October 1, 2025 • 24 mins
The LA modeling scene isn’t much, but it’s all Paul has. Can he claw his way to the top again?
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Campsite Media.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
So we've been telling this story for a while now,
and you may feel that Paul Fisher has been getting
off a little light, but that's about to change.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Got to get out of New York. I'm coming back
to Los Angeles. I literally didn't have suitcases and shit
like that. I think I had won, and everything else
was like in a brown paper bag. And I flew
back to Los Angeles. A friend picked me up at
the airport on his yellow motorcycle. We're driving down the
one oh one freeway. I'm on the back of his motorcycle,
(00:37):
no helmet, two freaking brown bags that I'm gripped onto,
and this asshole He's going in and out of traffic
on this freaking yellow motorcycle and we take a spill.
I go sprawling across the Venturo one oh one. Ambulance
(00:59):
comes takes me to the emergency hospital. I called my
mom and my dad. I say, you guys got to
come pick up pick me up.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
So not a great homecoming. And this is after Paul's
mom had convinced him to give up his dream of
becoming a model Asian in New York and just moved
back to La which Paul was also freaked out about
because it basically meant telling Paul to come home to
his father, the liquor salesman that he didn't get along with,
and admit that he's a failure.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
They got me in the car, my dad started freaking
yelling at me. You gave up your college education, you
threw away your degree, and now look at you. And
he was pissed off and he was screaming at me.
My mom was trying to tell him the calm is
ass down. And we stopped at a red light and
(01:55):
I got out of the car and I just started
walking and I had nothing I had. That was the
lowest part. That was the lowest point in my life.
I had no money, I didn't know who to call.
I didn't know what the fuck to do.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
But Paul doesn't one to linger on his low moments
very long. He goes on to possibly new lower moments
because after the car crash on the yellow motorcycle, a
friend picks him up. She lets him crash at her place,
she gives some food, helps them care for his wounds.
She acts like a sister to him, really, just like
(02:41):
Paul helped his sister Deborah, who's still in and out
of the hospital for her cancer treatment. And into this
scene of helping and healing comes the guy who's interested
in having Paul find girls to have sex with him.
I mean, nothing new there, but Paul didn't think he
(03:01):
was going to have to do this again. After Brazil.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
He says, I'm having a couple parties. I need your
special skill set.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
And now Paul's approaching rock bottom.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
My job was to go out and find beautiful girls
at nightclubs in La and they could some sleep within,
some nod and I remember one day I got a
phone call from one of those girls and they said, Paul,
your friend shit on me. And I know he shits
on everybody. He's an asshole. She says, no, no, no, no, no,
(03:33):
he shit on me. I said, I know that's who
he is. She says, sh he actually defecated on me.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
Paul.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Time for Paul to find a new job. From iHeart
Podcasts in Campside Media, I'm Vanessa Grigoriatis and this is
Model Wars episode five. Now you might be thinking, oh boohoo,
(04:08):
Paul has to retreat back to Los Angeles, California, one
of the most famous and wealthy cities in the world.
Place where you have a lot of fun. Our favorite
Jeufro pimp, Paul Fisher, is just in so much trouble.
But at this time in the early eighties, as far
as the modeling industry is concerned, LA is a backwater.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
There's no modeling done in LA. I mean very little, swimsuits, nothing, nothing,
stupid shit. That's not where real models go. Real models
go to Europe, Paris, lond and Milan to become real models.
That's what I learned.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
So, of course Paul is going to try to get
back into the modeling business here and dominate. But if
he's going to start another modeling business, he has two choices.
He can return to New York, where he's already blacklisted
at every agency or often true, he can try to
change which the power structure of the industry, and Paul
(05:03):
being Paul, he's inclined towards the more outrageous option. So
one of the few modeling agencies making a GOVID in
LA at that time is East West. That's quite a name.
It's hard not to notice that even the big LA
agency feels like it has to reference the East coast.
East West is run by a South African immigrant named
(05:25):
David Altman.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
Here's David la In the eighties was you know, glam
metal bands, Motley Crue, Poison, Guns n' Roses.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
You know, we're talking the Sunset Strip, people with big hair.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
You'd walk down Sunset Boulevard, You'd come out of a
restaurant in the middle of the night and then oh,
my god, that's boy George, that's Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Allman actually got his start in the industry in New York,
especially when he was dating a model, a fellow South
African named Alexi Singer. She's got big, bright eyes, strikingly
precise features, and don't forget her ears.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Clients would say to me, oh my god, have you
seen that ears?
