That’s Hollywood: Inside the mail room–and escaping it

If there’s a ground zero for aspirational types in Hollywood, it’s the mail room of a talent agency. Jordan Okun was there and he witnessed the bizarre reality of the entertainment industry. Fetching skinny lattes with the appropriate sweetener for the boss breaks a guy in.

And Okun must have known that that part of the rat race wasn’t for him when he turned the absurdity of it all into a novel, scribbled at first during his lunch hour. It’s called “LA Fadeaway“, and it chronicles the life of a 23-year-old lucky enough to step foot inside one of those vaunted palaces.

Explains the Hollywood Reporter: “The story follows a young agent trainee as he navigates the treacherous world of Hollywood talent agencies, encountering abusive bosses, backstabbing fellow trainees, unhappy trophy wives on the prowl and an assorted cast of hustlers and hanger-ons along the way.”

Okun was way nicer than I imagined he might be –okay, I cop to a bias against young aspiring Hollywood types, sorry– and he even brought his dad to KCRW for the interview. Here are the first two chapters of his opus. Read them while you listen to what he has to say about what happened to him after he dropped out of the agent-track: