending fund raisers and espousing the democratic “values” is not enough. These are the people who should be treating their “workers” fairly. I think that lawyers should be contacted, money should be donated to post a plea on at least one billboard to let the whole community know of this unfair wage reduction and some important WME clients-actors, writers, etc should be contacted to put pressure on WME not to go ahead with this lousy idea.
I’m sure these asssistants know what they were getting into from the beginning. Don’t they want the agent job themselves? A lot of them have law degrees, and they CHOOSE to start in the friggin mail room – haha – ridiculous, already. So what’s the difference if they cut your pay a buck or two? You’re a lawyer, sue them.
No one is mentioning the one obvious exception to the “all assistants are paid crap” rule — I know many assistants on TV shows that see a bump every year.
The downside is that you have to be lucky enough to land on a show with decent human beings, and your show has to get picked up every year, but if those two things work out, you will actually get a decent raise.
(But no paid vacation. Or sick days. And a health care plan that you wouldn’t give a dying mule. But nothing’s perfect, right?)
It says to me that if you find people who appreciate your abilities, they will reward you for your hard work and try (in their limited capacity) to keep you happy and on the show, because they know you make their lives easier. It also says to me that the crew on a TV show works too hard to take chances with newborn babies, right out of school, and they’d rather pay a premium for someone capable.
Agents, true to their stereotype, don’t think in these terms — it’s all about the deal, not the career; the sell, not the series. Some of my best friends have been assistants in agencies, and honestly, I’m glad they’ve all moved onto better gigs now.
Guys, seriously, this is Hollywood. It’s a cut-throat town, full of back-stabbing assholes. Casting couches, stolen treatments, drugs, wiretapping, etc… – there’s a rich history of sleeze in this town. Doesn’t sound like a place you want to be? GO HOME.
Haven’t you watched ENTOURAGE? Haven’t you studied SWIMMING WITH SHARKS? Didn’t you read HIT AND RUN? YOU’LL NEVER EAT LUNCH IN THIS TOWN AGAIN? Do you your homework. Just figuring this out now? GO HOME.
The trick to survival is simple: cash & carry. Don’t owe anyone money. Don’t accrue credit card debit. SHIT HAPPENS, especially here. And if job security is important to you, if benefits and a reasonable salary are important to you, if sane hours and bosses who respect you matter to you – GO HOME – this business isn’t for you (at any level, not just the bottom).
I agree with a couple points above and just want to say…
1) It’s a pay reduction. I repeat: a reduction. From a company that is not hurting and has already made tons of cuts and can make cuts from many other places before cutting assistants / support staff salary. Many people plan their lives on what they were making, to reduce it at an already low rate hurts…a lot.
2) I feel bad for the people in NYC where cost of living is higher than LA. There are no $400 apartments.
Nikki, please do a followup story on this.
i guess im the exception to the rule bc as a wm(ee) employee, i may be one of the supposed few that can say i support myself, no help from parents, and agreed to the job’s original measly pay and planned my budget for LIVING around that. this has been a fantastic week, full of wonderful surprises-
first the shock of more REQUIRED hours. its not that i wouldnt have stayed for that time to begin with but now it wont be counted as overtime. ok, fine. then we go down from the measly, what is it, 12-13 dollars an hour (after college degree(s) to under 10 dollars an hour.
to all of you who say ’suck it up, if u want it badly enough youll take it, in this economy everyones cutting corners, atleast you have a job…’ etc etc etc: EAT SHIT.
if the cat wasnt so fat, maybe id understand, but this is a multimillion dollar company run by lush gluttons. what is a measly couple of dollars an hour for the couple hundred assistants to them, any way?
whether intended or not (probably not the latter) this demotivates the trainees more than ever. it sends a big- fuck you, youre more disposable and replaceable than you ever were, and if you dont eat our shit and grin, LEAVE. maybe im mistaken but if we are expected to come in saying ‘bring it on, ill take whatever i can get, ill be better than ever’ i would never believe we work for what is essentially the business of never taking no for an answer. why do we have to nod our heads and say, thank you sir, instead of negotiating and standing our ground?
i love how every previous trainee that is now an agent laments about how bad they got it but doesnt do anything to make it better on the next guy. doesnt put their two cents towards improving the quality of the company. makes TOTAL sense. thats how we ended up where we are now, two piece of shit companies clinging to each other after swearing each other off. wow, i think i just learned a little about morals and being a person whos word is worth something.
one last thing, with all the unmotivated employees, the company’s bad karma, and then lack of camaraderie, i can only imagine how this looks and feels like to the clients. its a shit storm waiting to implode, theres no pride in working for an axis of evil greed.. and its literally a mailroom about to go postal. pun intended.
