Concierge Confidential (22 page)

Then one of my contacts pulled me aside. “Why don't you share this with other hotels?” she said.

“I didn't tell anyone here that I was doing this,” I replied. “I didn't know it was going to get this far.”

“It's not right to get all this free stuff, and just have
your
hotel benefit.”

I thought about what she said for a second. “You know what? You're right. But I didn't ask any of the people if that was okay.”

“Are you joking? It's all good. Don't worry about that, and just push this whole thing out there.”

She was right. I took it to the Hotel Association of New York, and they had twenty-five hotels playing it on their hold button. She knew Gerry Schoenfeld, the head of the Shubert Organization, and they got on board; whenever you called Telecharge to buy a Broadway ticket, you heard the campaign while waiting for an operator. Then Ticketmaster picked it up, and a slew of restaurants followed suit.

It kept my mind off all the crappy stuff that was going on in the rest of the city. Because all this happened within a month, I could keep myself distracted from the horror. Then I got a call from one of my publicist friends. “You know what?” he said. “This is really cool. I think you should call
New York
magazine and just get something in there. You might as well bring more attention to the fact that people should be going out to dinner and to see shows.”

I saw what he was saying but I felt very conflicted. I had made a difference, but on some level it felt like the most opportunistic thing imaginable. It was like I had the ethics of an ambulance chaser, using 9/11 to guilt people into coming back to New York—and somehow this was turning into something about
me
. I felt like I had medicated myself with the whole campaign and been an opportunist. Maybe what I should have done was to go to some kid's house who had lost a parent and, say, mentored him at the hotel and taught him a vocation.

After
New York
ran a piece on it,
Crain's
and Channel 5 news came calling. That was when it got too much for me to be the face of this whole, huge expression of love for the city. I roped Abbie into being my partner for the larger rollout as the project continued to take shape. Instead of it being the Michael Fazio show, it became the story of this creative duo who did this crazy, zany thing for the city that they loved.

Between all the press and all the attention, I had addressed the problem as best I could. Things definitely improved—somewhat. Now, instead of being at 40 percent capacity, the hotel was at 42 percent capacity—and next week looked to be at 43 percent.
They're not coming back,
I realized.
And there's nothing I can do about it. Dozens of stars have joined this fight, but they only managed to stop the bleeding. It's going to be a long time before New York is a tourist spot again—and before this hotel needs me as a concierge like they did just weeks before
.

It seemed like it was time to pay the bill and get out—but despite all my contacts, I didn't feel like I had any place else to go.

DEALING WITH CELEBRITIES

Concierges constantly get requests for meetings with celebrities but it's not as simple as just calling the stars themselves. A typical celebrity has: (a), a personal assistant; (b), an agent; (c), (often) a manager; (d), (often) a business manager—which is a nice way of saying accountant; (e), a lawyer; and (f ), a publicist.

People have this idea that if they only happened to run into a star in an elevator, they could pitch them their project and then be discovered. After all, this kind of thing happens all the time—
in movies
. In real life, you can't ignore the fact that these gatekeepers' very reason for existence is to guard the celebrity from people who would waste their time. You want to get
through
the gate—and not somehow sneak over it. No one, famous or not, is going to overrule their closest associates for the sake of someone they ran into in an elevator.

There is a certain system that you have to respect, just like when getting a discount for rooms or getting a table at a hot restaurant. You might get through by being creative or even tricky. If you were tasked with crossing a minefield, for example, getting a metal detector would help you navigate the situation. But getting through is not the most important part: you still have to have something
real
on the other side. The idea of being able to bullshit a star whose entire career is based in
Hollywood
is absurd. You can trick someone into taking your call, but you can't trick someone into doing something they otherwise wouldn't do.

Agents are all about how much a celebrity is going to get paid, so that is usually a bad person to contact first. Publicists are sometimes good way to go, especially if there's something they can spin in a positive direction. They are often a little bit more open, and they are always looking for something “interesting.” My fellow concierge Daria got her name into Page Six because she had been tasked with finding a beard-braider for ZZ Top. Lawyers are also often good to contact. They have the famous person's ear, but they're not in entertainment themselves. If you can present your case (ha-ha), they can be helpful. Many times, I've gotten theater tickets from musicians' lawyers.

Put out what it is you would like, and don't take it personally or get offended when they tell you that they don't take offers or that they don't take unsolicited material. You have to constantly skin it. “What if I just send you a treatment, and I sent you a disclaimer?” “Can I send you literally one paragraph to read, for your feedback?”

You have to have a very legitimate thing that you want. Let's suppose you wanted Beyoncé to sing at your birthday party. That's not
not
legitimate—but you had better figure out what is going to make that compelling for her
and her gatekeepers
. Maybe you're going to charge everybody who comes fifty dollars that's being donated to an after-school program. You should also have a plan B and a plan C. “Can she call and wish me a happy birthday?” “Can I send her a sign saying ‘have a great birthday,' and you just take a photo with her phone and send it to me?” Provide various levels, so it doesn't have to be all or nothing. If they're nice and they don't want to just say no, giving them choices will allow them to say yes to one of them—so you get something out of it after all.

One of my clients wanted to get backstage at a famous country singer's concert. I didn't approach his people with any expectations. “I would be excited,” I said, “if they could just go to the stage door and somebody there would have their name.” Not a big deal. What ended up happening is that the singer came out, brought them into his dressing room, and it became this whole big thing—which I would never have gotten if I made such a bold request to begin with. I kept it real, and things ended up happening. It works that way more often than you'd think.

Another trick is to read celebrity magazines like
In Touch
and
People,
as well as all the celebrity blogs. They constantly name-drop what restaurants a celebrity ate at and what hotels they were staying in. There's nothing wrong with calling the restaurant or calling the hotel, especially if you don't ask them to break their code of silence and confirm a certain person was there. Very often, you'll get someone on the phone who wants to show off. You could even get somebody who is actually friends with your targeted celeb. If you're compelling and real, getting them to do you a minor favor would be just that—a minor favor.

It's very important to validate whomever you're speaking to by knowing their name, and not just their title. In any bookstore there are agent directories. Thanks to the Internet, all of this information is readily available online as well. Because of the unfortunately named
WhoRepresents.com
(aka
WhorePresents.com
),
IMDb.com
, and
IBDB.com
, you can easily find everyone who a given star has ever worked with.

The Hollywood Creative Directory has not only agency listings, but also film production credits, production companies, and listings where you can see people's titles. If you look up Columbia Pictures, you can then drill into what actors have deals at Columbia Pictures, who's the director of development, who's the production coordinator—and you can kind of aim your contact request at the right level. If somebody's represented by the real-life equivalent of Ari Gold (i.e., the Ari Emanuels of this world), you're never going to get the agent on the line. But look to see if they have a production deal somewhere. Look at who their director of creative development is; that's probably somebody who's a little more eager to be nice. Having contact with celebrities seems more exciting than it really is. Being able to make that connection for you might be one of the few chances that contact will have to seem like a big shot.

Let's suppose you have a name but you can't get their exact phone number. In that case, my favorite thing to do is to use the prefix and dial randomly. Most companies have a bunch of phone numbers formatted something like “555-9xxx.” Try dialing a random sequence, like 555-9865. “John Geiger speaking,” they'll say.

“Oh, I'm sorry. I was trying to get Leslie.”

“Leslie who?”

“Leslie Langford. What extension did I dial?”

“She's at extension 3499.” Then they'll transfer you, but even if they won't, they'll have given you the extension. But again: Make sure you have something specific and legitimate to ask Leslie. Respect the system and her role in it.

13.

The Great Escape

Eric Stepansky was a frequent guest at the hotel. He owned a commercial lighting company and was wealthier than God. He also happened to be a very nice guy who treated Abbie and me like we were his pet charity. “Is it supposed to rain tomorrow?” he asked me one day, walking by the desk on his way out.

“Let me look,” I said, flipping open the paper. “No, it looks like it's going to be good tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” he said, passing me a hundred-dollar bill.

Whenever he made some dinner reservation with Abbie in the morning, he would give her a hundred-dollar tip. By the time I got there, she'd have a “confirmed” card for him—and when he came by to pick up that confirmation from me, he's give me a hundred dollars as well.

Eric's company eventually bought a corporate apartment, and he stopped staying as a guest at the hotel. But he would still pop in every so often. If he wanted a reservation at a place like Daniel or if he wanted to see a hot show on Broadway, he would simply ask us—and we always took care of it immediately.

“I don't want to come here every time to give you money,” he finally told Abbie. “Can I just give you a check once a month, and then I know that you're going to take care of me?”

“What do you want to do?” she asked me when I came in to work. “Should we do it?”

One of the things I admired most about Abbie was how hard she worked to provide for her son Ali. She scrimped and saved to pay for his tuition to the ultra-elite Allen-Stevenson School. It was the kind of place where his classmates were the sons of Goldman Sachs chairmen—while she was making do in a one-bedroom apartment. I knew that every little bit of money helped.

“Well,
yeah,
” I said to her. “Why shouldn't we take Eric's money? Who cares that he's not at the hotel? We're still providing him a service.”

“How are we going to deal with him on tickets?” she asked. “We can't put it to the room. There isn't a room.”

“Maybe we could get a credit card machine ourselves,” I said. “Or PayPal. I'm sure we can figure something out.”

“Fine. Let's just charge him two hundred dollars a month,” she said. “We'll split it.”

A couple of weeks later another of our favorite patrons was staying at the hotel. Kevin was a very frequent, very rich guest. He loved Abbie and me because we always covered for him when he brought his mistresses by the hotel. One week it would a girlfriend, and the next the wife; but we always acted as if we hadn't seen him in forever.

“You know I only stay at InterContinental hotels,” Kevin told me, “but I don't have the same relationship with the concierge in London as I do with you and Abbie. You and Abbie are the best. The next time I'm there, can I just call you and have you take care of things for me?”

“Of course!” I told him.

“I'm not going to do it unless you let me give you something.”

“All right,” I said. “Whatever you think is fair.”

“Do you share everything with Abbie?”

“Something like this, we definitely would. She's here at the desk sometimes and I'm here at the desk other times. To make sure that you're never disappointed, we can just split it. We'll make an arrangement so someone will always be around to take care of you.”

“Terrific. How much should I pay you?”

I shrugged. I felt so awkward. I liked and respected Kevin; despite his libido, he otherwise was a class act who always treated us well. I didn't feel comfortable putting a price on myself with someone like that. “I don't know…”

“Just give me a number.”

“Five hundred?”

“Perfect.” He counted out five one-hundred-dollar bills, and threw me a hundred dollars extra as a tip.

After a few weeks of this, I got to talking with Abbie. “You know, we should think about just charging people. Why should we be embarrassed? We're really good at what we do. We should come up with an official fee, and maybe even start telling people proactively.”

“Like who? What kind of people?”

“Like our big high rollers. There's a lot of people like Eric and Kevin. If they're not at the hotel and they live in Atlanta or whatever, we can still do stuff for them.”