Manners, Mores of Movie Makers

Since the dawn of movie making, there have been “Movie Manners” and “Theater Etiquette.” Good manners and etiquette don’t just apply to being in a movie theater, but the Hollywood movie-making industry, as well. —“Deal-making is to movie people what the tea ceremony is to the Japanese,” contends producer, Nicholas Kent. “They are very, serious about it.” But the fact that Hollywood follows its own etiquette doesn’t mean the town has good manners. Indeed, vulgar behavior is tolerated in movie-land, and some observers decry the incidence of screaming, cursing and abuse to subordinates. “Sometimes money talks and manners walk,” muses Jon Brown, a vice president in the literary department of the Agency for the Performing Arts. Indeed, there are those who dispense with etiquette— and they’re permitted to do so, provided they do it with Hollywood-style pizazz and panache.

Proper Etiquette When Making Movies — What a High Concept! 
Where does ‘yes’ mean ‘no’? Where is a lie considered a human kindness? Where is a returned phone call a status symbol? A guide to Hollywood’s manners and mores.

More than 40 years ago, an anthropologist well-versed in the tribal rituals of South Sea aborigines ventured to Hollywood, where she sojourned for a year. Donning her detached scientific hat, Hortense Powdermaker set her analytical gaze upon the manners and mores of movie-makers.

Here’s some of what she noticed:

* People dining together were assumed to be wheeling and dealing together too.

* Knowing the right people was crucial.

* Job-hopping was the norm.

* And hitting the box-office jackpot was the ultimate fantasy.

Sound familiar? You must have seen “The Player,” part of a recent Hollywood urge to expose its bizarre rituals for the moviegoing public and skewer them mercilessly. But Powdermaker’s findings, which endure to this day, came in her 1950 book, “Hollywood: The Dream Factory.”

To the uninitiated, Hollywood can be a confusing, frenetic scene replete with unusual customs and bewildering ways of doing business.

How do you negotiate this sometimes frightening terrain? Well, there’s a certain Hollywood etiquette. “Isn’t that an oxymoron?” quipped veteran director-producer Gilbert Cates, and the phrase was echoed by many of the people interviewed for this story.

Actually, the term Hollywood etiquette doesn’t convey a contradiction— “etiquette” isn’t just the province of dignified swells who comport themselves with class and poise. Rather, as Webster’s tells us, etiquette is “the forms, manners and ceremonies established by convention as acceptable or required in social relations, in a profession, or an official life.”

In that respect, says Nicolas Kent, producer of the TV series “Naked Hollywood,” the town observes its own rituals. For example, “Deal-making is to movie people what the tea ceremony is to the Japanese,” contends Kent. “They are very, serious about it.”

But the fact that Hollywood follows its own etiquette doesn’t mean the town has good manners. Indeed, vulgar behavior is tolerated in movie-land, and some observers decry the incidence of screaming, cursing and abuse to subordinates.

“Sometimes money talks and manners walk,” muses Jon Brown, a vice president in the literary department of the Agency for the Performing Arts. Indeed, there are those who dispense with etiquette— and they’re permitted to do so, provided they do it with Hollywood-style pizazz and panache.

But phoning, schmoozing, meeting, dining and screening all have distinct ceremonial formalities. Yes, even nay-saying constitutes an etiquette peculiar to Hollywood— part of the canon of celluloid conduct, if you will.

The Art of the ‘No’

Confused because the production executive hot in pursuit of your screenplay last week isn’t returning your calls this week? Well, meet the Hollywood “no.”

“Hollywood is the most masterful town in regard to saying ‘no’ without saying ‘no,’ ” says Adam Fields, executive vice president of Peters Entertainment. “ ‘Yes’ means ‘maybe,’ and ‘maybe’ means ‘no,’ and ‘no’ is ‘maybe’ until I change my mind.”

Rastar Productions marketing vice president Don Safran philosophizes further. “Hollywood is the only city in the world where ‘yes’ is an abstraction,” he explains. “ ‘Yes’ is open for interpretation. ‘No’ is considered hostile.”