The cost of living has increased exponentially, while the wages paid to lower rung Hollywooders has increased glacially. This is one of the glaring problems with the suck-it-up crowd in these comments. This isn’t 1975 or 1985 when you could get a place in WeHo or Hollywood for peanuts. Today you can’t get a place in Echo Park for peanuts. Yes, all assistants have always been paid like junk, but the junk pay used to go farther than it does today. Assistants are getting screwed far worse now than they were in the past. Thus, all assistants should have savings or parents that are willing to foot the difference, or be ready to go into debt.
All assistants should understand that they’re getting into a dicey game where the good guy doesn’t always win. Talent agencies aren’t pro sports, they’re not a pure meritocracy. You could work your ass off and the promotion could go to a producer’s son- Hollywood is run on connections, and if you didn’t know that before you arrived, it’s about time you found out. Cultivate the right patrons, and in twenty years you could write in on a comment board telling the future assistants (who are getting screwed even worse than you did) to suck it up.
There will be a special spot in hell reserved for Ari Emanuel, Jim Wiatt and Irv Weintraub. Two of these jackasses ruined a proud and historic company. The other’s just a self-centered dickhead. Or perhaps that applies to all three.
Someone should write the real story about what happened here. Enough with these d**k-sucking pieces that keep popping in the New York Times and The New Yorker.
Something is getting lost here. It’s not just about assistants. There are very talented people working behind the scenes in support staff positions which don’t fall into the “paying your dues” category. Whether they be in accounting or any other office service, they deserve to be adequately compensated and treated with dignity like any other Human Being. They have children and mortgage payments. This is something WMA finally figured out after decades and several laswsuits – and they had plenty of money still. WMA was a well oiled machine in this respect. People enjoyed working there up until the point they were betrayed and sold down the river. It’s a shame that WmE is actively lowering the standards from day one by actively disrespecting and shaming people to tears.
To romanticize assistant positions by reffering to fictional TV shows or movies such as Swimming with sharks is absurd and self defeating. As if there is some virtue in being on the receiving end of a flying cell phone from a pissed off Agent. To validate psychotic behavior only perpetuates it – HAVE A LITTLE DIGNITY! This is something WmE will have to learn THE HARD WAY! Harrassment lawsuits, etc.
It’s true though that most trainees are inbred realtives of other hollywood elite. In all my years I have never seen a regular Joe rise to the level of Agent. Good luck if you’re name is Chucho from East L.A. Your wasting your time. The low wages are there to weed out those trainees whose parents don’t make supplemental weekly deposits to their bank accounts.
I want to address a racial remark someone made in a previous posting. I have worked for Jews all my life and have made many friends that I admire greatly and look up to – Caring people of high integrity. Every Hollywood agent should follow the example of Norman Brokaw. His being Jewish never prevented him from representing people from various backgrounds back when it was hard to do so. eg. Bill Cosby, Muhommad Ali (a muslim). Then there are the elitist bigots who consider themselves God’s chosen “princes” who presume to dictate how the world should run and who deserves to live. But let’s not lump them all together in one Matzo ball. There is a definite difference.
I need to say one thing. WMA was not a perfect place by any stretch of anyone’s imagination, but when I had a personal emergency and was out for an extended period of time, the leadership and HR couldn’t have been more supportive. (I realize it’s the law, but that doesn’t mean they have to be nice about it – they were). Hey, we even got an ipod and a kindle once. Those days, my friends are over. There will be no mercy or humanity at WME. We now work behind the iron curtain.
