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The Mailroom
- Hollywood History from the Bottom Up
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 16 hrs and 39 mins
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Publisher's summary
It's like something out of a Hollywood potboiler: Start out in the mailroom, end up a mogul. Only for dozens of Hollywood's brightest, it happens to be true. Some of the biggest names in entertainment - including David Geffen, Barry Diller, and Mike Ovitz - began as trainees in musty talent agency mailrooms. Now, in this fascinating new book, veteran Hollywood writer David Rensin travels behind the scenes and through 65 years of show business history to tell the real stories of the marvelous careers that began - and in some cases ended - in the mailroom.
Based on more than 200 interviews, Rensin unfolds the never-before-told history of an American institution - in the voices of the people who lived it. Through seven decades of glamour and humiliation, lousy pay and incredible perks, killer egos and a kill-or-be-killed ethos, you'll go where the trainees go, do what they must do to get ahead, and hear the best insider stories from the Hollywood everyone knows about but no one really knows. The kids in The Mailroom have done it all: from hanging out with Elvis to delivering a senior agent's urine sample to the doctor; from pouring drinks for Sinatra to sending ice to Johnny Carson on the Nile; from crashing the Academy Awards ceremony to hoping to deliver more than just the mail to sexy actresses' homes.
The Mailroom reveals why Harvard MBAs fight, turning down secure six-digit corporate salaries, to start work at a major agency for less than $400 a week; what it takes to appease impossible bosses, outsmart the competition, and "agent" the agents; and how a hungry, star-struck kid can become the next Geffen or Diller by sorting mail, eavesdropping on crucial conversations, and trying anything to get noticed.
Full of revealing stories and delicious dish, The Mailroom is not only a nonstop, engrossing listen, but a crash course, taught by the experts, on how to succeed in Hollywood through hard work, shrewd manipulation, and a hell of a lot of nerve. The Mailroom is classic Hollywood - a vibrant and complex tapestry of dreams, desire, exploitation, power, and genuine talent. If you want to know who rules Hollywood and how they got their power, if you want to know how to start with nothing and get ahead in any business, this is the audiobook you must listen to.
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In 1963, 30-year-old Friedman - who had recently quit his job as a Boston advertising executive and returned to his hometown of New York to become a theatrical producer - opened a coffee house for Broadway performers called the Improvisation. His goal? Simply to make a living, and if all went according to plan, to also make enough professional contacts to be able to mount his first Broadway show within a year's time. Later shortened to the Improv, its first West 44th Street location was in a seedy section of Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen.
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Shockingly tone deaf
- By JenniferW on 06-28-23
By: Budd Friedman, and others
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Dynomite!
- Good Times, Bad Times…Our Times - A Memoir
- By: Jimmie Walker, Sal Manna
- Narrated by: Jimmie Walker
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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>Born into the violence of South Bronx ghetto life, the comic pioneer of TV’s Good Times fame offers a hilarious and politically charged review of his career as one of television’s first hugely successful Black stars. From opening for the Black Panthers and getting his first Tonight Show spot to becoming the first “Black” TV sitcom star, having comedians David Letterman and Jay Leno writing jokes for him, recording number-one comedy albums, and opening for rock n’ roll bands in 50,000 seat stadiums, Walker’s career hit all the highs.
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An transparent story of a socially but funny American icon.
- By John Lucasey on 05-08-21
By: Jimmie Walker, and others
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Anything for a Hit
- An A&R Woman's Story of Surviving the Music Industry
- By: Dorothy Carvello
- Narrated by: Traci Odom
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Dorothy Carvello knows all about the music biz. She was the first female A&R executive at Atlantic Records and one of the few in the room at RCA and Columbia. Featuring never-before-heard stories about artists like Michael Jackson, Madonna, Steven Tyler, Bon Jovi, INXS, Marc Anthony, Phil Collins, and many more, this audiobook is a must-hear for anyone who has ever wondered what it's really like to be a woman in a male-dominated industry.
