The Gift Bag Chronicles
Read The Gift Bag Chronicles Online
Authors: Hilary De Vries
Also by Hilary de Vries
So 5 Minutes Ago
Well, time is on my side, yes it is.
— The Rolling Stones
The New Rules
Because, the thing is, they keep changing. You get them down — and, frankly, they weren’t all that easy to figure out in the first place. Like getting your hair blown out before hitting the red carpet is a no-brainer, but who would know you’re supposed to lie about your yoga obsession? Or that you should never, ever expect celebrities to be your friends. Even if you
are
on their payroll. After several years in the trenches as a Hollywood publicist, I finally get a handle on the place and then it goes and changes
.
Or maybe it’s me who changed, because living here is a lot like that old Woody Allen joke about relationships being like a shark — if you’re not constantly moving forward, you die. In the interest of living at least into my forties, I present the new rules for staying alive in Hollywood:
If celebrities don’t walk your red carpet, you don’t exist
.If you don’t make Page Six, you don’t exist
.Too many photographers will ruin a party
.Too many fashion stylists will kill a party
.When in doubt, find another sponsor
.When in trouble, hire a wrangler
.Because there’s never enough time
.And there never will be
.To get ten celebrities to show up, invite four hundred
.And send a car
.A-list is best, but B-listers will work harder
.The gift bag totally matters
.A paper bag full of Benjamins matters more
.The List matters most of all
.Live feed beats B-roll
.Electronic beats print
.Always, always shadow the client
.Never give them an inch
.Never give them a reason
.Never leave them alone
.Tip sheet, tip sheet, tip sheet
.Rope line, rope line, rope line
.Headsets, headsets, headsets
.Publicity is the only job where you can do it perfectly and still fail
.In Hollywood, you only fail upward
.
Two Steps Forward …
“Honey, are you up? There’s a call for you.”
There’s a call for me. I’m sorry, but is there one morning when I don’t wake up with that pulse-jumping late-before-you-start feeling? Like I’ve forgotten something and by the time I remember it, it will be too late. I mean, could I have one day when I don’t wake up wanting someone else’s life? Someone who gets a lot more sleep than I do.
“Honey, are you awake?”
I fish my arm out from under the covers and try to focus on my watch. The latest must-have designer model, but I still can barely read the dial because God knows a watch isn’t about time anymore but about making a
statement
. Like, I have the time. I squint at the dial. 5:30, I barely make out. That would be
A.M.
judging by all the light pouring in through the blue toile curtains lining the windows of what used to be my old bedroom before Amy talked Helen into letting her redo it as the guest room. I don’t know
which was more insulting, my kid sister wanting to erase all traces of me, or my mother letting her.
“Alex? Are you up?”
At 5:30
A.M.
?
I don’t think so, except now I’m realizing that must be L.A. time, because in all the screwing around last night with the delayed flight out of LAX, which meant another delay in O’Hare before I finally landed in Philly at God knows what hour, I forgot to change my watch. So that means it’s really — I try to do the math and give up. Too fucking early.
“Honey?”
“Mom,” I say, or rather croak. “Can you just take a message?”
“Oh, you are up.”
The bedroom door cracks open, and twenty years flies out the window. Amazing how that happens every time I come home. Instead of Alex Davidson, president of one of Hollywood’s oldest publicity agencies — DWP-ED/PR; that’s me, the second D — divorced but with a serious boyfriend who’s about to meet my parents for the first time, I’m Alex Bradford, high school honors student with my kilts in the closet, an egg on the boil downstairs, and Mom at my bedroom door.
Mom. Even at this hour, she’s perfect. Or rather, error-free. Silvery-blond hair neatly coiffed, crisp white shirt, slim trousers, flats. Imperturbable. Mary Tyler Moore would play her in the movie.
“I’m glad you’re up, because there’s a Jennifer Schwartzman or Schwarzkopf on the line.”
“Yeah, I’m up,” I say, struggling to sit up, rubbing my eyes and pushing my hair from my face. When I come to, Helen’s handing me the receiver.
“She called me on your line?” I have a cell phone, an assistant with a cell phone, and an office back in L.A. with twenty-five different extensions, but Jennifer Schwartzbaum tracks me down at my
parents’?
Helen shrugs. “She’s already called three times.”
“That’s what she does, Mom,” I say, reaching for the phone. “She calls me three times, ten times, when once would do.”
Helen smiles one of her unreadable smiles and turns for the door. “I’ll leave you to your call.”
“Jennifer,” I say, flopping back in bed.
“Alex, thank God I reached you.”
I don’t even bother asking. Her tone of voice is one decibel short of a 911 call, but given the cotton candy world swaddling Jennifer Schwartzbaum, a former exotic dancer and now bride-to-be of Jeffrey Hawker, the much-married, much-divorced star of the long-running drama
Taskmaster;
her problems, such as they are, tend to top out at “Collagen or Restylane?”
“What’s up?” I say, stifling a yawn.
“Okay, so I was going over the print media list, and I see
InStyle
is the only magazine confirmed.”
“Well, that’s because —” I manage to get out before she cuts me off.
“Okay, but then the prototypes came in.”
“Prototypes?” I say, racking my brain.
Jennifer sighs. “The
gift bags!”
she says so loudly I have to hold the phone away from my ear. “I mean, the Stila lip glosses are fine and the new Oliver Peoples sunglasses are fabulous and I totally love the new BCBG fragrance. But we have a serious problem with the garters.”
“The garters?” I say, flaking for a moment. Oh, right, the
garters
. The traditional wedding favor, along with the cake slices wrapped for all eternity. Now that gift bags — or goody bags, if you live in New York — are de rigueur at
every
event, public and private, it had taken me a minute to remember this was an actual wedding, not a movie premiere or a charity gala.
“Yes, the garters,” Jennifer snaps.
Okay!
Still, how much can go wrong with a strip of elastic a half inch wide covered in ribbon? “Too big?” I say, sitting up in bed, trying to concentrate now. I hear her sigh, like I’m a complete
dunderhead. “Too small?” I say, trying again, realizing I’m sounding like Goldilocks.
“The ribbon finish!” she hisses. “It’s matte not sateen!”
I collapse back onto the bed. God knows, the gift bag matters. At some events, it’s the only thing that matters. That and the WireImage photos. I should know. I’m a Hollywood event publicist. Known in some greedier circles as the Keeper of the Gift Bag. Like I’m a character in
The Lord of the Rings
, with a mysterious and enviable power to conjure swag from the air and bestow it on the deserving, perfumed, partygoing masses. Still, explaining the nuances of matte versus sateen, not to mention
InStyle’s
bullying event coverage at 5:30
A.M.
or whatever time it is, is going to take a lot more energy than this wizard has at the moment. At least before coffee. I sigh and punch the damage control button in my brain.
“Jennifer, that is a disappointment, but one, it can be fixed. Two, Steven is on top of the media coverage, and three, the gift bag is really something to bring up with him. He’s the one handling the corporate outreach to, ah, our sponsors, as well as production of the garters.”
I may be the agency’s newest partner, president and account director for event planning or whatever title we’ve dreamed up for this jolly new service we at DWP-ED/PR now provide, but Steven, my former assistant and law school student for all of a semester until he realized how dull it was to actually sit in a law library, is the actual account executive. Aka the heavy lifter. The one who takes Jennifer’s calls. Or depending on his mood, palms them off onto his assistant. And then there’s Oscar. Our ace in the hole. A refugee from Colin Cowie’s office with a bouncer’s physique and Martha Stewart’s organizational skills (preindictment), Oscar — aka Oscar Parties — is the hottest event producer in a town that does not lack for hot event producers.
In fact, event production is the latest Hollywood career du jour. First it was personal trainers. Then publicists. Then stylists. Now
it’s event producers. Even by Hollywood’s normally lax standards for self-reinvention, the bar is inordinately low. Anyone who ever threw themselves a birthday party where people weren’t too drunk to remember it the next day has hung out a shingle. Club promoters. Maître d’s. Interior decorators. Bored housewives. Heiresses. They’ve all joined Hollywood’s newest growth industry.
And why not? God knows, it’s not every town where someone just hands you a check for half a million to throw a party. And hands it to you
every year
. Because if there’s any rule of thumb these days, it’s this: stars come and go, movies come and go, series come and go, but the parties — the endless roundelay of premieres, benefits, awards shows, product launches, weddings, and bar mitzvahs — go on and on. An endless trail of gift bags yearning to be filled. Which means every publicity agency in town has opened an event planning division to cash in on the trend. Which is why, as the agency’s head event publicist, I’m on the phone with Jennifer Schwartzbaum, listening to her ream me out about garter ribbons at God knows what time it is.
“Alex,” Jennifer purrs, changing tactics. “I know Steven is on it, but I don’t like it when I can’t reach you.”
I close my eyes. I’m out of the office for not even twenty-four hours, her wedding’s not for another three weeks, and already she’s hunting me down? No wonder no one wants to handle actors. All that hand-holding, 24/7. And that doesn’t even include the members of their posses, which in Jeffrey’s case are in the high double digits. Starting with Jennifer (who has her own posse) and ending up with his AA sponsor. Or maybe it’s the other way around.
“Jennifer,” I say, trying not to sigh audibly. “You have our office number, you have my cell number. You have Steven’s cell. You even have Oscar’s office number as well as his cell. I don’t
have
another number to give you.”
“Well, obviously there was one or I wouldn’t be talking to you now.”
Actually, how the hell did she get this number? Steven would never have given it to her. “Actually, how did you get this number?” I say.
“Your assistant gave it to me when I told her you weren’t answering your cell phone.”
Figures. Caitlin. Or
Kaitlyn
, or however she spells her name to distinguish herself from the other million Caitlin/Kaitlyns who’ve descended on L.A. in the past year, one of whom took up residence just outside my office. I’ll deal with her later. Right now I have to get Jennifer and her gift bag issues down from the ceiling and off the phone.
“Jennifer, it’s Labor Day weekend, and actually, what time
is
it out there?” I say, trying to focus on my watch again.