@Boutique
I think that would be a fabulous idea, but who would you hire? Its quite comical to me how hard work isn’t enough anymore. Lew Wasserman, Lou Weiss, Norman Brokaw, Abe Lastfogel, William Morris, David Geffen, Jeremy Zimmer, and my personal favorite RON MEYER HEAD OF UNIVERSAL for what? 14 years now, these were hard workers and almost all of them were drop outs, no J.D. from Harvard, no MBA from Wharton, but why is it so fucking cool to say “hey, you need an Ivy League degree”, one of the greatest mogul said it himself, when minorities began to show interest in the training programs, these racist pricks want nothing to do with them and slapped on requirements. Its only a matter of time before the requirements read: “No minorities! No goys! No service!” so I challenge you Mr. Boutique, look at past work ethic, how hard is it to get a J.D. from Harvard when your father and his father and his father all have their names on the fucking school? Not very hard huh? I know for a fact that I have a better past and future than everyone in the mailroom at UTA, CAA, WME, ICM, APA, PARADIGM, GERSH, ABRAMS ARTISTS, you name it, but I’m not being giving a chance. I have a degree in Chemistry, 3.75 gpa, letters of recommendations coming out my ass, I’ve made huge changes in my community and university, and NOTHING! I’m not even granted an interview or 2nd interview? NAACP award winner doesn’t look too appealing? Eh, whatever, just saying man. Take away David Geffen or Ron Meyer because they don’t have degrees and you probably won’t have CAA or DreamWorks. Get a fucking clue.
WMA was a classy joint thanks to people like Kim Koser & David Kekst whose offices were always open to listen and enforce mutual respect no matter who you were. It takes some intestinal fortitude and integrity to enforce what’s right in a Talent Agency atmosphere. That’s more than I can say for William Morris Endeavor. Oh just drop the William Morris part already and call it Endeavor – it’s insulting! These people have no scruples whatsoever. As far as Irv Weintraub is concerned, I never had a problem with him. He always treated me with kindness and respect. Am I missing something? A word of advice to WMAers don’t let the bastards discourage you into quitting. Milk them for all they’ve got before they lay you off so they’ll have to pay into unemployment.
Also, hang on to your memorabilia. There will never be another William Morris Agency.
this is unbelievable. i’ve spent time at CAA as an asst and it was horrible. i have to admit that i was an asst that others might have hated…while i wasn’t a trust fund baby driving daddy’s extra porsche i did have financial support while doing the monkey work.
but the pay cut is simply beyond – if you’re living strictly on an agency asst salary you’re a total hero if you can make it work. frankly, i’m stunned that anyone without parental help could make it in LA on a 9.50 salary…making it on a 13+/hr is still quite shocking.
however, to reduce an already minimal salary is just egregious. word to those who think that the E side of WME should simply raise all the assts salaries so they’re in line with what WMA was paying.
Just a thought: Organize? Don’t assistants in Hollywood have the right to a union? Problem is, the competition for these “foot in the door” assistant jobs is fierce, so the kids who have financial backing from parents or others will make themselves available at any rate. Probably an unachievable concept, but maybe those who know more about labor organizing than I do could address.
No one has to tell us WmE assistants to suck it up. Okay? We work plenty hard and will continue to do so. So, go fuck yourself.
This is the point – TONS of $$ just came off the books and tons more clients just came over. So doing this to the assistants is not necessary, it’s not a trickle down effect from the economy, it’s just a “screw you” for no reason. So forgive us for not responding with anything other than being thankful for having a job when we suddenly discover this extremely high stress job is going to start paying less – and for absolutely no good reason. Just the suits making the place more profitable.
So spare us the “GO HOME” and the “SUCK IT UP”, you’re not talking to people that don’t know what’s going on. Spare us the condescension.
Well, this salary issue sorta explains why so many of the agency assistants act like rude, condescending jerks when studios and licensors call and try give their agency CLIENTS work or pay them money for doing NO WORK. I cant say as I have much pity for you all – most of you seriously need to get some manners and remember that YOU aren’t the talent or the agent.
Hey WMA kiddies, I just ran the numbers:
Assuming you were paid to work 10am-7pm previously at 13.50 an hour, you were making $1282.5 every two weeks (with 10 hours overtime).
Now, you’re making $1254.00 when you consider the 20 overtime hours that come with the 9am-7pm hours. $30. All of this whining, all 134 comments… over $30. That’s the price of two drinks before tip.
