Working in L.A. can be a challenge. My lowest point came 18 months ago, when I found myself sitting in my darkened bedroom, wearing a telephone headset, and talking to a felon. He couldn’t understand why he wasn’t eligible to buy life insurance for $19.95 a month as promised in the television ad he had just seen.
Let’s see, I wanted to say. First of all, you are not young like the man in the ad. Second, you just told me you have Type 2 diabetes and—from the blood sugar numbers you gave me—I’m wondering how you are even alive. Oh and third … you are a convicted felon on probation.
Instead, I politely told him about the insurance industry standard: that felons on probation or parole are too big a risk to cover. I hung up as soon as he started to yell obscenities. Another wasted lead, another unmade sale, and it was getting close to 3:30 p.m., quitting time. I had been on my headset since 7 a.m. I knew my kids would give me hell if I was late picking them up again, but I hadn’t made my quota for the day. As I waited for the next call to come in, I prayed it would be someone who at least qualified for life insurance. The phone rang. Yes! This call sounded great. Young? Check. Children? Check. Meets salary requirements? Check! Any health problems? The man on the other end had pancreatic cancer. An automatic no-go. I was devastated when I had to tell him that he couldn’t qualify when I knew he needed the coverage so desperately.
All at once, I felt a wave of sadness over the stories I heard every day, one after the next. At the same time, I felt a blast of horror over being in the position to hear them. How on earth had my career taken this turn?
As I unhooked my headset, I had to laugh. A decade ago, I’d been a Hollywood executive: a wielder of budgets, a nurturer of new talent, a maker-and-breaker of movie dreams. My vision of the future had not included sitting at a wobbly IKEA desk in the corner of my bedroom, wearing sweatpants and selling life insurance over the phone.
I’d been screamed at plenty of times in my previous jobs in the film industry. I’d spent 20 years climbing the Hollywood ladder, starting as a lowly assistant where I did everything from cleaning out my boss’s refrigerator to flying in private jets with beautiful movie stars. My first job out of graduate school was Xeroxing scripts for 10 hours every day. It might sound worse than selling life insurance, but I was queen of that Xerox room. If you needed 150 copies of Hill Street Blues in goldenrod (the mustardy shade of yellow paper indicating the script had gone through many, many onerous drafts) by that afternoon, you had better be nice to me.
Next, I was an assistant at Creative Artists Agency during the golden age of talent agent Mike Ovitz. This was in the late 1980s, long before overtime wages and sexual harassment laws. More than once, I was summoned into my boss’s office so he could scream and curse at me. But I knew that job was a steppingstone to the big leagues. It led me to Castle Rock Entertainment, where I toiled for four years, working with some of the brightest and most creative people in Hollywood. I eventually became director of development, a job that meant spending every weekend reading and watching movies, most of which were terrible. But I remember vividly the day the script for The Shawshank Redemption came in. The head of the film department asked his team what we thought of it. I couldn’t believe how good it was—I couldn’t find any flaws.
From there, I got the chance to work with one of my favorite actor/directors, Robert Redford. As the vice president of development for his production company, Wildwood, I spent most of my time reading books, scripts, and articles—anything I thought merited a look from Robert Redford. Occasionally, when we had meetings about a script under development, he was reminded of a movie from his past. He told us about shooting The Electric Cowboy in a red rock canyon in Utah and shared memories of working with his friend Paul Newman. These moments made it worth the long hours.
Then, my first son was born. Plenty of women in the industry have kids, so I thought I could do it all: have a baby and a successful marriage while working long hours and reading scripts all weekend. When my son was 6 months old, I landed my dream job. I returned to Castle Rock, this time as vice president for Hugh Grant’s production company, Simian Films. I loved working for Hugh, who is as bright and creative as he is handsome.
But as my responsibilities grew, so did my time commitment. I would wake up at the crack of dawn to take my son for a walk or to the park just to have some time together before I headed off to work. I asked my nanny to keep him up late so my husband and I could have dinner with him. I felt increasingly pulled. One day, when I had a meeting with Hugh in New York, my flight out of LAX was canceled. I was thrilled when I had to return home—and I knew this wasn’t a good sign. Then, I was diagnosed with cancer, and my second son was born prematurely. After being treated and going into remission, I knew something had to change.
And that’s how I eventually ended up selling life insurance in my bedroom, alone with my headset and the felon. It’s been a decade-long journey of trying to find a job that offered more balance in my life and flexibility in my daily schedule, both in and out of the entertainment industry. My first outside gig was as director of a nonprofit foundation. I also spent time working on celebrity fundraisers. But I still wanted a job that would make it possible for me to work from home and pick my three kids up from school. So, two years ago, I started selling life insurance.
I loved working in Hollywood and found the people extremely bright and articulate. But Hollywood is also very insular. When I sold life insurance, I talked to people I had never been exposed to: cops, firemen, restaurant owners, truckers, FBI agents, hookers—a real cross-section of humanity. I loved getting calls from the South, because the men were unbelievably polite, even when I had to call with bad news, like when a client was getting a much higher rate then quoted because his blood work had turned up something that increased his risk. Southerners took it on the chin, thanked me, and then usually took the insurance at the higher price. I also loved the New Yorkers, who were refreshingly straightforward and honest. One guy, a police officer, told me: “Lisa, you’re a great gal, but I’ve got a local agent I’m going to go with ’cause he’s in the neighborhood.”
I was good at selling life insurance. I learned a lot about myself, and not just from sitting alone in a dark room. All of my telesales clients were trying to protect their families. And in order to help them do so, I had to ask personal, even intrusive questions.
In Hollywood, I had an endless array of breakfast meetings, lunches, and dinners with executives, agents, and managers. We talked about the writers and directors we liked and hated, and the movies and TV shows we were watching. I spent hours on the phone every day with these people, but I didn’t know any of them as well as I knew some of my life insurance clients. For example, if a client called who had received a cancer diagnosis—as I had, 13 years ago—I needed to know everything about it: size of tumor, type and results of treatment, blood work numbers, medications taken. Those calls were long and intimate. In my dark room, wearing my ugly headset, I got in-depth answers to my questions—and discovered I had a lot in common with people all over the U.S. I would never have spoken to before.
After six months on the job, I had to get out; being micromanaged from a distance, and the pressure of a sales job, were not for me. Now my challenge is to find my next career in Los Angeles, one where I can make real connections with people—preferably wearing something other than a headset and sweatpants.
Lisa Reeve is a Los Angeles native who lives in the San Fernando Valley.
Thinking L.A. is a partnership of UCLA and Zócalo Public Square.
This was originally published by Zócalo Public Square on October 9, 2013.
*Photo courtesy of Christian Haugen.
