Hollywood Is like High School with Money

by Zoey Dean

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

Twenty-four-year old Taylor Henning has just landed her dream job as an assistant at a major movie studio. But when her catty coworkers trick her into almost getting fired, she realizes that the old saying "Hollywood is like school with money" just may be true. The thing is, Taylor wasn't exactly a social butterfly in high school-how is she supposed to do any better the second time around? That's when she meets her boss's popular sixteen-year-old daughter Quinn, and has an epiphany: maybe this teenager can teach her how to use her queen bee tactics to succeed in the Hollywood popularity contest. Quinn comes up with a plan to teach Taylor one lesson a week-everything from "Fake it 'til you make it" to "It's *never* your fault"--and soon Taylor finds herself winning the war against rival assistant Kylie. Until, that is, she's directed to steal Kylie's boyfriend, and something happens that's not in the game plan: Taylor falls for the guy. Now she must do the impossible-- harness her inner mean girl while staying true to herself.

Release date: July 2, 2009

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 290

Sample

Dear Michael,

You’ll never guess where I am.

I paused and turned the postcard over to look at the picture of the iconic Hollywood sign, stark white and enormous against
the bumpy range of the Hollywood Hills. As I chewed the end of my pencil, I realized, belatedly, that the sign pretty much
gave my location away. Really, where would Michael Deming think I was—Peoria? I sighed but kept on going. After all, it was
only a postcard.


Got the job I mentioned last time. Moved out here from Middletown just last week. L.A. is crazy and weird, and I love it!!

I hesitated for a little while over what to say next. Michael Deming had never once written me back, though I’d sent him probably
three hundred letters and notes over a period of nine years. Some people, like my friend Magnolia, would say this made me
a kind of epistolary stalker, but I knew it just meant I was a fan. A really, really big fan. Kind of a really, really creepy
fan, Magnolia would say, but of course I wouldn’t listen to her. And anyway, what did she know? As much as I loved her, she
was still trying to figure out what she wanted to do with her life, while I was here, at a movie studio, getting ready to
start doing what I wanted to do with my life.


Will keep you posted, I wrote. Love, T.


Probably the “Love” business was a little much, but I sort of felt like I could say anything to the guy. It’s easy to be yourself
when no one is actually paying you any attention. Also, I’d never signed my whole name—for some reason I’d always just put
T—and the anonymity made me bolder.


I tucked the postcard into the Fodor’s Los Angeles that I kept in my purse and glanced up at the sleek, black-haired receptionist talking quietly into her headset. The wall
behind the white crescent of her desk was a waterfall, with sheets of chlorinated water splashing endlessly down into a basin
filled with shimmering rocks. Wind chimes tinkled in the corner of the room, and every once in a while a mist of gardenia-scented
air wafted out from some invisible vent. Some interior design team had gone to a lot of trouble to make the lobby of the creative
department at Metronome Studios look like a very expensive spa. And it was definitely impressive, although the sound of the
water made me feel like I had to go to the bathroom, even though I’d just peed.


Michael Deming would hate it, I was pretty sure of that. He’d fled Hollywood years ago and now lived in a log cabin without
running water or electricity in the San Juan Islands. Or at least that was the rumor. Michael Deming—director, auteur, genius—was
the J. D. Salinger of the film world, except that he’d only ever made one studio movie, which had been a flop. But a lot of
people had been obsessed with Journal Girl, including me. I’d seen it for the first time at age fifteen, as the clueless new girl at Boardman High School in Cleveland,
Ohio. By the time the credits rolled, I had discovered what I wanted to do with my life: I was going to make movies.


At first I thought I’d act, but as it turned out, I had terrible stage fright. I also developed a weird stutter whenever I
had to say a word that started with the letter S. The summer before my senior year, my parents sent me, at my insistence, to Director’s Camp, but I didn’t do so well there
either. I was terrible at telling people what to do, I had no “unifying vision,” as my counselor put it, and I couldn’t work
an editing machine to save my life. Luckily, I ate some bad shrimp, got food poisoning, and was sent home early.


Despite such setbacks, I did not give up. I focused instead on how to make movies without having to be in front of the camera
or manage heavy equipment. Four years in the film department at Wesleyan convinced me that I had the talent to pursue my dreams;
two years interning for a beloved professor, shadowing him as he made a brilliant movie only a handful of people would ever
watch, convinced me I wanted to work on movies that might actually get seen. Hence my presence in this lobby, waiting to start my first day of work as an assistant to an assistant at a major movie studio.


Thank you, Michael Deming. You are my inspiration, even if you’ve never even bothered to write me a single note of encouragement.
Even if, at this very moment, you are wearing dirty overalls and eating squirrel meat in some backwoods hovel, cursing Hollywood
as a nest of vipers, phonies, and sellouts.


