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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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.”
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.
I did something really radical over this long holiday weekend: I took off. And I read for pleasure. Pleasure. No manuscripts. Just. What. I. Wanted. To. Read. I read Nicholson Baker’s The Anthologist, which my best friend from graduate school gave me. If you give a fig about poetry, don’t miss this book. It’s dishy and funny and all too true about the bitch-fest aka the world of poetry. It’s terrifically entertaining and sad and sweet. Really, I laughed my ass off, but then again I’m always up for a good discussion of trochaic verse.
Also, I’m a die-hard Philip Roth fan. ( I can’t stand it when people say they hate Roth because he’s misogynist. That’s precisely why I read him, among other things. That said, were you to reject him on those grounds, this book would give you ample reason, and yes I’m talking about the strap on dildo three-way with two young women and our aging protagonist.) Look, not one of his better novels (should have been packaged with his last two as a collection of three novellas if you ask me, which no one is), but there was still one thing I loved about it and am glad I read it because I’ll remember it my whole life.
Betsy Lerner 
