How to Succeed in Business Without Really Crying

by Leifer, Carol

  And by the way, here’s a shout-out to being young—that’s not a small part of my story. There’s no way to explain it other than this: you lose your balls as you get older. Reality sets in, and man, is that a dream killer. So, for you readers at the beginning of your careers, take advantage of being young and brash and stupid. I look back and I can barely believe that I made such a bold decision—to transfer schools and become a stand-up comedian—without much thought. But that’s the thing about passions; they tend to rule you. They’re not hanging out at the punch bowl with Rational Thinking. (One caveat: Despite the heckling and bombing, I always got a lot of positive feedback about being funny, as did most of my comedic pals. So I would caution you about pursuing a dream if you find that, along the way, you’re the only one clapping. Anything is worth a shot, but comes a time when you need to realistically evaluate your abilities.)

  So, heed this advice: Find your true passion, even if it takes a little digging. Find the thing that’s inside you, burning to get out. I’ve always loved the question “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” (Hopefully it’s not “fly a stunt plane without lessons.”) Because the possibility of failure is the extinguisher that’s always ready to douse your fire. Find work doing what you love, and whatever noisy doubts and distractions come along, your passion’s voice will always rise above the din.

  Go for it. Passion is an early riser. It will be out of bed and ready to work while indifference is still trying to get its pants on.

  Meeting one of my comedy heroes, Mel Brooks! The late John Ritter brought him over to our table at Orso in New York City.

  CHAPTER 2

  MY BOSS WAS A DICK–EVEN WHEN YOU GOT TO KNOW HIM

  So I’m living the dream … I’m a stand-up comic working in the greatest city in the world—New York! Only problem: money. I was making a cool five bucks a night. Cab fare.

  A day job was a necessity so I could make my rent for a two-bedroom, fourth-floor walkup on Lexington Avenue, splitting the $450-a-month rent with my roommate Jim, a buddy from college who is still my friend to this day. At first I tried waitressing at the Comic Strip, which seemed logical—I was working there already anyway. But that turned out to be a disaster. Serving customers while trying to entertain them onstage was risky business, as I soon found out. The deadbeats figure out quickly that when their waitress is doing her set, it’s a good time to skip out on the check.

  One night as I was sharing my nightmare waitressing stories with a table of customers (also maybe not the brightest idea), one of them told me about a job opening she had heard about. A private eye was looking for a secretary. My eyes lit up! (Either out of excitement or because another of my tables looked like they were getting ready to bolt, I can’t remember which.) She gave me a number to call, and I scheduled an interview for the next day at Foresight Security on Seventh Avenue.

  I swear, I couldn’t sleep that night, visions of 1930s black-and-white detective movies dancing in my head. Would the “dick” be wearing a fedora and call me “doll”? Would I soon be the gal “packin’ heat” during the day while telling gags at night? (Would I be tomorrow’s New York Post headline, after blindly heading to a job interview based on a tip from a woman who ordered a seven and seven?)

  My bubble burst the second I walked into the waiting room, which was filled to the brim with a collection of slouchy, slack-jawed gum-snappers. I thought, “Is this defeated assortment really my competition for the gig? What gives?”

  Turns out they were clients. The bulk of this company’s business was administering polygraph tests to job applicants, from Burger King cashiers to hookers at escort services (I guess at both places, you want to make sure you get the order right). The opening was for a typist, operating a Dictaphone (a now old-fashioned device that was clearly named by a frustrated comedy writer). Basically the job was transcribing polygraph results onto paper. Miss Marple I would not be.

  I might have turned around and gone home, disappointed. But I sensed an opportunity.

  First, I was already a helluva typist (thank you, Mr. Feldman, my high school typing teacher!). Then during the interview with George, the boss/private eye (who was fedora-less, I might add), I raised the subject of possibly being creative with my hours. As a struggling comic, I was not yet getting the plum time slots at the club (1:10 a.m., 1:30 a.m, etc.). So I asked George how he would feel about my working eleven to six, with no lunch break, instead of nine to five? That way, I could get enough sleep when I got home from the club at night.

