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VLife
January 2005
STRANGERS WITH CANDY
Two of the most connected industryites you’ve never met
By Andrew John Ignatius Vontz
Just before midnight on a Wednesday evening an Escalade docks in front of Guy’s, Hollywood’s hottest club, and disgorges one of the biggest A-list directors in town. The sorrowful song of shotdown beautiful people pleading their cases at the door halts for a moment and the crowd rubbernecks en masse to worshipfully observe the director’s entrance. Before the director takes another step, Leo Monoshevitz, 20, sporting a buzz cut, stubble, sagging denim, an oversized hoody and toting a white cardboard filing box confidently struts up and gives the director a back-patting bro hug. “This is the most connected guy in Hollywood,” says the director while the two catch up on what’s hot and what’s not for the wee hours of the a.m.
Monoshevitz isn’t the latest wunderkind director and he doesn’t have a hot spec script or a Walter PPK inside the box he bears but rarely opens. But something about him makes him more magnetic than the North Pole to Hollywood’s biggest players. “If you want to know who’s where and what’s going on any night of the week, this is the guy you call,” says the director, a brotherly hand resting on Leo’s shoulder. “If you want to avoid your ex-girlfriend or find out where the ladies are at, this is the guy you call. He’s saved my ass more than once.” For the past ten years Leo and his brother Nathan, 24, have stood outside Hollywood’s hottest clubs and sold candy—and services—to the biggest execs, agents, celebrities, and power players in the entertainment industry. Like Patrick Swayze’s cooler character in Road House, Leo and Nathan fix problems and help their clientele have incident-free fun. When someone from the A-list needs a reservation or the location of the party of the moment or help getting into the back door of a club to avoid the paparazzi, they turn the Monoshevitz brothers make it happen. On a Thursday at the nightclub Prey, Leo makes a beeline for the back of the parking lot. “DiCaprio parks his car there and just walks in through the back,” he says pointing at an empty space when he spots a stretch limo. “Hugh Hefner will be getting in that limo in the next five minutes.” Sure enough five minutes later Hefner bounces out of the club with his readymade orgy of seven bunnyhopping dames.
“I’m hooked up wherever you want to be,” says Leo as he takes up position outside Koi, a regular stop on his rotation of hot clubs and restaurants that includes Prey, Guy’s, Concorde, and Mr. Chow depending on the night. “There are agents from CAA, William Morris, and UTA here tonight—but I’m not telling you who they are,” he says. His gig as Hollywood’s concierge requires the utmost discretion and he’s just as discrete about the compensation he receives for his services as he is about his clients, but his prices range from free to several hundred dollars depending on the task and the client. During the thousands of hours they’ve spent pounding the pavement in service of the entrepreneurial venture Nathan started from their parents’ home near Fairfax high school when Leo was 11 and Nathan was 14 the Monoshevitz brothers have carefully studied how Hollywood works with a view to one day standing tall on the other side of the velvet rope as true power players. “It’s not about the candy game anymore,” says Leo.
Nathan landed a gig with hip hop mogul Andre Harrell, president New America records, through his candy connections and has successfully worked his way off the sidewalk and into the entertainment industry. “I met Nathan out in front of Mr. Chow when he was a kid selling chocolate bars and I’ve seen him grow up to be one of the hardest workers I’ve seen in my life,” says Steve Stoute, a partner in the Arnell Group who has used Nathan as a driver, assistant, right hand man, and to help promote Tommy Hilfiger.
Leo, a business student at Cal State Northridge by day, hopes to follow in his brother’s footsteps. This past summer he interned at CAA, a gig he landed through his candy networking, and he has also worked for David Schulte, managing partner of the DCS Investment Group. Currently he and Nathan are launching a marketing and product placement company that will help promote the new clothing company People’s Liberation. In the meantime, there’s networking to be done every night of the week and Leo stands in front of Chow’s with his box of candy while a parade of Ferrari’s, Bentley’s, and S class Mercede’s flows in and out of the valet stand. “I read Variety every day, the Hollywood Reporter, and then you’ve gotta read the tabloids and see what twist they put on this,” he says. Peter Berg, the director of Friday Night Lights, steps outside to take a call and wanders up the street and into another restaurant. A few minutes later David Duchovny comes out of Chow’s on the phone and makes a bee line up the street to the same restaurant.
All the while Leo discretely watches the action from a respectful distance, his left hand tucked into the pocket on the front of a baggy gray fleece hoody, his stout body hunched forward, his eyes aimed at the ground but flicking up to catch the movement of everyone entering or leaving the restaurant. “Obviously they’re meeting about some kind of script that’s on the table,” Leo says as he takes in the action. “You start sniffing around a little bit and find out that there’s a script on the table with so and so involved and they’re thinking about working together.” Just the music producer David Foster strolls out, raps with Leo, and buys a pack of Reese’s peanut butter cups. He’s been buying candy from Leo for the past two years. “I’m a little chocolate junky so you might as well get it from the honest source. He’s dedicated, he’s a hard worker, and I predict that he’s going to do great things with his life.” Schulte steps into his car when Leo’s old boss David Schulte walks out of Chow’s. “Everybody in this town knows one thing—we’re all going to be working for Leo Monoshevitz in five years,” says Schulte. “That’s why every night when I come out I say hello, I bring him guests from around the world, I introduce him. This is the man right here.”
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