NMH Magazine : Fall 2007

Hooray for Huggywood

I had been in Hollywood only a few days before someone loved me. I had my first meeting with an agent, a stranger to me. I was ushered into his office, where he quickly rose from his couch, hugged me, and told me that he loved me. I decided to keep an easy chair between us. But the meeting went without incident—until he hugged me good-bye.

I soon learned love and hugging are commonplace here. “Oh, I love him!” “My assistant loved your script!” “I love my assistant!” If someone here gushes, “I love your work,” oftentimes that person has never seen or read your work, or may not even know what type of work you do. It’s just the local dialect. “I love you” in Hollywood only means “You’re standing in front of me.” “I can’t wait to work with you” means “I hope my assistant can tell me who you are.”

There’s a heightened intimacy in Hollwood, even if there’s no real love in the love. Why the constant hugging in the workplace here? Aerospace engineers don’t do that in their conference rooms, so why do we? It’s simple. When people in the entertainment business are hugging others, they’re hugging themselves. To give a hug is to get a hug. In a town of insecurity, it’s a moment of respite. Hugging is a varnish that smooths rough edges and softens future slights.

I found myself taking it on at work. It became instinctive. I hugged a teamster once, thinking he was a network executive. I hugged more at home, which my wife initially found to be nice, but soon unsettling. She told me to stop bringing my hugging home, to leave it at the office.

It occurred to me: why should all these displays of love be restricted to just Hollywood? I decided to spend a day being an ambassador of intimacy, converting heathens to the higher power of hugging. I began my mission at my local bank branch. I asked for 100 singles, cleverly ensuring that the teller would have to demonstrate her dexterity. Around the $50 mark, I told the teller through the Plexiglas security window that I loved her work. She motioned that she couldn’t hear me. I bent and spoke through the slot at the bottom. “I love your work.” She nodded, uncertain. I went on, “May I hug you?” She continued counting my singles, but now with a smile. The bulletproof glass had failed in stopping our mental hug.

Outside there was a crew of guys doing asphalt paving. I yelled to a guy wearing a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, no doubt in a past knife fight, “Love you!” He looked at his buddies, then headed for me. I said, “I love your work!,” hugged him, then quickly backed away down the sidewalk. He stared after me, then resumed his work with a smile.

And so the day went. I doled out hugs like Rockefeller handing out dimes. On rare occasions I was threatened and kicked at, but more often than not I was hugged back. People liked hearing their work was loved, even if the praise was from a stranger with doubtful sincerity. Try it. Say “I love your work” to your coworkers, even to the creepy guy who never leaves his cubicle.

Take it from the city of facades: the love you fake is the love you take.

Bill Canterbury ’83 graduated from Harvard in 1988 with a degree in applied mathematics. His planned year off before graduate school turned into 15 years in Hollywood, where he’s worked as staff writer on a dozen TV shows, including The Simpsons. Canterbury currently lives in Los Angeles but has long-term plans to renounce hedonism and return to New England.

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