Speaker 2 (06:06):
And it was like, yeah, great ears, you know, amazing
ears for looking at and presumably for hearing. So Alexa
was on the cover of many magazines in the eighties
and the nineties.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
It was weird for me, you know, as the boyfriend,
because she would sometimes be on the cover of Vogue, Self,
Mademoiselle Glamor. And in those days in New York, he
had the newsstand, which was this wooden structure on the
sidewalk and you'd walk past the newsstand. It would be
like embarrassing that she would have. You know, she would
be on the cover of five or six magazines all
(06:43):
at the same time.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
It was almost unfair.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
When David and Alexa moved to la they started East West.
They set up shop on Hollywood Boulevard, across from the
Stars on the Walk of Fame. Their office was designed
to look a lot like the interiors that models would
see when they arrived Elite or Ford in New York City.
In other words, East West is basically tailor made for
(07:06):
Paul Fisher's West Coast comeback.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Middle of the day.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
He has five portfolios under each arm, and he walks
in and he says to me, I heard about you.
I love the name East West, and that can help
you grow your business.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
David notices that Paul seems to be wearing his interview best.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
He was wearing one of those vests, those tank top vests,
but those.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Ones that you see in New York.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
They wear them in the summertime with holes in it,
you know, those ventilated holes.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Yep, Paul is in a mesh vest. But he feels
like the interview is going pretty well.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
I loved him immediately.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
His energy you know, he's a compulsive, hard worker. He's
like the Jurisale battery. My brother, who was my partner,
loved him immediately.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
But David Altman has a harder time convincing his staff
to love Paul.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
Other agents in the office basically took one look at
him and said, look, if you hire this maniac, weati here.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
It takes a special kind of guide to create a
staff revolt after one interview.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
His energy, I think, in that kind of work environment
was perceived by other people as potentially threatening, and they
understood that with that energy, it wouldn't take very long
for him to be in charge.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
So David starts working to win over his staff. But
Paul is getting desperate. He's out of his friend's place.
He's living on borrowed time in a studio apartment.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
I had been evicted out of that studio apartment for
not paying rent for two months. I had to be
out that morning. I had a white Berlinetta, a white
Berlinetta Camaro, no gas, no money to my freaking name,
I'm going back for my fourth interview. I wake up
in the morning, I know I can't go back to
the place because now I'm a Victag's why the night
before I take all my belongings, which is like a
(08:59):
stereo and a couple of paying I like nothing.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
But that night Paul's last Romanian crap gets stolen out
of his car.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Now I go over to David Allman for my fourth
and freaking final interview. Don't have a place to live now,
don't have any clothes, not one piece of clothing left
on my freaking name. The car is like running on
freaking fumes. I walk in to meet David Allman and
after fifteen minutes he goes, you know what we decided Paul,
one of my bookers. She thinks you're too intense and
too aggressive. We just don't think we have a home
(09:29):
for you. And I went, whoa, David. I got no money, bro,
Everything was just taken out of my car. I said,
by the way, if you don't want to hire me,
I don't want to work for you. If you think
that woman that used to work at Wilhelmina is going
to take you to the fucking Promised Land, then you
(09:49):
deserve her. I could take this place and put it
on the freaking map, bro. With everything I just learned
in New York, I could run this place, not her.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
The staff is West had read the situation perfectly.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
In other words, he went into another room. He spoke
to his brother Michael. He came back, he said, he said,
come with me, and he moved me into his home,
and he bought me clothes and he took care of me.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
He was sleeping in his car. Okay, he lived in
my house for a while. It's called identifying potential and
then resourcing the potential, and then empowering the potential so
that they can be the best that.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
They can be.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
So now that Paul has a job, he makes it
his mission to put Los Angeles on the modeling map.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Bro people laughed at LA. If there's one hundred modeling
jobs a day done in New York, there's three TV
commercials done in New York. In LA, there's one hundred
TV commercials done in LA. Three modeling jobs.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Remember, it's the magazines in New York that are running
the fashion industry. So that's where Paul is setting his sights.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
How do I take girls that live in LA and
book them directly into New York, bypass the New York
modeling agencies and go directly to Vogue. I knew them.