It’s very simple, assistants. Ari wants you to LEARN how to be a backstabbing asshole. This lesson is going to be worth more than your entire education, so take that into account when you complain about starving.
Lesson #1: Blackmail. It is illegal to not pay overtime for hours per day over 8. Now, you could simply report this to the Labor Commission and cause problems. OR, you could promise to not report it or inform any other assistants, in exchange for a raise to offset this just for you personally.
Lesson #2: Stealing. All of the information that passes through your grubby little hands every day that seems worthless is actually valuable. To who? Well, for one, to other agencies who would like to steal WME’s clients. Yes, this move takes balls and requires a method of stealing that is at least somewhat deniable, but let’s remember, this is how many agencies get started. The thing is, Ari doesn’t think you have enough balls to do this. He’s banking on it, in fact. All it takes is one person with parents to support them to start a new agency, and my God, you could steal every scrap of information WME has.
Lesson #3: Subversion. You don’t actually have to get any big name clients to make some sort of statement or stop doing business with WME to create the appearance that they are doing so. All you have to do is torpedo current deals in subtle ways. It’s not a strike, it’s a slowdown. A racist typo appears in a script. A client’s confidence in a film is subtly wrecked. People are a few minutes late for everything without knowing it. It’s tricky to pull this one off without being fired at the same time, but it can be done.
You know, or you could just take it. Whatever.
I agree completely with Gerardo who said agency pay for assistants is “deliberately lower due to the fact that they want to weed out those who do not have the means to survive on just that salary alone.” Looking at the agencies, studios and production companies Hollywood is the snobbiest and least economically diverse and least racially diverse industry you’ll ever find. Even Wall Street gets more kids from low income backgrounds with degrees from city colleges, as does medicine and law.
Boohoo for assistants? Please..Assistants do a lot. Not just answer calls. Yes there are a lot of people waitig i line to work as an assistant at a top agency but that doesnt mean that Ari & Co. should take advantage of this and pay less. Yes WME will save money, but in the long run will have more people bitching about getting low wages. People, let’s be honest. It’s not 1940 anymore. It’s 2009 and we are all in the generation of wanting it now. More money now. The economy is crap and people cant pay rent anymore. The people telling assistants not to complain because there are other people in line for their jobs are getting money from daddy.
“I need to say one thing. WMA was not a perfect place by any stretch of anyone’s imagination, but when I had a personal emergency and was out for an extended period of time, the leadership and HR couldn’t have been more supportive. (I realize it’s the law, but that doesn’t mean they have to be nice about it – they were). Hey, we even got an ipod and a kindle once. Those days, my friends are over. There will be no mercy or humanity at WME. We now work behind the iron curtain.”
HR must have gotten a new regime because they were definitely NOT supportive when I was there. Oh and the ipod and the kindle was a keychain and a metal cd holder when I was there which was just a year before you got your ipod. I was an assistant there for years and they never gave out good gifts like that, One year we got a gift certificate to Starbucks. Looks like they tried to make it better for the assistants with the ipod & kindle, but just couldn’t stick it out.
The workload is brutal the pay is crap and unfortunately you deal with all of that and the abuse because you know that there are 100 people waiting to take your place.
@”THE TEAM ”
If the amount is so trivial, then the agency should simply pay it instead of causing all this turmoil and bad blood.
The fact is, the amount is meaningful, especially to those for whom every dollar counts.
Next time some lawyer or agent or employer, or anyone who has stolen from you, tells you $30 is no big deal, ask them to open THEIR wallet and give you $30. Suddenly $30 will be a big deal.
@ The Team
What numbers are you using?
God, they pay assistants less than we book publishers do. That’s pretty shameful.
Also, THE TEAM, you’re wrong. Overtime will be regulated to 5 hours per week and no more. So during this difficult transition, learning new systems, new protocols, new colleagues and clients and moving offices twice in 2 weeks, we will get a pay cut and won’t even be allowed to put in the extra hours necessary to do the job.
