Agent to the Stars | Page 5

does he do it? Has he tapped my phone? I goggled
frantically at Miranda, who was standing behind me, notepad at ready. She shot me a
look that said, don't ask me. I'm just here to take shorthand.
"That's very considerate of you, Tom," Carl said. "But no one else is coming. In fact, if
you don't mind, I'd prefer it if Ms. Escalon wouldn't mind excusing us as well."
This would be the point where I casually dismissed my assistant and turned suavely to
Carl, ready for our executive pow-wow. What I ended up doing was staring blankly.
Fortunately, Miranda was on the ball. "Gentlemen," she said, excusing herself. On her
way out, she dug the spike of her shoe into my pinky toe, and snapped me back to reality.
I stood up, looking for where to sit.
"Why don't you sit here," Carl said, and pointed to a chair on the far side of the table,
next to the aquarium.
"Great. Thanks," I said. I walked to the other side of table and sat down. I stared at Carl.
He stared back. He had a little smile on his face.
There are legends in the world of agents. There's Lew Wasserman, the agent of his day,
who went over to the other side of the movie business and thrived at Universal Pictures.
There's Mike Ovitz, who went over to the other side and exploded, humiliatingly, at
Disney.
And then there's Carl Lupo, my boss, who went over to the other side, took Century
Pictures from a schlock-horror house to the biggest studio in Hollywood in just under a
decade and then, at the height of his reign, came back over into agency. No one knows

why. It scares the Hell out of everyone.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"What?" Carl said. Then he almost immediately laughed. "Relax, Tom. I just want to
have a little chat. It's been a while since we've talked."
The last time Carl and I had talked directly to each other in a non-meeting setting was
three years earlier. I had just graduated from the mailroom to the agency floor, where I
shared a pod with another mailroom escapee. My client list was a former teen idol, then
in his 30s and a semi-regular at intervention sessions, and a cute but brainless 22-year old
UCLA cheerleader named Shelly Beckwith. Carl had dropped by, shook hands with me
and my podmate, and blathered pleasantries with us for exactly two minutes and thirty
seconds before moving on to the next pod to do the same thing.
Since then, the former teen idol strangled in his own saliva, my podmate imploded from
stress and left the agency to become a Buddhist monk in Big Bear, Shelly Beckwith
became Michelle Beck and got lucky with two hits in a row, and I got an office. It's a
strange world.
"How are things going with Michelle Beck's negotiations?" Carl asked.
"They're done, actually," I said. "We're getting twelve five, cash and percentages, and
that's before merchandising."
"That's good to hear," Carl said. "Davis thought you'd hit a wall at about $8.5 million,
you know. I told him you'd top that by at least three and a half. You beat the point spread
by a half million dollars."
"Always happy to overachieve, Carl."
"Yes, well, Brad's no good at bargaining anyway. I stuck him with Allen Green, of all
people, for 20 million. How that film is ever going to make a profit now is really beyond
me."
I chose not to say anything at this point.
"Oh, well, not our problem, I suppose," Carl said. "Tell me, Tom. Do you like science
fiction?"
"Science fiction?" I said. "Sure. Star Wars and Star Trek, mostly, same as everyone. As a
kid I remember begging my mother to let me stay up and watch 'Battlestar Galactica'.
And there was a period when I was 14 when I read just about every Robert Heinlein book
I could get my hands on. It's been a while since I've really read any, though. I watched
Murdered Earth once, at the premiere. I think that's killed the genre for me for a while."
"Which do you like better, movies with evil aliens, or movies with good aliens?"

"I don't know," I said. "I haven't really ever given it much thought."
"Please do so now," Carl said. "Indulge me, if you don't mind."
Carl could have said Please disembowel yourself and sauté your intestines with
mushrooms. Indulge me, if you don't mind and anyone in the agency would have done it.
It's disgusting what sycophancy can do.
"I guess if I had to make the choice, I'd go with the evil aliens," I said. "They just make
for better films. Put in a bad alien and you get the