My healthy attitude toward the Hollywood totem pole is this: We're not at the bottom, 'cuz we're not even on it. We're the dirt-- check that-- the earth around it that holds the whole thing upright, its shining faces bathed in arclight splendor.

How is this healthy? 1) It's accurate, realistic, humbling, AND it places us as part and parcel to where movie ideas come from, baby! Mother earth, the big organic zeitgeist, the grand collective unconscious, good compost, food for worms... ;-)

Heh... I love the Hank Moody suggestion. A couple years ago I watched the first season of Californication in one long marathon shot. My wife wandered in at one point to ask what I thought of the show, and I said something to the effect of, "I really like this guy... great character." At that point, I noticed that Hank and I were wearing the same outfit and probably had the same 5:00 shadow.

(Side note: I've met Duchovney once... I'm pretty skinny, but he's actually even thinner than I am. Which brings up something else you'll notice at a Hollywood premiere - the talent always looks like a stiff wind could blow them over.)

It was like that Simpsons gag where Homer says there's something about the similarly-rotund radio personality Birch Barlow that speaks to him.

Unfortunately, I hadn't honed this fashion sense by the time of my first premiere. I wore a black suit. Everyone probably figured I was a junior agent.

Can you elaborate on Joe Eszterhas circa 1990? I missed this aspect of his legend.

@Amos: Back when Eszterhas sold the spec Basic Instinct for big bucks, he evolved into a larger than life character. Here is an excerpt from an overview by Slate of his book "Hollywood Animal":

Now turn to Page 252 and read the chapter about Eszterhas' fight with superagent Michael Ovitz. When Eszterhas attempts to fire Ovitz, the agent responds, "My foot soldiers who go up and down Wilshire Boulevard each day will blow your brains out." An Ovitz deputy later tells Eszterhas, "Mike's going to put you into the fucking ground." (Ovitz denies making threats.) Eszterhas writes Ovitz a scathing letter that leaks to the newspapers. Then he embarrasses Ovitz by selling his script for Basic Instinct—originally titled Love Hurts—for a record $3 million.

Eszterhas was brash, profane, arrogant, and made lots of headlines. He also made lots of money, at one point selling - as I recall - a two page treatment called One Night Stand for something like $4M. It was all part and parcel of the public persona he had created, obviously his talent as a writer having a lot to do with it.

Amidst all the craziness, if you go back and read Basic Instinct, you will see why it was such a great example of a spec script. It catches your attention right from the very first paragraph, and is a solid thriller with a lot of sex in it.

Thanks. I'll add that read to my to-do list.

Can't say John Goodman and Arnold Schwarzeneger look like a stiff wind would blow them over though ... ! ;) One thing I have noticed (at premieres - where I worked, not invited! - and in, well, jobs and life (always have been bumping into people for some strange reason) is that they are way nicer and friendlier than I could have expected ... never have I seen one "playing the star" and looking down on me (and I've had some "regular" people talk to me like I was shit) We're all human beings at the end of the day ...

@Anne: Agreed. This is especially remarkable because high visibility types have so little private life available to them. You'd think they'd be exhausted from excursions into the public. But that's been my experience, too, most of them friendly, engaging, even interested in what you do. Tougher to pull off at a premiere event.