Find Me B***h & The Bleep Bleep Story

Sometimes when you're in a toxic situation, you don't realize it until it's too late. Other times, you take that situation and work the shit out of it.

On this week's episode of the Hollywood Confessional, we have two confessions from entertainment industry newcomers who found themselves in abusive situations. And they have some serious words for their former bosses.

Find Me, Bitch!

"When you're in a vulnerable spot, you have to take a job and keep it by any means necessary."

Confessor 1 is a 22-year-old who rushed out of college and was struggling to find a job when their mom passed away. They  eventually found a production assistant job for a commercial production company. When it turned degrading, they found innovative ways to stay employed and get their revenge.

The Bleep Bleep Story

"When they announced the master class, it was like, Oh, this is the thing. [BLEEP BLEEP] is teaching it himself. This is going to be amazing. And I sort of naively expected that we were going to really workshop the scripts. I thought he was there to sort of, like, teach us his process. But I should have known better because the theme of the class… was sex scenes."

Confessor 2 is a 20-year-old aspiring screenwriter fresh out of suburbia. They were invited to take a free writing class at the studio of a famous multi-hyphenate. Despite  red flags, they went along with it and soon realized they'd been sucked into a wild and toxic scam.

In this episode, we get into the following:

• What is the reality of the entertainment industry like for those starting out?
• How do you identify red flags when you're pursuing a Hollywood opportunity?
• Why are people trying to break into the entertainment industry sometimes willing to overlook toxic behavior by people in charge?

We top it off with a shoutout to someone who is putting his career on the line to make Hollywood a happier place... the founder of Video Mantis, Thomas Popp. 

Love this episode? Rate and review it here! 

Other episodes we think you'll like:

• "The Can Lady" & "This Is a Man's World"
• "The Porn Car"
• "Stranded" & "The

Connect with us:

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Check out some of our favorite shows:

• Screenwriters' Rant Room
• Screaming into the Hollywood Abyss
• It Happened in Hollywood
• The Secret History of Hollywood

Hollywood Confessional is a Ninth Way Media production, produced by Meagan Daine and J.R. Zamora-Thal.

Sound Effects and Music provided by Zapsplat and Pixabay.

Keywords: filmmaking podcast, film podcast, screenwriting podcast, entertainment podcast, Hollywood, filmmaking, writerslife, actorslife, setlife

Transcript

FIND ME B***H

[THEME MUSIC]

Confessor: Forgive me, father, for I’ve been a gopher for an adult little boy whose mommy was really mean to him. 

[SFX: Child crying]

JR: Tell me, who were you when you took this job?

Confessor: I was fresh out of college. I was 22. I was in a really vulnerable spot because it was my first job out of school. I didn’t have any luck finding anything. I was applying for everything and just getting nothing. And to make things worse, my mom passed away unexpectedly. She was like my support all around. 

There was like no safety net for me so whatever job I could get, I was going to take it. I had been looking for six months with absolutely no luck. I was surviving on the money I made giving swim lessons the summer before. 

[SFX: Splash, whistle blowing, lifeguard yelling]

I was really desperate. And then, I get this job. 

[SFX: Triumphant music]

It’s this production assistant job for this commercial production company. They did animation for commercials. And I was running errands for them. It paid shit. And it also wasn’t… I had no health insurance. It was that contractor type pay with no benefits.

Meagan: How did that make you feel?

Confessor: It’s so degrading. I realized that I ended up doing things I never would have done before my mom passed away. I had this level of fear that things could happen when you don’t expect them. You should just take a job and keep it by any means necessary.

JR: Did you have a sense going in that it was going to be that shitty job, or did you have higher hopes?

Confessor: I thought that it was going to be something… I thought it would be a stepping stone to something else. Something better. I thought I’ll do this for a little while and then I’ll find another job. I was applying for other jobs the whole time I was working and just getting nothing. At the time, I wanted to put on that I didn’t need help. I was afraid to tell people I was struggling, so I was just eating it. 