I knew the editors. I had met them when I
was in New York. I met mister Avadat, I met
mister School, I met them all. I hung out with
all these people for minutes here in minutes there. I
knew them, I knew of them. And so what I
did is I said, you know what, fucking fucking le
(11:32):
fuck Fords and Gwillian Klick. I'm going directly to the
New York clients.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Yeah, Paul's ready to run another model war. He's talking
about Wilhelmina and Click. Those are two other major modeling
agencies which are both based in New York.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
I would wake up at five o'clock in the morning.
David would be freaking sleeping his ass off with his brother.
I'd be inside the agency, literally sleeping in the office.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
I would walk into the office at seven thirty eight
o'clock in the morning and it would walk in and
he was like sleeping. He was sleeping in the office.
I was like, dude, what's up. And he would go
to the restroom and he'd splash water on his face,
run water through his hair, brush his teeth with his finger,
(12:18):
and then looking good.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
I want to get up at five o'clock by the
time New York opened up. I'm an animal. I'm directly
booking into New York. So I'm taking girls that live
in LA and I'm booking them directly into New York.
And my reputation spread like freaking wildfire, and they hated me.
The New York agency's freaking hated me. I'm becoming John Casablancas.
But in LA, I'm the man for sure.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Okay, So that's what's going on in LA. But Omar
still in New York. He's landed a job actually with
John Casablancas's agency Elite. But now Paul convinces Omar to
move to LA and to build East West's men's division, and.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
We want to show him how this shit is done.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
The band is back together and Paul has all the
success that he ever wanted, so now it's time for
him to throw it all away. As Paul and Omar
(13:30):
are scheming to revitalize LA's modeling scene, David Altman made
sure he was smack in the middle of Hollywood's A list.
There was no shortage of egos, and unfortunately, Paul's continued
to be his worst enemy.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
There was a woman who opened a restaurant in a
nightclub on Beverly Boulevard called Helena's Invitation, Only she had
to invite you, so you couldn't apply to be a member.
She would have to look at you and go, do
you want to be a member, And then she'd write
her home number down on a napkin. You could pay
(14:08):
her a lot of money which would allow you to
come to Helena's and bring one person. The next table
next to you was that was Sean, and that was Madonna,
and then over there was Jack Nicholson.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
And what was Jack Nicholson doing?
Speaker 4 (14:21):
He was doing in real life, like with his eyebrows
what he did in the movies.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
And there was Warren Bay. Anyway, it was a fantastic SCE.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
In this intimate, shoulder to shoulder celebrity setting. It sometimes
mixed in interesting ways with all that eighties macho bullshit
that was wafting through the air.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
If you went to Helena's, which I did, and you
sat next to Madonna and Sean Penn, and you looked
at Madonna in a way that Sean thought was inappropriate,
maybe three seconds longer than Sean thought it should be.
(15:04):
Anything could happen.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
In this telling. The eighties were all about guys putting
a lot of product in their hair and going out
with their girlfriends, often models, and then fighting people.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
You know.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
Axel Rose had a reputation for being very aggressive.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Mickey Rourke.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
You know, Mickey would walk out a restaurants and got
pissed off that the paparazzi.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Were there, and he took a swing at them. It
was normal.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Introduce So Paul says, he's not at Helenez on the
particular night we're going to describe. He's actually at another
exclusive club that's called Flaming Colossus that was once described
by the La Times as a place for black clad
fashion models and the sort of expatriate continentals who designed
(15:53):
sportswear or do a little cinematography on the side.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
I had a girlfriend at the time, beautiful black girl
named Katrina. I was in love, two years in love,
and then one day we broke up and I walked
into the nightclub and there was Katrina was some freaking
big old dude with his arm around her.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
In the paleolithic era known as the nineteen eighties, this
is an act of war.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
I beat him to a pope, dragged him through the
fucking club. He ended up in the hospital. I went
to work Monday morning, and David Alman looked at me
and he said, hey, hey, hey, hey, that boy you
put in the hospital. That's Pam Piper's brother. Pam Piper
was one of our most famous models at the time.
I said, see, well, so what is that I have
(16:43):
to do with anything. You're gonna have to apologize to
Pam and to the boy. Go to the hospital and apologize.
