Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs Part 22

I've seen all the typical first alb.u.m mistakes over and over again. Things like, "We don't really need a producer, just get us a good engineer." You hear that one a lot. Or, like, just because CDs give you the opportunity to make records seventy-four minutes long doesn't mean everybody should make a really long alb.u.m. I mean, CDs have made people much less interested in the totality-so even though they're longer, they're shorter. Because n.o.body listens to them. Everybody plays a CD once and they go, "Oh, tracks three and nine are the ones I'll listen to again." Which you would never think of doing with a record alb.u.m. I mean, I'm not going to go out on some vinyl bender here, but with the record alb.u.m you either like the first side or the second side. Sometimes you liked both sides. At the very least, you were digesting a twenty-minute piece of music. But with CDs now you go and play, like, track three. And you might actually think that's a good record because you really like track three. You don't care what the rest of it is. So there's just no point filling out seventy-four minutes. The thing is to get a few good singles. But a lot of kids don't wind up making that judgment. Which you kind of don't want to argue because it's like a bad thing. I mean, what can you say?-"Well, don't worry about it, n.o.body's going to get to track eight anyway"? I mean, you could make a good argument for that, but it's kind of like, you know, thinking about death all the time. [Laughs] Why get up in the morning?

So I see a lot of first-time mistakes. A lot of self-absorption. What is rare is an ability to sort of have any kind of perspective and get any distance and look from the outside at what the work feels like. Every once in a while you meet somebody like that. And that's really exciting. They can finish a record and then go away and call a week later and say, "I want to change this and this and this." And apply logic to that as opposed to just emotion like, "Well, it has to be there because Joanie and I were breaking up when I was writing that song." [Laughs] Or, "Remember how long we worked on the guitar sound for that? You know, we spent all week working that! I can't take that song off the record." You know, just stupid things that they get attached to.

But that's my favorite part-working with some really smart artists, seeing them develop. In the best situations it gets easier and easier and people learn from their mistakes. And it's beautiful for me to get the material and then lend, hopefully, some sort of critical judgment, and, you know, help them develop artistically. To me, by far the most exciting part of it is watching people who are really smart and really talented learn and grow. It's the only part of the job that I really like.

The rest of the job is just-well, it's just become very f.u.c.ked up. What went on in the business over the last few years was, you know, Nirvana sold some records and then, whatever, the Stone Temple Pilots sold some records and so then, you know, like the whole industry went alternative rock crazy. The whole world kind of did grunge for a moment and there were torn jeans on runways in Paris and stuff and a lot of very marginal artists were signed expecting that there would be a quick return as per these other examples that had just turned over.

So, like, Kurt Cobain, what do you do after someone like that? I mean, the fact that lightning struck and one really troubled kid was able to put his thoughts together in his art that was at the same time both emotionally effective and also culturally entertaining, it excited a lot of people. It was a rare kind of event. But it wasn't going to keep happening again and again and again. So a lot of things were signed that shouldn't have been. And too much money was spent. And now the industry has kind of backpedaled out of that period into sort of a high entertainment value period. Which would be exemplified by, like, the Spice Girls, Hanson, whatever.

The end result of it is that more and more I have to go chase after these bands I don't even give a s.h.i.t about. Like their music, I think, is just garbage. And I find myself asking questions that I never would have asked. "What do they look like?" Or, "Can she dance?" You know? I mean really stupid stuff like that. It's about what's going to get it on television, what's going to get it on MTV, you know? What's going to turn into mall fare? That's what's making it all work right now.

And the industry is-it's becoming more and more a mirror of the film business. It's turning into this giant monster that's basically just s.h.i.tting all over the place. [Laughs] And the funny thing is, like, n.o.body seems to notice. You know? I mean movies-I rented The Wedding Singer last week-have you seen that? A friend of mine said it was funny. And, you know, it was like the number one movie in America for a while and its sound track did outstanding business- and it was f.u.c.king awful. It was really like just having somebody s.h.i.t on your face. [Laughs] It was so bad, so not funny, you know? Just sentimental, cliched c.r.a.p. I mean, I was embarra.s.sed to watch it. And I've been feeling like that for years now as I've watched the film industry just churn out worse and worse stuff, and now I'm starting to realize it's turning into the same thing in the record business.

