Bernie Brillstein

November 11, 1999
Web posted at: 4:48 p.m. EST (2148 GMT)

By Paul Clinton
Turner Entertainment Report Correspondent

In this story: Personal managers 'do everything' Learning where to draw the line Early years at 'SNL' RELATED STORIES, SITES

LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- Bernie Brillstein is a show-business original. He's a street-smart, savvy, self-confessed "fat guy" who looks a little like Santa Claus. He began his remarkable career in 1955 in the mail room of the William Morris Agency agency in New York.

Over the years he's worked as an agent and television producer. He's the creator of the long-running show "Hee Haw," which began life on CBS in 1969, and later was syndicated. And at Lorimar Film Entertainment, he green-lighted the making of Christopher Hampton's "Dangerous Liaisons," distributed by Warner Bros. in 1988.

But most of all, Brillstein is a personal manager extraordinaire. In 1992, he and Brad Grey founded Brillstein/Grey, one of the most successful management and production companies of the 1990s. Together they produced such shows as "NewsRadio" and "Just Shoot Me" for NBC, and "The Sopranos" on HBO. He has since sold his half of Brillstein/Grey to Grey and now serves as consultant and founding partner.

"Politically Incorrect"'s Bill Maher is one of many celebrities to sing Brillstein's praises

Current high-profile clients are happy to talk about Brillstein.

Rob Lowe: "He's got instincts, great instincts, and he loves talent."

Bill Maher: "He cares more about the people than the money or the deal."

Martin Short: "He's wildly passionate and very, very honest and smart."

Those instincts, that care and those smarts should all be evident in Brillstein's new book, "Where Did I Go Right? -- You're No One in Hollywood Unless Someone Wants You Dead" (Little Brown & Company, $24.95).

The book covers his relationships with clients including John Belushi and Muppet creator Jim Henson. There's material on his feud with super-agent Michael Ovitz. Brillstein shares his views on what's wrong with Hollywood today. And he discusses the inside story on the beginnings of "Saturday Night Live," created by longtime client Lorne Michaels.

Days before the book's publication, Brillstein, 68, sat down to talk in his office at Brillstein/Grey. The result was a candid discussion about his years on the front lines of career management in Tinseltown -- where, he says, integrity is in short supply.

Q: What exactly is the job of a personal manager in Hollywood?

Brillstein: You actually do everything. You "get" the person's talent. You make sure the right people see that talent, and you make sure that talent grows. You're a wife. You really are. You take care of everything and get them ready for the day. Sounds strange but that's what you do.

Q: Does everyone need personal management?

Brillstein: I really believe in this market everyone needs personal management. Because every agency handles about 2,000 people and there are less and less studios, therefore less and less jobs. You have to have someone to go in there with a little authority and a few testicles, and make sure they're protected.

Q: In your book you say, "Comedians are the strangest breed in all of show business." Why?

	GALLERY
Browse through photos from Brillstein's book

Brillstein: You have the ability to go out before 2,000 people twice a night -- cold, no orchestra, nothing but your mouth -- and try and make them laugh at the same jokes, at the same time, and you do it 14 shows a week. That's a masochist of the worst order. You need so much approval to do that, that you have to be a little nuts.

Q: Which brings us to the language of comedy.

Brillstein: "I killed them, they died, I laid them in the aisles, I made them cry." -- the language is really death. Comedians are the most morbid people I know. They all come from dysfunctional homes, as did I, so I understand the comedy mind. You're trying to please someone in your family, probably your mother, and get them to love you. So now you get group love.

Q: You have a deep emotional attachment to show business, don't you?

Brillstein: Some people get excited by a piece of art. Some people get excited by architecture, I love performers. Bebe Neuwirth said it best: "On those nights when you're on stage and the words are right, the audience is right, the other actors are right, the staging is right, you feel you're touched by God."

Q: You say "you sublimate your ego for cash."

Brillstein: (Laughs) You really read the book. Of course I do. I don't think accountants can do show business. I don't think lawyers can do show business. They can do what they do, but how do you take an actor or comedian or a writer and point them in the right direction and go through all that garbage unless you love it and love them and think they're talented and worth it? It's an amazing experience.

Brillstein at a book-signing party

Q: Is your client Rob Lowe a case in point?

Brillstein: I've been with Rob Lowe for eight years and he had a tough time. He was coming back little by little and then he fought to get the role in "(The) West Wing," and look where he is today. It's going to put him right back where he was. He's been in the business for 18 years and he's only 35 years old. It's just great when you're right.

Q: Where do you draw the line as a personal manager?

Brillstein: I've had to call a star and tell them something at an ungodly hour. I've had to give a star bad news and good news, but I've never pampered them. Here's how I put it: If a star is working hard, I'll get them a drink of water. If he comes up to me and he's not working, and says, "Get me a drink of water" -- bye.

Q: You believe that actors are a bit lazy?

Brillstein: I've worked 46 years, 300 days a year, let's average, maybe a few more a year. I get nervous after 10 days on vacation. I want to go back to work. I love what I do. Actors sit home after a movie and say, "Ah I'm exhausted, ah I'm so tired, ah I'm going to take two months off." There are actors that make movie after movie if they're good -- Nic Cage loves to work -- but most actors love to mosey. "We'll have coffee, we'll talk."

Q: You never sign contracts with your clients. That makes it easy for them to walk away. Have you ever been hurt by a client?

Brillstein: You're talking about Richard (Dreyfuss). I was hurt. I loved Richard and I thought he loved me. He kept claiming he loved me. So I guess it was just a summer affair. I was really hurt and that's the last time I've been emotionally hurt like that because I won't allow myself -- I'm too old. I've been in the game too long, but yeah, he hurt me. Richard is an Academy Award-winning actor. He's good. That doesn't make him socially acceptable, but he's a good actor.

Representatives for Dreyfuss were invited to react to Brillstein's comments for this story, but offered no response.

Q: You say that in this business, "Desperation is the worst cologne."

Brillstein: You know if you're sitting home and haven't worked in six months and a terrible job comes up and it's for a lot of money -- I mean anything over $50,000 to me is a lot of money -- and the guy has a family and wants to do it, I'll get it for him. If he has to support a family, you should do anything you can do to do that.

But if he's sitting there with a lot of money and he just hasn't worked and wants to work because of his ego, and do something lousy, he can put himself out of the business by doing that. That's where I step in. I think that's what happened with Richard and I. He had three movies for a lot of money. I thought they were all terrible.

Ovitz used to yell at me all the time for being a critic. He said, "Why are you such a critic? You're picking up a lot of money and by saying 'no,' you're blowing a lot of money." And I said, "That's what I do for a living."

Q: Which brings us to your long-standing feud with Michael Ovitz. (Once considered one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, Ovitz founded the Creative Artists Agency, or CAA, in 1975 with Ron Meyer and Bill Haber, then walked away to join Michael Eisner at Disney. Ovitz left the Mouse House, reportedly with a large payment, and has recently started his own personal management company.)

Brillstein: Let me put it this way. Fifteen years ago, when I first lost my temper with him (Ovitz), everyone thought I was crazy and I'd be out of the business. And I said, "Where am I going with the talent I represent?" Now it's 1999. I'm still doing the same thing. Brad (Grey) is taking this company to new levels. And his (Ovitz's) goal? Just trying to copy this company.

What he figured out, brilliantly by the way, is that this town is run on fear. And when the studios abdicated their control of the actors, the writers and the directors, Ovitz stepped in. If you have the talent you are king. Talent runs managers, talent runs studios, talent runs agencies. If I didn't have the talent I had (meaning people Brillstein represented), I wouldn't have written this book.

Q: He made a comment to you that made headlines when he said the same words to his former CAA client, screenwriter Joe Eszterhas.

Brillstein: "I will send my foot soldiers up Wilshire Boulevard to get you." When Joe said it to me I nearly fainted, because I didn't think anyone could say that twice. If he's Nero, or Caligula, or any of those people, he's crazy. He's losing his hair, so he's Caligula, so that's fine. What happened is like when Hitler went into his bunker he wasn't Hitler anymore. When Ovitz left CAA he wasn't Ovitz anymore.