Fuck you go apologize, or I have to fire. You said,
you're gonna fire me. I run this place. I run la.
You can't fire my ass. I'll take the whole fucking
place down. I'll take everybody with me. He said, well,
you're fired. If you don't do it, he fired me.
(17:08):
David Alman fired me.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
She was upset because her brother, you know, apparently, you know,
was roughed up, and I think simultaneously, like maybe.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
He was annoying me. I don't really remember, like maybe
Paul was annoying me, you.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Know, that seems unlikely.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
I think Pam.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
Issued me an ultimatum, if you don't give him the bullet,
I'm out of here. And she was somebody that was
highly respected by other models, So he suddenly became a risk.
So Pam basically like called me up and said, look,
you know what, if you don't you know, this guy's
like a complete nutjob. If you don't get rid of him,
(17:44):
I'm out of here. So I gave him the push.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
You know, basically, Paul is out of a job. Yet again,
some of us would be despondent, but you could say
that Paul goes into Jerry Maguire mode. You remember the scene.
It's when Jerry's leaving his fancy sports agency and he's
trying to convince the entire staff to leave with him.
Speaker 5 (18:09):
Anybody else wants to come with me. This moment will
be the moment of something real and fun and inspiring
in this god forsaken business, and we will do it together.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
I went over to my little apartment that I had.
I called every one of the models to come with me.
We had like one hundred and fifty miles at the time.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Who's coming with me? Who's coming with me?
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Nobody returned my call. They all told me to fuck off,
including Omar.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
This is embarrassing.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
Omar ran the men's Omar had one hundred and fifty guys.
I said, Omar, come over. He goes, Paul, you don't
got no money, I said, I do. I just borrowed
ten thousand dollars from my grandpa. He was, Paul, how
are you going to compete with anybody doing with ten
thousand bucks? I said, all the models are going to
come with me. He said, no, they're not, Paul. No
one's coming with you. What what?
Speaker 2 (19:04):
No one is coming with Paul. It looks like he's
out of luck and on his own. So Paul made
his big plea as he was ousted from East West,
but it looked like nobody wanted to go with him,
not even Omar, who we all assumed was the renee
(19:27):
Zellwegger to Tom Cruise's Jerry McGuire. But just like Jerry McGuire,
it turns out Paul does have one person in his corner.
I will go with you one young model.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
She's actually only thirteen or fourteen years old, and her
name is Jennifer Jimenez. And Paul is over the moon
about this.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
She walked into my agency and I looked at her
and I laughed, and I said, okay, first of all,
take off all that makeup, little girl, and we're gonna
shave your head, then you're can you would meet a
friend of min named Bruce Weber. What yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
You're gonna take off all that makeup. I'm gonna make
you look like a little boy, and then you're gonna
go meet Bruce Webber. She came back the next day,
(20:12):
head shaved, no makeup on. I introduced her to Bruce Webber.
Bruce Webber booked her for the Azzadine Olaya campaign and
walk in the fashion show, booker for Calvin Klein, and
she was off and running. Put her on the cover
of Americanelle. Was the youngest girl ever on the cover
of Americanell.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
So it's just Jennifer, this one middle school kid who's
gonna come over and she's gonna join Paul.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
You can be with an agency, but it's the agent
that actually represents you, that loves you, that's who you
really want to be with. So in the modeling business,
you can be with any name brand, fancy agency.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
You want to be with, But does your agent love
you and Paul love Jennifer. So yeah, so Jennifer went
did the I mean I had no for me? It
wasn't even a quick and of course Jennifer went with Baul.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
So Paul founds a new agency in his apartment with
Jennifer Jimenez as his only client. It's called IT Models.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
How did I come up with the name it? I
had placed Jennifer with an agency in Paris called City
See it Y, one of the biggest agencies in Paris.
When Jennifer came over to my agency, I couldn't afford stickers,
I couldn't afford portfolios. So this little fourteen year old
girl has her city model's portfolio on our on my table,
(21:33):
my kitchen table. I don't have an office, I have
a studio apartment. And she takes a piece of tape.
She covers up the y, covers up the sea. She goes, Paul,
we don't need portfolios. We just call it it. You
just cover up the sea and cover up the wy.