The fact is that over, I don't know, the last ten or so years, with the merger of Seagrams buying Polygram, and MCA and Universal and Polygram all being under one roof, there's only like five companies putting out music in the world in a major way. There's a bunch of different labels, but only like five companies own them all. And that's the same in movies. And, with music, four of the five companies are owned outside the U.S. So you've got these big corporate alien headquarters directing-or dictating-a very kind of subtle business. And what made the record business exciting once upon a time- what made it such an important cultural element-was that there was always innovation. There were always exciting kids. And now it seems like there's a preponderance of people who are so far away from kids in the street, and all they're trying to do is ape what was done last week over and over and over and over again.

Historically, you know, record companies go through this cyclical thing where sales go up and down based on whether their superstar acts are in peak periods or in sorting out periods where, if they're serious artists, like any writer or painter or whatever, they'll go through periods of maybe three, five years of like sorting through a new idea or a new life experience that will then manifest itself in some great breakthrough-that will, you know, excite or inspire ma.s.ses of people. I mean, look at the career of somebody like, say, Bob Dylan or Neil Young-they've had real ups and downs, but they've made great music in four different decades. And that's the way it always has been, but the industry is set up now to not tolerate that. As soon as you deliver less than the demanded return on the stockholders' investment, then you have failed and you're out the door.

The companies that have traded in sort of high art value, high innovation level sort of work-like Warner Brothers through the seventies and the eighties-were dismantled effectively a few years ago because they went through a couple of bad quarters. I mean, seriously, after like seventeen, eighteen years of unparalleled success, Warners had a couple of soft quarters and that was enough.

And the music industry is dying now. I mean, it's dying kind of a strange death with a lot of protest, but it's dying. It will, I think, fall apart to an extent. Partly because of the Internet-which is going to just destroy a lot of the current distribution stuff and just change everything-but also, partly because the industry isn't doing what it's supposed to do.

I mean, I'll hear at a convention or within the company, when people will get up and make speeches that music is playing a different role in people's lives than it ever has before, because kids are more interested in computer games or whatever, and music is not as important. But it's like the tail wagging the dog, because truckloads of s.h.i.t are being dumped on the street, and n.o.body's clamoring to get out there and pick some up, you know? And the companies are like, "What's wrong with people?" Music is not as vibrant, as interesting as a youth trademark or as a lightning rod for whatever brings kids together. And I think it's crazy. I think that music has essentially played like a really important role in people's lives because it is essentially an emotional medium. And for hundreds of years this has been going on. And now it's ending?

I'm actually thinking about going back to an independent label. Independents have always been underfinanced, disorganized, usually based on one good idea or one good act. But I think that in the next few years, you'll see a lot of independents that are well funded by people who see that there is room to make a very steady, nice profit if you're not looking to run over hundreds of millions of dollars a year. And this financing will be available because the big companies like mine don't know what the f.u.c.k they are doing anymore. So the music of quality will wind up on these little labels. And hopefully that's where I'll wind up. Unless I'm too old. [Laughs] Because, you know, how long is somebody viable in this business? I mean, I've always thought that there's a ceiling somewhere between forty and fifty when you're really too old to be signing up bands, unless you're going to move into more seriously adult music-cla.s.sical or jazz or whatever. Which I know very little about.

So I don't know. I would like to be done doing this by the time I'm fifty, that's for sure. [Laughs] I actually used to think that about forty. But you know you always keep that line-five more years. I've been saying that every year since I can remember, "Five more years and then I'll be too old to do this." [Laughs] Maybe I should quit today. Seriously. Just put it to bed.

It used to be so easy when my specific job instruction was just, "Follow your gut and anything that's exciting to you, that's what you should be chasing." You know-just be you. It's different now, because what's selling has nothing to do with what I'm interested in. So I have to listen to things much longer just to see if I maybe like them. Not if I really like them, but more like, if I maybe might like them-given what's going on now. So I'll listen and listen over and over, and I'll go see the band, and I'll walk out because it sucks, but I still won't know what to do. I go, "Well, G.o.d, that could be the next Matchbox 20." Or whatever. It could be anything. It could just be another record in a sc.r.a.p heap. But you can't tell the difference. I mean, I don't know what you're looking for when you decide like that. And to find the next Matchbox 20, I don't know how good I feel about that. [Laughs] You know what I mean? I don't know if that's a goal worth pursuing. But even if it is, I don't know. I don't know what the h.e.l.l's the difference.

