He seems to follow a kind of routine, according to sources. He invites you in for a meeting at his cramped apartment/ office in Studio City, sometimes alongside five other potential clients, and then he gives you what sounds like a well-rehearsed act. You don't have credits or training? No problem. Talent manager David Payne wants to give you a chance.
But he'll have to get to know you first. What does he expect from you? He jokes with you. He "expects sex once a week, or whatever you can handle. A trip to Vegas?" He'll "be there for anything, at any hour?dinner, drinks, talk, sex." He laughs. Some find him funny; others get up and leave. He thinks a manager/client relationship should be "like this," he says, crossing his fingers to indicate, well, a closeness, shall we say. Then there are his $200-a-month on-camera audition classes. They're not mandatory, but they are recommended. And you may need new headshots with his photographer.
At Best Artists Management, Payne has been handling clients in L.A. for some seven years, he pointed out in a recent phone interview, without any trouble with the law whatsoever. Yet he said he's recently been cut off from Breakdowns- confirmed by Breakdown owner Gary Marsh, who declined further comment- and other sources have said he's no longer going to be listed in several of the personal managers handbooks. Payne plays by the rules, he said. So why all the current critique? The 18 letters of complaint received by Back Stage West-originally sent to Tombudsman- might give some indication.
It seems that his alleged sexual comments and intimate questions have provoked some of his former clients to speak out, worried that some of his younger clients- he manages adults, teens, and kids- might not be savvy enough to tell when the lines have been crossed.
This isn't the first time Payne's overtures have been called into question. First there was the incident in Dallas, where Payne ran a talent management agency/school/hair-salon in the late 1980s. Payne was accused of sexual assault in 1989, though a Dallas grand jury decided against indicting him. Payne explained the situation. "There was one complaint in which there was a woman who said that I had assaulted her, and I went down to the police department and talked to them and talked to the grand jury and nothing was ever done with it," he said. Why did she file the complaint? "I don't know," said Payne. "People file complaints all the time."
Then there was the situation in Tulsa, where Payne also ran a management company. According to the Tulsa World newspaper, a judge sentenced him to a two-year probation period in October 1991 for the alleged molestation of a 15-year-old actress who was his client. Payne plea-bargained, pleading "no contest" to one count of lewd molestation, in exchange for the two years, during which the charges were suspended and then dropped. The article explains that the girl said Payne had reached under her shirt and fondled her. She also reported Payne had rubbed his groin against her and said, "Do you like anal sex?"
Payne tells a different version of the story. "She claimed that I rubbed my erect penis on her buttocks," said Payne. "I know exactly when it happened. It was in a room full of people. I went up after class. I usually hug everybody- I'm a father, I've got kids of my own and grandkids- and very fatherly, I put my arms around her and hugged her, kind of a bear hug kind of thing and said, 'See you next week.' And at that particular time, I had maybe 20-30 keys on a key chain in my pocket and she misconstrued that to be an erect penis, I guess." He explained that his lawyer advised him to plea bargain to avoid going to court, where he said he was likely to be convicted of something he "didn't do" due to the conservative nature of Tulsa juries. He denied the breast-fondling incident outright, calling it "absurd."
Hands-on Experience
These situations are all in the past, as is Payne's run-in with the I.R.S. for tax evasion in Dallas when the I.R.S. seized all of Payne's accounts-including the talent trust account-and Payne went bankrupt, owing actors some $37,000, he confirmed. Yet problems seem to have arisen again.
One former client, who submitted a two-page letter to BSW, spoke candidly in a phone interview about Payne's sexual overtures. "He would do a lot of touching," she said. "He would regularly grab the girls in the classes, grab our asses. One time he cornered me and was looking down my shirt, and would say things like, 'Oh, I'm just joking.' He stuck his hand down inside my shirt once and of course I pulled it out and I was like, 'What are you doing?' He made a joke out of it."
"He always wanted hugs, and he would rub his chest against your breasts and hold onto you really tightly and not let go even when you were trying to pull away," she said. "Then he'd laugh about it, and he'd say, 'Oh, you guys are all so prissy. You're all so prude.'"
Two other sources who had worked with Payne also reported instances when he had gotten a bit frisky. "He would try and, let's say, arrange the girls' clothing and his hands would get a little exploratory," said one source. "Whenever they would complain, he would stop, but he would see how far he could get. Sometimes he would flat out almost cop a feel. He would reach up inside a girl's short skirt to try pull her shirt down to arrange it."
The other source, a former employee, described instances when she had her leg groped, one in which Payne had tried to tongue-kiss her, and, finally, a situation in which Payne jokingly dropped his pants, wearing no underwear, and exposed his penis to her. She said he later told her, "Whatever happens between us stays between us." Another anonymous client described a similar instance when Payne asked her to come to his place around 10 p.m. to talk about headshots, and ended up coaxing her to take off her shirt for a backrub, after which he took off all his clothes in front of her. She promptly left.