Adding onto my earlier comment I should state that what everyone has said about getting in and getting out is right on the money. I got in, put in 11 months on a film working absolutely insane hours for very little money (once you factored in the cost of gas for the errands the studio sent me on into that $10 an hour anyways) and got the hell out. From the moment I set foot onto the studio lot I networked my ass off and spent 7 of those 11 months working on my new demo reel after work and sacrificing my social life to do it. In the end it paid off, I was only on the project for 11 months before I was hired out in New York for double the pay and a much sexier job title in an artistic/technical roll.
As one departmental supervisor wisely told me in my PA days after I disclosed my career goals to him, “don’t get complacent.” Complacency is the killer of so many assistants, they get brow-beaten to the point that they just accept it and live with it. Don’t! Network the system for all its worth and move to another company with a better job title and a higher salary. If I can do it anyone can!
@ “The Team”
I think you should double check your math before posting on DHD again…
Based on the 2 week pay schedule with 5 hours of overtime per week:
$13.50(80) + $13.50(1.5)(10) = $1,282.50
Now, let’s take that further and get the gross for the year (26 pay periods):
$1,282.50(26) = $33,345.00
An assistant would make $33,345.00 a year BEFORE TAXES!
Your math does not compute because $9.50 an hour does NOT equal $1,254.00 every two weeks as you claim. The base rate would be $11.40 an hour, which is way more compared to the $9.50 per hour.
Let’s solve for “x”
$1,254.00 = 80x + 20(1.5)x
$1,254.00 = 80x + 30x
$1,254.00 = 110x
$1,254.00/110 = 110x/110
$11.40 = x
$9.50(80) + 9.50(1.5)(20) = $1,045.00
Again, let’s take it further and get the gross for the year:
$1,045.00(26) = $27,170.00 a year BEFORE TAXES!
This is a loss of $6,175.00 per year!!!
$33,345.00 – $27,170.00 = $6,175.00
Even if the base was $11.40 (as you assumed) that would be $740.00 a year, which is good portion of a month’s rent here in Los Angeles.
$33,345.00 – ($1,254.00(26)) = $740.00
As someone not in the Trade, I find this thread remarkable for the fact that these people, liberals for the most part, who are paid a very decent wage as Agents, Actors, etc. knowingly take financial advantage of, for the most part Twentysomething kids, who aspire to make millions in the entertainment business by paying them minimum wage and then on top of that requiring unpaid overtime as proper job performance.
A beautiful recipie where the “man” creates the dynamic where he, the WMA/Endevors, benefit from increasingly higher productivity with increasingly lower costs while throwing out to the worker bees that nub of a shredded carrot that, “If you suck it up, you too can be a success in this town — a somebody!” Ofcourse they don’t mention that like a an aspiring, actor, golfer, tennis, hockey or football player only maybe 1% make it to the bigtime.
Yet even with such cheap entry-level labor dynamics the über-liberal Ari Emanuel need drive it down more; 30% more, and that 30% less means a he’ll of a lot more then 30% less for Eddie Murphy asking for 25 mill + gross or Ari taking 30% less.
This whole scenario lays bare the hypocracy of liberals.
To those assistants that came before saying take the shit wages and hazing and suck it up as those before you did there is a big difference in economic waves relative to when you paid your dues and those paying the “dues” now. Many of you paid your dues over a rising tide where obscene amounts of money were thrown around and a two headed chimpanzee could get rich in lala-land picking up money off the floor if they knew where to look and/ or were at the right place at the right time.
“Pledges” today are taking a fast ride down the backside of that wave and the wait for the next upward economic wave is going to be a long hard slog. A slog made harder by Wasington D.C. doing everything to keep housing values inflated making it that much more difficult for the “Pledges” to find affordable housing.
Inevitably big Hollywood is going to have to suck it in but they’ll have millions to get by provided they get small.
I read Johnny Depp just gave a Chicago waiter a $4K tip. Good for the waiter but I’d say it shows Depp was paid $4K too much for Public Enemy.
I wonder what Depp pays his PA
Im staggered as an outsider that more people dont like to notice just who most of the big end agents are. You can network all you like but they are inside a network that was formed long before you were born, no way are most of you are going to be allowed in no matter who your contacts are, how hard you work.
