When Business Becomes Blood Sport

The word Survival, because of its most recent connotations, has come to be associated with those pessimistic souls who are convinced that a Communist-inspired world economic collapse ("It"), an urban uprising ("Them") or some other catastrophe is going to force middle-class white Americans to the hills, where they will have to live off the land and defend themselves against whoever the enemy turns out to be, domestic or foreign, according to their ideology. Judging from the voluminous literature of "survivalists" (as they call themselves to show they're not just passive survivors), Armageddon is going to be like a homicidal boy-scout outing.

But surviving the Eighties may well turn out to be not so very different from surviving the Seventies or the Sixties, or even the Forties. The key weapon will not be a handmade dagger or a roll of gold coins strapped to your waist but, as usual, smarts, quick thinking, a keen sense of competition and the cultivation of basic survival instincts. The battleground will not be in the hills, mountains and urban streets but where it has always been: right there in the office, where you're trying to hold on to your job or work your way up to a better-paying one.

And with good reason. When corporations talk about running lean and cutting out the fat, when interest rates soar and business stagnates, when corporate America hunkers down, they mean you, as several million of your fellow citizens have already discovered. As the economy falters, as more women enter the work force, as companies tighten up in the face of foreign competition, the race to the top is going to be harder, tougher and faster. What's more, even those who do survive are going to have to get themselves promoted at a rapid rate if they're going to stay ahead of inflation.

It's no longer enough just to do your job. You have to do it better than your competitors or, at any rate, be seen as doing it better. Born survivors don't have problems in that area. Nobody has to tell them to look out for number one. They've been doing it for a lifetime. They can step into a revolving door behind you and come out ahead. It's in their blood. Nothing personal, but if you're in the way, too bad.

•

"The fast track is getting faster all the time," my friend Hal Grieff says, as he nurses a Perrier with lime in the grillroom of The Four Seasons, casing the house. Architect Philip Johnson is here; Sy Newhouse, the financier who has just bought Random House, is here; Morton Janklow, the lawyer-agent who represents Judith Krantz, is here; Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., is having lunch with theatrical superlawyer Arnold Weissberger; Irving Lazar is table-hopping from Truman Capote to John Chancellor. Grieff looks content, or as content as a 24-hour-a-day survivor can ever look. He's among winners.

Actually, Grieff is more at home in "21," where there's a less glitzy group of winners--David Mahoney, reputedly one of the highest-paid corporate C.E.O.s in the country; Roy Cohn, the lawyer whose very name strikes terror in the hearts of opposing counsel; Michael Burke of Madison Square Garden, the Rangers and the Knicks. It's essential to Grieff that he isn't surrounded by losers, nonentities, schleps. He can breathe.

Grieff stares at a plump, elderly man seated across from us with a ravishing young woman, pulling on a Davidoff Monte Cristo Individuale, while watching the maître de spoon out caviar. There is a bottle of Dom Pérignon champagne in a silver ice bucket beside the table. The elderly man's eyes resemble the caviar: They are black and very, very cold.

"Gunther Kleinfeld," Grieff says with approval. "A real survivor."

Kleinfeld, it so happens, has survived being a concentration-camp inmate, a displaced person, a penniless refugee; he has made and lost several fortunes, survived innumerable bankruptcies, divorces, mergers, acquisitions and lawsuits to emerge as a heavyweight hotel and resort developer. Who else, Grieff asks rhetorically, could have persuaded Saudi investors to put their petrodollars into an Israeli hotel?

Grieff's eyes sparkle with admiration. He relishes survival stories. He himself has danced from network to network and back again, always leaping one step up in salary and title while leaving behind him a trail of disaster. He knows exactly when to ask for a raise (when his numbers are up), when to move to a new job (when he knows his numbers are down but before the company has found out), when to say yes, when to say no; when, as they say, to play his hand and when to fold.

When Grieff worked at CBS ("Black Rock"), he outfitted himself with a dark suit from Morty Sills, black Gucci loafers, capped teeth (a $10,000 investment in success), blown hair--the CBS hard-edged look. At NBC (more haimish, particularly under Fred Silverman), he switched to tweed suits from Dunhill Tailors, brown brogues from Peal & Co., knitted ties. At ABC, he adopted what he called his "off-the-rack" look, the fighting underdog image. Grieff's talent for camouflage is impeccable.