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A MUST READ (listen) for all females
- By CallieRoseMadeIt on 07-17-19
By: Dorothy Carvello
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Remember the Time
- Protecting Michael Jackson in His Final Days
- By: Bill Whitfield, Javon Beard, Tanner Colby - contributor
- Narrated by: Neal Ghant, Brad Raymond, Brian Troxell
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Hounded by the tabloid media, driven from his self-made sanctuary at Neverland, Michael Jackson spent his final years moving from city to city, living with his three children in virtual seclusion - a futile attempt to escape a world that wouldn’t leave him alone. During that time, two men served as the singer’s personal security team: Bill Whitfield, a former cop and veteran of the security profession, and Javon Beard, a brash, untested rookie, both single fathers themselves. Stationed at his side nearly 24/7, their job was to see and hear everything that transpired.
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Amazing Book! I didn't feel dirty listening to it
- By MObetta on 06-11-14
By: Bill Whitfield, and others
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The Art of the Pimp
- One Man's Search for Love, Sex, and Money
- By: Dennis Hof
- Narrated by: Kevin Stillwell
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Dennis Hof, proprietor of the world-famous Moonlite Bunny Ranch brothel and the P.T. Barnum of prostitution, charts his path to fame and infamy, while dispensing homespun wisdom about sex, sales, money, and how to live as the country's most recognizable pimp. In The Art of the Pimp, Dennis Hof offers a hilarious, insightful, behind-the-scenes look at life as the proprietor of The Moonlight Bunny Ranch, the world's most famous legal brothel, and recounts his chaotic life.
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if you love the sex industry then yell love this
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Robert Altman
- The Oral Biography
- By: Mitchell Zuckoff
- Narrated by: Robert Altman, Warren Beatty, Cher, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Robert Altman - visionary director, hard-partying hedonist, eccentric family man, Hollywood legend - comes roaring to life in this rollicking cinematic biography, told in a chorus of voices that can only be called Altmanesque.
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Enthralling!
- By Wise & Careful Shopper on 10-17-10
By: Mitchell Zuckoff
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Easy for You to Say
- By: John Melendez
- Narrated by: John Melendez
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Easy For You To Say is "Stuttering" John Melendez's memoir of his childhood being bullied in school for his stutter; his years as an on-air personality with The Howard Stern Show; and his subsequent 10-year career as a writer and on-air announcer for Jay Leno's Tonight Show. It details his famously acerbic relationships with celebrities he interviewed/insulted (Raquel Welch once punched him in the face). In the audiobook, Howard Stern emerges as a surprisingly mean, stingy, and megalomaniacal boss - and Jay Leno as a seeming sufferer from OCD.
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Was expecting more
- By Amazon Customer on 10-25-18
By: John Melendez
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Fairy Tale Interrupted
- A Memoir of Life, Love, and Loss
- By: RoseMarie Terenzio
- Narrated by: RoseMarie Terenzio
- Length: 5 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
To everyone else, John F. Kennedy Jr. may have been American royalty, but to RoseMarie Terenzio, he was an entitled nuisance—and she wasn’t afraid to let him know it. RoseMarie was his personal assistant, his publicist, and one of his closest confidantes during the last five years of his life. In this, her first memoir, she bravely recounts her own fairy tale interrupted, describing the unlikely friendship between a blue-collar girl from the Bronx and John F. Kennedy Jr.
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Mediocre read
- By Rachel on 05-28-12
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Digging Up Mother
- A Love Story
- By: Johnny Depp - foreword, Doug Stanhope
- Narrated by: Doug Stanhope and Friends
- Length: 12 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Doug Stanhope is one of the most critically acclaimed and stridently unrepentant comedians of his generation. What will surprise some is that he owes so much of his dark and sometimes uncomfortably honest sense of humor to his mother, Bonnie.
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Not my thing.
- By J. Harral on 01-27-18
By: Johnny Depp - foreword, and others
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Bare Bones
- I'm Not Lonely If You're Reading This Book
- By: Bobby Bones
- Narrated by: Bobby Bones
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Growing up poor in Mountain Pine, Arkansas, with a young, addicted mom, Bobby Estell fell in love with country music. Abandoned by his father at the age of five, Bobby saw the radio as his way out - a dream that came true in college when he went on air at the Henderson State University campus station broadcasting as Bobby Bones while simultaneously starting The Bobby Bones Show at 105.9 KLAZ.
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A look inside the narcissist life of Bobby Bones.
