Monday, June 15, 2009

Page 3 -- William Morris Executive Compensation Memo

Lost in the hub bub of Irv Weintraub's now legendary (but painfully out of date) leaked memo of William Morris' executive compensation was the equally intriguing "Third Page." Industry insiders are obsessed with Pages 1 & 2 that discuss senior management pay packages like Jim Wiatt's $7 million and Dave Wirtschafter's $6 million [Thought: Does the analogy of buying gold-plated deck chairs on the Titanic apply here?]. But not me. I want to know what they're paying the underlings, the barnacles and the Temps.

Luckily The Hollywood Temp Diaries obtained a copy of Weintraub's notes and will now interpret them for you.*


  • All assistants (ASSTS) will receive $9,000 base annual salary. They will be eligible for overtime, but total compensation will be capped at $14,000.
  • An assistant's lunch hour will be 8 minutes at the most. [Rumor: This allotted time can increase to as much as 15 minutes if you're scoring cocaine for your boss.]
  • Assistants receive 2 1/2 days of paid vacation (VK) per year -- Thanksgiving (TG), Christmas (XMAS) and a half day on New Year's Eve (NYE).
  • Assistants will be eligible for insurance (INS) after two years.
  • Assistants are not eligible for Profit Sharing (PS).
In a curious turn, William Morris' management also discussed certain issues related to Temporary employees (TEMPS). It appears that WMA was looking into legal ways to pay Temps less than minimum wage, similar to what they do with their interns. And in another cost cutting measure, Temps will not have access to coffee and presumably tea.

Then it appeared that Weintraub had a moment to day dream about his new-found wealth by doodling a picture of what his new boat will look like. [Note: We're 99% certain that the other person on the boat, labeled "DR" is former actress and Playboy model Denise Richards. The other 1% suggests it could be 5-time NBA champion Dennis Rodman.]

Fascinating, eh?

* Watermarked for your pleasure

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Its all true! And they're pushing out the long time assistants, some 15+ years there, so they can bring in assistants and pay them nothing.

Anonymous said...

Wha???? How is that even legal?

Anonymous said...

Ari has got me all kinds of fired up! He's reducing WMA assistant's pay to that of Endeavor's-- $9.50/hour. Good luck paying off those student loans! I hope you didn't have to pay for Yale/NYU/whatever

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