He himself is a connoisseur of survival techniques. He tells how he was invited to lunch by the chairman of the board of a major corporation. Grieff was in one of his periodic slumps--"kamikaze time" he calls it--when, every so often, he runs something into the ground. And when he does, he's off to a new job before the news is out on the street. He buys a few new suits, eats out at expensive restaurants, puts on a show. He doesn't believe in waiting around glumly for the ax to fall; he's off and running in time for it to descend on his former subordinates who stayed behind.

The chairman's secretary suggests lunch the next day at one in Biarritz. Grieff knows most of the restaurants in New York, but Biarritz doesn't ring a bell. "Which Biarritz is it, honey?" he asks, hoping to conceal his ignorance.

"Biarritz, France," the secretary says.

A lesser man would express surprise, or ask for a ticket, but Grieff is a survivor. He charges a Concorde roundtrip ticket to his American Express card, flys to Paris, rents a car, drives to Biarritz, and at one the next day, he's having lunch with the legendary tycoon, who shows no surprise that Grieff has flown the Atlantic to see him.

"You staying in France long?" he asks Grieff after picking his brain for two hours, between telephone calls.

Grieff doesn't hesitate. "No," he says, "I'm going back to New York tonight. I have a heavy day tomorrow."

"Tomorrow is Saturday."

Grieff shrugs. "I get my best work done on weekends. It's the only time the office is quiet."

A look of respect crosses his host's face. "You flew here just to see me?" he asks.

Grieff nods.

"At your own expense?"

Grieff hesitates, but he knows his man. "No," he says, "at yours. I'm billing you for the whole thing."

His host smiles with relief and shakes Grieff's hand. "Good!" he says. "You want the job, you got it. For a moment there, I thought you were a schmuck!"

Grieff laughs as he tells the story. Hell, that's nothing. Gunther Kleinfeld once rented an apartment in Aristotle Onassis' building and rode up and down in the elevator for days so that he could meet Ari "by accident" and pitch him a hotel investment. What's more, he persuaded Onassis to put up $13,000,000 between the 24th floor and the lobby, and got a lift downtown in Onassis' limousine afterward.

•

Grieff studies people like that. He's a fast learner for a boy from the Bronx, for a boy from anywhere. He has his shoes polished twice a day, at his desk. He carries no money in his pockets. He doesn't own an overcoat, gloves, a raincoat, galoshes or an umbrella. A guy who goes everywhere in a limo doesn't need them, and Grieff knows that owning any one of those objects stamps you as a nonlimo person.

Grieff gets a limo written into his contracts for starters, though he's too shrewd to make a point of it, which might suggest that his limo status was a matter for negotiation. During his discussions, he merely alludes to the world-famous entertainment company that was just about to hire a major executive at $250,000 a year and lost him because it refused to give him a limo. Chintzy!

Everybody laughs; nobody wants to be thought chintzy. Grieff's limo slips in without argument. After all, if a guy is worth a quarter of a mil a year, he's worth a limo. And a cost-of-living clause, and half a mil of life insurance, and first-class travel.

Grieff dismisses those things as unimportant. He knows how to sell himself--he's money in the bank. He talks about what he can do for them. In a gentlemanly way, he takes it for granted that they're going to look after him. No demands, no specifics, no shopping list of (continued on page 258)Blood Sport(continued from page 120) perks. Grieff talks about profits, bottom line, the dazzling future. He lets them suggest what they'll offer him, nodding his head impatiently, almost with embarrassment, as if those details were of no interest to him compared with the challenge and excitement of the job at hand.

They almost think he'd pay them to let him do the job. By the time he's through, they're throwing limos, stock options and health-club memberships at him, and he's shrugging--sure, that's fine, whatever you guys want. I'll take whatever you think is fair. Shit, I don't care if I ride the subway, except it's a waste of time, but let me tell you how I can turn this area around for you....

•

It's easy to overlook the fact that success is not a question of ego, because most successful people are egomaniacs, self-involved to an extraordinary degree. But (and it's the 24-kt. but) they have their ego firmly under control. Survivors know that pride and ego are heavy burdens to carry on the way up. As the late Harry Cohn, the foulmouthed, tough, genius boss of Columbia Studios, used to say, "I need a guy, I'll kiss his ass in Macy's window at high noon; I'm not proud."