  George went for it. I’m still not exactly sure why, but I’m grateful to this day. If he had said no, I probably would have taken the job anyway. But I must admit that my mother’s advice was ringing in my ear as I sat down for the interview: “You don’t ask, you don’t get, Carol!” (An entire chapter in The Big Book of Jewish Advice, I expect.)

  I worked at Foresight (“Where Your Security Is Our Concern!”) for almost two years until I was finally making (barely) enough to support myself with stand-up gigs alone. A hundred bucks from Baruch College for a nooner! (Which is not what it sounds like—it’s a daytime show at the student union.) The typing job was a lifesaver, thanks to the hours George let me work. But I must admit, I kind of enjoyed it. Nothing like a day’s worth of mindless typing to clear the head for an evening of nightclub hijinks. (Although I wish just once someone would have called me a “dame with nice gams.”)

  Which is all a way of teeing up my advice for this chapter: Get creative with your job search. Whatever conventional means you use when seeking work, there are always ways to go off the grid, and I highly recommend that route. Where everybody zigs, zag. (And vice versa, in deference to zagging.) Here are four general principles to follow.

  1. Get into the “machine.”

  Not surprisingly, a lot of people ask me how to get into writing for television. The stock answer is pretty basic: Learn how to write a “spec” script and then try to get an agent who could submit it for a job. But to me that’s lousy advice, because I think your odds of getting a job in that way as a novice are practically zero. It’s just too big a mountain to climb with baby steps like that.

  So my recommendation, when people ask that question, is to try to get a job, any job, on a television show you love. There’s not a show out there that doesn’t have an extensive support staff of production assistants (P.A.s) and runners. It’s low-paying work, you work crazy hours, and odds are good that at least one of the people in front of the camera will be a total psychopath. But that’s not what matters in this equation. You’re there, and that is priceless.

  I believe this same strategy will work in almost any business—just get yourself on the premises, as close to the action as possible, in one of those grunt-level assistant gopher-type positions. You want to be someone who, like a production assistant, gets an insider’s view of how the industry works. P.A.s do everything from getting more paper at Staples, to going on Starbucks runs (sometimes two or three times a day), to waking an actor in his dressing room, to taking the executive producer’s dog to the groomer. Anything and everything, all the little stuff that the people stuck in that damn room writing all day have no time to do. I’ve sent P.A.s to the grocery store with the mandate, “Get at least ten different types of candy bars and bring them back.” We writers love our sugar and caffeine.

  So look for that entry-level job that allows you to be around the nucleus of the most influential employees. Especially one in which you’ll have opportunities to do, and do well, what the career staffers shudder to do. Interacting with the staff is what it’s all about, so being stuck in a mailroom or warehouse all day probably won’t help you. A good head start is to apply for a college internship at your favorite show or business or wherever you’re looking to work. I’ve seen so many people over the years climb the ranks starting as a lowly intern. For would-be television writers, I suggest you pick up a phone and call the main line of your dream show, or the network the show is on, and ask for inf
ormation about its internship program. I suspect the direct approach will yield good results in other industries, too. The Internet is busting with all this info, or at least clear paths to finding it. (Check out IMDB.com.)

  Job seekers, this is a good spot to raise the issue of working on your people skills, which are critical from day one. In television, a production assistant who’s entertaining and likable will be kept around just because her personality is fun. Doesn’t that work in every place of business? Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, in hiring new writers for Seinfeld, always referenced “the easy hang.” Whatever business you’re in, you’ve got to be good at what you do. But you also need to be the easy hang, a person whom people like to be around and hang out with. It doesn’t matter how talented you are if your personality is a drag. Or as one agent told me when I was just starting out: “Don’t be an asshole. If you are, they’ll fire you and hire someone who isn’t.”

