These were my first two bosses in Hollywood, Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yorum Globus who ran the low-budget/low quality film studio Cannon Films back in the 1980’s and hired me as a kid off the street to first operate the Xerox machine in their publicity department, then to write publicity materials and temp track their films for free and late into the night after my minimum wage photocopying day job ended.
Do you think they weren’t rude, temperamental, vulgar, demanding, unappreciative, ill-mannered, cheapskate task masters who would constantly work us to the bone without commensurate compensation and without proper acknowledgment?
Of course they were.
AND I LOVED THEM!
If it weren’t for them giving me my first big break in Hollywood, I would NEVER have become the success I am today.
BECAUSE they were cheap and demanding I was given access to SO much. And while others around me were endlessly bitching about them, I legitimately and happily lapped it all up which lead to me moved my way up into become their Head of Music, despite having ZERO experience at it.
I learned more from those slippery, penny-pinching, impolite tyrants about the realities of our industry during the years I worked for them than during any other time in my life.
I was a horribly paid, overworked SPONGE soaking up everything around me.
They didn’t exploit me… I exploited THEM.
THANK YOU, Menahem and Yoram for opening your crazy doors to me and giving me opportunities beyond my wildest dreams.