When relayed these comments, Howard Rubenstein, a spokesman for Ovitz, says, "I understand that in promoting a book, one must do what they have to in order to bring attention to their project. Mr. Ovitz and Mr. Brillstein have had a very productive business association for many years.

"Every long-term relationship has its challenging moments," Rubenstein says, "but Mr. Ovitz is disappointed that their relationship is being portrayed in this negative light."

Early years at 'SNL'

Q: What were the early years at "Saturday Night Live" like for you?

Brillstein: John (Belushi) was the most charming -- well, you knew him. He was the boy who "when he was good, he was very, very good, and when he was bad, he was horrid."

The real John Belushi story is the night before The Blues Brothers opened at Universal. I went to rehearsal and I called John over, and it was great. I said, "John, you're at Universal Amphitheater. You cannot saunter out on stage like you do." And he said, "Bernie, I make the greatest entrance since Jimmy Durante."

Now, who in the world would think John Belushi knew who Jimmy Durante was? But he was such a student of comedy and stars and old-time showbiz. He somersaulted to the center of the stage. Those nine days, by the way, were the most exciting I'd had since Martin and Lewis. It was great.

Q: Getting back to "Saturday Night Live."

Brillstein: That first year, there were no agents there, there were no managers there (except for Brillstein). There was no one there. It was just us. And then, right after Chevy (Chase) left to do his first movie, and when John (Belushi) did "Animal House" (1978), we started attracting hordes of people and it's been that way for the last 24 years. Frightening. I added up one day over $7 billion in movie revenues have come from that show. Seven billion dollars.

Q: You know my favorite Belushi film was "Continental Divide" in 1981. He was playing a part that was close to the John I knew. But it doesn't seem that anyone else liked it.

Brillstein: I did. I wanted him to become Spencer Tracy. And he was in shape for that movie. He trained for that movie, he looked great in that movie. I thought (director) Michael Apted did a great job, Blair Brown was delicious. I don't know. They wouldn't accept him as that kind of guy. Maybe if he would have done one more, it would have worked.

Q: But the drug addictions began. (Belushi died of a drug overdose in March 1982.)

Brillstein: Someone, one night, offered me some dope, in front of John. I thought he would kill them. He said, "How can you disrespect him like that?" Oh, my God.

Q: Muppet creator Jim Henson was also a good friend and client who has since died (with pneumonia in May 1990). Your success really started with him, didn't it?

Brillstein: Well, really, Lorne (Michaels) and Jim. It was Jim who was the deep bottom of it. The comedians were over here, when Las Vegas was flourishing. With comedians, they paid for this over here. (Gestures to left.) And Jim paid a lot of what I call "experimental money." Where I could hire young people. You know, where I could represent young people.

And then Lorne came along and gave me John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner. And then Dana Carvey, Mike Myers, Dennis Miller. Brad brought in all those people. And it's been really the cornerstone of our business, yes it has.

Q: It must have been interesting to see all those people make it.

Brillstein: If you see a guy who's a junior star, and all of a sudden has a hit, or gets to be a headliner in Vegas, or gets to be a star of a television show, and you see them right after they make it, they walk differently and carry themselves differently. They're now stars. And that's it. It's a whole big difference.

Q: You speak in your book about the wasteful way that television networks decide to pick their shows each season. They use pilots, which cost a lot to make and many never see the light of day.

Brillstein: You can't predict what's going to be a hit and what's going to make money. You have to make what you think is good. Do enough good things and you'll be OK. The average success of a pilot is one-and-a-half percent. They spend $50 million a year on research. That's insane after all these years. For $50 million, you can do six shows or seven shows. It's all crazy. Have you ever met a Nielsen family? I haven't either. Who are they? Wouldn't it be great if the Mafia took over? That's a Nielsen family.

Q: So has it all been worth it?

Brillstein: I had a great time. Look how lucky I am. Look how lucky.

Brillstein still represents 12 clients, including Short and Lowe and is working on a biopic of Richard Pryor for Brillstein/Grey.

Little Brown & Company is an imprint of CNN Interactive sister company Time Warner Trade Publishing.