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TRUE TALES OF SHOWBIZ

WHERE DID I GO RIGHT? YOU'RE NO ONE IN HOLLYWOOD UNLESS SOMEONE WANTS YOU DEAD
By Bernie Brillstein with David Rensin
Little, Brown and Company, 320 pp. $24.95

Bernie Brillstein is a behind-the-scenes Hollywood mover and shaker whose career makes a great story. He’s an entertainment industry manager of the first magnitude, or at least, he was, since this book of his wise, wonderful and wickedly hilarious reminiscences opens with his erstwhile retirement from his own company, Brillstein-Grey Entertainment.

On the other hand, the autobiography also starts with a passage where Brillstein claims, “Today, I can walk into a store anywhere in the country, plunk down my credit card to pay, and more often than not the clerk will say, ‘Are you the Bernie Brillstein?’”

Though intro might leave you thinking Bernie’s ego is out of control, fear not. He’s as self-deprecating as anyone I’ve ever met, heard or read, which is a refreshing change from the self-inflated hubris that other power brokers would heap upon us. Within the first chapter, Brillstein tells us he’s fat, comes from a dysfunctional family with a New York Jewish background with roots in vaudeville and old-time showbiz, was lousy with girls and didn’t know what the hell he was doing at every stage of his career.

But chapter by chapter, as he spins his stories of yesteryear, he manages miraculous successes and builds his business to represent artists from the late Muppet-master Jim Henson to “Saturday Night Live” creator Lorne Michaels (and a host of SNL’s greats including Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Adam Sandler, David Spade, Phil Hartman, Chris Farley). In between, he helped guide dozens of stars of the showbiz pantheon who lit the stars and faded, as well as current giants such as Nicholas Cage and Brad Pitt.

But those successes started with the starstruck hunger of a young man who’d been lucky enough to see showbiz from behind the curtains, thanks to family connections.

The book covers 45 years beginning with Brillstein’s first job as a mailroom clerk for William Morris Agency, the granddaddy of them all. It ends with more recent Hollywood war stories, including a nasty and long-running feud with super agent Michael Ovitz.

But the early years are some of the most interesting. In this era of People magazine and Entertainment Tonight, there isn’t much about showbiz - either in front of the camera or behind the scenes - that we don’t know anymore. But reading his memories of the Manhattan nightclub scene (many too raunchy to cite in a family newspaper) or his early run-ins with celebs are worth the price of admission alone.

By the late ‘60s and ‘70s, Brillstein was in Hollywood and finding great success with Jim Henson and his Muppets - is first and most loyal management signing - and with such TV show ideas as “Hee Haw,” which he explains quite honestly was a pure ripoff of the hit show “Laugh-In.”

His initial idea was to pitch an adult Muppets series in a talk-show format because he thought puppets could away with saying more outrageous things than people. The idea was turned down, but as he stared late one night at a list of the year’s hit programs -- “Green Acres,” “The Andy Griffith Show,” “The Beverly Hillbillies” - it came to him.

“Suddenly it hit me: How about a country ‘Laugh-I’? I turned to Laura (his wife) and said, ‘What does a donkey say when he makes that f------ sound?’

“’Hee-haw,’ she said.

“’That’s it!’

“And that’s how, at 3 a.m. a New York Jew named Bernie Brillstein created ‘Hee Haw.’”

The book’s chockfull of such anecdotes, and even better ones. It’s worth reading for Brillstein’s humor and knowledge, conversational style (which is ably communicated by co-author David Rensin, by the way) and even his lessons, which are scattered throughout and reveal his hard-earned wisdom from the school of hard knocks.

This book review ran in the Denver Rocky Mountain News.