by Andy Behrman
To take my mind off things, a few days after we move into our new place I start snooping around the building looking at apartments and talking to the doormen, and soon I find out about an apartment in the building that’s for sale. Buying an apartment would add an element of pressure to my life at this point that I want to add. Not only would it provide me with a tremendous challenge, it would increase the pressure to produce and create, and trigger the anxiety and fear that keep me functioning at a frantic pace, making my daily life exciting. More responsibilities and obligations give me an incredible sense of purpose and satisfaction and keep my ego high. So I go see a broker. Although in fact I barely have enough to pay the rent, I think I can easily write the owner a check for the entire amount. It’s a one-bedroom, 719 square feet, for $195,000. Great southern exposure. Even before I see it I tell the broker I’m almost certain that I’ll take it. Get me two. Break the wall down. Make one big apartment. I go see a bank officer at Marine Midland to talk about a mortgage. He’s enthusiastic about working together and flashes me his biggest grin. He tells me he’ll run a credit check on me and that I should get all of my financials in order. I don’t know where I think I’m getting the money from, but I imagine armed guards walking into our apartment and filling it to the ceiling with stacks of cash. I’m obsessed with money and addicted to spending it—but I barely have any left, and it looks like Armani won’t be needing me anymore, since their flagship store is open.
My one-year anniversary of trying to produce an independent film is coming up, and the fantasy is ending. Thank God. It’s a big flop. I haven’t come up with the money. Not even close. And what I have raised, I’ve spent on junk that I can’t even account for. I don’t know if I’m depressed or relieved that I’m throwing in the towel. I owe my investors a small fortune, about $50,000.
The Queen of Schmooze
My sister Nancy has a public relations firm that represents several doctors. She is twenty-four years old, beautiful, smart, and driven. And she has real chutzpah. She is the only person I know who can walk into Yves Saint-Laurent on Madison Avenue in the middle of the winter and ask if they have a pair of shorts in the stock room that she can try on. She had worked for a small PR firm for a year, quickly picking up the tricks of the trade and fine-tuning her schmoozing skills. She was unhappy and unappreciated at the agency, so one of her clients there, Dr. Stuart Berger, offered to set her up in her own business, which she now runs from her apartment on the East Side. She attacks the promotion of his book, Dr. Berger’s Immune Power Diet, with everything she has, booking him for print interviews and on television and radio shows. Although he is a diet doctor to the stars—singer Roberta Flack and ballerina Leslie Browne were patients—Dr. Berger is a hulking six-foot-five, 365-pound man who sweats profusely, is known to ingest huge amounts of cocaine and alcohol, and has a horrible Percodan habit, not to mention his addiction to brisket, corned beef, and pastrami sandwiches. He doesn’t look like the healthiest guy in the world. But ultimately Nancy is able to convince a producer at Donahue to do an entire show on his weight-loss program, and within days she has created an instant number-one best-seller.
I have always maintained that Nancy has the most finely developed schmoozing skills, no doubt one of the reasons for her success in public relations. She gets a call from Dr. Robert Giller, a well-known nutritionist and holistic practitioner with celebrity friends like Halston, Bianca Jagger, and Liza Minnelli, who wants to discuss the possibility of hiring her to promote his book, Medical Makeover. She meets the young doctor, who is as well known for his art collection as for his B12 shots, in his Park Avenue office. In his meticulous study, he is sitting behind a contemporary desk, wearing a white coat, waiting to hear her pitch. He doesn’t appear to have much time, but Nancy’s not quite ready to begin. She engages him in conversation about her success with Dr. Berger’s first book and retells the story of booking him on Donahue. Giller seems impressed. She promises that she can deliver even more national exposure than Berger received and that his book can become a number-one best-seller in less than two months. “I know the producers of two of the biggest shows, and they’ll use you for the full hour,” she tells him. He just stares at her. “How do you know you can do it?” he asks. “Trust me,” she says. Then she outlines a ten-city national book tour. “We’ll hit all the best shows with the highest ratings,” she says. Giller is liking this PR woman. “Is this going to stretch far into the summer?” he asks, beginning to worry about all of this interfering with his summer plans in the Hamptons. “That should be your biggest problem,” she says. She warns him that his office will be flooded with new patients, and he seems to get nervous. “You’d better expect it, your phones will be ringing off the hook,” she tells him. “You’re a young, good-looking guy who’s going to be great on television.” She makes him feel good and gives him hope for a best-seller that he didn’t have fifteen minutes ago. She tells him she wants to set him up with a media coach and have him meet with a few close friends who are magazine editors for a drink to start talking up the book. Who is this superwoman? Giller hires her.
Brother-and-Sister Act
I’m spending the weekend in the Hamptons at Nancy’s summer share. Even though I’m the loser brother, for some reason I’m feeling a little high anyway. This weekend is supposed to cheer me up, give my pale complexion some color, help me to relax and give me a chance to think about plans for the fall. Allison and I sit around Nancy’s pool one late afternoon drinking Amstel Lights and eating guacamole and chips with her friends. Nancy starts talking about the success of her business and brings up the issue of my coming to work for her full-time. Embarrassing. She loves to bring up the ridiculous. Is she serious? Sometimes I can’t tell. I mean, I can’t imagine anything crazier than my sister and me working together—we’re siblings and we’re much too competitive. And I couldn’t think of any job worse than working for my sister. Part-time or freelance work would be fine—I need the income—but taking a full-time job with her would be beneath me. I can’t bear the thought of her being my employer. I’d feel like a small child again, and she would be the rebellious teenager. I could just start my own PR business or launch another type of business or go back to Armani if I was desperate. But after a few more Amstel Lights, Nancy insists that we’ll make a great brother-sister team and it’s such a great opportunity and what else am I going to do? She has a point. She makes it sound great. She tells me she’s already got three clients on retainer and several interested in meeting with her. She wants me to take care of all of the writing and proposals, work my old contacts, and structure the business. And it’s a guaranteed weekly paycheck. It seems like she’s acting genuinely. And she’s always tried to protect me.
We have a barbecue, and somehow before we go to bed we’re not only working together but we’ve become equal partners in a new venture called Behrman Communications. Monday I show up at her apartment at 9:00 A.M., and by the end of the day we have a brand-new bright red logo that uses the same type as my Smash logo. We’re in business.
In the early fall, Nancy and I are referred to our first “celebrity” client—at least we think she is a celebrity—socialite Cornelia Guest, the “Debutante of the Decade” and the daughter of C. Z. and Winston Guest. Cornelia has developed quite a reputation as the youngest of the Studio 54 gang. Her business manager from the company that handles her trust fund calls us in, ostensibly to promote her new humor book, The Debutante’s Guide to Life. But what we really do is keep her life calm and under control. We involve her in some charity work and get her some good press and try to keep her name out of the club scene. She lives high up in Olympic Tower, overlooking Fifth Avenue and Central Park, with her little West Highland terrier, Lyle, in a lavishly over-decorated one-bedroom apartment. As you walk into the apartment, an imposing square Warhol portrait of her stares out from the wall. It is an impressive home for a twenty-three-year-old, and Nancy and I simply pretend that we are just as successful and wealthy. We dress and act
the part, the way we have always been taught by our parents. Nancy handles more of the day-to-day activities of the “Cornelia account,” which she both enjoys and despises, while my relationship with Cornelia is more ironic. Neither of us takes any of this too seriously. She has unbelievable delivery and a fantastic, racy sense of humor. I ask her if she is interested in working on a project for a group involved in ending homelessness. “I’ll do anything to end homelessness—anything,” she says, Lyle curled up on her lap.
We continue to represent Dr. Berger, who drives around Manhattan from gala events to pseudoglamorous openings in the backseat of his navy blue Silver Cloud Rolls-Royce, snorting cocaine and drinking vodka. By this time, Allison is working for him as an assistant, so I am privy to all the inside stories about what is really going on in the office, wild stories of throwing away blood tests, charging patients for tests not done, and his alcohol and drug abuse on the job—doing lines of coke and drinking a mixture of milk and vodka at his desk.
