Dickering

There are times when it seems like the Republicans' main quarrel with Barack Obama goes something like this: "He's an obstructionist! He thinks that just because he has a majority behind him, he's allowed to stop us from getting everything we want!" There are times when those of us who support the president almost wish it was like that; that he didn't keep offering these people compromises. Then again, to many of them a compromise is a loss.

Years ago, I worked for a TV producer who had an odd (to me) way of doing business. If this sounds like I've just jumped to a new topic, wait. Maybe you'll think of some way in which this ties in…

This producer — some nicknamed him "Zardoz" — was constantly negotiating deals with people — actors, staff members, directors, even me. He had a serious-faced lady lawyer who handled the haggling for him. Some called her "The Lawyer Von Papen" in honor of Hitler's chief negotiator. She was murder when it came to arriving at terms with your agent, your lawyer or you. Away from the bargaining table though, she was charming and funny and very honest about the two-faced nature of her life. We even went out a few times and each time, she had a couple of wines too many. One of the perks of not drinking, I've found, is that you remain lucid and able to remember what others say or do while under the influence.

Via the alcohol, I learned she thought her boss was a pretty horrible person. Turned out, she liked him less than I did and I wasn't wild about the guy.

One week, my agent closed a deal with her for my continued services and a night or two later, we went to dinner. She'd been quite rough in the back-and-forth and had asked for a number of odd things. At the last minute, f'rinstance, after they'd finished mud-wrestling over money and settled on the dollar amounts, we had to agree to a clause that said that every script I handed in would be "double-spaced and legible."

I didn't get it. The scripts I'd handed in previously had all been legible. I'm a neat typist and we were just getting into word processing which meant that if a script wasn't double-spaced, you could make it so in under 1.5 seconds. I agreed to that condition and thereafter just ignored it and no one said anything.

When I asked her why every negotiation was so contentious and full of last minute demands from Zardoz, she said — with obvious distaste for what her employer required her to do — "He doesn't think negotiations are about arriving at a deal that works for both sides. He thinks negotiations are where he establishes that you're working for him, not with him."

She said that if she went to Zardoz and said, "I've been talking to Mark Evanier's agent and I think we can get him for $2000," the only question the producer would ask was, "Was that our number or theirs?" In other words, did she (on his behalf) first mention $2000 or did my agent (on my behalf) first mention $2000? If we'd suggested $2000 then the deal could not be for $2000 because the employee doesn't get his demands. He's the employee. He works for what the employer thinks is the right number.

So if the producer had been willing to pay $2500 and we asked for $2000, it was no deal. In that case, he'd offer $1800. The $200 didn't matter much to him. What did was that he had not agreed to my number. I had agreed to his.

It was a very strange but not unique game…and of course, once you understood it, very easy to defeat. My agent and I would decide that X was a fair price for my services. We'd ask for a number that was around 125% of X. Zardoz, via the lawyer lady, would offer X and we'd accept. Done and done. It also helped, my agent said, if he acted like he was unhappy about X and had been outfoxed into taking it. She said, "What we pay you doesn't matter much to him. He just has to prove he's in charge."

Not long after, my agent was making a deal for me with a different producer for something else. He called me with an offer he presumed I'd accept but before he told me its terms, he said, "It was an honorable negotiation."

I asked him what an "honorable negotiation" meant. He said, "It was only about the money."