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Chore Whore
Adventures of a Celebrity Personal Assistant
Chapter One
Today is December 18, Steven Spielberg's birthday. Although not formally declared a national holiday, in Hollywood, California, and its environs, it is celebrated as one. A wicked form of paralysis cripples the movie industry. Celebrities, producers, directors and musicians -- in fact, anyone who is or wants to be indebted to Steven -- is at wits' end. Fingernails are being chewed, hair is being torn out and smokers who have quit, resume.
I prepare all year for this day, taking notes every time a brilliant gift idea presents itself. However, with so many requests from my clients, I still get caught short.
The week leading up to his birthday I can't sleep due to the spinning wheels in my brain working overtime.
The stars who employ me typically procrastinate, waiting until the morning of December 18 to call, desperate for ideas on what present to give Steven that will make them stand out amongst all his other gift-givers. What do you get someone who has everything?
Call me practical, but I always first suggest that they donate to his favorite charity, the Shoah Foundation, which his former assistant, Bonnie, who has since climbed the rungs of Amblin Entertainment's ladder to procure a loftier title, personally told me he prefers.
"Fuck that!" my clients say. They want theirs to be exceptional, not just another donation. Forget that Shoah documents the stories of surviving Holocaust victims and all that dribble, they want to give him something he'll never forget ... a present of such extreme uniqueness that it will stick in his mind when he's casting his next big feature, something guaranteed to set them apart from the crowd.
Combine the usual holiday madness with Steven's birthday and December becomes a time worthy of heart attacks and drug overdoses. Every one of my clients has a long Christmas gift list of what to get other celebrities, agents, publicists, household staff and assistants, not to mention families and friends. They know their yearly limit of creativity will be spent on Spielberg's birthday present, so they allow themselves to fall into the "rut" of giving charity donations to all the other folks on their holiday gift list.
Giving to charities makes the stars feel good once a year, it's a tax deduction (so everyone gets into the act), it benefits the downtrodden and it's a cure-all for what to give the person who has everything.
It just won't do for Steven.
To avoid additional pressure and stress in December, I descend upon my stationer in October and have the Christmas/Hanukkah/ Kwanzaa cards done early. I also start calling everyone in my clients' Rolodexes to confirm addresses, names, spelling, babies born, birthdays, etc. This time of the year, it is not uncommon for me to come home to messages from Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, Tom Cruise, Elizabeth Taylor, Don Johnson, Garry Shandling and Pamela Anderson —all confirming or giving a change of address. By mid-October the cards are printed in raised gold lettering with envelopes lined in silk. By Thanksgiving, several thousand envelopes have been carefully addressed. I hit the post office on December 1, hauling boxes of cards to be mailed out to addresses across the globe.
A typical preprinted gift card reads: "The [insert almost any last name in Hollywood] family is celebrating this holiday season [not "joyous season" because one wouldn't want to offend Hollywood's depressed] by donating a financial gift to [pick your charity—preferably one dealing with disease, children or the Democratic Party, if it's an election year] in your name [never specify whose]. We wish you bliss and peace in the upcoming year. All our love, [insert celebrity name].
The recipient of the card feels warm and fuzzy for three seconds, never suspecting the giver has donated $500 total to the charity, spent $2,200 on the preprinted gilded cards and has sent them to 1,000 people, donating exactly 50 cents per person. Now, that's a gift!
Eight days before Christmas, the busiest time of the year for me, and Lucy Bennett, a two-time Academy Award–winning actress, called last night wondering if I might be "available" to whip up a meal for a small, intimate dinner party she plans on having ... tonight.
The small, intimate part doesn't bother me. The cooking on such short notice bugs me only slightly. It blends in with all the other anxiety I'm feeling right now. The guest list is the intimidating part. Cooking is a job requirement. All my clients know I love to cook, so over the years it has been incorporated as an aspect of my personal assistant job, just like taking their dog to the vet, answering their fan mail or doing their grocery shopping.
I've been Lucy's personal assistant for twenty years -- way before her first Academy Award score and way before she had most of the friends she's now inviting over for dinner.
To celebrate Christmas and the upcoming Academy Award nominations, she wants to entertain ten of her closest pals -- John Travolta and his wife, actress Kelly Preston; Melissa Etheridge; Courteney Cox Arquette and David Arquette; Meg Ryan; Laura Dern and her rock star honey, Ben Harper; director David Lynch and his woman, Mary.
To complicate the dinner and my life, Lucy has given me a list of what her friends will eat, won't eat, can eat and what they would prefer to eat. Meg doesn't like salmon and she's on a diet that dictates food according to her blood type. John and Kelly lead a preservative-free life. Laura's no vegetarian but she doesn't do red meat or dairy, and Ben likes chocolate. No, scratch that, loves chocolate, especially chocolate cake. Melissa is giving the Atkins Diet a try, Mary's on the Zone, and both Davids are sold on the South Beach. Courteney doesn't eat anything that "pumps, thinks, filters or scavenges" -- in other words, no hearts, brains, liver, kidneys or crab ...
Chore Whore
Adventures of a Celebrity Personal Assistant. Copyright © by Heather Howard. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
