Used to work in “the industry” back during The Entourage days and what you saw on the show was 100% true when it came to the way Ari would treat his assistant. Except the problem was everyone then began to think they were Ari. Even if they were a complete nobody – like my bosses. First boss was in film finance – worked for him as an assistant. Second boss was a talent agent – worked for him as an assistant too.
I’m actually surprised I haven’t seen more of these stories / experiences.
Some fun memories of dealing with these idiots:
Boss 1:
Had to help him box up and move everything in his house to another place across town. The hard part was his cats. When they were in their crate they decided to take a gigantic watery shit everywhere, which I was responsible for cleaning up. At 8 pm on a Friday night of a long weekend. We spent the rest of the weekend unloading boxes into his new place.
Was at a club with said boss and he decided to do a few grams of coke in the bathroom. Had to carry him out of said club and convince him he wasn’t having a heat attack and just needed to go home.
Boss was on his way to the Middle East and didn’t know he didn’t collect his bags in transit and that they would show up in the baggage claim at his destination. Him yelling at me at 3 am to call the airline and see where the bags are when he could’ve done it at himself….was fun.
Called in all of us one by one to help us pick a color for a used Aston Martin he wanted to by while we had tried to set up multiple meetings with him to set up a health insurance plan for all of us. Oh btw we were all considered 1099 employees so we were all responsible for our own taxes and healthcare.
I ended up testifying against him because he tried to to withhold commissions from a Middle Eastern Royal Family member. His lawyer was Michael Avanetti. That was really fun.
Boss 2:
Wanted to illegally rent out his guest house on Westside Rentals. Had me do it. What I didn’t know was that back then when you wanted to put a rental on there, they put a sign on your front lawn indicating you have a property for rental. Except in this case it made it seem like his whole house was up for rent. Got an earful about that.
The talent agency was bought out by a competing agency, and the new bosses hated my boss (rightfully so he was a prick). So my boss decided to try and steal as much information from our systems as possible – client lists, personal contact info, agency contracts, the whole 9, and brought it to a Greek billionaire who was trying to build his own free tv network. The idea here to start his own agency and production company. Guess who was forced to do all the downloading of said information because my boss was too technically illiterate to do it himself? He couldn’t even log into his computer each morning without me helping him press ctrl+alt+del.
There’s so much more but these stuck out to me. I wish I had more of a backbone to stick up for myself and leave these shitty situations.
Needless to say these few years were miserable. I was trying to stick it out to make a name for myself and put faith in my bosses to help me climb to where I wanted to be in the entertainment industry. I was also afraid of being unemployed. It was a tough spot, making $500 a week before taxes and trying to make it work and trying to climb up in a tough as shit industry. I wish this sub was around to give me the confidence to say fuck it and move on rather than continue in what was basically an abusive relationship.
Stay strong y’all.