Saturday, January 9, 2016

LENNY THE BOOK CROOK, PART 2.

Part 2. 

         This Craigslist advertisement changed everything for me. Looking over the ridiculous nature of this posting placed publicly on Craigslist and the ridiculous grammar mistakes, I couldn’t help but wonder if this was how it was all going to happen for me. I wanted so badly for it to be this easy, responding to a Craigslist posting, that I chose to ignore the obvious red flags. Tom Cruise wasn’t discovered through Craigslist and neither was Chelsea Handler, but maybe this would be different for me… All I could think about was how great this story would be if it was that easy.

            I e-mailed this Craigslist advertisement as quickly as I finished reading the posting. Within five minutes or so of sending an e-mail, I received a response:

“Do you have a completed script; or manuscript; if not; do you have a budget for a writer; I will call you.
Lenny.”

There was no addressing of me or my name, let alone his insane overuse of semi-colons. I happen to have quite the love of semi-colons, but even I know when it’s that overdone. He included a list of his credits beneath his name. They were all exciting large credits, but for a different time. Lenny’s huge list of accomplishments were no longer relevant by at least twenty years. There were a number of projects that had his name attached to them, but not one had been after 1991. While I saw the red flags once again, I was somewhat overcome with excitement at the potential of being picked up by an agent. This was the first time I so much as contacted an agent and here I was with a response in under ten minutes. I went into this with a certain naivety that must have read from my e-mail to him. Judging by the fact that no reputable agent lists their submission requirements on Craigslist, I should have known, but as I’ve said before, I didn’t.

Lenny called me a few minutes after sending me his responding e-mail. You’d think his open schedule of availability to get back to me this quickly would have suggested a lackluster roster of clients, but I just thought my “one sentence” was that compelling! Receiving his call from an unknown number, we began chatting about the book and what I hoped for its future. At the time, I wasn’t more than twenty pages in, but I knew my long-winded self and figured I could finish within a few months with the right team behind me. Lenny explained how brilliant he thought my idea was and how unique it would be. “I see big things for you, Raanan. I want to blast this. Get ready for Leno, Letterman, and all the talk show circuits. This is gonna be huge and I only represent the biggest projects!” After the initial excitement of having this man represent me wore off, I couldn’t help but wonder what he was working on currently. Who were his big projects? I began probing him with questions and his response seemed understandable. “Well, I’ve become very successful over the years, repping so many of Hollywood’s biggest talents. The last few years I’ve taken a back seat because nothing has really inspired me. Your idea for a book is the first in a long time that grabbed me. I want to read your story and I want the world to know who you are!” Flattery will get you everywhere with me and here he was, appealing to my senses.

As the conversation continued on, he began pressuring me for a finished manuscript. The truth was that I only had twenty or so pages at the moment and that does not make a book. Some of my blog posts are just as long as that. Lenny was promising me fame, success, and money. “You’re not going to know what hit you.” Still, he hadn’t read more than a few words from me, matched with our telephone conversation. I overlooked all of this, taken by the excitement of it all. Lenny wanted my finished manuscript the following week. I can easily churn out a good fifty to sixty pages in less than eight hours, so I thought: “No problem.” The problem with this method is that while I can write so much in such a short time, it’s often the furthest from polished. You wouldn’t expect Kim Kardashian’s makeup to be painted in less than six hours, so how could I think a book would be? Still, I was taken with all of this and Lenny wanted it all to start happening as quickly as possible. I agreed to have the book in his hands, claiming I needed the weekend to just edit things. Really, I was planning to spend the weekend without a lick of sleep, writing away.

The other caveat of Lenny and my initial agreement was going to be money. While I am more than well aware of money-thieving practices under the allure of a business, I couldn’t help but silence my rational mind. I wanted so badly, so quickly, to believe this was all legit that I couldn’t acknowledge the murky nature of this all. Lenny asked me for the one-time fee of five-hundred dollars. This was needed to ensure I was serious about the project and pay for overnighting my manuscript to different publishing houses right away. When I raised the slightest doubt as to this agreement, Lenny grew pompous. “I have worked with the biggest names in Hollywood, entertainment, and literature, and I have the best connections you’ll ever see. You can go to any agent you like, but I will get your book read at ‘Simon & Schuster’ and names like that. Isn’t that what you want?!” It was, but I didn’t have five-hundred dollars to give. And, if I was going to be such a huge success, landing me on talk shows like Leno and Letterman as quickly as tomorrow, shouldn’t there be some money fronted on his end? If he was going to receive a percentage of my earnings when I did hit it big and I was paying for the overhead fees now, what was he bringing to the table outside these amazing contacts from so many years ago?

A number of years ago, I was talked into a monthly subscription for a modeling agency that recruited me one day. I was told that I would be the next biggest thing to hit the modeling world. Foolishly, I took the flattery as well as the bait. I began paying almost fifty dollars a month for well over a year without one single audition coming my way. Given my clear naivety for anyone offering to help me with my dreams, I had a little more perspective with Lenny than I had when I began my “modeling career” years before.


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