Last night in L.A., eating Thai take-out and watching episodes of 30 Rock on Hulu after a long day of meetings.  The night before I met my kid sister for dinner. She’s casting her pilot and was having a hard time finding the right young woman for a certain role when I spotted a gorgeous young woman sitting on a banquet at 9:00. I told my sister to check her out and immediately she saw what I saw. We asked if she was an actress and, eureka! she was. My sister told her a little bit about the show and then then asked for the name of her agent, which she put in her blackberry. My sister’s casting director will call the young woman’s agent in the morning to set up  an audition. Only in LA, kids, only in LA.

Star Meter: 0

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Pitching the same projects over and over is a little like married sex — sometimes you have to work to keep it fresh. I find it’s best to ask a producer/manager/agent what they’re looking for before I start in. This way, you don’t start pitching a thriller, for example, only to find out they’re no longer producing thrillers, which at best is a buzz kill. I’ve also learned only to share  two or three projects with a producer. When I started, I’d manically talk about everything I had as if my client list were a buffet table. It’s much better to talk about a couple of projects that might actually be right, like when a personal shopper suggests two suits out of the twenty she has because these are the two that will fit.

How much do you tip the guys who valet park your car? Is $2 bucks the going rate?

There is a salad at the Beverly Hills Hotel called the McArthur or McCarthy, and if I get executed and I get to pick my last meal, it will be this salad. They chop it so fine that you barely need to chew and I’m guessing that if you’re about to take the pipe, it might be hard to chew.

ALL anyone  can talk about is how Dear John bumped Avatar off the #1 Box Office perch. NO ONE can believe this. And they all want to know if we have something like a Dear John on our list. I have a Dear Adolph. Does that count? How about Dear Sirhan Sirhan? Or Dear Ted Bundy. Oh, yeah, they’d also be interested in then next The Blind Side and The Hangover. Whatcha got people? I’m here, it’s now. Pitch your high concept movie here and earn big bucks!

One last thing: Lots of producers offices have chocolate at their reception desks. What is up with that? And how many pieces is it appropriate to take?

Star meter: 0

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Last night, getting on to the Santa Monica Boulevard, I accidentally went over a divider. Cars behind me came to a screeching halt. I thought if I die now, I want everyone to know that deep inside this miserable wretch is a person who is happy and has been loved. The screeching was followed by a great deal of honking as traffic diverted around my rented Dodge Ram.

I would be lost without my GPS system. I am truly a menace on the road and it’s terrifying trying to get to meetings on time and then to park. Today, I blindly parked in a valet section and went away with the keys. For the first five minutes of every meeting, I have to sit on my hands to stop them from trembling. I also love it when the pretty assistant (and they are all pretty) asks, “Do you need to be validated?” Oh, honey, if you only knew.

Star Meter: 1  Josh Duhamel (does he even count?)

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As some of you may know, I was “invited to leave” NYU’s Film School after my freshman year. I had some issues including sleeping through movies, but far worse apparently was my predilection for 180 degree pans in my end of year film, a biopic of my boyfriend.

As a result, I was shuttled into Washington Square College of Arts & Science. I still remember the parting words of my professor, “Why don’t you go away and read some books. Come back in twenty years and make your movies.”

It’s 31 years later and….Good morning Los Angeles! I’m here to try and sell book projects for film. Bringing a smile to my face are huge billboards everywhere of the HBO movie of Temple Grandin’s life. If I had a camera, I’d spin completely around so you could see everything. Tomorrow a.m. meeting on the Warner Lot with BDP (Big Deal Producer). FMD.

Star meter: 0

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Betsy I

When I was in college, a budding screenwriter invited me to join a literary soiree in the west village. This was not an NYU sanctioned club, this was an off-campus affair, and I felt very honored to be included. The woman who called us together seemed much older than the rest of us; she was sophisticated and world weary, a cross between Gertrude Stein and Vanessa Redgrave. When we were introduced, she made it eminently clear that the name “Betsy” would not do. And from that moment on, she called me Elizabeth (my real name). Elizabeth, she said, was a poet’s name.

When it came time to publish The Forest for the Trees, I wanted to use Elizabeth on the jacket. The few poems I had managed to place in literary magazines were under Elizabeth. My editor balked. Everyone knows you as Betsy, she said. But how many people could that be, I asked. She insisted. I  recalled my junior year abroad when I tried to be known as Elizabeth and introduced myself as such. It was fine at first, but later when people called me Elizabeth I would sit as dumb as stone, completely forgetting that I had changed my name.

I’ve always wondered about writers who hid behind initials: TC Boyle, EE Cummings, TS Eliot, AJ Liebling, AA Milne, AM Holmes, just to name a few. What’s up with that. Maybe I should have tried it: ES Lerner.  I actually kind of like that.

Betsy Taylor

Before I love and leave you: I’m going to LA next week to pimp my wares. I don’t have a laptop and don’t know how regularly I’m going to be able to blog. I may just have to ask Keanu to hop off his desktop for a few. I’ll do my best. Until then, wouldn’t it be very entertaining to compile the biggest list under the sun of authors who go by their initials? Whatcha got?

Betsy Gilbert

Betsy Barrett Browning

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Dear Diary,

I remember when I was a little girl dreaming of what it might be like someday to be a literary agent. And I thought it would be just like tonight: hobnobbing at a gallery opening, being whisked off to dinner to a private room in a five star restaurant, the table filled with rock stars, clothing designers, photographers, producers, heirs to fortunes, and hedge fund managers. The conversation ranging from real estate to bestiality, Avatar to frequent flier mileage.

And I always imagined that when the night was over and my yellow pumpkin had delivered me to my office, I would be back amid the piles of manuscripts, letters, and contracts. And that into the late, quiet night, I would write my long editorial letters. And that I would grow old among books and writers. And that I would be happy.

Love, Betsy

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I went to a Man Ray exhibit today at the Jewish Museum in New York. Am I the last person to know that his birth name was Emmanuel Radnitzky? And sure enough, early in the exhibit there was Radnitzky at 13, portrait of the artist as a bar mitzvah boy. I would have enjoyed the exhibit more, but two women in front of me kept talking about their co-op boards and favorite brand of veggie burger. I know I could have walked away, but I was so disgusted by them that I was also attracted. There was also a father, son, grandson trio moving through the show. The grandfather was in a wheelchair. When the art was really outrageous, the old man would punch the air with his cane and exclaim, “He was meshuggenah! Meshuggenah, I tell you.”

Fast forward to the documentary at the end of the show. Here we see the aging Ray in beret and thick glasses; could possibly win a Groucho Marx look-a-like contest. One thing he says stays with me. He doesn’t care about being understood, he says. He wants to be accepted. What does this mean exactly? Has he grown tired of trying to explain his work? He wanted to be accepted by whom? Is it personal or institutional? Doesn’t acceptance follow understanding? In publishing we think in terms of critical success (reviews, prizes) and sales (money). Would you feel accepted if you received a Pulitzer? What about being on the New York Times Bestseller list? What about self-acceptance; does such a thing exist? What it would take to feel accepted? Understood? What’s more important to you?

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What I saw over the holiday break & what I thought:

Crushing

Up in the Air: I wish I were as thin as the script.

It’s Complicated: A complete abomination save Alec Baldwin’s twinkle. This could be the first movie Meryl Streep is in and not nominated for an Oscar. Steve Martin: Botoxaddictfreak, what happened to you, man? And tall guy from office, you should play Shaggy from Scooby Doo (and that advice is absolutely free).

Nine: Three words: Daniel Day Louis. I love everything about him including his strange hands, esp. his thumbs. Two Words: Penelope Cruz. Two Words: Marion Cottilard. One word: Fergie. Even Kate Hudson was winning — a first! If you love women as much as I do, please see this movie.

Secret Lives of Pippa Lee: If you like the “my mother was a pillhead therefore I am emotionally remote and all men are dickheads” genre, this is for you. One reason not to miss this movie is when Keanu Reeves puts his hand down Robin Wright’s jeans in the back seat of his truck. Wide-on! (That’s a female boner, credit to BR). Also, Winona, I’m sorry, but stick to shoplifting.

Sherlock Holmes: Robert Downey, Jr. you make life worth living, and you know I don’t say that lightly. And I thought Guy Ritchie was just Madonna’s butt boy — apologies are in order. He even made Jude Law sympathetic. Kudos!

Precious: My audience was laughing when Precious was being beaten by her mother or puking or falling down. WTF. If Halle Berry had been beaten I doubt anyone would have laughed. Obesity is still okay to laugh at. Pisses me off. I applaud the movie for tackling obesity, teen pregnancy, abuse, incest. I think the director Lee Daniels is amazing. And finally: revelation: Mariah Carey as social worker. Star turn. If her agent isn’t working on getting her an HBO series based on that character, he is OUT TO LUNCH. Mariah, call me.

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It’s 2:00 a.m. Home after the annual agency holiday party. I’m wired, agitated, and depressed all at once. I’m one of these people who dread all social gatherings. Then I have a really good time. Then I hate myself. It’s so fucking predictable.

Our party is just for our clients. No publishers, no editors.   Just the talent. I have this fantasy that we’ll still have the party when we’re in our eighties and it will be a sort of Broadway Danny Rose affair. I like to think that I’ll still be at my desk, my hands knotted with arthritis, a ciggie dangling from my lips (I plan to take up smoking again after eighty), barking to some editor how I want a better royalty rate for a z-book, which will be a book that you download out of your ass.

I also have a fantasy that if I die young all my clients will come to my funeral and say extraordinary things. Not because I’m the end all and be all, but because they are brilliant writers and know how to string sentences together that dazzle. You have no idea how much I love the people who trust me with their work. And yes, I had a bit too much to drink. But they will come and they will read. And one will sing.

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After the fact, I discovered that my co-publisher Bruce Craven had named our magazine after this movie.

Rick Moody emailed me out of the blue because he needed a copy of a piece he had written in a magazine I published in 1990. He was wondering if I still had the issue.  Well, they don’t call me the Archivist Extremis for nothing. His piece was in our last issue of BIG WEDNESDAY, Volume 2 Issue #1. We published the likes of Bill Matthews, Campbell McGrath, Kate Braverman, Pagan Kenedy, David Means, Denis Johnson, and others. We promoted our publication with a monthly gathering at a bar with a game show-style event called Wheel of Poets. Our emcee was a woman named Jennifer Blowdryer. We actually had a wheel and she spinned it with it about as much disgust as you could possibly muster.

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