Concierge Confidential

by Fazio, Michael

  “Cool.”

  But from the way that he looked at me, I knew that I had gotten him the right one. Yes, I had spent my own money. Yes, I had wasted my own time. But I showed him that I’d go the extra mile and I showed him that he could count on me.

  Now that he knew that he could rely on me, Charlie took it up a notch.

  Many Monday mornings, the phone would ring. “The Liberty Company. This is Michael.”

  “Oh,” said the girl on the line. “Oh, I’m sorry. I think I have the wrong number.”

  “No problem.” I hung up and waited for three seconds, until she called back. They always called right back.

  “Is Charlie there?” she said.

  “No, he’s not. Can I take a message?”

  “Can you tell him that Susan called?”

  “Of course,” I told her.

  “Thanks!”

  He walked in not long after. “Susan called,” I told him.

  He stared at me blankly.

  “You know. Susan.”

  He tried to remember what and who he did over the weekend. “Oh yeah!” he said, laughing. “Right. Oh, I forgot my bag at Hamlet. Could you go get it?”

  It was five minutes away, so I just ran it. “Has Charlie Sheen left something here?” I asked the host.

  “I don’t know. I don’t have anything.”

  “Where was he sitting?”

  “Over there.”

  There were people in the booth he had been in, with a small paper bag scrunched in the corner. “I just need to grab that,” I said to them. As I left the Hamlet I couldn’t help but notice that the bag was unusually heavy. I opened it up. Inside there was something wrapped in packing paper, like it was going to be shipped. I gasped.

  Charlie Sheen had left his gun at Hamburger Hamlet.

  I carried it back by my fingertips, scared that it was going to spontaneously discharge. Is he weird? I asked myself. Where has this gun been? I had gone through a million questions by the time I had returned to the office—but I asked Charlie none of them. Good service means that you don’t ask why, even when someone tells you to go get their gun.

  * * *

  THE MASTER MENTALITY

  A friend of mine who worked for Martha Stewart had an experience that illustrated our plight. His name is Robert. Nobody calls him Bob—except Martha does, always. He was frantically running out to grab lunch one day—frantically, because he could never leave his desk. Without an umbrella, he sped down the street in the pouring rain. “Bob!” he heard. He turned around and saw that it was Martha in her town car.

  Martha motioned him to come over. “Hold on,” she said, “I just need to finish a call.” She finished her conversation while he stood there in the torrential downpour. She wasn’t being mean. She wasn’t enjoying watching him get wet, while he was on the street and she was inside her car. She didn’t think lowly of him. Quite the opposite: he was her everything. It was just like, “I need you … but in a second.” Any healthy person with self-esteem would’ve said, “Lady, open your fucking door and let me in! I’m getting soaked here.”

  But Robert had the service bug. And part of the bug meant standing there, waiting until Martha was ready for him. There wasn’t any need for her to apologize. After all, she didn’t really do anything wrong. Robert’s position wasn’t even in service. But he, too, had the service bug and he wasn’t afraid to serve.

  * * *

  Back during the Dark Ages, sending faxes to a hotel was not a given. They often had only one fax machine in the entire building. First you had to call and ask if you could send a fax to a guest. Then you had to call and tell them you were sending it. Finally, just to be sure, you called to find out if they received it and how many pages they actually got.

  Martin Sheen was staying at the Mayflower Hotel in New York. Every day we were getting script pages in the office, fifteen sheets on that horrible thermal paper. Every day I had to call his hotel and do the whole song and dance to fax those pages over.

  Maybe they got sick of doing it for me. One day I couldn’t get a hold of anyone over there. I had always told Glennis when the fax had gone through; when I didn’t tell her anything she knew something was up.

  “It’s impossible,” I told her. “The guy at the front desk never calls me back.”

  “Why didn’t you just call the concierge?”

  I didn’t even know that word. I’d heard of it but I didn’t really know what it was.

  When I called the concierge about Martin’s fax, it was instant synergy. Everything was just as important to him as it was to me. I could ask him to go outside and tell me what color flag was across the street. If he needed to call me back, he would give me an exact time frame to expect the call, and he always followed through. He made me feel like I was doing him a favor by needing his help.

