When I Stop Talking You by Jerry Weintraub, Rich Cohen Read Free Book Online

Jerry?"
    "No."
    "Can you type?"
    "No."
    "What did you think would happen when you got in here and sat down, and I started giving you this letter?"
    "I don't know," I said. "I guess I was hoping it would just come to me, that I would suddenly know how to do it. I've heard of even crazier things happening."
    He asked me to leave. There were meetings and discussions. After lunch, I was called back into Mr. Robinson's office. He said, "Look, Jerry, we're not going to fire you. We like you-we like having you around. We think you're going to be great. But stop trying to take dictation and stop trying to type. We'll get an assistant for that. We're promoting you to junior agent."
    What lesson do I take?
    Be willing to be lucky.
    Look at me. I had stumbled from chance to chance, emerging each time not only intact but with a better title and a bigger salary. I was one of the suit-wearing agents of MCA now, with clients of my own, making a hundred dollars a week. But I think it was more than luck. I think I was being tested, as everyone is tested in this business, the object being-even if the bosses don't mean it consciously-to see who can think on his or her feet, who can survive. The job of an agent is, in part, anyway, to bullshit and schmooze: How better to find talent than by seeing who can talk his way into a career? From usher to mailroom to secretarial pool to my own office.
    It was like falling up a flight of stairs.
    I had gotten back together with my high-school sweetheart-the girl who sent me the care packages in Biloxi. She was working as a secretary in the LA office of MCA. I called her every few nights on the WATS line, a party line that kept the East Coast and West Coast offices of the company in contact. You dialed Canal 6-0083-212 and a second later an operator picked up: "MCA, Beverly Hills."
    So one night I am at my desk in New York, feet up-I always did have excellent taste in shoes-talking to my future ex-wife, and we get into one those awful screaming fights you only have when you're a kid. Five minutes later, you can't even remember what it was about.
    I come to work the next morning, seven, seven-thirty. I was usually the first one in. I sit down, and, before I can take a sip of my coffee, the phone rings. It's the switchboard. "Is this Jerry Weintraub?"
    "Yes."
    "Please clear your lines. Lew Wasserman is calling."
    I had never met Lew Wasserman. I mean, he was the president of the company, the voice speaking from the burning bush, and I was a pissy junior agent.
    I did the math. Seven-thirty in New York. Making it… six-thirty, five-thirty… For the love of God, why is the president of the company calling me at four-thirty in the morning?
    I wait, listening to the static on the line, to the beating of my own heart, then he comes on-big, booming voice.
    "Is this Mr. Weintraub?"
    "Yes, sir."
    "What department are you in, Mr. Weintraub?"
    He was showing me that he knew I was a peanut.
    "Commercials."
    "Were you on the WATS line last night with your girlfriend, Mr. Weintraub?"
    "Yes."
    "Do you know for how long?"
    "Well, no, but it seemed like forever."
    "It was three hours and twelve minutes, Mr. Weintraub. Did you enjoy your conversation?"
    "No, not particularly."
    "Well, I listened to some of it and it was terrible. How can you talk like that?"
    "You listened to my conversation?"
    "I wanted to reach Mr. Stein in New York, and was trying to get on the WATS line, but they told me it was being tied up by a Mr. Weintraub."
    Wasserman had probably expected me to obfuscate, bullshit, stammer, or lie, but I instead told the truth. Which disarmed him immediately and made it so he would probably never forget me. I mean, can you believe this kid?
    There was a pause, then he said, "When I come to New York, I want to meet you."
    A few weeks later, he called, asked me to his office. We talked, and later talked again, then again, and gradually, over time, we became friends.
    By the early sixties, MCA represented the biggest