Why all this perplexing mumbo-jumbo? “I think most people have a hard time saying ‘no,’ because they’re afraid that they might say ‘no’ to people they may need tomorrow,” says TriStar Pictures Chairman Mike Medavoy. “I think most people appreciate a quick ‘no’ as opposed to a slow ‘no.’ ”

At any rate, slow “nos” and less-than-honest feedback are all too prevalent. Genuine “yeses” are rare, which means that people with yes power tend to be heavy hitters. Back to “no.”

How they communicate a turndown is crucial. Some say no quickly and politely. Others engage in an activity we’ll call the Yes-But-No Ritual, leaving wanna-bes in a frustrating purgatory.

“Hollywood people tend to be very friendly and cordial, even if they don’t like your idea,” says Mark Litwak, the author of the book “Reel Power.” The charm is turned on, Litwak says, because “you may have a dumb idea today, but tomorrow you could have the greatest idea in the world.”

Producer David Permut’s recent experience shows the benefits of building, rather than burning, bridges--or adhering to the “You Never Know Doctrine.”

“Well, I just made a movie called ‘Three of Hearts'--and it was written by a pizza deliveryman in Hollywood who also tended bar in East L.A.,” says the producer of “Blind Date” and “Dragnet.” “You never know--the gate guard at Fox gave me a screenplay yesterday.”

Wasn’t that in poor taste to thrust a script at him like that? “It’s only bad etiquette if it’s bad,” Permut replies. “If it’s a good script, I think it was a very wise move.”

The Phone Is a Deadly Weapon

Boon or bane, phones play leading and supporting etiquette roles in Hollywood. With the aid of portable cellular objects, fax wizardry and the like, most Hollywood connections are carried out via phone lines. But those lines don’t transmit for everybody.

Clearly, as director Martha Coolidge points out, “phone calls are probably the greatest thermometer” of one’s current status.

Hollywood phones ring constantly, and how to manage them all is an art. “Many people prioritize calls the way the military do during medical emergencies,” says writer-director Devorah Cutler, who color-coded message slips while an executive at Columbia.

“The ‘triage’ approach involves deals or relationships in their dying gasps, ones that’ll endure till tomorrow, and wounded ones that’ll survive without instant intervention,” adds Cutler, who teaches “Survival in the Showbiz Trenches” courses at the Learning Annex dressed in military fatigues. “And fun people are in a category of their own--you always want to talk to them,” she notes.

“Business is a series of conversations carried on from dawn into the night,” says Sean Daniel, a producer at Universal Pictures. And sometimes it takes days to complete the connection. “I try to return all my calls, but I think there are still some writers out there angry at me because I didn’t return their calls,” Daniel admits. “But I never killed a screenwriter,” unlike “The Player’s” cellular studio exec, Griffin Mill.

But many screenwriters still are seething because some movie executive didn’t return their calls weeks, months or even years ago. “It’s just plain rude not to return calls,” says screenwriter Robert Newcombe, who recently sold his first script to Walt Disney Pictures. “I understand these people get a lot of phone calls, but that doesn’t mean they can’t take two seconds to call you back or have someone else call you back,” Newcombe adds. “The weird thing is, you remember every person who doesn’t call you back.”

Cary Brokaw, “The Player’s” executive producer, understands that not returning calls can be risky. “After all, the call you don’t return today might be the next Larry Kasdan three years from now,” says Brokaw.

Although unreturned calls are considered a horrific breach of decorum, such trespasses are common. “People don’t return calls on a regular basis,” admits one veteran agent.

“You’ll call 18 times, make friends with the secretary, you’ll be strung along, and then you’ll never hear from them again. It’s like you never existed,” says a producer who moved here a year ago from New York. “They’ll kill you with kindness.”

Mark Litwak agrees. “In New York, at least you know where you stand,” Litwak adds. “In Hollywood, you just don’t hear from them.”

In fact, unreturned calls are such a heated Hollywood topic that many bosses, including Columbia Pictures Chairman Mark Canton, insist that employees always ring people back. “I don’t understand it. It (not returning calls) just doesn’t make sense,” Canton says. “We’re in a business, and one can never know where something’s going to come from.

“It’s impractical to let things back up,” Canton continues. “The amount of flak that you get is not worth it. I mean, who wants to be castigated all the time?”

Nonetheless, some people do return their calls, but they return them deviously— they resort to sneaky phone tactics— like calling late at night, during lunch or early in the morning.

“I won’t do that,” says A&M; Films President Dale Pollock. “I find that insulting.”

“I think that’s a real cheap shot,” concurs Jon Brown of the Agency for the Performing Arts.

“People go to such lengths to avoid each other that it’s amazing they get things done,” says writer-producer David King, who once handled calls for players Dawn Steel and Jon Peters.

Evidently, this evasive after-hours phoning practice--which author Buzzell aptly terms “call dumping"--is widespread. Essentially, says casting director Mike Fenton, “it salves their conscience.”

Of such behavior, producer Lynda Obst says, “They’re meant to be returned calls that aren’t really returned. They’re saying, ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’ ”

Phone behavior can get mighty strange when movie execs--like one studio head and a less-powerful producer--are pals outside of the office. “During the week, the producer will call the studio head for business purposes,” an assistant explains. “The studio head dumps the call (after hours). The business never gets resolved.” But, as the assistant reveals, come the weekend, “The studio head will call the producer at his home and say, ‘Hey, let’s go to dinner?’ Neither makes a mention of the unreturned call. Can you believe that?”

People aren’t happy about other pervasive phone rituals in Hollywood. As when someone doesn’t call you back even though you initiated the first contact. Or you are kept on hold for eons. Or an executive talks to you on a speaker phone. Or, worse, he or she permits an assistant to eavesdrop.

You get the idea. Phones also provide plenty of fodder for jokes. “I finally returned a bunch of calls today. And, the good news is, I got their answering machines,” one insider cracks.

Naturally, horror stories abound:

* Like the time a development director returned Ted Dodd’s call almost instantly. “As it turns out, the guy was returning my call from three months ago,” says Dodd, a former production-executive-turned-independent-producer.

* Then there’s the occasion Dodd couldn’t get through, after six tries, to a studio head to invite him to give a talk. The “no” came via the unreturned call. Months later, at a party, several other folks, similarly shunned, berated the mogul. “He was kind of pressed in a corner and looking very sheepish,” recalls Dodd, who resisted the urge to join in the mock-lynching.

* Another phone story comes from Karen Dare, director of creative affairs for Trimark Pictures. An out-of-the-office executive had his assistant place a call, assuming the callee wouldn’t be on hand. Says Dare: “When it turned out that the guy was there, the assistant then had to say, ‘Oh, well, he’s gone; we’ll have to call you again.’ ”

* And oodles of calls haven’t worked yet for New Jersey native Terry Coyle, a TV producer who recently moved west armed with a glowing letter of introduction from an entertainment bigwig to one as-yet-unavailable producer. “I’ve called at least 12 to 15 times at two different numbers,” Coyle says. “I know his secretaries.” Still no callback after four months. “They’ll never say they totally don’t want you, but it’s like a sorority or fraternity,” Coyle remarks.

Electronic etiquette even applies to assistants, who need to know when to put their bosses on the line. And the Hollywood decorum for assistants can be quite elaborate. When executives are deemed equal in stature, assistants might say, “Shall we ring together?” In a situation where one caller outranks the other, the assistant of the less-influential player puts his or her boss on the line first, who must wait until the more powerful person’s assistant puts him or her on the line. “It’s like saying, ‘My boss is more important,’ ” discloses a veteran assistant. Not everyone does that, of course.

But the cellular age has ushered in a new set of concerns and practices.

Producer David Permut says, “The most common phrase in Hollywood today is ‘You’re cutting out.’ . . . When there’s a piece of paper in the car and you crumple it up near the microphone, it sounds pretty much like static. I must admit there was a time I did that, because it was such a belabored conversation. So I’ve crossed the line on etiquette.”

According to Dale Pollock, “The new hip thing to say is, ‘Are you on a secure phone?’ ”

Actress and writer Carrie Fisher warns, “Try not to say too much on your car phone or your portable phone, because everyone has those scanners. I mean, literally, people are making decisions or learning stuff based on those scanners. It’s become a way of working.”

Put a Shine on Your Schmooze

Of course, another way of working is recognizing that schmoozing with the right people can open career doors. Not surprisingly, forging business unions in Hollywood has its own intricate rules of etiquette.

“The whole town operates in a dance of seduction,” says Linda Buzzell, former movie executive, now a career counselor and psychotherapist. “You’re seducing people into getting involved with your project or your talent. A pitch meeting over lunch at the Ivy is almost like a date. You woo them into a good mood, and then you pop the question.

“There is even a rhythm of the pitch, and a rhythm of the schmoozing, and a rhythm of the bonding,” says Buzzell, whose book, “How to Make It in Hollywood,” was recently published. “It’s really poor etiquette to immediately launch into some hard sell when you see someone. You need to set the right climate first.”

Carrie Fisher says “It better not look like schmoozing. . . . You have to schmooze with the goods. I mean, if you can do something that can be identified as schmoozing, you’re (in trouble). It has to be seamless. Or it can only be identified as schmoozing in retrospect--after it’s been effective. I think conscious schmoozing ought to be outlawed or taboo.”

“Network laterally and network up,” says Linda Obst. “And don’t give cards. No business cards.”

‘Your Movie Is, uh, Interesting’

Don’t know what to say to your director friend whose awful film you’ve just seen? Find something nice to say. The prevailing view on etiquette at screenings is to be kind, even if the movie reeks.

“Movies are children, and you just don’t want to tell someone they’ve got an ugly child,” says Brokaw of Avenue Pictures.

Deceit is considered de rigueur . But lies can come in two flavors.

“One is, you qualify what you say . . . so that it’s truthful even when you hated it. Or, the other school is that you completely perjure yourself,” Brokaw says.

Interscope Communications President Robert Cort edifies: “There are movies which you patently didn’t like, over which you basically have to lie. You don’t like doing it, but you do it.

“Because,” Cort adds, “the alternative to not doing it— which is to tell the truth— is uglier.”

While any number of lines will do, certain comments such as, “You did it again” or “You couldn’t have done it better,” are dead-giveaways that the movie stunk. Some other options:

* “Find one thing about the movie that was very positive, and don’t say another word."--casting director Mike Fenton

* “If it’s an offbeat picture or something that goes against the mainstream, you can always qualify it with, ‘It’s gonna take special handling to find its audience.’” —Adam Fields.

* “Never use the word ‘interesting.’ It’s the kiss of death.” — casting director Sheila Manning.

* “You can always say a lot without saying anything.” — Karen Dare, director of creative affairs for Trimark Pictures

* “You just leave. You say, ‘Hey, thanks,’ and leave. No one’s asking you there to be a critic.” —producer Freddie Fields

* “It’s common decency to keep your opinions to yourself.” — talent agent Gary Salt

The Bottom Line on Good Manners

Interscope’s Cort thinks the true manners test is trying times. “People are incredibly well-mannered so long as things are going their way,” Cort says. “Should things fail to go their way, manners do tend to be one of the first things to disappear.”

“Some of the biggest people in the industry are rude and crude,” says agent-turned-producer Freddie Fields. “And some of the biggest people in the industry are gentlemen and gentlewomen--and gentle human beings.”

Columbia Pictures Chairman Canton contends there’s no room for arrogant people. “There’s such difficulties in the world at large, it’s pathetic not to have good conduct,’ says Canton. “Manners really do matter. It’s very important to make a real effort to be appropriate with people.”

Adds producer Obst: “People in Hollywood are either at your throat or at your feet. If they’re at your throat, all bets are off. If they’re at your feet, then there’s etiquette.
— By Connie Benesch, 1993

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia