Cubs fans: It's been 100 years. Lift the curse!

Why are there so many Cubs fans in show business? I mean, the list is so long that if I listed a few names--starting with Bill Murray, Vince Vaughn, John Cusack, Jim Belushi, Eddie Vedder, Jeff Garlin, Bonnie Hunt and Joe Mantegna--I'd just be scratching the surface. (And don't even think about asking why so many Cubs fans end up being, well, comedians.) My theory is that after 100 years of futility, curses and belly-flops, when a team suddenly turns it around and starts to play like a winner, with the whiff of World Series glory in the air, if you're in showbiz, you go: I get it. From adversity to redemption. Whadda great third act!

Last month, Jim Belushi reminisced with us about how he became a Cubs fan. But he was a Chicago boy. How do you grow up in Southern California, listening to the great Vin Scully, and still become a die-hard Cub rooter? That's what happened to Chris Thile, the 27-year-old bluegrass mandolin player who spent years playing in Nickel Creek before striking out on his own--he's now playing in Punch Brothers, who among other things do a pretty great rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."

Thile was born in Oceanside. When he was 4, his family moved to Idyllwild. There was no TV in the house, so he didn't get hooked on Vin's baseball rhapsodies. But on Saturday morning, he'd go to a friend's house, where they'd watch Cubs games on WGN. The first team he really remembers was the 1991 squad, which featured future Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg, Shawon Dunston, Mark Grace, Andre Dawson and Greg Maddux, who's closing out his career with the Dodgers this year. Instead of getting hooked on Scully, Thile got hooked on Harry Caray, the colorful Cubs announcer, who was known to say anything in the later innings after he'd had a little liquid refreshment.

Thile's favorite player was Sandberg, the Cubs second baseman who was a clutch hitter with a great instinct for the game. "I have about 250 Sandberg baseball cards," Thile told me. "He was so smooth and professional in the way he played the game. I could hardly watch a game without seeing him do something notable. With him, Dunston and Grace turning double plays, for us kids, they were like Tinkers, Evers to Chance."

Now that he's a master craftsman himself, Thile has an ever greater appreciation for Sandberg's play. "It really had a huge impact on me as a musician," he says. "When he made his Hall of Fame speech, he said he was never the most naturally gifted player, but he worked as hard as anyone. That applies to anyone playing music. You want to be a team player, not just in performing well under pressure, but by performing in ways that help your band mates. Whether you're an athlete or a musician, there's a danger that you see yourself as being so naturally gifted that you're willing to let the talent do all the work. But the really great ones don't take their talent for granted. They mold their talent into something extraordinary."

Thile didn't make it to Wrigley Field for the first time till he was 18. He's seen plenty of Cubs highs and lows since, but one favorite Wrigley pilgrimage stands out in his mind. And guess what? It involves lust, romance and a mystery woman:    

Bernie Brillstein: The happiest man in showbiz

Bernie Brillstein, who died yesterday, did a thousand things in show business, but he was one a kind: agent, manager, producer, executive, raconteur, confidante, great source for lowly reporters in search of a good quote or a great tip. I first met him years ago on the set of a movie that was going down the drain, but you'd hardly know it from Bernie's demeanor. He always had an easy smile, a funny remark and the attitude that whatever was going wrong couldn't possibly spoil his day. When I started writing a column, he'd take me to lunch or call me with suggestions, quips and encouragement, as in: "Hey, you haven't written anything bad about Mike Ovitz for weeks. What are you waiting for?"

For years, Bernie had a regular monthly lunch at Hillcrest Country Club with two old pals, Jerry Seinfeld's managers George Shapiro and Howard West, who got their start, with Bernie, in the William Morris mailroom in the mid-1950s. I was occasionally invited as a guest. Everything was off-the-record, although, ironically, they had a tape recorder on the table, saving everything for posterity. As Bernie joked: "We're getting so old that soon this will be the only way we'll be able to remember all the stories." I hope the tapes are being well preserved--they'll be a treasure trove for some future showbiz historian.

At lunch, Bernie always had plenty to say about the current state of affairs, firm in his opinion about which studio chief was a total moron, which agency was in total disarray and what network chief wouldn't know a hit show if it bit him on the tuchis. But I especially loved hearing tales from the Morris mailroom, which for decades was the launching pad for all of Hollywood's kingpins, from David Geffen to Barry Diller to Ovitz to current CAA barons Bryan Lourd and Kevin Huvane. (With loads of help from Bernie, David Rensin wrote a fabulous book in 2003, "The Mailroom: Hollywood History From the Bottom Up," that is an oral history of the chicanery and escapades that occurred on the premises.)

Every day in the mailroom was an adventure, whether you were delivering a package to Zsa Zsa Gabor's apartment (she would often come to the door in a negligee) or rushing across the street--as Bernie once did--to buy the young Elvis Presley a sweater when he was stuck in a chilly dressing room waiting to appear on a variety show. Back in the 1950s, WMA mailroom flunkies made $40 a week, but somehow Bernie lived like a prince even on a pittance. When I heard this morning that Bernie died, I called up Irwin Winkler, producer of "Raging Bull," "GoodFellas" and dozens of other great films, and also a mailroom graduate from Bernie's era. "Bernie was a guy who knew how to live." Winkler recalls. "Even when we only had $40 a week, let me assure you, Bernie spent all $40 and more. We were poor, we'd both just gotten married, but when our checks would come every other Friday, we'd go right out and splurge."

Winkler remembers that Brillstein somehow had access to tickets for every hot Broadway show in town. "He's say, 'Let's go see a show,' and take me to 'My Fair Lady' or 'Gypsy,' whatever the great show of the moment was. He always had tickets. And he never let you put your hand in your pocket. He'd pay for everything. Bernie taught me a lot of things, starting with knowing how to laugh at everything, even adversity. He just knew how to live."

Everyone has a favorite Brillstein story. Here's one he loved to tell that perfectly captures Bernie's wry take on the showbiz life:

The Israel Lobby, Hollywood style

In Hollywood, a town full of Jews, there's a long-standing tradition to be in denial about being Jewish. Asked once why he never made films about Jewish characters, Louis B. Mayer complained: "Rabbis don't look dramatic." When Hitler was killing Jews in Europe during the Holocaust, Hollywood studio chiefs kept quiet, rarely giving money to Jewish refugees or, God forbid, making movies about the subject until long after all 6 million Jews were exterminated. Times haven't changed so much. When The Times went to Hollywood bigwigs for a reaction after Mel Gibson let loose a volley of anti-Semitic slurs after being arrested in Malibu on suspicion of drunken driving in 2006, Sony Pictures' Amy Pascal was the only studio chief willing to publicly respond.

Hollywood's attitude toward Israel has been nearly as standoffish. There have been untold dozens of films made about the Holocaust, but almost none in recent years about the Jewish homeland, unless you count the gaggle of hummus jokes in Adam Sandler's "You Don't Mess With the Zohan," where the comic plays an Israeli commando who comes to America to become a hair stylist. But one industry figure has made it a crusade to raise industry consciousness about Israel. For the past two years, the respected William Morris agent David Lonner, whose clients include Alexander Payne, J.J. Abrams and Jon Turteltaub, has been taking groups of Hollywood tastemakers -- both Jews and Gentiles -- on tours of Israel.

The trips, co-sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, have attracted a host of A-listers, including Pascal, such writers and directors as Payne, Turteltaub, Brad Silberling, Michael Tolkin and Audrey Wells, along with producers Nina Jacobson and Donald DeLine. The event-packed five-day itinerary includes meetings with Israeli artists, high-tech tycoons, soldiers and politicians; a walking tour of historical sites; a helicopter ride across the country; a trip to gay bars (for gay members of the group); and an evening of Torah study at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies.

Even though the trip is organized by a Hollywood agent, it hardly sounds like an episode of "Entourage." What gave Lonner the idea for such an unlikely odyssey? And how did all those denizens of Hollywood, the holy land of situational ethics, fare in Torah study?    

 

CAA still the biggest star in talent agency universe?

If you can't get our film reporter John Horn on the phone today, it's probably because he's checked into one of those swank Malibu rehab centers for a few hours of seaweed wraps and sauna massages. That's what happens to reporters when they spend a week on the phone with very, very tightly wrapped talent agents trying to nail down a bragging rights story about which Hollywood agency has the most top clients in this year's most high-profile summer films. His story, which runs in tomorrow's Calendar section, offers an intriguing glimpse into which agencies wield the most clout in today's film business.

Want to know how insanely competitive the agencies are these days? When Horn was reporting the piece, one rival agency exec argued that CAA couldn't claim credit for Heath Ledger's starring role in the upcoming "The Dark Knight" since the actor was, well, dead. John's story was such a hot topic among nervous agency chiefs that Deadline Hollywood Daily's Nikki Finke, who considers the agencies her exclusive preserve, felt the need to badmouth the story before John had even finished writing it. It's true that it's hardly a news flash that CAA has the most clients in the summer films, but seeing the pecking order--laid out in black and white--was pretty interesting stuff. The real eye-opener for me was how many high-profile Hollywood types are managing to survive without an agent at all, an A-list that includes "Indiana Jones" producer George Lucas, "Hancock's" Charlize Theron and "Wanted's" Angelina Jolie.

John has been tracking the agency wars for a while. But this new story raised a few questions for me. Here's a look at some of John's inside analysis: