A Pre-Oscar Protest in Beverly Hills

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170313_r29551illuweb CreditIllustration by Tom Bachtell

Three weeks before the Academy Awards, Jeremy Zimmer, the C.E.O. of United Talent Agency, set about reviewing a guest list for the firm’s annual pre-Oscar party. He paused when he got to the name Asghar Farhadi. The Oscar-winning Iranian director, whom U.T.A. represents, had said that he would not attend this year’s ceremony—where his movie, “The Salesman,” was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film—to protest President Trump’s travel ban. “Suddenly, it all coalesced,” Zimmer said. He fired off an e-mail to the agency’s board of directors, proposing that they scrap the bash and donate the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars allotted for champagne and canapés to the American Civil Liberties Union and the International Rescue Committee. (The agency’s clients and supporters chipped in another seventy thousand dollars online.) Instead of a party, the firm would organize a pro-immigration, pro-free-speech rally for its agents, its clients, and Hollywood at large. “The truth is I just couldn’t take the typical nonsense anymore,” Zimmer said. “It’s, like, Nero’s fiddling and we’re all eating grapes.”

At 3 p.m. on the Friday before the Oscars, hundreds of people milled in the street in front of U.T.A.’s Beverly Hills office. Many held signs, some directed at the President: “Immigrants: We Get the Job Done”; “Dude . . . Your Skin Looks Terrible.” “I’m a talent manager, but I’m a human first,” Andy Corren, whose sign read, “No Es Mi Presidente,” said. Corren is not of Hispanic origin, but he spent Inauguration week on vacation in Oaxaca and participated in a women’s march there. He nodded approvingly at the U.T.A. crowd. “This might be the biggest protest in the history of Beverly Hills,” he said. “Think about it. It’s not a hotbed of activism—unless you count, like, ‘Free Zsa Zsa.’ ”

The rally had a name, United Voices, and a United Nations of food trucks—Caribbean, Korean, Mexican, Italian—were parked in a line, dispensing free lunch. Timothy Simons, who plays the smarmy White House aide Jonah Ryan on “Veep,” swigged from a bottle of water. “On November 9th, nothing was funny,” he said. “It’s all still terrible, but I feel like I’m able to make jokes about it more.” He was interrupted when DJ Cassidy—he played at Beyoncé and Jay Z’s wedding—bounded onto a stage placed, curiously, beneath the bunny logo of Playboy Enterprises (the agency’s neighbor) and started blasting soul music. This was followed by an electric-violin rendition of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.”

“Is this, like, the liberal version of Toby Keith?” a woman wearing a leather jacket asked a friend.

“Let me get this straight,” a gray-haired talent manager said. “The first thirty-five minutes of the rally is a d.j. and a violin?”

Forty minutes in, Keegan-Michael Key took the stage. “Everybody, move up,” he implored, trying to create an impression of critical mass. Jodie Foster elicited wild applause: “It’s time to engage! And, as the very, very dead Frederick Douglass once said, ‘Anytime is a good time for illumination.’ ” The assemblage, around seventeen hundred at its height, hushed as Michael J. Fox recalled becoming an American citizen (he was born in Canada). “It took about eight years from start to finish, and I complained,” he said. “Now I think, What was I bitching about?”

The dominant message, as summed up by an attendee in an expensively torn T-shirt: “Social justice is the new sex.” Still, some Hollywood tropes prevailed. “Trump is the new Kardashian,” Perez Hilton declared from the sidelines. “We aren’t talking about that whole family like we used to. Now we’re talking about Donald and his extended family, including his staffers.”

As the sun sank, some guests seemed a little wistful for the glamorous bashes of years past. A guy in a black hoodie said, “I went to the U.T.A. party last year. It was pretty fun.” Andrew Rannells (“The Book of Mormon,” “Girls”) had his eyes on the flat-screens lining the sidewalk. “It doesn’t really feel like it’s a time to throw big, lavish parties,” he said, “even though those parties are wonderful.”

After Farhadi sent his regards via video from Tehran, Jim Berkus, U.T.A.’s chairman, urged everyone to stay put. “We have a great surprise artist to come!” he announced. The musician Ben Harper sauntered onto the stage, sat down, laid a guitar across his lap, and crooned, “They shot him in the back. Now it’s a crime to be black.”

U.T.A. had locked the front door to the office. An agent looked around at the thinning crowd and said, “They want this to stay crowded through the entirety of the event.” Asked if it was nice to have the afternoon off, she replied, “I guarantee, any agents you walk by here are probably still answering their phones.” 

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