No one knows though if this affects the rest of the support staff too. Perhaps these geniuses haven’t thought about the following, but support staff also consists of Talent Payment and IT, two under-appreciated departments but very necessary to keep an agency running smoothly. Mind you, we’re not making a fortune, but we understand we never will too. We’re not in this business for the Ari Gold glory. Most of us are well over 35 with families. Fine, make us old geezers work 50 hours a week, and you’ll find we’re much less efficient at our jobs. MUCH, and, our morale and motivation are shot and in the sewer. No, we don’t want to shortchange our clients, but I feel that Ari/Carol/Rick want to fire the competent people and bring in a bunch of 22 year olds on the cheap that don’t know what they’re doing, at all. The clients will suffer, trust me, but greed blinds you, Ari and Rick.
But then again, they’re keeping us in the dark, because our new HR department(and defacto dictator) Carol Katz doesn’t seem to have a handle on the whole merger, at all. So who the hell knows what’s going on?
$9.50 an hour? $9.50? Ari, I’ll pay you $20.00 just to kiss my ass. How about it? $20.00 for 3 seconds of work? Come on please? Pucker up for $20.00.
Hahaha. Yeah I’ll pay him a c-note to tongue my asshole. Surely he can “suck it up” like a big man.
As I understand it from a reliable source, many more long term support staff (accounting people) will be sent home today. Surprise! all former WMA. I don’t understand how the little fish eats the big fish. They are less professional, they don’t even spellcheck their company wide emails and their grammar is juvenile. This has definitely not been a merger. It has been a violent ass-raping by a lesser primate.
$9.50/hour? Those bastards are really some really stingy sons of gun, aren’t they? And then to top it, they have to deal with every single egomaniac that comes into the office expecting to be treated like a damn king!
Hey, assistants, let’s do this. Start a strike of your own. Don’t show up to work for a week. Oh, wait, the boss won’t care about it. They will just call the temp agency and find some desperate high school graduate to replace you. Life sucks, indeed. Well, if I were the assistant to that type of exploiting nose up stingy broad, I’d hold their phone messages for a couple days, don’t forward voicemail to anyone while you’re at lunch.
When someone calls, don’t transfer the calls to a live person, but directly to voicemail and when the prince orders lunch… guess what? you have lunch first, take 1.5 hours and then arrive with his cold food at around 2 or 2:30, make him starve. Oh, and when they have a lunch meeting, order it from the worse place you can find. Prepare coffee? yeah, sure. Save the one from the day before and give it cold during meetings.
Don’t call the water guy to deliver it for a few days. Oh, and the copy paper… Forget about it. Tell them you forgot to order it and leave them without it for a few days.
Always be late in the morning and take breaks during rush our, that’d be the time when the phones are ringing off the hook asking to be transfered the call to the prince of Beverly Hills 90210.
Oh, if “The King” BET host, yeah, that dumb dude steps into the office, PLEASE tell him that he’s not as big as he think he is. In fact I had forgotten all about him before Sunday. I was, like WHO? So, yes, there you have it. I DON’T EVEN REMEMBER YOUR NAME right now, so that tells you something! and yes I was going to google the show to find out your name, but why bother?
Just FYI, I’m making over $50,000/year as an Administrative Asst/Receptionist, and no it’s not in the entertainment industry. Guys (receptionists) somebody is stepping all over you.
Doesn’t WM represent Condo Rice? Oh yes, that woman who refused a peace deal between Israel and Lebanon. She wanted the killing to continue while negotiators wanted it to stop, but NO, Condi Rice wanted the massacre to continue… and her gift? Well, a very profitable book deal worked by no more and no less that WM… Interesting, very interesting.
It’s amazing to watch middle class values slam up against America’s real class system in this thread. Finally is all I can say.
The upper-middle class have ingenious ways of making sure jobs in the creative class are preserved for their own. Keeping wages artificially low for entry-level jobs in LA and NYC is certainly one of them.
I find all the “suck it up” admonitions naive. Upper middle class kids don’t learn how to “work hard” in private school; they learn how to interact in ways that signal they won’t upset the elitist applecart.
Finally, if over 50% of the Forbes 100 richest Americans are of Jewish heritage (and Jews make up 2% of the US population), it’s ridiculous to say that being Jewish doesn’t help in gaining access to wealth and power.