Down and Dirty in L.A.
The entertainment industry is full of jobs that come with a large dose of power, glamour, and excitement. "Assistant" isn't one of them, but a pief stint in that lowly position is almost a requirement to move up the career ladder."Everybody has their fabulous horror stories about being an assistant," says Samie Kim '96, who spent two years working for executives in Los Angeles. Her duties included everything from picking up one bruised and bandaged boss after a face tuck to doling out spending money to the wife of another.
"Before I did that I'd never even balanced my own checkbook," she confesses, "so it's a frightening thought that he had me managing his personal finances."
Kim's management responsibilities have increased significantly since then. At twenty-seven, she is the director of current programming for Fox broadcasting, where she serves as the liaison between the television network and shows like The Bernie Mac Show, Boston Public, King of the Hill, and The Simpsons. And yes, she now has her own assistant.
"The great thing about this business is that there's so much fluidity between the different roles you can play," Kim says. "You can be a producer one minute and an agent the next or a studio exec after that."
On a typical day, Kim might sit in on "table read" with the actors and writers for one show, visit the set of another, watch the daily footage of still another and, finally, attend the taping of a comedy that shoots in front of a live audience like That 70s Show. She also works with writers and producers to staff the various programs.
There can be tension--to put it mildly--when Kim has to impose the will of the network on a show's writers and producers, but she also fights to get backing for the comedies she handles.
"A lot of time you work on a show that you believe in creatively and your thirty corporate bosses do not," she says. "You're constantly making sure that your show is being represented and being considered at the network. You're constantly defending it and squeezing everything you can get out of publicity, marketing, and scheduling."
It's the kind of life Kim knew she wanted growing up in Philadelphia before coming to Kenyon to study English. "It was probably just my own naiveté of not knowing anything about entertainment," she explains. "It was something unreachable and unfathomable and so far from what you've grown up with, it naturally looks appealing."
The industry may have been attractive, but living in Los Angeles was not. "I've grown to love it here, but when I first moved here my immediate reaction was to hate it," she says. "It's a bizarre city. It was very disorienting."
One thing that helped Kim get her bearings and gain some perspective was the very un-L.A. sport of field hockey. She was a two-time All-American at Kenyon, and she found a co-ed, all-ages league that plays at 9:00 a.m. on Sundays. Even though Saturday is just about the only night Kim can get away from work and go out, she makes a point of getting up and making the fifty-minute drive to play.
"Part of the L.A. lifestyle revolves around personal appearance and grooming and driving around in your car and not being exposed to the rest of the real world," she says. "I think I'd gotten to the point where I was afraid to get dirty, and I had to rediscover my roots. It's really good for me to go down there and peak into a sweat and roll around in the dirt."
--Gordon Young
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