  “Oh, I have a great idea,” I finally told one. “Instead of me bothering you every hour, do you have a fax machine in one of the offices that we can just borrow for Martin Sheen?”

  “Not a problem.”

  Nothing I asked for seemed presumptuous to the concierge. Everything seemed like a logical request and completely possible.

  The concierge got someone to take a fax machine from one of the hotel offices, bring it into Martin’s room, and plug it in. The concierge even tested it to make sure it was working. Every time Martin was due to stay at the hotel, I would connect with the concierge first. I knew I would be in good hands.

  * * *

  HOW TO DEAL WITH CONCIERGES

  It’s not pronounced con-SEERS or con-see-air-GEE. The worst is the pretentious con-see-AIR, which comes from people affecting a French accent—incorrectly. It’s con-see-AIRJ.

  In medieval times, the concierges were the keepers of the keys. They literally had the keys to the castle, and were on duty to open doors for people. In old hotels, the concierge held the guest room keys. With the advent of rail travel, the concierge met visitors at the station and took them to their destination. They were the ones who knew the route.

  Nowadays, an on-site concierge is mandatory for a hotel to be certified as four stars. For five-star certification, the concierge desk has to be staffed twenty-four hours—with polyglots.

  A concierge is not the guy under the CONCIERGE sign at Home Depot or the person helping you with your credit card on the phone—despite their claims to the contrary. A real concierge is like your distant relative in whichever city you happen to be staying in. They get you to the hotel from the airport. They know you like ice cream, so they recommend the best ice cream place. They know where the best stores are, and where the best sales are. Their job is to get you where you want to go. If a travel book points you to three destinations, the concierge will tell you the best of the three—as well as let you know about the fourth destination that didn’t make the book.

  And because the concierge is like a distant relative, people feel comfortable making service requests they otherwise wouldn’t. That can mean being an alibi, getting drugs—prescription or otherwise—or finding a place to keep the breast milk. The concierge might refuse you, but the one thing they’ll never do is judge you. Odds are, they’ve gotten requests ten times stranger within the last ten minutes.

  * * *

  As the months passed, Glennis realized she could depend on me. I always remembered to keep those curlers steamed. I made sure that the burgers were done the way she liked them. It wasn’t just the burgers, either; she never ordered from the menu. For her, every restaurant was like a buffet. If they had chicken over rice and steak over salad, she would want the chicken over the salad—with a side of rice. She was the menu designer, which was her way of asserting her position. I even tried to pick up her power habit of talking on the phone and chewing at the same time, but I could never pull it off without spitting my food onto the receiver.

  Glennis was focused on Martin and Charlie, period. I was given Ramón Sheen and Renée Estevez (the secret Sheens) to look after. I really wanted something t
o happen with Renée, but every casting director had already seen her. They knew who she was and they just didn’t want her.

  I tried every little sales-pitchy thing I could think of. She wasn’t that Hollywood pretty—so I described her as mercurial. “She could be anything,” I insisted. “She’s not ingénue. She’s not leading lady. But she’s so mercurial!”

  As the months with Glennis became years with Glennis, I started to feel a bit lost. Yes, she gained more and more confidence in me and began referring to me as her associate rather than just her lowly assistant. Yes, she let me have my own little roster of actors, like one recurring guest on Remington Steele. For Beatrice Boepple, I landed her a role in a Nightmare on Elm Street sequel where she did a dramatic birthing scene giving birth to that adorable, razor-gloved infant Freddy Krueger.

  But I didn’t have a hot, commercially appealing actor who was easy to sell. One who wasn’t mercurial, who could make my job a little easier and more rewarding. I was exploring possibilities with my career, and I was finding it pretty easy for me to make connections with people because of a strategy I had picked up. Whenever I saw an article in a newspaper that mentioned someone I hoped to connect with, I would clip out the article and send it to the person with a little note like, “Congratulations!” or “What an accomplishment!” It was a way to create virtually instant familiarity. Even thought they didn’t know who I was, suddenly I was someone who was close enough to be clipping articles with personal congratulatory notes attached. At the very least, they paused for a moment to look at my note. If I would ever eventually contact them, I would be distantly recognizable at least to the extent that I could get past the receptionist.