I took a sip of the iced mocha I’d bought from the café down the street from my apartment—technically Magnolia’s apartment,
but she’d been kind enough to let me and my boxes move in—and cleared my throat, hoping the receptionist would notice me.
She sighed and pushed a curtain of black hair back from her admirably high cheekbones. “Taylor Henning?” she said breathily.


I stood up obediently, my heart pounding in my chest.

“You can go in now. Here’s your ID.” The receptionist pushed toward me a laminated card that read METRONOME STUDIOS in intimidating
block letters. I picked the ID up and saw a grainy version of my narrow face and light blue eyes staring back at me. My hair
was sort of flat, and my nose was a little shiny, but I’d certainly seen worse pictures of myself. My Ohio driver’s license,
for example, which I hadn’t bothered to change in six years of living in Connecticut, made me look like a felon.


“I’m sorry—where again?” I asked. “I can’t remember.”

“Last corner office on the southwest side.” The receptionist opened an Us Weekly to a spread of Ben Affleck pumping gas into his car. “Stars—they’re just like us!” the headline proclaimed.


Right, I thought—just like us, only richer, better looking, and constantly hounded by photographers. As I walked away, the
receptionist called, halfheartedly, “Good luck.”


I turned around and smiled my best, most grateful smile. “Thanks,” I said, but she was no longer paying any attention to me.

I swiped the ID through the silver card slot, and the glass doors slid open with a hiss. If the waiting room was a spa, the
interior of the creative department was a luxury space station. Below the high white ceilings, the illuminated walls gradually
changed color, like a pulsing screen saver, from vivid orange to deep magenta to purple and blue. It was… not tacky, exactly,
but not subtle either.


Through open office doors, I could see the creative executives, intimidatingly busy on their BlackBerries or laptops or iPhones.
Their assistants sat at desks outside the CEs’ offices, guarding their doors, acting as secretaries, factotums, and girl/guy
Fridays. And in about five minutes, I was going to be one of them.


The last corner office on the southwest side was a sleek glass cube buffered from the hallway by an intermediate room, half
office, half reception area. A shiny placard announced that I was entering the domain of Iris Whitaker, President of Production.
Iris Whitaker, my new boss. In the outer room were two sleek black desks, two bookcases lined with scripts, a NASA-quality
laser printer, a low white couch, and a single window that looked out onto the courtyard and fountain in the middle of the
studio lot.


I set my bag on the smaller, empty desk and looked around, feeling my pulse beating hard in my neck. The other desk, which
mine faced, was decorated with a cluster of silver photo frames, votive candles, and a porcelain vase of pink tulips. That
would be where Kylie Arthur, Iris’s first assistant, sat. Up until very recently, Kylie had been the second assistant, but
now she was basically my boss too. I’d never met her, but Iris, during our interview last month, had assured me that we would
get along.


I would have been able to see into Iris’s office but for the tangle of tall plants along the glass wall that separated her
from us, her minions. There were several towering cacti, a bunch of lush, ferny things, and even a miniature orange tree.
Through the green fronds I could only make out the occasional flash of a white blouse. But I could hear Iris’s gravelly voice,
and though I didn’t want to eavesdrop, I couldn’t help it.


“Quinn,” Iris said. “I don’t care what your father says, you know the drill: shopping on Third Street on Saturdays only. Now don’t
make me get into it again.” She paused, then cackled. “Nice try, kiddo,” she said. “I’ll see you tonight. I love you.”


I waited another moment until I was sure that Iris was off the phone and then approached the threshold to her office. I could
already feel my cheeks flushing, the way they always did when I was nervous. (This was why I never wore blush—overkill.) I
unclenched my fists, smoothed my hair, and tried to think calming thoughts. I knocked on the doorjamb.


“Come in,” Iris called, and steadying my breathing, I entered.

Iris Whitaker sat behind a desk cluttered with paper, typing furiously into her computer. The vast rear window of her office
looked over one of the ocher soundstages toward the skyscrapers of downtown, which were, unsurprisingly, obscured by an orange
brown smog. Hesitantly, I moved a few inches further into the room, stepping onto the sheepskin rug and admiring the marble
coffee table and the slate gray minimalist sofa with its shantung throw pillows. The office had the strange but not unpleasant
smell of potting soil and expensive leather.


Iris’s computer pinged—e-mail sent—and then she turned to look at me with her dark eyes. Copper-colored curls fell to her
shoulders, and her arms were Pilates-toned. She was in her forties, but she looked about twenty-seven—hardly old enough to
be the mother of Quinn, who Iris had told me was a junior in high school. “Taylor!” she said warmly, standing up. “Welcome—come
on in.”


I leaned over the desk to shake Iris’s hand. She was angular and nearly six feet tall, and her handshake was as firm as a
man’s.


“Hi,” I said. “Thanks.” Then for some stupid reason I wished her a happy Monday.

Iris smiled, not dismissing my silly remark but not responding to it either. “Please, pull up a chair. Actually, not that
one—it’s holding up that cactus there. So you made it here in one piece, I see.”


I sank so deep into the black leather chair I’d chosen that my head was barely above the desktop. “Yes,” I said. “I’ve been
here a whole week.” I tried to sit up very straight, but what I really needed was a booster seat.


Iris twisted a large opal ring on her right hand; otherwise she wore no jewelry. I’d heard that she’d been married to a high-powered
producer but that there had been a messy divorce. He’d run off with a starlet—someone young and malleable, not tall and fierce
like Iris Whitaker, the seventh most powerful player in Hollywood. That was what Entertainment Weekly had called her; I’d read it on a plane trip to Florida to see my grandparents. Or at least that was what I thought I’d read.
I’d had a couple vodka tonics—I do not like to fly the friendly skies—and so I couldn’t be 100 percent sure.


Iris was smiling at me but not saying anything, and it’s awkward moments like this when my verbal floodgates tend to open.
“I just have to tell you how thrilled I am to be here,” I said. “I know I said this in the interviews, but this is all I’ve
ever wanted to do, and I can’t believe I get to be doing it. I know how lucky I am, and I want you to know that I’m grateful
too. I mean—it’s just incredible. And so I want to say thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.” I managed to stop myself
then by biting my lip. Hard.


Iris raised her carefully plucked eyebrows. “That’s great to hear,” she said a beat later. “You’re welcome.”

“Movies are my passion,” I barreled on. “And I plan to be here for the long haul. I’m not in it to hang out with celebrities
or drop names. I don’t want to party all night at Chateau Marmont or anything. I’m in it because I’ve never wanted to do anything
else but make great movies.”


Clearly I needed a better strategy than lip-biting to shut me up this morning. Maybe a muzzle would do it.

Iris smiled. “Great is a tall order, you know,” she said, not unkindly. “Profitable is often about the best we hope for. But we do look for great stories here, of course. If I’m doing my job right—and if you’re
doing yours too—that means we’re reading every script out there, plus every magazine article and every book and every blog
that might be a hit. We don’t want to miss anything that might translate to the screen. We’re prospecting for gold, Taylor,
and we sift through every pebble in the river to find it.” She paused. “There! That’s my recruitment speech. Not that I need
to persuade you of all people. You seem to have drunk the Kool-Aid already. Not to mix metaphors or anything.”


“Of course.” What she said was true—I needed no convincing.

“It’s not an easy job,” Iris continued, still twisting the ring. “You need to make yourself available to us around the clock—which
is where the BlackBerry you’ll be getting comes in,” she said with a wink. My stomach tingled with excitement. Not that I
relished the idea of middle-of-the-night e-mails (I’ll need that script on my desk at 8 a.m. sharp!), but knowing I’d soon have my very own BlackBerry—like a doctor’s pager, I thought—made me feel high powered and professional.
And God knows my battered old Nokia could use an upgrade.


“Of course,” Iris added, “I do lean on my assistants to help me prospect.”

“Absolutely,” I agreed. It was why I had wanted the job so badly. At Metronome, assistants weren’t just cappuccino fetchers;
they were asked their opinions while they delivered the cappuccino. At the agencies, you started out in the mail room.


“Enthusiasm comes in handy. But it can sometimes cloud someone’s judgment,” Iris continued. She pointed her BlackBerry at
me. “Not every movie deserves to be made, you know.”


“Oh no,” I agreed. “Of course not. I mean, half the movies that do get made don’t deserve to get made, it seems. Like that
one where Owen Wilson played the one-legged horse trainer with the pet monkey, what was that called? I’d like to meet whoever
thought that was a good idea.”


“Actually,” Iris knit her brows, “we considered that script.”

“Oh,” I stammered, “I’m sorry—I mean, I’m sure it had great potential. I think—”

There was a knock at the door, and I sat back in the chair, immensely grateful for the interruption. In two more minutes,
I would have talked myself right out of my new job, and then what? I’d have to go back to Middletown and beg Eckert Pinckney,
the professor who’d already paid me out of pocket for the last two years, to take me back. Not that I’d left on bad terms;
he was the reason I even got this job, anyway. Of the handful of people who actually saw Gray Area—the gritty but beautiful film I’d helped him make—Iris Whitaker was one of them. Opportunities like this only came along
once in a lifetime, as my mother was fond of reminding me, and I wasn’t about to screw it up.


A lithe blonde slid into the room on a pair of kelly green ballet flats. “Morning, Iris,” she said. “Bryan Lourd said twelve-thirty
at Cut. I told them that was too late, but he insisted. Also that weird DP called again.”


