"Rachel McAdams was on the cover and no offense to Rachel McAdams but she is maybe the most inoffensive, generically attractive white person in the world."
—
E. Gould (via ferrrn)
Wrong, wrong, totally wrong.
Here, more shameless self-regard, I’m feeling feisty today: I was an assistant producer (read: an assistant to the lead producer, or by its Hebrew Name: “Bitchboy”) for nine months before I started working for Chris, who pulled me from obscurity, but moreover, saved my sanity by getting me the fuh out of dodge. Here, now I can put my name on this shit, not that everyone didn’t already know at the time, or not that the producer I worked for showed up at my birthday party and even freaked Nic out (which is impressive). It was a really exciting job that required me to be a babysitter and an indentured servant, but also an essential hub that put me in between everyone trying to get through to my boss. All the shit he didn’t have time for or wanted to distance himself from went to me. Five months in that job will teach you more about the entertainment industry than just about anything else I can think of, and will also traumatize you enough to the point where you are knowingly resigning yourself to an emotionally disturbed life if you knowingly and willingly continue in that line of work once you realize how utterly fucked up it makes you feel sometimes.
Anyway, one my various responsibilities was to be the liaison to celebrities who came to our shows and/or office.
Annette Benning was a pompous weirdo who shoved her daughter in Ian McShane’s face and told her that she’s a burgeoning playwright. If I remember correctly, her daughter looked like Justin Beiber. McShane, by the way, is a gentleman in the truest sense, and at the cast party, he thanked everyone in the front-of-house and crew by name, and had to be reminded who some of the show’s backers were. Lily Tomlin came with her girlfriend and friend, she was scary, frenetic, and kinda insane. Kristen Bell was very nice, and also, more interested in the two dogs who lived in our office than she was in working with my boss. Prettier in person. Jeremy Piven is an asshole, front-to-back, and I was pretty sure he was going to fuck something up from the start, which he did. Raul Esparza’s a gem. Eric Bogosian’s an asshole. Liev Schrieber’s very nice. Adam Duritz was very strange and somewhat combative. Steven Spielberg asked me if Dennis Letts’ accent was real. Tom Hanks is both the most famous and the out-and-out kindest person I’ve ever met, and he talked to me for ten pretty unforgettable minutes. When asked to go backstage, both deferred to the other (“Why don’t you go ask Spielberg?” “You already ask Tom? What’s he think?”) and in the end, they decided not to. Josh Hartnett is emaciated. Nathan Lane, reclusive weirdo, Laurie Metcalf, awesome, and Madeline Martin’s mom thinks Californiacation sucks, but is glad her daughter’s having fun on it. I’m sure there’re more, but I can’t remember them. After a while, you don’t get jaded so much as understand that they’re just part of the job, and your gig is to just accommodate them with discretion and tact, which I can now throw out the window. Kate Lee, call me. Anyway.
Rachel McAdams was incredibly nice, and also totally awesome. Not only did she decline the offer to go backstage to meet the cast, which meant I got to go home and call it a night instead of having to sit through a third act I’d seen so many times, I could mouth my way through word-for-word, but she asked what else I did as assistant producer, and was genuinely curious about my job, which I had to explain to her was maybe kind of interesting but not really, the subtext of which was “I love you, marry me,” because she was bar none, the most stunningly attractive person I’ve ever met, to this day. She glowed. There was something classically Hollywood about her, built in the old Hollywood movie star model. She wasn’t emaciated, but she was surprisingly short.
So there. Wrong.
UPDATE: OMFG.