Like I said, it was degrading work. You’re just running around getting people stuff, which is fine, but when people are rude about it and not saying thank you… plus I was cleaning up after them. I was doing dishes. I cleaned up the bathroom after it flooded, stuff like that where I’m like I would never do that now. I’d be like “Fuck you, no way”. But back then I just didn’t know. I didn’t compare notes with a lot of people to find out that that it wasn’t normal or just “what you have to do”.

JR: Who was the adult little boy you had to work for?

Confessor: The nightmare guy was the CEO, I guess you’d call him. He was the primary person. I was the assistant for the entire office. Any time anyone needed something, they’d ask me, and I’d go do it. But the worst parts of it were dealing with him.

He was this new and up and coming animator. He had a new, hip style of animation that was in all these high-end commercials. He made a name doing that and it gave the company a name. It all went straight to his head, and he thought he was God’s gift to animation or some shit. 

I’d heard some stuff when I got there. That there was a former producer there who was having assistants get oxys and shit like that for him. And that guy had to go to rehab, or quit, I don’t know. But he wasn’t there when I was there. Even the fact that he was there for so long made me think something was weird. Culture doesn’t change in a place that quickly.

Meagan: Tell me, what was your breaking point?

Confessor: He had a well-documented anger issue. He would shout and throw things, but thus far, I had been able to avoid it. One night, I find out at seven o’clock, when I should be getting off, that they need something printed for a pitch in the morning and they need someone to watch it the entire night. I had to make sure the computer stayed awake and not pause out, because then it would be on me. This was like a big job, for Nike I think.

[SFX: printer noises, occasional beeps]

I’m watching this printer just go beep… beep… I’m seeing it click once every two minutes. I honestly felt like I was going to go insane watching it. This producer who sold me on doing this. She was like “We’re going to do this together” and then around eight she was like “I gotta run to my house” and she never comes back. 

[SFX: Car speeding away]

They didn’t even say they would pay me another day. I just wrote down on my time sheet later “Hey by the way, that’s another day of work.” It should have been two days because of labor laws. 

JR: Labor laws do exist in this country, even though people in the industry want to pretend that they don’t. 

Confessor: To be honest, when I look back, that’s the stuff that gets me. The feeling that they took advantage. They took my ignorance and used it against me. I stayed up all night watching this stupid printer. In the morning, the CEO comes in all stressed out. And the print doesn’t look right. He starts yelling. 

MAN: Who printed this? You printed this? This is wrong. This isn’t the format. 

Confessor: I’m like a zombie. He proceeds to throw the papers at me and storms off. The office was an open space, so everyone sees it and they are quiet. I got up and walked out. His apologist came chasing after me. I was just like “Bye” and got in my car and went home.

[SFX: Happy music]

JR: Did you ever come back?

Confessor: That’s the thing. I came back and worked another six months there. 

[SFX: Record scratch]

So when I came back, I don’t know how many days I was out, but his underling producer called me and said come back, we’ll have a conversation. She said “I’ve had staplers thrown at me and I’ve been shouted at” she starts naming all the traumatic things that have happened to her and she had this term that was a really useful term for these situations. She called him an “intense creator” like that justified what he was doing. 

I knew at the time it was bullshit, and I was just so frustrated that I couldn’t leave because I was so scared at the time that I wasn’t going to find something else. And the CEO never apologized. I think he might have said something in passing like 

MAN: Hey we’re cool right? 

But I used that passive aggressively. I was like I’m going to do no work. It was the wrong way to go about it, but I was like I’m going to sabotage this company. They gave change for parking meters, and I took as much of that as I could.

[SFX: coins jingling]

It was reserved for guests, but I’d be like “I need to go move my car” and take a fistful of change. Anything I could do to undermine their business. I would steal t-shirts. Anything I could to delay flow. I would hide a lot. I’d go in the closet. They’d be like 

WOMAN: Where’s [BLEEP]?