The girl cocked her head while she waited for Iris to respond. She stood by the cactus, not looking at me at all. She reminded
me of Sienna Miller in the film Factory Girl, playing Edie Sedgwick, except that her hair was long and wavy and dark gold, with butter-colored highlights that framed her
face. A jumble of silver chains around her neck tinkled as she shifted her weight from foot to delicate foot. Her perfume
smelled like lilies—really expensive ones.


“Thanks, Kylie,” Iris said. “Kylie, this is Taylor. Taylor, this is Kylie Arthur, my first assistant. She had your job until
a week ago, when Christy got promoted to CE.”


I’d met Christy Zeller when I flew out to L.A. from Middletown last month. I’d stayed for just two days, with Magnolia, and
interviewed at Metronome. Christy had been just an assistant then, and now she had her own office and her own assistant. At
Metronome, they nurtured talent and they hired from within.


I heaved myself out of the chair, but Kylie didn’t offer her hand. She just stood there in her skinny jeans and her silky
polka-dot tunic top and smiled. “Hi,” she said. “Welcome to Metronome.” Her eyes flicked up and down the length of my body,
taking in my black wool-blend pants from Banana Republic and my blue ruffled shirt from Forever 21. “Cute shoes.”


Involuntarily, I glanced down at my Nine West–but-look-like–Michael Kors black pumps. “Thanks,” I said, unsure if she was
being snide.


“Taylor just moved here from Connecticut,” Iris noted. “She was working with Eckert Pinckney on that film I told you about,
the one about star-crossed lovers and domestic violence?”


“Oh,” Kylie said, playing with one of her chains. Finally she looked me in the eye. “How are you liking L.A. so far?”

“Well, there’s a lot of smog,” I said. It was the only thing that came to mind.

“Right,” Kylie said, looking at me blankly through her long, mascaraed lashes.

There was an awkward pause, which Iris finally broke. “Kylie’s one of the best assistants I’ve ever had,” she said. “If you
have any questions, she’s the go-to person.” She turned to look at her e-mail. “And I guess we’ll have to move my two-thirty
so I’m not late from Cut.”


“No prob.” Kylie nodded briskly and vanished behind the plants into the outer office.

“Kylie’ll get you situated,” Iris said, dismissing me. “Good luck.”

“Thank you,” I said. I thought that maybe I should shake Iris’s hand again, but she was already scrolling through her BlackBerry
screen. As I passed the jungle of plants on my way to my new desk, I felt a mixture of elation and mortification. I had gushed
like a seventh-grader, I was wearing imitation designer shoes, and I’d summed up my feelings about my new home with the word
“smog.” But still, I thought, I’m here. I made it.

I straightened my shoulders and sucked in my stomach. At twenty-four, I was ready to start living my life. But first, I really
had to pee.


Some people say that being a second assistant is kind of demeaning,” Kylie said, touching a lit match to one of her votive
candles. “But it’s not. It’s incredibly important. I’m actually going to miss it a little.” The wick sputtered, then caught
the flame. Kylie looked up. “I hope you don’t mind.” She blew the match out. “It’s soy-based and aromatherapeutic. It helps
my concentration.”


“No problem,” I said quickly, suppressing the urge to make a joke about fire safety. I wanted to ask Kylie what she was going
to miss—the photocopying? the fetching of nonfat lattes? sitting at the smaller desk? Don’t get me wrong, I was thrilled to
be at Metronome, but I knew there were going to be parts of my job that weren’t actually thrilling. That was the way things
went: you paid your dues, and then you got to do what you came for. So far I’d been second assistant for half an hour, and
all I’d done was log into my computer, put my notebook in my desk drawer, and wait for Kylie to tell me what I ought to be
doing with myself.


Kylie tossed the matchbook onto her desk. “Chateau Marmont” was written across it in loopy script. “So here’s the deal with
being Iris’s assistant. We’re on all her calls and we do her schedule. We also make sure she only speaks to the people she
needs to and that she’s never surprised by anything,” Kylie said, ticking an imaginary list off her fingers. “If she knows about it, we know about it. Here.”


She held out a stapled packet, which I walked over to take from her slim, manicured hand. “This handbook is your bible,” Kylie
said. “Also known as the employee manual for assisting the president of production. It has everything: passwords to check
voice mail, the private numbers of all the top agents, private numbers of her favorite restaurants, and a list of callers
you should always put through. It also has her daughter’s schedule, a few lines about proper attire, and the recipe for her spirulina smoothie.”


“Wow,” I said, flipping through the pages; there was a baffling array of lists and diagrams. “This is great. You know, I saw
an employee manual for carnival workers once. You know, carnies? The rules were all like, do not sleep under cars. Do not
be too drunk to respond to a customer’s needs. Do not pee in public.”


Kylie stared at me.

“I know this is totally different! I was just try. . .