Conversations with My Agent.

Conversations with My Agent, by Rob Long (Dutton, 224 pp., $15.95)

Mr. Chetwynd is an Oscar-nominated filmmaker, and writer and producer of Colors of Justice, to be released in September by Showtime.

"THIS story is half true" is the entire preface to Rob Long's delicious examination of the folkways and mores of Hollywood. He might have added that in Hollywood, truth is a commodity to be dealt with only in terms of whether it helps or hinders whatever you happen to be pitching at the moment. In these rite-of-passage confessions, Mr. Long is pitching his own honor, as if to say, "I'm not like the rest of them. All this happened before I was a virgin." But, of course, he is one of us. How else could he have captured so perfectly the mixture of ennui and adrenaline that attends life in the entertainment industry? In terms of the whole truth, Conversations with My Agent is the best thing since The Judy Garland Story or The Larry Sanders Show. Even the form of the book is instructive, mixing as it does essay-like prose with screen- play-format inserts, first-person observations with third-person stage direc- tions. If nothing else, this book shows how to format a screenplay.

We learn at the outset that Mr. Long had, by age thirty, risen through the ranks of the entertainment industry to be a writer/producer of Cheers, which is very high up the food chain indeed. But that is really only context, a credential offered the reader as evidence that this is an authoritative voice describing a journey that has a destination. It is a trip worth taking with Mr. Long (who is an NR contributing editor and the author of the regular fea- ture "Letter from Al").

Mr. Long begins his journey as a fresh-faced 23-year-old, newly arrived in Los Angeles from the Ivy League and in search of fame, fortune, and a great deal of money. (He was not alone; Hollywood was -- and is -- filled with young men and women who think these three things are guaranteed them by their Ivy League degrees, only to be shoved aside by a cunning graduate of the Pismo Beach School of Liberal Arts.) Mr. Long reasonably seeks a grounding in his new field with graduate work at the UCLA Film School, an internationally renowned institution. His description of that experience is painfully funny, very accurate, and unlikely to make Rob Long a desirable reference for new applicants. The dialogue he writes (in screenplay form) for his first day at film school has the ring of total truth:

The head of the program, a bearded, elfin-looking guy in pressed jeans and a white shirt, greets us.

HEAD OF PROGRAM

I'm passing out a list of the scripts I've written and the subsequent events that led to me being cheated out of screen credit. The important thing though . . . is the book I wrote on scriptwriting, which will be the text for this class, and which is available at all the big bookstores for $22.95. Okay? Buy the book. Class dismissed.

There are only nine class meetings scheduled of which this one, lasting all of ten minutes, is the first.

So much for film school. That behind him, he embarks upon his career, the first stop involving the acquisition of an agent. This is one of the more dif- ficult hurdles, one that is effectively "the first cut," sending more than half the aspirants back to the relative safety of Wall Street trench warfare. As Mr. Long makes clear, nothing is more critical than the quality and loyalty of one's agent. Well, "quality" and "loyalty" might not be appropriate adjec- tives for Hollywood agents, but you get the point. Rob Long's agent is both his Yoda and his Darth Vader, a person who not only educates him in the real ways of the jungle (who needs UCLA?) but also is his antagonist, constantly prodding and jabbing at him, pushing him forward or studiously ignoring him in the attempt to maximize both their incomes.

But the truly marvelous thing about Conversations with My Agent is its small perceptions: whose car the parking attendant brings first after a smart lunch meeting between a client and an agent; the moments of hating the telephone, praying it won't ring with a cancellation notice or beseeching it to clamor with job offers; which productions are worthy of leather jackets for the crew and which rate only baseball caps; how you become reluctant to tell strangers what you do, for fear that they will mail you their (or their son's/daughter's/neighbor's) screenplay; how East Coasters both hate and envy us; the subtle ranking of residential neighborhoods; why an order for 13 episodes can be as depressing as none at all; and most of all why, in Hol- lywood, the next best thing to a yes is always a no. For this is the land of the indefinite maybe, the Purgatory of hope that never dies and the Hell of "being in development." All of these Mr. Long observes and analyzes for us. And does it with humor, grace, and as much honesty as the subjects (he and Hollywood) will allow.

By the time Mr. Long reaches the last stage of this voyage, he recognizes that he has become one of us, another Stepford Wife ready for assignment to her master.

And therein lies the one thing that is missing from the book: an explanation of why so many intelligent, honest, sincere, and committed people devote them- selves to a life of toil in the factories of America's Popular Culture. Are Jaguar convertibles, the Malibu beach house, the vacations on Bora Bora worth the Sturm und Drang?

I could answer that question, but my agent's on the phone.

Love ya, babe. Thinking of you.