  However you wrangle it, I can’t emphasize enough how great it is to get a foot on the same ground as your dream job. So many writers I know started out as a writer’s assistant. They were good typists (Mr. Feldman, once more, big props) and then went on to learn the mechanics of computer script writing. It’s a really clever choice, because as a writer’s assistant, you’re in “the room” with the writers all the time, taking down everything they’re saying. They’re not always the best-groomed group, but hey, you pick up so much about a job purely through osmosis. Being in the room is the best training ground a would-be TV writer could possibly have. So whatever career you’re trying to crack into, figure out which room you need to be in, then pursue the job that will put you there.

  2. Invest in opportunities that pay off later.

  A paycheck is important, of course. But when the right opportunity comes along, don’t be afraid to work for free if there’s the potential for a bigger payoff in the future. An internship is one example, but be alert for other chances to show what you can do.

  Little story: I was writing a pilot whose lead character was a female attorney, and I needed some help with the legalese. One of my cousins who’s an attorney recommended a colleague, Sue (not her real name but seems like a good choice for a lawyer), who specialized in the type of law my character practiced. When my draft was finished, I sent it to her to catch any legal mistakes. Sue sent it back, with some joke pitches throughout the script. Some of her lines were phenomenal. I used a bunch in the final draft, they were that good. One of them I even anointed the “blow” (the last line in a scene, the one that’s got to wrap up everything with a bang). Sue appreciated the praise, and when I thanked her, she told me she had always wanted to get into comedy.

  So a few months later I sent Sue an e-mail asking if she wanted to read another script and maybe add some jokes again. Sue wrote back that she would be happy to, but she wanted me to pay her. I tried to explain how writers usually work in a pilot situation: you ask for input, and then when/if the show gets on the air, you can potentially hire that person as compensation. Sue didn’t budge, which was certainly her prerogative. But I do think it was a lost opportunity for her. If Sue threw me some great jokes again, I would have seriously considered hiring her if the show had been picked up. So the moral is, don’t always evaluate an opportunity as an immediate paycheck. Sometimes much bigger things might lie ahead if you sit tight and are patient.

  3. Be a “squeaky wheel.”

  No other credo could better describe how an annoying crank caller wound up as one of only three writers for The Howard Stern Show.

  If you’re a Stern fan like me, you already know the story. And if you don’t, it’s pretty remarkable. Sal Governale was a stock broker who regularly called in to the show. He broke the chops of the producer, Gary Dell’Abate, by repeatedly pranking him, winding up the call with the pronouncement that Gary was a “horse-tooth jackass.”

  But what Sal really wanted was to write for the show. And as my fellow Long Islander told me, he just kept creating bits and submitting stuff: roast jokes, song parodies, material of all kinds.

  Here’s what I love most about this story: Sal just wore them down. He knew he had what it took to create comedy for the show, and he kept cranking it out. Eventually, they offered to try him out for a month. That month became ten years, and he’s still at it.

  As Sal told me himself, he was “relentless,” and that’s what it takes. His balls made him a permanent fixture on the show (and continue to, for he has no shame in endlessly offering them up in the name of entertainment value). Rock on, Mr. Governale.

  Of course, aside from the Stern show, calling someone a jackass on a near-daily basis isn’t a viable option for most job hunts. So you’ll have to figure out what “relentless” means for your particular career path. Perhaps it’s sending project pitches and samples of your work to managers and H.R. departments, so you’ll already be on their radar when a job opens up. Maybe it means going to job fairs and networking sessions and other events so that you become a familiar face. A big part of the Governale strategy, though, is not taking no for an answer … the first time, or the first fifty times.

  4. Use every “in” available.

  When it comes to landing a job, there’s no such thing as “unfair advantage.” If you have some kind of connection that might grease the wheels, by all means use it. Though I will add this caveat: using that “in” comes with great responsibility. Because when you use someone else as your entrée, their reputation becomes part of the mix. Your connection is giving his or her word that, going forward, you will step up one hundred percent for whatever is asked of you.

  So if you show up late to your interview, or do any of the other dumb stuff I warn you not to do (see Chapter 4, “So I Stole Soda from Aaron Spelling”), your benefactor’s ass is on the line, too. If you mess up, the person who helped you will be screwed; he or she could lose all credibility with that contact. Which is exactly why I don’t pull a lot of those kinds of favors anymore, unless it’s someone I know and can vouch for personally. I’ve been burned way too many times doing a solid for a “friend of a friend.”

  Bottom line: No matter what your dream job is, don’t hesitate to try something new or different to get it. Don’t feel you have to follow the normal route. Try going off road. While everyone else is fumbling with their GPS, you just might reach the destination first.

  With Paul Reiser outside my first apartment in New York City, 1978.

  CHAPTER 3

  DESPERATELY SEEKING SOUPY

  Waiting to audition for a TV show is one of the most anxiety-producing feelings ever. Especially for me, because I sucked at it big time. You sit in a “cattle call” room with dozens of people, all thinking the same thing: “I hope these other numb-nuts fall flat on their face.” It’s positively life-affirming.

  It’s way worse for comics, because we are not built for auditioning. It’s exactly why we picked our chosen field. Stand-up comedy may be the quintessential tightrope act (outside, of course, actual tightrope walking), but comics have all the control, which is ultimately what’s most important to us. And stand-ups almost always have issues about “proving ourselves.” We’re only as good as our last set or joke. None of those things make it easy to put yourself at the mercy of a casting director. But only a month after I moved out to L.A., an audition came my way, and I was dying to get the part.

  Director Barry Levinson, hot off the success of his film Diner, was casting a pilot for ABC. The show was called The Toast of Manhattan, and it was a comedy set backstage and behind the scenes of a variety show, à la The Carol Burnett Show (for which Barry had written back in the day). They were looking for comedians and actors who could do improv. It was a show that everybody in comedy wanted on their resume.

  My agent told me the audition was simple: Go in and do a bunch of characters. That immediately put me at ease because I wouldn’t be reading lines from a script. And when I went into the audition, a very relaxed vibe already permeated the room. Which normally didn’t happen, at leas
t not for me. (That’s another thing traditionally hard for comics: being in the moment and going wherever it leads you—i.e., not being in control.) Then one of the producers, Rudy De Luca (whom I recognized from a couple of Mel Brooks movies) began improvising with me as one of my characters. We moved on to my other characters, and the interaction stayed pretty seamless; we just kept riffing together. (The steady round of laughs I was getting didn’t hurt either. Those are the waves in a comedy audition that keep you buoyant.)

  When the audition ended, we naturally moved into shooting the crap. Being a huge Mel Brooks fan, I told Barry that I loved his cameo in the movie High Anxiety. (He and Mel have an unforgettable scene, where Mel as Dr. Thorndyke uses a rolled-up newspaper to murder Barry, playing the pesky bellman.) I could tell that when I mentioned this cameo, I really struck a chord. Barry lit up and clearly felt complimented that out of all the things he’d achieved and accomplished, I remembered this small but hysterical part he had played. (By the way, it’s so nice to tell someone in Hollywood that you love his or her work and really mean it.)

  Lo and behold, I got the part. Alongside my good friend Paul Reiser, I was lucky enough to be a member of an eclectic cast that included Gilbert Gottfried and Craig T. Nelson. Who knows what put me over the top in that extremely competitive situation? I was up against so many talented people. But I don’t doubt for a second that my quirky, out-of-left-field compliment to Barry Levinson sealed the deal. I love this story, because my obsession with comedy—which goes with me everywhere—may have been just the thing that landed me this unbelievable gig.

  As a side note, we shot The Toast of Manhattan in May 1982, and it remains one of the most fun experiences I’ve ever had. The program didn’t get picked up, but I made four thousand dollars, which sustained me for quite a while as a new transplant to Los Angeles. And being cast in a pilot—even though it didn’t go forward—made my agent’s job that much easier because a network had already deigned me “castable.”