I approach an energetic producer I know at ABC World News Tonight to pitch him a story idea on the dark side of Dr. Berger. This is not your usual pitch. I believe Dr. Berger has taken advantage of patients and also of my sister and me, financially. We are furious at him, but don’t turn away his checks. The producer has heard some other gossip about Dr. Berger and thinks it’s a great story. At around the same time, Dr. Berger makes an arbitrary decision to clean house, and he fires Nancy and me and several people on his staff, including Allison and a few of our friends. I quickly organize a group of ex-employees to go on camera and speak in disguise about his quackery. Of course, Dr. Berger is shocked when the piece airs, and it is the beginning of more investigations into his practice.
Meanwhile, Dr. Robert Giller is determined to have a number-one best-selling book and is willing to do whatever it takes to reach that spot. Nancy and I mastermind a publicity tour and handle it like a presidential political campaign. We are on the phones constantly, trying to get through to our contacts at the major national television shows. Once we finally make contact with the producer, we have to make a pitch in thirty seconds. We get only one shot. The pressure is enormous. We sell Dr. Giller’s book as the most modern approach to changing overall health through diet, vitamins, exercise, and nutrition and link him to his successful celebrity clients. In the first two months we book him on The Sally Jessy Raphael Show and The Oprah Winfrey Show, turning his book into a number-one New York Times best-seller. We talk to producers and editors in the fifteen largest television markets in the country, booking him on local shows, setting up radio and print interviews. I become particularly passionate about this book because I enjoy watching the sales grow weekly, in proportion to the work we are doing. The high that I experience from turning this commonsense book into a best-seller is phenomenal. Then my behavior becomes obsessive—I don’t want to see him fall from the best-seller lists and start sending him to small markets for any type of exposure. I convince him traveling to Portland, Oregon, is worth the trip. As his practice becomes busier, Allison comes to work for him as an office assistant. Eventually, after a few months, the book falls off the list, and I am the only one who is crushed. Staying at the top is what makes me feel good—the money is secondary.
High-Wire Act
At home Allison and I are like two little kids playing house. The only things holding the relationship together are sex and spending money. Our communication is increasingly limited. Many nights I smoke a little pot before going to bed. One night I lie naked waiting for her to join me, and when she walks into the bedroom her entire body is glistening with oil. It’s the most erotic sight. We’re making love and for a while everything is fine with us again. But then, just as quickly as it started, it’s all over.
Allison and I make another move in 1986—an incredibly ridiculous one way above our heads, a $2,300 huge duplex on the second and third floors of the same building, overlooking the lobby. It has an enormous living room, one bedroom, two full bathrooms, a loft/den, and gloriously high ceilings. We hire a decorator and start working on it right away, even though Allison has stopped working for Dr. Giller and is spending her days playing housewife, taking care of our two cocker spaniels, and working out.
Soon I find myself just as addicted to the gym as Allison is. At the beginning of the new year, 1987, I start an intense exercise and diet regimen—cardiovascular workouts and lifting four times a week with Sean, my trainer, an actor in his midthirties who has no qualms about making me work hard, or about sharing the weekly dilemmas of his private life. I have an incredible amount of energy that isn’t absorbed by work, and I’ve fallen for the “no pain, no gain” motto. I make notes in my date book—no dairy, no meat, no bread, no pasta, no sugar. I’m not eating much except for protein and vegetables, and I’ve lost weight and built muscle. I’m in the best shape I’ve been in since college, and I’m addicted to the two things in my life that I can control—diet and exercise. I have the strange desire for my body to become stronger than my mind.
It’s January, and we’re starting to have problems with our landlord because the apartment is freezing cold. We walk around bundled up in layers of clothes shivering, and our landlord does nothing. I decide to withhold rent, and we become involved in a bitter legal battle. Until he fixes the heat, I will not write another rent check. Defiant, I ignore all warnings from the court. We are finally evicted several months after we start withholding rent. This puts an incredible amount of stress on our relationship. Allison and I barely speak to each other, and she blames me for my poor handling of the situation, believing that I was too aggressive. Allison decides it’s best that we move to separate apartments. We’re both forced to quickly sign separate leases and start packing boxes of clothing and dividing up what we’ve accumulated together. This is Allison’s idea, and I am opposed to it from the beginning because it’s such a dramatic response, but I agree to continue the relationship with these living arrangements. We find a new home for our dogs with a family in Connecticut.
When we realize that the problems in the relationship are so serious that they might bring it to an end, we start seeing a therapist in New Jersey, Dr. Dworkin, whom we are referred to by Allison’s parents, who think we’re both a little bit crazy at this point. Our relationship has seemed headed toward marriage in the next few years, as our friends are getting married, and eventually we’d like to start a family, so we are extremely cautious in handling our problems. Yet neither one of us is in any particular rush to get married, and it’s not even an issue that’s discussed for a few years. Our parents are perfectly comfortable with our living arrangements and never question us about our plans. Allison seems somewhat jealous of my work and of Nancy and feels I don’t pay as much attention to her as I used to, and she’s angry that I am so work-obsessed. Seeing Dr. Dworkin is extremely inconvenient, since it’s a half-hour bus ride each way, but we both like him and the fact that he can help us create some dialogue, and we have confidence that he can guide us through what we hope is a temporary crisis. We are learning to listen to each other, and that’s the first major step.
At a dinner party at her apartment one night, my friend Lucy Lehrer from Wesleyan and her boyfriend, Dan, introduce Allison and me to her friends Lauren and Jonathan. Lauren works as a personal assistant to film director Jonathan Demme, and Jonathan, her boyfriend, works at The New Yorker. Allison and I are quite taken with them. Jonathan has angular features, intense green eyes, and light brown hair and looks like a character Norman Rockwell might have painted. Lauren has dark hair and dark eyes and looks like an Italian movie star. They met at college. They are sitting next to each other on a loveseat; Jonathan is drinking a beer and Lauren a glass of wine. When they stand up to say hello, we see that Jonathan must be six-feet-four. It’s a pretty small apartment, and we’re squeezed around a cocktail table. Jonathan and I make eye contact in reference to the spatial problem, and I realize that we share a similar sense of humor. Jonathan is fascinated by what I do. He can’t get o
ver the fact that every plastic surgeon has a PR agent. “Dentists, too,” I tell him. That really makes him laugh. Lucy serves the quiche, which she proudly tells us she has made herself, and it looks delicious. We all start eating. “Lucy, you used a goddamn graham-cracker pie crust,” screams Lauren. We all start laughing. It’s a fun evening, and when we’re leaving we realize that we live on the same block as Lauren and Jonathan. We make plans to get together with them soon.
The PR business often takes me to the West Coast, mostly to Los Angeles. Driving on the freeway there, listening to the radio, makes me feel carefree and euphoric. I’m staying at expensive hotels racking up huge bills, paid for by the company, entertaining prospective clients and just enjoying myself for the first time in a long time. I’ve never felt better. The freedom of being on my own leads me to believe that I need more independence when I return to New York and that my working conditions with my sister are much too tense. I try working on several client accounts on my own, but it appears that I’m trying to hide something. One day I’m sitting at my desk, which is right next to Nancy’s, talking on the phone to a client while I hear her backtracking on work that I have already done, talking to someone about the same client I spoke to them about the day before. I quickly end my conversation, and an explosive argument ensues between us. I scream at her, “You’re screwing everything up, you’re fucking up everything!” I throw everything on top of her desk onto the floor, grab her by her throat, and push her against the wall. She is shocked by my aggressive behavior and screams back at me, “Let go! Stop, stop!” The entire staff is watching. The fight is over in a couple of minutes, and we both realize that our relationship must be severed immediately. I rush out of the office within five minutes, ashamed of my abusive behavior but relieved that the business relationship has finally come to an end. My father comes in to meet with us at the Westside Diner to calm us down and try to reach some type of settlement, but he is unsuccessful. The next morning I pick up a copy of the New York Post at the newsstand. Nancy has made the feud public by leaking a story to “Page Six,” implying that she didn’t like the way I was handling the company finances and insinuating that I was dipping into the funds. I make a settlement with her without an attorney. I’m enraged by the publicity and vow not to speak to her for the foreseeable future.