And I’d be like “Find me bitch. Come tell me I gotta work.” Any chance. I remember the World Cup was that year I left, and I would be in their conference room watching games all day long. They’d ask me to do something and I’d be like, “Sure. In a minute.” Because I was like, “Fire me. Please.” Then they threw me a goodbye party when I left. I don’t think they could find somebody who would tolerate as much shit as I did. I don’t know why they didn’t fire me. I wish they had. But I was ultimately glad that I could leave on my own terms. 

Meagan: How was the conversation with your boss about quitting?

Confessor: I saw several people come and do something there, but it became clear I wasn’t going anywhere. When I started, I thought I might be a producer, and I told them that. And when I quit, he was like “Oh, you don’t want to be a producer?” He was going through the motions like that. He knew it was clear I didn’t want to be there. I was like “Let’s stop this charade.”

JR: So if you saw this guy in the street-

Confessor: The funny thing is I actually did see him in the street. It was crazy because I was walking with a friend right by this place. It doesn’t exist anymore and I think this guy is a nothing now. I’m sure he couldn’t get anybody to work with him. 

So, I’m walking with my friend and literally saying “This is that place where I worked for that asshole.” And as I’m saying this, I’m pointing to this place and there’s a guy who walks out to get in his car. He walks right into the aim of my finger and he kind of perked up like he heard me and I’m like “That’s the fucking guy”. I was wrapping my head around the fact that it was him and by the time I processed it, he was in his car and gone. But it was hilarious because what are the chances? I think he might’ve heard me. I hope so.

[SFX: Happy music, birds chirping]

JR: Go in peace my child.

[THEME MUSIC]

 

THE BLEEP BLEEP STORY

Confessor: Forgive me, Father, for I was part of a reality show for a famous multihyphenate who turned out to be a fraudulent monster.

[tense music]

So this is my [BLEEP BLEEP] story. It’s such a weird thing. I've never really unpacked it for myself in a lot of ways.

Meagan: Start with the simple things. How old were you when it started?

Confessor: Um, I was probably 19. (remembers) No. I was 20 when it started.

JR: And how did it begin? How did you get involved?

Confessor: Through a friend of a friend, actually. A friend of a friend was [BLEEP BLEEP’s BLEEP]. And that person was teaching a class at [BLEEP BLEEP’s] studio.

JR: Wow. This one is gonna be like top secret classified.

Confessor: Yeah, I’m really nervous it could get back to me somehow.

Meagan: This is a safe space. We’ll bleep everything out, and in the end, you can decide whether you’re ready to let it go out in the world. It’s completely your decision.

[tense music]

Confessor: Okay. So the friend of a friend was teaching a writing class. He wrote a bunch of movies,  like [BLEEP] and [BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP], which funny enough he said set his career back five years. So at the time he was teaching this writing class at an acting school. This was [BLEEP BLEEP’s] studio.

[SFX: Film reel, director calling action]

[BLEEP BLEEP] wanted this studio to be a holistic thing, where he would have writing classes, directing classes, acting classes. The whole idea was that people find their tribes, and he finds young talent there and kind of creates a pipeline to produce and further his own career. And the friend of a friend who was teaching there invited me to his class for free. And I was like, Oh, free writing class. Obviously I want to do this.

And I also thought it was cool, because this guy knew [BLEEP]. So I was like, “You never know what's going to happen.” I was 20 years old. So it was like, oh, my God. Like I could be best friends with [BLEEP BLEEP].

Meagan: A consummation devoutly to be wished.

[SFX: People laughing happily together]

Confessor: I came from the suburbs. Perfectly cliche, suburban upbringing. It was very safe. It was very idyllic. I have great parents, just like a really good childhood. But I was so naive about the world. I’ve made a lot of frustrating mistakes because I was ill-prepared for the things that I would end up finding in LA.

[SFX: People arguing, traffic sounds]

By this time, I’d been here three years. I was studying [BLEEP], but I knew  writing was the thing that I wanted to do. And so this kind of felt like something that I could do – you know, I felt my peers were ahead of me because they were actually in the film school, but this was an opportunity they weren't getting. That made me doubly excited, because I wasn't getting the opportunities that they were.

[music shift]

JR: So what was it like the first time you went to class?

Confessor: It was so cool. It was on a studio lot. My first time on a lot. Like they had my name, they gave me a parking pass. 

[SFX: security guard says “Thank you, miss,” car drives through a gate]

And then, you know, you go into one of the bungalows, and it's just like, here are all these writers. And this first class was actually really, really cool. And through the class I ended up meeting one of my writing heroes who – the movie that he wrote is actually one of the reasons I wanted to become a writer.

[SFX: angelic chorus]

Confessor: I had a wonderful time, and [BLEEP BLEEP]  was nowhere near this class. That came later, when I got more involved with the school itself.

[foreboding music]

I only went to that one class at first. It was ten weeks over a summer, and it was my first summer staying in LA. So, I mean, it was so much fun. I was doing what I wanted to do. I was in the city that I wanted to be in, and I was excited because things were going pretty much exactly as I had always wanted them to go.

[SFX: phone rings]

Confessor: Then I got a call from the teacher, and because of our connection, he invited me to work on this new web series the school was developing with its actors.

[music intensifies]

The idea was like an America's Next Top model, but for actors, where [BLEEP BLEEP] and his producing partners would be judges and end up choosing one actor, and I believe the prize was to have a lead role in the next movie that he was writing.

Meagan: That's a big prize.

Confessor: Yeah, it was a huge prize. And so they needed writers to come up with the scenes and the monologues that the actors would do as part of their competitions. And because [BLEEP BLEEP] was involved, it made me think it was legit. But there were a few red flags right away.

[music hit]

His producing partners, some of them were super creepy. One seemed like a failed actor. He was very handsome, and he knew it. And he liked to use that to influence people. And the other one – he was just a gross dude. Like, he just seemed scummy. He always wore clothes that didn't fit and a backwards baseball cap. And it was just like, why are you even here? He was a very weird dude, and I immediately did not like him.

The whole team worked at this house – the five producers and the five writers, um, and two of the producers were also writers. So it was like a team of seven writers. 

Nobody was really legit. But they were all further along in their careers than I was. I mean, one of them was a star on [BLEEP]. And one had done college humor. One was like booking national commercials. And here I was, who had taken one class. Like, I felt like I didn't belong at all.

Meagan: Why do you think you got chosen? Was it because your writing was so great?

Confessor: I don't really think it had much to do with my writing. I think it had more to do with my connection.

JR: It’s the Hollywood way.

Confessor: Right? And I think like, I was young. So he knew that there wouldn't be any problems with, like, pay or anything. They paid us, but it was not nearly enough for the work that we did. It was like a flat $500 for probably three weeks of work.

JR: What?!

Meagan: $500 to create a show. For an A-list [BLEEP].

Confessor: Yeah, pretty much. So this was another red flag, but I was so excited I didn’t see it. I, like, wanted to frame the check. And I mean, like, $500. It's not even going to cover rent. But I was like, this is the first time I've been paid to be a writer. 

[ominous music]

Once we started shooting the show, though, it became immediately clear that something was wrong. They had this one, uh, “acting challenge” – I'm putting air quotes around that – in which the actors were given a monologue, and then they would get notes from the directors. And then they would redo the monologue with the direction. 

And so it was the producers that I was telling you about – the guy that was a seemingly failed actor, and the scummy dude – and then it was four young directors who were still in film school.

Meagan: Oh, God.

Confessor: And they had the actors come on stage, and it was a lot of women who were just starting their acting careers. And the direction almost every single time was to be sexy. They had them crawling on their hands and knees. They had them, like, whispering the lines, trying to be sexy. 