  I started going to showcases and acting classes, where the students performed these mini-recitals. I was talent scouting, but it was kind of fruitless. We constantly got photos in the mail; I was always opening envelopes looking for my own personal discovery. But that didn’t pan out much, either.

  One day there was mail addressed to Ramón Estévez, which is Martin Sheen’s real name. What a weird thing to put on the envelope, I thought. This is interesting. Inside there was a letter to Martin and some stapled Xeroxes, crudely done. There wasn’t even a headshot. There were pictures of an actress from Cosmopolitan, Vogue, and Mademoiselle and a VHS tape. The video was three hours of a Mexican soap opera named Teresa, and the production values were that of a horrendous school play.

  But the star, Salma Hayek, was stunning and sexy. I took the color Xeroxes and went to talk to Glennis. “Please, oh please,” I said. “Let me work with her. I think I can make something happen.”

  “Are you sure? Kiddo, how do you know she can act?” Glennis said.

  “I know. I’m telling you, I know she can. I know I can do something with her.”

  “I’d like to see your energy focused more on helping me get some of our production projects up and running. But if you really want to take a shot at selling this girl, then let me meet her first.”

  “Great!” I went to my desk and gave Salma a ring. I was tickled to be making the call, if only to hear the excitement in the new actress’s voice when an agent reached out to her.

  “Hello?” Her accent was thick. Really thick.

  “Hi, Salma. This is Michael Fazio, Glennis Liberty’s associate from the Liberty Company. We received your pictures. Glennis wanted you to come in for a meeting.”

  “Oh, okay.” She took down the information. She wasn’t at all excited; if anything, she was kind of cold. (Or “professional,” if I were selling her to someone.) When she came in a couple of days later, she was just as stunning in person as in the color Xeroxes. She didn’t even look like an actress. She looked rich. She looked like a debutante.

  I tried my best through assured small talk to let her know that I was a “real” agent. “That’s a gorgeous ring,” I said. “I love your bag.” Hi, I recognize the fancy stuff you’re wearing. And since I recognize it, it should be obvious that I could be your best gay friend ever. “You really pop on camera. You’re so mercurial. The production values are really good on your show. What kind of below-the-line budget do they have?” See, I know what I’m talking about! I’m going to be a movie mogul because I know about budgets and stuff.

  Mid-sentence, Glennis came into the waiting area, took Salma into the inner office, and shut the door. They talked for a bit and then Salma left. “If you want to do this, go for it,” Glennis told me later. “But I don’t know about her. She’s going to be a handful.”

  “No, I’m telling you. I know. I know, I know, I know.”

  As usual, the breakdowns were always full of calls for characters described as “beautiful,” “sexy,” or “nicely built.” Even if they were looking for a hobo, the character was somehow nothing short of a fashion model. Now, I had a new sense of confidence, because I was submitting an actress who was truly gorgeous. I had the luxury of simply saying, “She’s stunning, and you need to read her.”

  After one day, I got a reading for Salma for “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show.” I was excited; I had to be excited for the both of us. Salma never said that she was excited. She never said “thank you.”

  In fact, she never even went to the meeting.

  “Oh yeah,” she said, when I called her to find out what had happened. “I couldn’t go. But I can go tomorrow. At three o’clock.”

  I felt humiliated. Still, I smoothed it over with the casting director. “She’s new and she got lost,” I fibbed. “She’s so busy. But tomorrow she does have an opening at three.”

  This time, she went.

  When I called for feedback, the reaction was really, really marginal. “Eh, she’s not right for the part.”

  “Not right for the part?” I said. “The part is Rosa the maid.”

  “She’s too Rosa. We need Rosa from L.A., not Rosa from Mexico who we can’t understand.”

