Adventures of a TV Editor in Hollywood
Part 1: The first job I landed in Tinsel Town. (Warning: THIS IS DISTURBING!)
My job search for an editor gig in LA dragged on for more than six months after the move south from the Bay Area. The Land of TV and Film Production was not delivering on its promise. The only industry-related work I found advertised in the paper was at Blockbuster Video, and they didn’t hire me because I had next to zero retail experience. I was growing more desperate by the day.
My roommate Dito finally threw me a bone and clued me in to Backstage, a trade paper used mostly by productions looking for actors, but every so often, you could find crew jobs and editing gigs. I checked it for several weeks, and nothing of interest popped up. I was at the end of my rope, dangling by the neck, when I found it. A tiny square ad on the back page of Backstage.
A small post-production boutique in nearby Culver City was in need of an experienced Avid Editor. I called immediately. I was excited and hopeful but knew it wasn’t going to be easy to land the job. That was the first ad I’d seen since arriving in town, so I’d surely be competing with an untold number of other experienced applicants.
My job search for an editor gig in LA dragged on for more than six months after the move south from the Bay Area. The Land of TV and Film Production was not delivering on its promise. The only industry-related work I found advertised in the paper was at Blockbuster Video, and they didn’t hire me…
A lady with a thick Hindi accent picked up the phone. “MD Media, this is Patel. How may we help you this glorious day?” She cooed into the phone with a phony, way-too-friendly voice.
“I’m calling about your ad in Backstage, about the Avid Editor position.”
“Ok, good to hear, good to hear,” she said. “Do you have much experience?”
“Yes, I do. I’ve been editing on Avid for three years.”
“That’s not a very long time.”
“Avid has only been around for four years,” I said. “Do you mean as an editor?”
“Yes, how long have you been an editor?”
“I’ve been working professionally as an editor for six years.”
“Where do you live?”
“I live in Venice Beach.”
“Oh, that’s very close,” she said, perking up a little. “Do you have a car?”
“Yes, I have a car,” I said, “I’m also within biking distance.”
“Some people I hire don’t have cars, and that has been a big problem for me,” she said, then paused for a few seconds. “Uh, ok, let me see… you have a car… do you work hard? Can you work long hours, very long hours for me?”
“Yes, I’m a hard worker. I love editing, and I’m available to work as much overtime as the job requires,” I told her. “I just moved here, and I don’t really know anybody. I have lots of free time.”
“Ok, ok, I need someone to start today. Can you come over here for an interview in person, right now at this very minute? My editor quit on me.”
That comment raised a huge red flag, but I was not in a position to heed it.
She gave me the address, and I ran as fast as I could to my car, parked two blocks away. I couldn’t believe my luck. It seemed I had a good chance of landing the first job I saw advertised. Maybe the move to LA hadn’t been such a bad decision after all. Maybe Hollywood was the place I needed to be.
Patel steered me directly to one of her edit bays and sat me down. “Let me see what you can do. I need this video done by 6 o’clock. If you complete the task, I will hire you,” she promised. “You have less than three hours.”
With that, she left the room.
We hadn’t discussed pay, we hadn’t discussed anything. In fact, we didn’t even discuss what needed to be done with the video she wanted finished. I wasn’t about to question anything. I needed the job. I scrolled through what had been edited together. Then I poked around, opening project bins, playing video clips, and somehow figured it out.
After Patel played it back, she told me, “You did a good job on this. I will hire you.”
“Oh, that’s great! I was a little worried…”
She cut me off, “You have to work for me for free for two weeks so I can check out your work and your attitude. Your attitude is important. I will not work with bad people with a bad attitude.”
“That’s fine,” I said, hoping I misunderstood her. “So then, after two weeks, you’ll pay me for the work I did?”
“No, I will start paying you $12 an hour after you prove yourself. If you are not good, I will not hire you.”
I couldn’t believe the gall. She was obviously experienced at taking advantage of desperate souls like me.
“Ok, I’ll take the job,” I said. The words didn’t come easy. They came with a tinge of resentment, as hard as I tried to mask it. I was backed into a corner.
I told her, “But just so you know, I was making $30 an hour in San Francisco.”
“Well, you are free to go back to San Francisco and work,” she snapped at me.
I worked for two weeks for free. Eight to ten hours a day. And just like she promised, I got no pay. It wasn’t easy not getting paid. It wasn’t easy work. And it wasn’t easy working for her. She was toxic. Everything about her business was toxic. Her customers were bottom-of-the-barrel riff-raff, the lowest of the low in “Hollywood,” it was an absolute shit show.
I worked for two weeks for free. Eight to ten hours a day. And just like she promised, I got no pay. It wasn’t easy not getting paid. It wasn’t easy work. And it wasn’t easy working for her. She was toxic. Everything about her business was toxic.
After I worked the third week, she sat with me at her desk and pulled out her checkbook. “You worked 45 hours this week, but I will pay you only for 40.”
I lost it. “No fucking way! I’m getting paid everything you owe me!” I yelled at her. “And I want a raise to $18 an hour to keep working in this shithole!”
She smiled. She liked that attitude. She gladly paid me for the week.
I learned Patel was a fence for stolen property. She had a reputation for paying decent money for hot film and video cameras, lighting and grip equipment, and anything else production-related. A steady flow of criminals was coming and going, some were buying, some were selling. She had the building fully fortified with wrought iron welded over the windows and a wrought iron screen door with a buzzer. It was as secure as any prison.
One day, she got into a loud shouting match with two street thugs in her front office. They were hurling death threats back and forth, and I was expecting to hear gunshots ringing out any second. It was then I realized that I was trapped. There was no exit but the front door, which was clear on the opposite side of the building. If there was a gun battle, or a fire, I was a dead man.
Worst of all, the place was chronically infested with cockroaches. I was working inside the World’s Biggest Roach Motel. They were swarming everywhere and inside of everything. I had to fight them off the keyboard while I was working and check my clothing before I got into my car. When I stepped into a room and turned on a light, the room would shift because the walls would be covered with a blanket of cockroaches, which would only scatter if you banged hard on something, repeatedly. They owned the place.
Tiny cockroach babies fed at the water cooler overflow/spill trough. Patel didn’t seem to notice their frenzied scurrying as she refilled her water bottle over and over throughout the day. She happily invited everyone to drink from the cockroach fountain, “Please do enjoy the free water I am supplying for my good customers and employees!”
As if that wasn’t bad enough, when I learned that she was refilling the water cooler bottles in her bathtub at home I almost hurled at the thought of it. Thankfully, I never had a single sip of water from it.
On my way out the door to lunch one day, I glanced in the kitchen and noticed Patel had a heaping salad in a bowl set on the counter. It was fully-involved with cockroaches. They were crawling all over it, around it, and inside of it. I could make out cockroach droppings or eggs on the leaves, or maybe it was black pepper. It was hard to tell. I thought to myself, “That’s sad. What a waste of a good salad. Too bad she’s gotta throw it away now.”
When I returned from lunch, Patel was just polishing off the bowl of salad. I closed my eyes, found my center, and kept from reacting to the horror.
The next day, Patel spent her time running back and forth to the restroom. She did not look good. She looked like she was at death’s door. I suggested she go to urgent care or the ER to get checked out. She had to be severely dehydrated, despite frequent refills at the infamous water cooler. She refused.
On her way home from work, her appendix exploded, and she crashed her car into a tree. I had a nightmare that night of tiny little baby cockroaches hatching inside her guts and eating her alive, slowly.
Somehow, she survived.
I found a new editing gig while I was out of work and Patel was recovering in the hospital. I didn’t see or hear from her until the day after she was released. She showed up at my apartment at 6 in the morning, pounding hard on my front door. I pretended I wasn’t home.
“Wake up! Jon, wake up! I need you back at work today!” she yelled.
She walked over to my bedroom window and began hitting it with her keychain.
“I see your car parked out here on the street! Please come back to work!”
There was a long pause…
“I’ll pay you $40 an hour!”
CONTINUED IN PART TWO
Note: this is a rough draft of a larger story that I’m hoping to turn into a book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "I am an avid reader of mob and true crime novels. This is one of the best I have ever read." - Amazon review
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "What a page turner! This story is an amazing piece of investigative work—both compelling and heartbreaking." - Amazon review
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I’d seen the author’s work in OZY but was blown away by this book. It’s SUCH a great read, written from the heart! Full of interest for those historians of the hippie generation, North Beach, corrupt cops, mobbed up pols, and San Francisco in general. Very well written and paced up to the last pages. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Buy this book now!" - Amazon review
Well did you go back for the $40.00 an hour or stay at the other gig?