I wasn't in the room for most of it. They kept the writers somewhere else, setting things up for the next competition or working on scenes that we had to write for the next competition, stuff like that. But I knew what was happening because some of the actors, to their credit, stood up to this and basically dropped out of the competition, because they were like, this is not right. And so, like, I knew it happened more than the people than I actually saw it happen to.

[door slams, high-heeled footsteps walk way]

JR: Eventually, there was like a big pause in production. They had all these grand ideas, but those all got scrapped, and there was a tiny little finale. And then I don't think the show really ever came out anywhere. I certainly wasn't told about it.

Now, this is like where the story kind of gets complicated. I got another opportunity. Like, in hindsight there was thing after thing that I sort of heard about but didn't quite see that were red flags. I should’ve known, I should’ve gotten the fuck out, but I got blinded by what I thought was the next step. I got invited to be part of [BLEEP BLEEP]’s personal masterclass, which was supposed to be the pinnacle of the school.

Meagan: Oh, wow.

Confessor: Yeah. This was a huge opportunity, because [BLEEP BLEEP] himself is teaching the master class. And he wasn't really present on the Web series. I think he may have been there at the finale when they shot that, but I don't really remember him being any part of it.

So when they announced the master class, it was like, Oh, this is the thing. He's teaching it himself. This is going to be amazing. And I sort of naively expected that we were going to really workshop the scripts. I thought he was there to sort of, like, teach us his process, because this was right in the midst of him writing and directing all these different movies that he was doing. It was going to be writing focused. But I should have known because the theme of the class… was sex scenes.

[music hit]

JR: Oh, my God.

Confessor: I should have known something was amiss. But to me, I'm 20 years old and I'm like, well, of course it's sex scenes. This is going to be so interesting. Look at all these things that we can do based around something super interesting. Like, you know, you know how movies are. You're waiting for the sex scene. Like it's an exciting thing. And here we are crafting these shorts where it's pretty much just the exciting parts.

Meagan: That makes me feel a little bit sick, to be honest. They were totally taking advantage of that kind of innocence.

Confessor:  The masterclass was in West Hollywood somewhere at like a rented rehearsal space. There was a stage, and then there were bleachers, and we'd sit in the bleachers. There were wranglers sort of operating the class and everybody would get in their place. And then he would come in and he'd talk from the stage. 

The way it worked is, there were ten writers, ten directors, and ten pairs of actors. And so, he came in and he told us all to introduce ourselves. Then he told us to write down our top three of each opposite category so that we could have some say in who we were going to work with. And then he ended up pairing everybody based on that. 

So you got a team of one writer, one director, and one pair of actors. The idea was that we were going to create ten shorts that [BLEEP] produced. 

Which at the time, made it seem like this was thought out. But it became apparent very quickly that whatever thought went into this wasn’t for our benefit.

[SFX: erotic sounds]

Every single person there was there because they were hungry. They wanted to break into the industry, and they wanted to impress [BLEEP BLEEP]. But there was no instruction. He wasn't working with the writers, he wasn't working with the directors. And really, he was just on the surface working with the actors. He was basically unreachable. 

There was one pair of actors in class who were acting out their scene and got fully naked and almost had sex on stage just to get his attention.

JR: Did he respond in any way?

Confessor: Not really. Like he was very, very aloof. I couldn’t figure out why we were there. What we were supposed to be getting out of this. And I mean, it cost money to be part of the class.

JR: Wait, you were paying for this?

Confessor: Yeah. $750 for six weeks.

Meagan: Wow. So much for the 500 bucks you got to create a show for this guy.

Confessor: Yeah. But, I mean, it was cheap to get face time with a famous actor-writer-director. And in some ways it still felt like we were getting that.

[eerie music]

During the Master Class, we all got invited to [BLEEP BLEEP’s] Halloween party. I was like, Holy shit. Like, I get to go to a celebrity Halloween party at his house. This is so cool. 

[SFX: Party chatter]

And so I got to the party and I had to sign a waiver to be recorded. We were given very specific costume instructions. Mine was 50s Hollywood. Some of the actors from the class were, like, dressed as cats and were pawing at people. And it turned out he just wanted a bunch of extras for this scene he was shooting. And then he's, like, interacting in the party as his character, and everybody else are just extras.

Meagan: What a fucker.

Confessor: It's just like one more thing that I was very uncomfortable with. And if I knew then what I know now, you know, I wouldn't have I wouldn't have been a party to all of this. I would have known that it was weird and wrong. But at the time, I still wrote it off as, like, this is a famous person’s party.

JR: Fame hides all manner of sins.

Confessor: Well, not all of them.

[music shift]

After the party, the Master Class continued. I wrote my script. We rehearsed our scene one time in front of him and he gave some notes. And I mean, like, to his credit, he's a fucking smart guy. He gave smart notes, like he knew his shit. And so there was always that little bit of like, maybe this is something.

When it came time to actually shoot the short – because that was part of the program, the directors were supposed to produce these shorts as well –

Meagan: Wait, I thought [BLEEP BLEEP] was producing them.

Confessor: Yeah. I don’t know if that had been a rumor or what was going on. But he just was not. He really didn’t do anything. My director got her own crew, she got her own everything and pulled a lot of favors, I think, to get this short done. And at the end, there was a festival where everyone showed their films. There was only one good short. And I don’t even know if [BLEEP] was present. 

But I know one thing [BLEEP] got out of it. He got a lot of young actors who wanted to be in his shows, and who I can only assume were put in positions that they shouldn't have been… because one of those actors is the main person who accused him of abuse.

[music hit]

Meagan: Holy shit.

Confessor: Yeah.

JR: How long after was that?

Confessor: The timeline gets fuzzy, but the accusations happened with like the Time's Up stuff, when [BLEEP] was on the award circuit for [BLEEP]. He wore the Time's Up pin, and this woman who was one of the actors in the Masterclass called him out on it. I have to think the episode that she called him out for happened pretty quickly after the sex scenes class.

[music shift]

The thing that really, really frustrates me is that I was watching it happen, and I was just so naive and so blinded by what I thought was an opportunity that I had no idea what was going on. I just assumed everybody was as hungry as me. 

And the web series is what set me up for that, because during the web series, all these actors were grossly hungry. Like we had actors like following the writers to crafty and like singing in our faces, like trying to get us to remember them. And so I had this impression of young, hungry actors that was very negative.

[music shift]

The moment the news came out, it was like, holy shit. I know this person. And like it fundamentally changed how I understood this experience that I had. Which is very selfish, because I didn't go through any of the abuse. But I became angry with myself that I didn’t understand what was happening in front of me. Up until that point, I was very excited to tell people that I had this experience. It was cool. Like this huge A-list celebrity took time, and we worked together, however tangentially. And all of a sudden it was like, Oh, no, no, no, no. Like, this was not good. I felt angry and dumb.

JR: What would you do differently, knowing what you know now?

Confessor: I don't know. I don’t know what I could’ve done. Because I just wasn’t around. For whatever reason, I wasn’t directly exposed to a lot of the stuff. 

JR: What would you say or do to [BLEEP BLEEP] if there were no consequences?

Confessor: I'm just so disappointed in him. Like this was like the coolest dude in the world, and it's just like, why did you do this? You didn't have to do this. I just want to know, why? None of this needed to happen. 

And the most frustrating thing is that even if I’d never done it, I think I'd be in the same place that I am now. Because where I am now has nothing to do with that experience.

When the Master Class was over, it just stopped. Like, full stop. No more contact with any of those people. A couple years later, I wasn’t working in film and tv. And I was desperate to get back. I was desperate to feel that connection to writing.

So I took another writing class. I met somebody there that ended up being very important to me and my development as a writer. It’s because of them that I am where I am today. [BLEEP BLEEP] had nothing to do with it.

JR: That’s great. Opportunities come from good people too. We just have to learn how to tell the difference.

Meagan: Sounds like you did. Create in peace, my child.