You want the deep respect of your peers; you don't want to demean yourself; your self-image is important to you? Congratulations; you're a wonderful human being. But that sudden pain between the shoulder blades just may be a knife. Survivors believe in getting what they want. As one successful executive thoughtfully said, "I need to feel good about myself 24 hours a day. And I feel good about myself when I've won."

A scene: The garden of a house in Bel Air, California, survival capital of the Western world. Here is the town where a guy can blow $20,000,000 or $30,000,000 on a movie and get financing for another even as the first one is sinking, because, in the words of one executive, "At least a guy like that thinks big, you know. There's always a chance he'll score; whereas some schlep who hasn't got the guts for a big failure probably won't ever have a hit."

This is the town where, when David Begelman, the studio boss, was convicted of check forgery, he was sentenced to make a documentary film on drug addiction (in other towns, he probably would have gotten one to ten in the slammer) and given a standing ovation by the "industry" when he went into Ma Maison for lunch after the sentencing. "Look," someone explained, "he made money for Columbia, right?"

In any case, Daren Yegrin, the head of a major studio, is waiting by the pool of his Bel Air home for the arrival of a man he hates, Bobby Dime. Bobby is a film maker who has made at least two expensive flops for Yegrin, who had a much-publicized love affair with Mrs. Yegrin, who divorced her husband to marry Bobby, with even more publicity. Bobby has been in litigation with Yegrin for years. There are lawyers who have bought themselves beach houses in Malibu from the feud between those two men.

The pool is empty. Yegrin is not the kind of guy who wastes time swimming. Just at the moment, he needs Bobby Dime. A car door slams, Dime comes up through the lemon groves and topiary bushes, tanned, lean, handsome, shirt open to the waist; his face lights up in a smile. Yegrin stops grinding his teeth with rage, smiles like a maniac, rushes down the steps, throws his arms around Bobby, hugs, pats, feels, strokes, paws.

He virtually drags Dime to the pool, takes his arm as if they are about to be married, raises it high above his shoulder, hand in hand, and says with profound emotion, "This is my boy!"

Bobby looks touched, moved, humbled. He takes Yegrin's hands in his. "You've always been like a father to me, Daren," he says, his voice husky with emotion. "So what's the deal?"

What's the deal? The deal, as it turns out, is pretty much what you'd expect. Bobby will drop his lawsuits against Yegrin. Bobby's wife (Yegrin's ex) will give back the two Maillol bronzes she took with her when she left Yegrin. Yegrin will finance Bobby's new movie....

Bobby walks back to his car. An associate asks Yegrin how he managed to bridge the hostility so quickly. "Schmuck," Yegrin says pleasantly, staring at his empty pool, "I need the cock-sucker, he needs me. You got to hand it to Bobby. He's a survivor."

A touch of affection crosses Yegrin's face. Survivors are a class apart: realists, operators, guys you can trust because you know they can always be relied on to do the best they can for themselves, and at least that's consistent. You can count on them for something.

Doesn't Yegrin resent the fact that Bobby ran off with his wife? Yegrin looks pained. As of ten minutes ago, Bobby is his brother, his son, a fabulous guy. Yegrin has little or no patience with people who don't get the message. "That was a long time ago," he says. "Besides, what's a wife compared to a picture?"

•

Survival is an art. Survivors are artists. The best acting is done in daily life, not on the stage. My late uncle Sir Alexander Korda, the motion-picture producer who could "charm money out of an empty safe," was a gifted survivor. Once, a group of investors called him in to complain that he had lost £5,000,000 of their money. Most men would have tried to defend themselves. Alex did not. He sat there, the living picture of dejection and guilt. They were right, he said quietly; he had been wasteful, careless. He had chosen the wrong scripts, paid too little attention to the budgets. He was too old for this business. He would retire. Perhaps he would be happier living simply in Antibes or Monte Carlo. He might write his memoirs. Possibly a few old friends would visit him, though he doubted it. He only hoped the investors would forgive him.

Within an hour, the investors were busy encouraging Alex, cheering him up. It was out of the question for him to resign; they wouldn't hear of it. And by lunchtime, Alex had £2,000,000 more of their money and was back in the action again. When I asked him if he was happy about it, he shook his head, exhaling a cloud of cigar smoke inside his RollsRoyce. "No," he said, "I let them off too easy. They would have put up three or four million, I think. Still, it's a good lesson for you to learn. Always settle for less than you could get. It doesn't hurt to have a reputation as a gentleman."

•

Survivors never fall on their faces. They don't show pain, fear, resentment or defeat. They have, to use the basic word, balls. Also chutzpah, realism and a sense of self-interest as highly developed as a bat's sonar. Plus a certain degree of inevitable ruthlessness. If you already have all those qualities, and are using them to the maximum degree, you're in good shape for the Eighties, whatever form the apocalypse takes. If there's the slightest fear in your mind that maybe, just maybe, you're not moving as fast as you'd like to, or as fast as the guy (or gal) next to you, there are a number of things you should learn about survival. In fact, if your salary isn't increasing by 20 percent a year, given the current rate of inflation, you'd better start learning fast.

Survival can be learned. Start by recognizing that the days of the organization man (or woman) are gone, partly because organizations themselves are becoming more flexible, less hierarchic, forced to change at a rapid pace because of new technology and unimaginable financial conditions. Organizations no longer "look after" their people. Stay on long enough and you'll find your boss is a man (or woman) 20 years younger than you are, who can't even remember your name. This is not the age for putting in 40 years and retiring with a gold watch. People who put their faith in the Chrysler Corporation for job security, for example, have recently found out (1) that no matter how large a corporation is, it can turn bottoms up in the age of OPEC; and (2) that when a corporation is in big trouble, it doesn't hesitate to shed even its oldest and most loyal employees, while those at the top, who made the original decisions that led to disaster, stay on, with stiff upper lips and six-figure salaries.

In business, the usual practice is to reverse maritime tradition. When the ship hits an iceberg, the captain and the officers take to the boats and the passengers and crew go down with the ship. The lesson to be learned from that is: The higher up you are, the safer your job is. At the very top, those who have screwed up go to the International Monetary Fund, or are co-opted into government, or step up to become chairman of the board, or run a foundation. There, it is assumed, since they can do no good, they will find it difficult to do any harm. Even at a less exalted level, the senior executives of a company have the advantage of being better informed (they know when it's time to jump ship) and are in a better position to blame other people (you, for example) for what went wrong.

The trick is to understand the organization the way you understand a woman you love. You don't have to think she's without faults, you may be aware that she has certain secrets in her past, but you have to accept them and understand them. Blindly believing she's perfect is not the best way to survive a love affair or a marriage. It's the employees who are always telling you "This is a great place to work" who usually get canned first in times of trouble. The realists stay on, unless things are so bad it pays to go elsewhere. In the same way, you have to commit yourself to the organization's goals without becoming a company man and trusting that Big Brother, whether it's G.M., Chrysler, CBS or Bankers Trust, will take care of you. Big Brother, you may be sure of it, is looking out for number one.

The first step is to identify the immediate power elite--the men and women who are insiders, who not only participate in the crucial decisions (at whatever level you're involved) but also influence the way in which more senior managers rate their subordinates. This is where survival training pays off. Where there's an "in" group, you have to become part of it, while keeping your eyes open for ways to outflank the group. If the "in" group wears dark-blue suits, buy a dark-blue suit (even if you're a woman). If they're interested in football, learn to talk football (even if you're a woman). The main thing is to be seen as part of the company's basic inner circle, even if it's at some inconvenience to yourself. When the ax falls, it's better to be among those who are busy deciding who gets axed than among the axed. Basic survival.

•

My friend Dennis Trumbull is a perfect example of what happens when you don't do that. He was hired away at a considerable increase in salary to run a major department in another company. Now, Dennis is bright, make no mistake about it, but he's also a man nursing an oversized, but fragile, ego--a man obsessed with status.

He fusses over details, over personal prestige--the size of his office, whether or not he's getting engraved stationery and business cards, whether or not his secretary will have a new IBM Selectric. A survivor knows that none of those things matters. Everybody knows you want all of those things and more, but you don't show it--you pretend that you don't care. "Just give me a goddamned desk and a telephone and I'll get to work," as Grieff would say, all the time planning for a corner office with four windows and a sofa.

Dennis worries. Is his office big enough? Is he being invited to the right meetings? Those are not the questions a survivor asks. A survivor's office is just a temporary stopping place on the way to a larger one, and any meeting he attends is made important by the fact that he's there. Also, survivors never worry, or at least they never show they're worried. Or surprised. Or upset. Or upstaged. They don't get mad; they get even. Give them bad news and they smile or simply nod to suggest that they heard about it before you did and already have it under control.