- By Selena on 05-20-16
By: Bobby Bones
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Top of the Rock
- Inside the Rise and Fall of Must See TV
- By: Warren Littlefield, T. R. Pearson
- Narrated by: Bob Balaban
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Warren Littlefield was the NBC President of Entertainment who oversaw the Peacock Network’s rise from also-ran to a division that generated a billion dollars in profits. In this fast-paced and exceptionally entertaining oral history, Littlefield and NBC luminaries including Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Kelsey Grammer, Matt LeBlanc, Lisa Kudrow, Julianna Marguiles, Anthony Edwards, Noah Wylie, Debra Messing, Jack Welch, Jimmy Burrows, Helen Hunt, and Dick Wolf vividly recapture the incredible era of Must See TV.
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Nostalgic Look at NBC in the 90's
- By Jill on 10-10-12
By: Warren Littlefield, and others
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Every Day I'm Hustling
- By: Vivica A. Fox, Kevin Carr O'Leary
- Narrated by: Vivica A. Fox
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Vivica A. Fox is a dynamo who has created a lasting career on her own, through sheer, roll-up-your-sleeves DIY hustle. Every Day I'm Hustling is a personal book with a message Fox passionately believes in: that you make your own luck, that you never ever wake up in the morning thinking somebody's going to call you and offer you that part or ask you out on that date that's going to change your life, that you have to wake up and put on your longest eyelashes and fiercest heels and go out and make your life happen yourself.
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Loved it!
- By colette on 04-09-18
By: Vivica A. Fox, and others
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Conversations with My Agent (and Set Up, Joke, Set Up, Joke)
- By: Rob Long
- Narrated by: Rob Long
- Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Barely out of film school, Rob Long struck the jackpot and landed a job on the phenomenally successful TV sitcom Cheers. However, with the demise of the show, Long was faced with the question, "Is there life after Cheers?" Mercilessly witty about the daunting process of setting up a new series and getting it on air, these two audiobooks tell the absurd tale of what came next.
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The writers should run the business
- By Charles on 04-21-23
By: Rob Long
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The Pursuit of Happyness (Abridged)
- By: Chris Gardner
- Narrated by: Andre Blake
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
At the age of 20, Chris Gardner arrived in San Francisco to pursue a promising career in medicine. However, he surprised everyone and himself by setting his sights on the competitive world of high finance. Yet no sooner had he landed an entry-level position at a prestigious firm, Gardner found himself caught in a web of incredibly challenging circumstances that left him part of the city's working homeless with his toddler son.
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Very Good Story!
- By Lito Da Critic on 06-02-06
By: Chris Gardner
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There Are Worse Things I Could Do
- By: Adrienne Barbeau
- Narrated by: Adrienne Barbeau
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Adrienne Barbeau never set out to be a sex symbol, and she never planned on giving birth to twins when she was 51, but both those stories and a lot more are detailed in this witty, revealing memoir. With humor and fearlessness, she shares her romance with a superstar, her marriage to a famous film director, her marriage to a much younger man and her successful battle with infertility.
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Excellent book
- By Jill on 01-05-10
By: Adrienne Barbeau
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It was the best of times and the worst of times for Hollywood before the war. The box office was booming, and the studios’ control of talent and distribution was as airtight as could be hoped. But the industry’s relationship with Washington was decidedly uneasy - hearings and investigations into allegations of corruption and racketeering were multiplying, and hanging in the air was the insinuation that the business was too foreign, too Jewish, too "un-American" in its values and causes. Could an industry this powerful in shaping America’s mind-set really be left in the hands of this crew?
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In Oscar Wars, Michael Schulman chronicles the remarkable, sprawling history of the Academy Awards and the personal dramas—some iconic, others never-before-revealed—that have played out on the stage and off camera. Unlike other books on the subject, each chapter takes a deep dive into a particular year, conflict, or even category that tells a larger story of cultural change, from Louis B. Mayer to Moonlight. Schulman examines how the red carpet runs through contested turf, and the victors aren't always as clear as the names drawn from envelopes.
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From the archives of the American Film Institute comes a unique picture of what it was like to work in Hollywood from its beginnings to its present day. Gleaned from nearly three thousand interviews, involving four hundred voices from the industry, Hollywood: The Oral History, lets a listener “listen in” on candid remarks from the biggest names in front of the camera—Bette Davis, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Harold Lloyd—to the biggest behind it—Frank Capra, Steven Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock, Jordan Peele, as well as the lesser known individuals that shaped what was heard and seen on screen.
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Picky, Picky!
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Best Pick
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Authors John Dorney, Jessica Regan and Tom Salinsky provide a captivating decade-by-decade exploration of the Oscars. For each decade, they examine the making of classic films, trends and innovations in cinema, behind-the-scenes scandals at the awards ceremony and who won and why. Twenty films are reviewed in-depth, alongside 10 detailed 'making-of' accounts and capsule reviews of every single Best Picture winner in history. In addition, each Best Picture winner is carefully scrutinised to answer the ultimate question: 'did the Academy get it right?'
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They pretend to love movies
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The Purple Diaries
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1936 was a great year for the movie industry - the financial setbacks of the Great Depression were subsiding, so theater attendance was up. Americans everywhere were watching the stars, and few stars shined as brightly as one of America's most enduring screen favorites, Mary Astor. But Astor's personal story wasn't a happy one. Born poor and widowed at 24, Mary Astor had spent years looking for stability when she met and wed Dr. Franklyn Thorpe.
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Impossible not to like for old movie buffs
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Indecent Exposure
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When the head of Columbia Pictures, David Begelman, got caught forging Cliff Robertson's name on a $10,000 check, it seemed, at first, like a simple case of embezzlement. It wasn't. The incident was the tip of the iceberg, the first hint of a scandal that shook Hollywood and rattled Wall Street.
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Wow. What a bore.
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Hank and Jim
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Story
Henry Fonda and James Stewart were two of the biggest stars in Hollywood for 40 years. They became friends and then roommates as stage actors in New York, and when they began making films in Hollywood, they roomed together again. Between them they made such memorable films as The Grapes of Wrath, Mister Roberts, Twelve Angry Men, and On Golden Pond; and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Destry Rides Again, The Philadelphia Story, It's a Wonderful Life, Vertigo, and Rear Window.
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Fascinating look into these two actors' lives
- By MPAMIN on 06-25-18
By: Scott Eyman
What listeners say about The Mailroom
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Andre
- 01-15-23
Read rather than listen
Way too many names, dates, and businesses into one book to just listen. They list over a dozen different agents that it’s hard to keep up with. Nonetheless a great telling of Hollywood History!
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- T. Smith
- 09-16-21
If you enjoy the workings of Hollywood,...
....you should enjoy this. It's cool to hear the stories of where a lot of these are the men and women got their start and what they made of themselves. It really was pa time of the American Dream. Start at the bottom and be successful, maybe even run a studio.
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- AC500driver
- 12-29-23
The real deal
The stories mentioned in this book just have to be true because no one could have made them up. The book is so well presented, I binged it.
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- James M. Patton
- 03-17-19
Up there with the best books of this kind.
If you are a fan of learning the stories behind the glamour of Hollywood, you will appreciate this book.
Similar to CAA, the book interviewed dozens of former mailroom employees, some who have made it big, some who have not, to get the inside story on how much of Hollywood gets started in the business.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Judy Simms
- 04-23-24
fascinating if you like the film biz
the stories and anecdotes are broke up by years which is nice to feel
the evolution of the business. it certainly makes you wonder how anyone ever made it through the mailroom programs because they sound like such a thankless slog. but the ones that made it usually went on to big things. my only gripe would be this needs to be updated with more current time periods. but don’t let that stop you from listening, it’s a fun ride
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- Christopher
- 03-06-19
Some interesting Hollywood history.
Some interesting Hollywood history. But , who cares if rich entitled guys and gals had to would hard for a short time to
make themselves into Hollywood agents..........
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- Anonymous User
- 09-18-22
Donkey
marriage to a lady that was doing two guys that lived across the hall from each other and it wasn't you.
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- Mrs Dumblepants
- 03-27-20
Great for naps
I’ve found this to be the perfect audiobook for napping. The narrator has a calm, soothing voice that rarely breaks his established cadence. As an oral history, there’s no plot to follow. If you doze through parts of it, you won’t lose information crucial to the storytelling.
The book itself clearly didn’t hold my attention. After a while, all the interviews sound the same. Working in the mailroom was an awful experience, its main purpose being to prepare these future agents for the insanity that comes with the job. There are “highlights” - delivering a script to find an actress at the door in a robe, staplers and chairs thrown at heads, and multiple firings over the smallest infractions. Cars break down, everyone drinks to excess, etc etc. Different eras, same stories.
Highly recommended for insomniacs.
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2 people found this helpful