Aside from the occasional hug-which he said he never forces on anyone-Payne denied having any physical contact whatsoever with students, clients, or employees. Almost all of the complaints did not, in fact, involve any touching. What most clients found inappropriate were Payne's off-color remarks, ranging from "I wanna see where you're a natural redhead," to such compliments as "nice nipples," to such questions as "Do you shave, trim, or let it grow?"
Regarding the last comment, Payne said, "It's kind of funny because people come in and they ask a question like, 'Well, what do you want to know about me?' and it's another joking statement. I've never gotten a negative response from that-not that I say it all the time.
"I'm a real jovial, flirty type person," he explained. "I'm very playful and very joking. It's kind of humorous, even the thought anyway, because I'm about 25-30 years older than them. I'm very politically incorrect, but you kind of have to go off of the natures and the personalities of the people who you're communicating with. Perhaps there were some people who were particularly playful and I felt at ease to be playful back. I don't know. Most of these people aren't giving you the full text of the meetings. I interview with the door open; there's no pressure."
Many of his former clients and employees admit that Payne does have a kind of laid-back, "ex-hippie" type of blunt humor. Some explained that they initially found his manner "refreshing." Yet when asked about his sexual comments, one former client explained, "Yes, he was joking, but he says it so many times that it was like hitting you over the head with, 'I'm not really joking.'"
Other clients said Payne had asked them personal questions that they did not interpret in a joking manner, either in person or in questionnaires he had them fill out and then kept. They claim his questions have included such things as "What's your favorite position?" "What's the most sexual thing you've done?" "Have you ever been abused?" and "How many people have you slept with?" One client claimed Payne had called her just hours after their first meeting and asked if it had crossed her mind to sleep with him. She said he then proceeded to ask her such things as, "Have you ever been with a woman?" claiming he needed to know what his clients were comfortable with so he would know what jobs to send them out on.
Payne denied this line of questioning, and he denied another comment reported by a male client who said Payne remarked to him and a roomful of potential clients, "I sexually harass women. That's the best part of this job."
"David is a master manipulator," explained one former female client. "He knows how to ingratiate himself. He comes off as kind of a nice guy. He tells you a sob story, that he's all alone and hasn't been with a woman in a long time, and he's afraid to leave his apartment. He does this whole trip, and it's never about your acting. He would always be asking you to meet him after hours or at a time when no one's going to be there. He would ask you to come in and 'keep him company' because he's 'a little lonely' there? and he says everything with a smile and a Texas drawl."
The Thin Grey Line
At the moment, Payne said he represents 20 adult clients, 20 to 30 kids and teens, and said he has 40 clients "in development." His office is located at 11434 Ventura Blvd., Apartment 101. He runs a dual company, both Best Artists Management, and one called Global Entertainment Management, which he said he inherited a year ago when the company owner turned over some 2,000 clients, many with little acting experience.
Why did Payne take on the company, which had few real actors as clients? "Because about 1,500 of them were kids and teens, and kids and teens are hot, and I hope to find a jewel out of that haystack," said Payne. "A lot of them have benefited greatly as a result." When asked, he couldn't remember the name of the owner, or why the company had gone out of business. "I think it was due to an illness or something," he said.
Payne does characterize himself as a kind of "development"-oriented manager, who takes on clients with little experience and tries to get them jobs. Does Payne do his job as a manager competently? Yes, his former employees said. He does work hard; he does get clients work. He does have a little something to teach in his classes-though others complain they're "bogus."
"I work very hard for people," said Payne. "I've helped a lot of people over the years, and I'm very conscientious about my job and my work, and I do it diligently. I care about people. I care about actors, and I feel that I guide them in the right way."
Yet it seems that in crossing the lines of professionalism, Payne has lost more than a few women clients who refused to tolerate his overtures-jokes or not-and who questioned the seriousness of his commitment to actors and their profession in general.
Recalled a former client, "I remember when I first met with David, he was playing Lotto. He had like 20 sheets of Lotto spread out on his desk and he was picking his numbers. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but later I realized that metaphorically speaking, that's exactly the way that he perceives actors, as just this big old lotto ticket. He'll sign anybody and then basically just hope he gets lucky."
Whether Payne will run into legal trouble is another story. According to Deputy City Attorney Mark Lambert, if clients feel they've been sexually harassed, they would have to take it upon themselves to contact the Van Nuys police department and file reports. Most of these former clients, one imagines, probably won't make the call. There are fine lines, they feel, and they don't know exactly what the laws are, and besides, some of these actresses seem downright accustomed to this kind of thing.
"I've been to some major management companies in the city," said one source, "and even they perve off on me. So I don't know how to tell the difference. It's really hard. Any woman will tell you that. We put up with a lot. It's like, Is that person kidding? Or are they serious? How serious are they? You never know."