I think I've probably been attacked more

than any other artist in history. Except

maybe Andy Warhol.

PAINTER.

Julian Schnabel.

I'm a painter. And a few years ago, I made a movie about another painter, Jean-Michel Basquiat. And right now I'm trying to make a movie about a poet. So [laughs] I guess I'm a film director, too. But you know, my job is-I mean, I make paintings. I sell the paintings. And with the money I get from the paintings I support my family. I pay for the house and everything else. And that's very lucky.

What kind of paintings do I make? I don't know. I can't find an easy answer. I don't want to use someone else's words to describe what my paintings are about. Basically, I paint because I can't communicate in another way. So sometimes, my paintings, they can be on flat canvas, or broken dishes, or some are made out of velvet or on an old theater tarp from j.a.pan or something I might find. Sometimes they have images in them that you can name. And other times you can't. But all of them mean the same thing to me, in a way. They form a philosophy or an att.i.tude toward life, a moral code, or some truth that you can't really define until you have some physical fact where all these different elements converge and embody some kind of a soul. It's only later on, in retrospect, that they became my "work." You know? People go, oh, that's-and then they can name what it is. "It's a Schnabel." You know? But what's a Schnabel? To me, they're just something close to me. They come out of me in some way.

I've been painting since I was three. My brother and sister are a lot older. I spent a lot of time by myself, and it's something that I did naturally. My mother encouraged me to do it, and I kept doing it. I just drew whatever came to mind. They used to have these advertis.e.m.e.nts for the Westport, Connecticut, Famous Artists School in Life magazine or something. Like, "If your child can draw this they might have talent," you know? And my mother saw one of those. It was like draw a horse's head. And I drew that. I don't know that they ever sent it in. I know I never made it to the Westport, Connecticut, Famous Artists School. [Laughs]

But I liked drawing it, so I drew a lot of horses when I was very young. And I drew a lot of-the Cyclops in Sinbad the Sailor was one of my favorite images. And also Theseus and the minotaur. Whenever my mother bought me tubes of paint, it was like getting candy. Mineral Violet or, you know, Mars Yellow. I liked the smell of them. I still do.

I went to art school at the University of Houston. I had a lot of trouble there. I think the main thing I learned was how to fight with people and protect myself. You know? Because it's hard-you don't know what you're doing all the time and you can't explain it. Why should you have to? You're dealing with your subconscious, you know? Just make the thing. Through the making of it you figure out what it is that you were thinking or what you were feeling.

I guess I think school isn't particularly healthy. There were things that I wanted to make there that I was discouraged from making. And since then, I've given talks at Columbia University or at Yale or wherever, different universities, and talked to students. And while I think it's great for them to be meeting other artists, I've sort of told them on different occasions to, like, save their money, not pay tuition, and rent a studio in New York or somewhere and just do their work and get on with their lives. [Laughs] Not that I followed my own advice- I almost didn't graduate from the University of Houston-but I did. And then I came to New York City.

I was accepted into the Whitney Independent Study Program. That was a program set up where artists can work by themselves and meet different, older artists. And then, basically, I stayed here. I had different jobs. I was a cab driver for a while. I was a cook in a few places. Nothing fancy. I met a lot of artists at that time. And I think that's good. I think New York is a good place for people from- whether it's Padua, Italy, or Osotamwi, Iowa-you know, to converge, even if the rents are high and it's hard to live here.

When I was twenty-seven, I had my first one-man exhibition. It was at Mary Boone's gallery in February 1979. Mary really believed in the work, and it was great to show with her. These were wax paintings. And, they were about-what were they? Three thousand five hundred dollars or something? Three thousand two hundred? I don't know. I think I got like twelve hundred for each painting. And people bought them. Some really good collectors. It was a great moment. I was able to stop my cooking job. I was only making two-fifty a week as a cook, so even if I only made six or seven paintings that year it was still enough to stop cooking.

And then in October of 1979, I had another show. I think I showed four paintings in the first show, and five in the second one. They were eight by nine feet and they were covered with broken dishes, about a foot deep in dishes, and I painted diagrammatic kind of drawings on top of them. They looked kind of like closets or something.

Once I showed the plate paintings, that was it. A lot of people got very excited. Some people got very shocked. There was a big hullabaloo about the whole thing and a lot of writing about the paintings and people trying to come to grips with them. And from the time I showed those paintings my life changed drastically. I don't know if you'd call it success, but there was a lot of attention. They caused a big upheaval. And put me sort of in the center of a storm of debate that is still going on.

And-I feel like I was lucky to get recognition so young. So many artists go crazy. It's great to get some attention when it's important to you, when it really means something to you. For most people, if it comes, it comes when you don't care anymore. Or when you're dead. But on the other hand [laughs] it seems like I've been attacked for it ever since it happened. I think I've probably been attacked more than any other artist in history. Except maybe Andy Warhol. I mean, we keep a record of all this stuff. [Laughs] It's shocking. Most of the time it's not really criticism. It's just an attack.

I remember, you know, the critic Clement Greenberg saying to me, "Early success doesn't last." He said it in an airport in Los Angeles. And one of my favorite reviews somebody wrote was that I knew how to make garbage out of garbage. [Laughs]

I don't like critics. They knock things that they don't even do. That they can't do. I think what happens is as soon as somebody says, "Hey, this is it. This is good." Then there has to be someone who says, "Well, I disagree." The writing becomes much more about the writers than about the work. They like to hear the sound of their own voice and their own ideas, and they have a lot of preconceptions, so it's very hard for them to have an open, free experience. I mean, the idea of writing a few quick lines about somebody who spent their whole life doing something is a little bit out of scale with, like, the idea of a person making this thing that's supposed to be a gift to-you know, whoever-to the world.

So, I don't know. I don't care. I think some people like me and some people don't. There are people that know me that don't like me. [Laughs] And I think there's a lot of people that don't know me that think I'm some way that I'm really not, you know? But I have a lot of friends. And my focus is never skewed by any kind of criticism that I've had, good or bad. It's never an issue. I mean, it might be upsetting but it has nothing to do with making art.

When I stopped cooking, I stayed focused. Sometimes people like to blame their day job and say that's why they don't-why they haven't achieved what they wanted to achieve. But the fact of the matter is when people get the free time, most of them don't know what the h.e.l.l to do. And then they have nothing. No job to blame. n.o.body to blame. Now, I've been showing my paintings publicly for more than twenty years, in museums all over the world. I've bought a house from my paintings, fed my family from my paintings. [Laughs] I mean, this is all I can do now. I'm unemployable. But I'm lucky.

When I'm making a film, it's just like using a different tool. As a working process, painting is more fun, but sometimes you don't feel like painting. Paintings are, in a sense, mute. They're nonverbal things. Whereas with movies, there's a narrative, it's conversational, more understandable, and it reaches a wider audience also. So sometimes I want to make a movie and communicate that way. And I'm lucky to be able to support myself selling my paintings, so when I make movies, I don't have to address the lowest common denominator just so I can make a dollar. I didn't make Basquiat so I could make a bunch of money. I made the movie because I wanted to tell the story about an artist, who was my friend, and I wanted to tell it with what my idea of the truth was, as close as I could get to telling other people the way it is or the way it was.

My goal is-to work. Just to work. I don't care how much money I get. I mean, being able to make these things-paintings, movies, whatever-and enjoy looking at them is the thing that really is the success, not how many people like them or how much you got for them for selling them. Money-I think I worry more about money now than I did when I was broke-but still, it's more about the opportunity or the privilege of being able to make the work that I want to make, when I want to make it. Just to have that privilege is a success.

My father had to work all the time. He didn't have time to think about what was going on in his head, really. He had to just think about feeding us and doing, you know, whatever had to be done to make everything float. And somehow he gave me the opportunity to sit back and ruminate a bit and think. So I was able to realize that maybe I didn't have to, you know, go and do the same job that he did. I had the luxury to kind of pick what I was going to do. And [laughs] that's it. [Laughs] You know? I've been able to stay a child. I think I'm a baby basically. I think that that's my job. To stay a child. And so that's what I do.

There is a huge gap in the art world

between the haves and the have-nots.

You are either making big bucks or you

are just a schlepper of some sort for

twelve dollars an hour or less.

ART MOVER.

Eric Beull.

I have wanted to be an artist since 1985, when I was a soph.o.m.ore at a large midwestern college and I took a painting course. I had never painted, drawn, or done anything artistic before then-except sometimes try to play a guitar-and I only started because I could not think of anything else to do in school. But I liked it from the beginning. It's one of the few things that ever really interested me. That and girls. [Laughs]

I guess I never seriously thought that I would become famous as a painter. And now, after being in New York City for ten years, and seeing how the art world works, I know for sure that fame will not happen.

The New York art world is a lot like Peyton Place, if you know what I mean. There are a few major players and, in a way, they decide who is hot and which artist they can push on the viewing public. It has a lot to do with money. The bigger the money behind the artist, the more famous the artist will become. And by money I mean what gallery is representing the artist and which collector has bought the artist's work. Fame happens to only a handful of people. And there is a huge gap in the art world between the haves and the havenots. You are either making big bucks or you are just a schlepper of some sort for twelve bucks an hour or less.

For a while, I thought I could teach art. I thought I could be a college professor and have a decent life, with plenty of time do my own work. But after my three years in an M.F.A. program, I believe that the art school system is one big lie. The teachers, for the most part, are third-rate hacks, usually past their prime both as teachers and artists. The chance of a young person getting a job is very slim and I gave up on the idea of teaching a long time ago. Although it is a good way to meet young girls if you're a dirty old man.

So I am an art mover.

I get up around seven in the morning most days, sometimes slightly hungover from lack of sleep or beer, and then I get in a truck and drive around for eleven or twelve hours, sometimes more in the busy seasons, carrying big crates of art from the homes of rich people or warehouses to museums or other warehouses. The best is to drive to the Hamptons because it takes all day and you usually only do three stops, and two of those involve a milkshake at the Candy Kitchen in Bridgehampton and then the beach.

But this doesn't happen too often. Usually, we just drive to certain parts of Manhattan. We go to the same places a lot-Sotheby's, Christie's, museums, galleries, framers, and some private dealers. And warehouses. That's something that I bet people don't know: the vast majority of the world's art-including a lot of what you see in books and think of as being really famous-is just boxed up in warehouses. Look at the Museum of Modern Art, only like five percent of their collection is shown. The rest is in crates. Sometimes it reminds me of the final scene in Citizen Kane.

My fellow art movers are mostly artists. A few are musicians and a few are just normal guys. I like working with other artists. There is a core group of us who have been with our company for at least three years. We talk about art, usually in the negative, like how c.r.a.ppy a show is that we see, or else we gossip about the art world. But actually, lately, we mostly talk about the job and the stupidity of it. None of us have had any major success, although some have had one-person shows and there's a guy I know who shows with a really good gallery in the city. But so what, the market sucks right now. n.o.body is buying anything except blue chip, established stuff. I mean, this guy, he's still working on the trucks. As for the rest of us, most of us realize that we will never be able to support ourselves as artists, even though everyone wishes they could.

I have moved all the big-name white male artists of this century, and I would say that most of the art that we move, if we art movers see it, we don't like. It all seems very old, very stale. Most artists, once they become successful, just seem to repeat themselves. And speaking for myself as a mover, not as an artist, it p.i.s.ses me off when I break my back for something that was made with no sense of craft, or is needlessly heavy, or is too big and full of self-importance. I always like art that is small and light, even if it is c.r.a.ppy.

A lot of the time we do not even know what it is we are moving because it's already in a crate when we arrive. But sometimes, very rarely, you see something great. Like you go to Si Newhouse's place on the East Side and see a Lucian Freud painting in the living room which I thought was really impressive. And then-with the crates- who knows what's in there. I was once escorted by police from the airport to the Metropolitan Museum, so whatever was in those crates must have been worth something to someone.

Of course, basically everything we move is worth a lot of money. All of our private clients-you know, the individual art collectors-are rich. Very, very rich. It's hard to say what the average rich person's collection is like. Usually the more money one has, the better the art, but of course, there are always exceptions. One of the first things I did on this job was to move the entire collection of a rich idiot who made his money in shopping malls. There was a lot of kinetic sculpture, including a giant fake rock made of fibergla.s.s, mounted on a concrete slab in the backyard. If you flipped a switch in the kitchen, the rock moved back and forth on the slab. Talk about stupid. And this rock could have paid my salary for six months. And the rich idiot wore those polyester golf pants with no belt loops. And we found a d.i.l.d.o in his bedroom.

Then there was this guy who had this very large suburban house full of taxidermy animals, like elephant feet and big-game heads on the wall. The whole house was filled with them and it was very odd. What made it even odder was that the house seemed like it had not been lived in for the last five years. It was really dusty and dirty. The guy'd moved to Montana, I think. But it didn't matter where he was-we carried all of his dead animals out to our temperature-controlled truck, which took them back to our warehouse, where they are now stored in a climate-controlled room for an indeterminate amount of time.

Collectors are weird. Very weird. I once went to pick up an installation piece that consisted of a long wooden table and a canoe. And inside the canoe were dried up pieces of bread that the artist had chewed up and spit out. I think this was supposed to be some sort of Zen activity that was supposed to, you know, comment on consumption in a capitalistic society, or something stupid like that. Anyway, the whole canoe was filled with these hard, mouth-sized pieces of bread and when we arrived the collector had these two j.a.panese teenage girls counting all the pieces. How could it possibly matter if there were two thousand six hundred or two thousand five hundred and seventy-five pieces of this dried, chewed-up bread? It was so absurd. The final count was like three thousand two hundred and sixty-three or something, which I wrote down on the paperwork. I wonder if the people at the museum counted the pieces when it arrived.

The collector of this bread did help us get the table into the toosmall elevator, which was very nice. Most people just close the door on you-and that's one of the worst things about this job-art movers are treated like any other service person. Which means that we're treated like c.r.a.p. For starters, we have to go into buildings through the back entrances. Next time you are on the Upper East Side try going into a doorman building with a package. See what happens. Or try going into Joan Rivers' pad to pick up some jewelry and watch the house maid look at you like you are insane when you ask to use the bathroom. That is the thing about the really rich-you are always dealing with the a.s.sistants, the secretaries, the maid, the doorman. They are the ones who will never give you a tip, either. Why should they? It's not their Monet you just moved. However, when you do see the rich goofball with the s.e.xy wife or girlfriend, he will probably give you a tip because he wants to show off in front of her. Especially if she is new.

And then, after the service entrances, you have to ride in the service elevators. These are some of the scariest places in the world, if you ask me. New York is full of old ones that are operated by cables. And the high-rise types are like being inside wind tunnels-try riding in one with too much weight. We had to lift this thousand-pound marble slab into the elevator of the U.N. apartment building because it was too long to go straight in. It took about six of us to lift it. Then, while it was leaning against the elevator wall and we were underneath it, the car started to drop erratically because of the weight. We got stuck in there for almost an hour. The whole time was spent thinking we were going to die, telling stupid jokes about disaster movies and trying not to s.h.i.t in our pants. This was done for this bachelor type who had nothing but Hawaiian shirts in his closet. Family money from aluminum, I think.

The service entrances and elevators make you realize that you are part of the lower cla.s.s, and I guess in that the architects have succeeded in some perverse way. I mean, you feel like a service person when you are in them-you know where you are and why you're there. It's very humiliating-as is being treated like s.h.i.t by the owners and the doormen and everyone else-but it makes a certain amount of sense, architecturally. I just wish I could make every architect who designed a small elevator or a dangerous service entrance come on the truck with us for one day, so I could show them what idiots they are. I have a real distaste for architects now. Look at all the ugly buildings in New York City and remember: they are worse on the inside.

It is funny how my view of certain artists-and of the art world in general-has gone down the toilet from doing this job. I guess that I think there are just too many people making art. And most of the art just isn't very interesting. It's depressing. So I am trying to find another job right now. I really do not want to work in the art world in any capacity anymore because it does not pay enough money and because I'm just kind of sick of it.

But, you know, I have a studio at home and whenever I get the chance, I try to work. So I guess I haven't completely lost my interest in art. I don't get much time to do it, maybe once a week or so, and I have not actually painted in two years, but I have been doing these drawings that are really small. I still do it because I like the activity of making something. Although, I suppose I could do something else and be a lot more satisfied.

The Internet did not make me.

WEB CONTENT PRODUCER.

Jaime Levy.

I'm the CEO of Electronic Hollywood. We're like a production studio for the Internet. We make cartoons and games that go on websites. And some of our stuff goes in film festivals and on television, too. Basically, I'm telling stories. If it's a game, if it's a cartoon, even if it's just a website we're consulting on, I want content on it-a cool story, pictures, and sound. Something that's visual, dynamic.

I'm thirty-one. I've always been doing this same thing. I started out-I was in graduate school at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University, which is, you know, looking at new technology and finding new ways to use it. [Laughs] That's what it's supposed to be anyway. But, like, everybody in the department at the time-this is in the late eighties-was there on a Citibank scholarship to design ATM machines. I was the only one who wanted to do something creative.

Remember floppy disks? For my thesis, I made what I called an electronic magazine on a floppy. It was essentially an interface, a graphic with three b.u.t.tons on it. And the b.u.t.tons led to three different sections. One of the sections maybe would be games. Another section would be animation. Another section would be textual. And it was all sort of about the world of Jaime Levy. I had a game called Noriega Tag where you're chasing Noriega around Panama. 'Cause I like left-wing s.h.i.t like that. And then I had, you know, some article written by me or a friend-usually full of dirty, you know, raunchy s.h.i.t, 'cause I like that too. And then it would have pictures that I stole from other things.

I put out six issues of these disks. I was making them and then printing out labels on a color printer and taking Krazy Glue and gluing on the label and putting it all inside of a plastic bag and taking it- maybe ten of them to bookstores, like alternative bookstores. I'd go in and say, "Hey, would you guys be interested in selling these electronic magazines?" And they were like, "Huh? What the h.e.l.l are those? No one's going to buy them." And I'd say, "Well, fine, here, just take ten for free and see if anyone does." And so they'd take them and put them on their counter and then all of the sudden there was a message on my answering machine that said, "Yo, this is, you know, whoever from Big and Tall books. Can you drop off some more of those thingies? We sold all of them and we want to get more." [Laughs] And one of the people that bought one of them was Billy Idol. And his people called my people, basically. And they said, "We want Billy to come out with a floppy disk to go with his new CD." Which was gonna be called Cyberpunk [laughs] because Billy Idol was trying to get on the whole cyber bandwagon.

So then I made the world's first interactive press kit. [Laughs] And it was just-I just ripped out all my cool content and put in Billy Idol's content and used all the same programming. So instead of it being, you know, one of my disks with my stories and pictures in it, it was his stuff.

When that thing came out, I thought I was gonna be famous. I thought everybody like Trent Reznor from Nine-Inch Nails would be calling me up saying, you know, "Oh, I've got to have one of these with my record." But Cyberpunk flopped. [Laughs] Billy Idol-it just didn't sell for s.h.i.t.

People liked what I did, though-they sold all the ones with my floppy disk in them. And then one day a guy-I was going to trade shows and selling my floppies there. And they would always give me a booth-oh, she's a girl and she's kind of cute and we'll let her sell her little disks for six dollars at her booth. And so one day this guy came up to me and he said, "You know, one day people are going to be getting this information and it's going to come down over a network and ka-c.h.i.n.k, ka-c.h.i.n.k, the money's going to go right into your savings account." And this guy turned out to be my investor. He just sort of watched my career blossom.

Because the thing was, back then, the whole traditional way of distributing digital information sucked-selling those CD-ROMs in bookstores. You know? That was a.s.s-backwards. But then the Internet became, you know, a household name. And all of the sudden, we had this great distribution medium where like anybody can put up something that's creative-even if it's a picture of their dog. [Laughs] And I got hired to be the creative director for Word, an electronic magazine on the World Wide Web. And we basically had money to spend and pay people to put together cool content. And I got like-we got a lot of press, and I became sort of a "cyberstar." Newsweek ran a big photo of me with my skateboard, calling me, "One of the most influential people in cybers.p.a.ce."

The Internet did not make me. I was doing my stuff way before the Internet. But I definitely benefited from the publicity and the hype, and it was fun, you know? And then I quit Word, because my head got too big for my body and I thought I would make more dough being an independent producer. [Laughs] Which didn't work out at all, so instead I was like, I became a struggling freelancer, hardly getting any work, barely sc.r.a.ping by.

And then this guy-it wasn't my idea to start my own company. It was that guy from the trade show, who had become very wealthy from selling his company to Microsoft. He insisted that I take a half million dollars from him and start a company and all I had to do to get the money was write a business plan.

So Electric Hollywood became incorporated in October of 1997. The first year-it was like being thrown into a pool with all your clothes on and not knowing how to swim. I didn't know anything about running a business. I hired an ex-boyfriend, three friends, and my brother as my first five employees. We fought amongst ourselves all the time. I just felt completely lost. I hated it. And like, we got this office, and we're sitting around waiting several months for the Internet connection, telephone system, desks, computers, software-everything-to get up and running. We could barely do any business, but the rent, payroll, and a million expenses still had to be paid. It was a nightmare. I ended up firing my own brother, who had moved across the country to help me. My ex-boyfriend personally called up the investor and told him I was smoking pot in the office. [Laughs] Everyone else either quit or turned against me. We p.i.s.sed away almost all of the money.

Finally, it was down to just me-the lone CEO-in a big office with no people to work and no jobs to work on. And it was like-it seemed like I was gonna tank. But then I decided I'd just try to finish production on this Internet cartoon I'd been working on called CyberSlacker. It's like an autobiographical story about a hacker chick in the East Village. [Laughs] Another world of Jaime Levy thing. I thought it could be the company's "product"-you know, one significant piece of work for me to show for the money if somebody ever asked.

So I went and recruited a bunch of interns to help me finish it, and when we did, the response was overwhelming. Because, you know, most production shops were making these boring corporate websites, and this was like this gross R-rated cartoon with, like, people having s.e.x and running around with dogs.h.i.t and stuff. And people just thought it was cool, I guess. And the beautiful thing in retrospect is that those interns ultimately saved the business by getting it up on the Web so we could show it to the world. One of those interns is now my partner and literally runs the place with me. She rocks.

And since CyberSlacker, more gigs started rolling in. We went back to six people and now we're up to almost fifteen. We have a business developer. We have a marketing person. We have a creative director. We have a production manager. We have ill.u.s.trators and animators and programmers and a webmaster. And we have sublettors who basically-it's a digital kibbutz. [Laughs]

It's not very bureaucratic here. We just started having staff meetings because I found out you were supposed to. [Laughs] It just builds, you know, morale. And so we started doing that. And, you know, now we have minutes and all those exciting things. But basically, it's like-I'm like the uber-person who just sort of oversees everything and basically conceptualizes any new ideas for original content, the games, and the cartoons. And a lot of the people who actually grind the stuff out are like, you know, the invisible staff. [Laughs] My freelancers. At any one point, I may have thirty people working for me but you don't see them in this office because they don't need to be here. We do everything with e-mail. I can't afford to have them full-time, I can't afford their computers, I can't afford their health plan, I'm not interested in paying for their health plan for their little boy. You know? So I pay them a nice, decent hourly wage and they can work at home in their underwear. And they're happy. And I'm happy. And so it's a great situation for everybody.

I definitely handle all the press because most of the press wants to talk to me. I'm the spokesperson for the company and a lot of the company is based around my reputation. And so that's a little bit of pressure. But that's part of being in the public eye. And, you know, I've been in the press and on television for ten years-so I can't complain about it because it's that same thing that has helped propel me to be successful-people saying, "Oh, I've heard of her, therefore she must be good so we'll pay her company to make this product for us." You know?