Survivors don't ask what the limits of their authority are; they simply assume they have all the authority in the world until they reach a stone wall. Dennis spent a lot of time drawing up organization charts and trying to find a way of emphasizing his place in them, without realizing that anybody who does that is simply building a cage for himself. Corporate power players ignore charts: They like to operate between the lines and boxes, making other people worry about where they fit in. First-class players, like Grieff, are so good at it that one executive at a network used to complain he couldn't decide whether Grieff reported to him or he reported to Grieff. Of course, by the time he'd worked out that Grieff was his subordinate, Grieff was already his boss.

Not so with Dennis, who was already being written off by the inner circle while his carpet was still being tacked down and his new furniture installed. Dennis wanted things firmly fixed, posted. He was comfortable only when secure. But survivors--and this is of the essence--thrive on insecurity. They operate best in chaos. They thrive on crisis, which is why the present unsettled state of business and the world in general doesn't frighten them a bit. On the contrary. Armand Hammer built his fortune in the aftermath of the Soviet Revolution and civil war. H. L. Hunt made his in the wake of the oil-lease crash. Fred Silverman went to NBC-TV when the network was on the skids "because of the challenge." Survivors relish excitement and change, and know how to exploit it.

When my friend Grieff heard about Dennis' organization charts, he laughed. "Dennis is going to be finding out about food stamps soon," he said. "You want to survive, the less you put on paper, the better. I don't even write memos. I phone. No files, no Xeroxes. They have a way of turning against you."

•

Survivors also know how to put on a show. The survivor tends to be a chameleon--he fits in. An acquaintance of mine was recently hired by a record company in desperate need of his skills as a cost cutter and manager, but he soon found that nobody would take him seriously, not even the president of the company, who had recruited him in the first place. The managers and producers were young, hip, dressed in blue jeans, cowboy boots, turtlenecks, most of them with long hair, beards or mustaches. My friend wore a dark-gray suit, a tie and black Gucci loafers, par for the course at William Morris, whence he came, and to which he reckoned he soon might have to return at a lower salary. He did not change his opinion about what needed to be done in the way of reorganization, but gradually, bit by bit, he changed his appearance: a mustache first, then a pair of Porsche aviator glasses, then a casual jacket and a pair of tailored blue jeans; finally, cowboy boots to replace the Gucci loafers.

Soon, people were listening to him, accepting his recommendations even when it hurt, deferring to him. He had joined the organization, in the sense of adopting its dress and its traditions, and was therefore now criticizing it from the inside, instead of as a hostile stranger. Needless to say, he not only survived but is now running the company. The true survivor always remains an outsider in his secret heart, even when he's inside.

Dennis, of course, failed. He played the game by the rules, not realizing that the rules were there to be ignored. He never understood that survival, in any organization, is a high-stakes game in which everybody wants you to lose. He would have benefited from a conversation with Gunther Kleinfeld.

•

It is five A.M. and it's dark inside Kleinfeld's plane, as he flies back from Los Angeles, where he has been putting together a deal. Kleinfeld puffs on his cigar as the plane descends toward New York at nearly 600 mph. He is almost, but not quite, relaxed, his legs stretched out with his feet on a leather ottoman, his shoes off. Kleinfeld is in his element.

"What time do we arrive?" he asks, pushing the button on his intercom.

"We'll be landing pretty soon, Mr. Kleinfeld, don't worry," the pilot replies.

A spasm of anger crosses Kleinfeld's plump face. "I didn't ask that," he says. "I asked what time."

A pause. The pilot clears his throat. "E.T.A. is exactly 5:45, Eastern standard time, Mr. Kleinfeld."

Kleinfeld nods. "Thank you," he says, switching off the intercom. "A new boy," he points out. "He hasn't learned yet. Well, we all learn."

What has Kleinfeld learned?

He stares out the window, thinks for a moment. "To keep moving. When I used to work for other people, I discovered that if you sat for more than a year at the same job or the same salary, you were dead. Get out. Move. Switch jobs. Success is an escalator. If it stops, you're stuck between floors. What do you do if the escalator stops? You get off, take the elevator, take the stairs. Right? You don't just stand there, waiting for it to start up again."

Is that true even when business is bad?

Kleinfeld nods. "Business is bad? So what else is new? There are always problems. Listen, in a plague, you sell coffins, yes? In a drought, you sell water. In a flood?"

"You sell boats."

He smiles. "Or water wings."

How has he always managed to survive?

A moment of thought. "I kept in mind the simple fact that you can only survive by understanding the world as it is. Most people think it ought to be some other way or, worse yet, they hope it really is, despite what they see every day with their own eyes. What you see is what there is. It isn't going to be any better. So you say to yourself, OK, that's the way it is; now"--Kleinfeld pantomimes rolling up his sleeves--"let's get down to it!"

Isn't he ever depressed by that Manichaean point of view?

He laughs. "No. I'm not depressed. Not ever. I survived the Nazis. I survived being a refugee. I survived working for people who were real monsters. I know what matters is to be honest about oneself. I'm ambitious. Fine. I admit it. I'm greedy. OK, so nu'? I live by my wits. Who doesn't? I'll tell you something. The first time I was ever sent out to negotiate a big deal, I went to England, and I met with these guys in their Savile Row suits and their accents, and I was impressed. So we get to dealing, and I realize that I'm brighter than these people, even if they do have old-school ties and handsome shoes. When we get to the end, we settle on two million, and I'm delighted. I was figuring a million five, tops. We all shake hands. The guys stand up to leave, and the chief negotiator for the other side suddenly looks as if he'd forgotten something. 'Oh, Mr. Kleinfeld,' he says, 'dollars or pounds?' Well, in those days, the pound was worth four bucks. I thought for a moment and I said, 'Pounds.' He nodded as if that was what he expected, and we shook hands. I couldn't believe it. I was willing to settle for $1,500,000, and here I just got $8,000,000 by keeping my mouth shut! It taught me a lesson."

What lesson? The plane banks over Manhattan, as the lights begin to turn off in the dark below. The flaps and wheels go down with a subdued hum. Somewhere down there, Kleinfeld's limo is waiting; somewhere in his cooperative apartment, coffee is being brewed for his return. He stares at the Seat Belts sign as it lights up and pushes a button to turn it off.

"A guy can land without a seat belt on his own airplane," he says. "I told them to take the signs out.... What lesson? If you want to survive in business, even in life, listen before you talk. Let the other guy suggest the price. Let the other guy say what he's going to do. Let the other guy mention a number."

The plane lands smoothly, draws to a stop, the stairs descend with a low whine. Outside, Kleinfeld's chauffeur waits in the damp dawn with an umbrella. The limo is parked under the wing. Kleinfeld yawns and makes his way to the door. "Survival," he says, as the copilot helps him into his suit jacket, "is like getting laid--it's just a question of self-confidence and opportunity."

And desire?

Kleinfeld stands on the steps, while the chauffeur holds the umbrella as high as he can to shelter him. "Of course, desire," he says. "The rest you can fake, but the desire to survive--that's the bottom line."

He gets into the car, slams the door, picks up the telephone. Rain is beading the windows. He looks up, pushes a button, his window goes down.

"Hey," he says, "it's raining. You want a lift?"

I nod.

"You know," Kleinfeld remarks, "a real survivor would have stepped into the limo right after me, without asking. I once did that to Onassis, and you know what he said to me? He said, 'You could get shot for that. I have bodyguards.' So I told him, 'I'm not worried.' 'Why not?' he asked. 'Because then you'd never find out what my deal is!' "

Kleinfeld sits back in the limo. He is silent for a moment. "I liked Onassis," he says, like a man offering an unpopular opinion. "He was a real survivor." Kleinfeld looks almost sympathetic in the gray dawn light. He is thinking of Onassis. "He taught me another valuable lesson," he remarks in a quiet voice.

I ask what it was.

"Nobody's ever too big to listen to a deal. If you want to survive, you've got to look as if you're giving, not getting, offering, not asking. A survivor seduces the world. Losers try to rape it, or don't even give it a try, but a survivor believes in all the possibilities. He's an eternal optimist about himself--and a pessimist about other people."

Not a bad combination, I suggest.

"Not bad." Kleinfeld looks out at the grimy rows of houses, the rusting el, the potholed streets. "Life teaches you survival," he says. "It's just that most people don't want to learn. They want to believe in organizations, companies, rules, friends, lovers, wives, brothers-in-law. In the end, you want to survive, you got to learn to trust only one person."

He pulls a curtain down to close off his view of Queens--you've seen one pothole, you've seen them all.

"Yourself."

"Survival is an art. Survivors are artists. The best acting is done in daily life, not on the stage."