Transcript: I Don’t Get Important Phone Calls

Rob Long on the bluster of having an assistant and the reboot showbiz needs

This is Rob Long with Martini Shot for The Ankler.

I once had a young writer on a writing staff and we were talking about when, exactly, we could expect that writer's first draft.

“I'm not sure,” she said. “I'll have to figure that out with my assistant.”

And I remember thinking to myself, assistant? And then mentally calculating this writer's episode and script fees, and wondering how someone making such a decent but not extravagant salary justified spending even what was probably a usurious portion of it on an assistant. What did this assistant assist with?  

At the time, I was one of the executive producers of a network television comedy. And I had a writers assistant — we had two of them, as a matter of fact — but these are pretty important and busy jobs. They have to make script and story notes, sit during rewrites and get all of the changes into the script, and in general work for the only thing worse than one writer, and that's a room full of writers. But they were busy. They didn't really work for me exclusively. Or even non-exclusively. They worked for the show.  

So when the writer said, "I'll have to figure it out with my assistant," I guess I was nonplussed — the actual definition of nonplussed, which is baffled, rather than what it sounds like and will eventually come to mean, which is unimpressed. I was baffled, and it showed on my face.  

So the writer explained that the assistant was there to help with all sorts of things the writer was too busy for — what those things were was unspecified — and that, besides, it was a great way to break into show business, running to CVS and Staples.  

And of course we all know that when you talk to your agent or manager, it's highly likely that his or her assistant is listening in on the call. They're supposed to, actually. It's considered a perk, for some reason — a way to really learn how the entertainment business is conducted. Although it would seem to me that a day spent listening to phone calls between agents and clients and agents and studios couldn't possibly encourage anyone to get into show business, apparently it does. So the next time you're on the phone with your agent, make sure you say hi to the assistant who's also on the line, on mute.  

I once was running a show and I was told by the line producer that there was money in the budget for my assistant, should I want one. And I said, “No, I don't need one.”  

And then I thought, wait. Maybe I do need one. I mean, everyone in Hollywood has one, right?  And they all know each other, and follow each other on Instagram, and hang out in bars and places like that, exchanging information and getting intel to bring back to the office. It's true — the town is basically run by a bunch of people roughly the same age who listen in on every important phone call. They know stuff.

“And I'm sure I can find something for this person to do, right?” I thought to myself.

So, “Sure,” I said. “Get me an assistant.”