  But because her photos were so beautiful, I was always able to get her into auditions. “She’s just here from Mexico,” I said countless times, “and she’s the star of one of the most acclaimed television shows Teresa. She is Teresa. Her accent’s so exotic! I mean, it’s real. It’s real. You don’t want someone faking this.” I made her out to be a dignitary from a far-off magic land.

  The feedback from casting directors was always lackluster. And the reaction from Salma was like ice. Everything was just whatever for her. Usually wannabe actresses are the complete opposite: “I’m sitting next to my mother. She’s dying. I’ll be right there.” But if I told Salma that she was up for Martin Scorcese’s new film, she’d say, “I can’t be there at three. I’m busy. I’ll do it tomorrow. At two.”

  Between the accent and the aloofness, after a couple of months she wasn’t booking anything. “Have her back,” I pleaded with one of the casting people. “Try her for this other role.”

  “No!” he told me. “Michael, you’re sweet and I like you. So let me tell you something: I get what you’re doing, but she can’t act and you can’t even understand her. You’re wasting your time and you’re probably bothering people. Get over it. You don’t want to ruin your reputation because you’re being so damn pushy about someone who is really difficult to cast.”

  “All right,” I said. Damn it. I went into Glennis’s office to tell her that it wasn’t going to work with Salma.

  “Are you sure now?” Glennis said.

  “She’s terrible. She’s not reliable and people complain that she can’t act. She’s pretty, but big deal. I know I said I wanted someone pretty, but it really doesn’t matter after all.”

  “It’s your call. It’s fine.”

  “Yeah. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  Glennis was trying to get into production and leave the agency behind anyway. It made for a perfect excuse. “You’re really great,” I told Salma, “but Glennis is giving up the agency franchise and we’re going to start producing movies now. Glennis arranged for you to meet a few other agencies. So good luck to you.”

  �
��Okay,” she said.

  Less than a year later, she booked Desperado.

  Maybe I wasn’t up for being a Hollywood big shot after all.

  3.

  The Plane, the Plane

  So what exactly was I good at? Sadly, I realized I was best at simply managing Glennis. I had an instinct for anticipating her needs and for getting them met no matter what. I figured if I was ever going to climb, I’d need to find a more powerful (and probably way more demanding) lady to work for. It was time to grow and try my hand in a higher-profile environment.

  Dolores Robinson had a much bigger agency compared to Glennis’s; it wasn’t just about one family, an editor, and a few DPs. Not only that, but Dolores had more razzle-dazzle and worked with a broader spectrum of people. She networked, lunched, and partied with Hollywood’s elite. Her call sheet was a list of every major studio head. She had people like Ron Howard and Larry David as neighbors of her Maple Drive office. She had a Maple Drive office, for God’s sake! She had garnered Wesley Snipes his first major $8 million payout for Demolition Man, and her name was always in the trade publications. She knew everyone—and everyone knew her.

  I knew who she was because a couple of months back I saw an article honoring her in the Hollywood Reporter. I had done my trick of cutting the article out and sending it to her with a little note: “Congratulations! What an amazing feature.”

  One day I saw an ad in the trades for an associate manager. The title was enough to grab my attention, but the Maple Drive address jogged my memory. When I confirmed that it was indeed Dolores Robinson who was looking for an associate manager, I called her right up. Even if my name wasn’t instantly recognized, the flattering note I sent with the article a few weeks prior made it easy for me to talk my way past the nervous receptionist and Dolores took my call. The call led to an interview and the interview led to the new job. Now I was Dolores’s new associate manager (read: assistant).

  The thing with Dolores was that she was like a pet wolf. She was very smart and very warm—and you knew she could turn on you in a second. There was nobody I was more afraid of than her, but I knew enough to never let that show. Nor did I have an attitude about it. If you don’t own your confidence, that pet wolf will growl and bite you. If you fake it and you come on really strong, it’ll kill you. But if you really convince yourself in every fiber of your being that you can tame the wolf, you’re cool, and everything’s fine. With Dolores, being cool meant having business taken care of, making sure everything was in order, and being tuned in to her.