I can keep my old portfolio from Paris. I went,
(21:55):
you gotta be freaking kidding me. It was born.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
So Paul and this teenage girl are joining forces that
IT Models, and Paul is once again clawing his way
back into the modeling industry, and little by little it's
starting to work. We're going to get into all of
that but before we are really overdue to discuss what
(22:23):
is modeling at its core, especially when you're dealing with
young girls. What is this world that Paul's trying to
climb to the top of. Next episode, Jennifer Jimenez is
going to explain it, and some of it is going
to be dark. Not all modeling stories are this dark.
(22:44):
Some of them really aren't. But we think it's time
for you to hear from one of the girls themselves.
Speaker 6 (22:52):
I kept saying, you should get your daughter into modeling,
you should get your daughter into money. Abnormal became the
new normal for me, you know, and I was being
looked at for the moment I started as an object.
I was remember this one teacher, drama teacher of all teachers,
and she was like, oh, you think you're going to
get away with everything because you have a pretty face.
And I just looked at her like she has no idea.
I just came back from Tokyo. I've been sexually assaulted,
(23:14):
like I'm paying for my family, like for us to survive,
and she's making fun of like me being pretty or
ugly or something like co fuck yourself, lady.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
That's next time on Model Wars.
Speaker 7 (23:34):
Model Wars was a production of iHeart Podcasts and Campside Media.
Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts. Model Wars was executive produced and hosted
by Vanessa Gregoriotis. Our senior writer was Michael Kenyon Meyer.
Julia K. S Levine was our producer and reporter. Our
senior producer was Lily Houston Smith, and our assistant editor
(23:56):
was Emma Simonov. We had story and production help from
Shoshi Shmolowitz, Ali Haney, and Blake Rook. Our production manager
was Ashley Warren and our studio recordist was Ewan Lyi Tremuen.
Sound design, mix and engineering by Mark McCadam. iHeart Podcasts
executive producers were Jennifer Bassett and Katrina Norbel. The show
was also executive produced by Rachel winter In, Campside Media's
(24:18):
Josh Dean, Adam Hoff, and Matt Schaer. If you'd like
to access behind the scenes content from Model Wars and
Campside Media, please go.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
To join campside dot com. That's j O I N
C A M P s I d E dot com.
Speaker 7 (24:33):
If you enjoyed Model Wars, please rate and review the
show wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Thanks so much for listening.
Campsite Media.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
So we've been telling this story for a while now,
and you may feel that Paul Fisher has been getting
off a little light, but that's about to change.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Got to get out of New York. I'm coming back
to Los Angeles. I literally didn't have suitcases and shit
like that. I think I had won, and everything else
was like in a brown paper bag. And I flew
back to Los Angeles. A friend picked me up at
the airport on his yellow motorcycle. We're driving down the
one oh one freeway. I'm on the back of his motorcycle,
(00:37):
no helmet, two freaking brown bags that I'm gripped onto,
and this asshole He's going in and out of traffic
on this freaking yellow motorcycle and we take a spill.
I go sprawling across the Venturo one oh one. Ambulance
(00:59):
comes takes me to the emergency hospital. I called my
mom and my dad. I say, you guys got to
come pick up pick me up.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
So not a great homecoming. And this is after Paul's
mom had convinced him to give up his dream of
becoming a model Asian in New York and just moved
back to La which Paul was also freaked out about
because it basically meant telling Paul to come home to
his father, the liquor salesman that he didn't get along with,
and admit that he's a failure.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
They got me in the car, my dad started freaking
yelling at me. You gave up your college education, you
threw away your degree, and now look at you. And
he was pissed off and he was screaming at me.
My mom was trying to tell him the calm is
ass down. And we stopped at a red light and
(01:55):
I got out of the car and I just started
walking and I had nothing I had. That was the
lowest part. That was the lowest point in my life.
I had no money, I didn't know who to call.
I didn't know what the fuck to do.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
But Paul doesn't one to linger on his low moments
very long. He goes on to possibly new lower moments
because after the car crash on the yellow motorcycle, a
friend picks him up. She lets him crash at her place,
she gives some food, helps them care for his wounds.
She acts like a sister to him, really, just like
(02:41):
Paul helped his sister Deborah, who's still in and out
of the hospital for her cancer treatment. And into this
scene of helping and healing comes the guy who's interested
in having Paul find girls to have sex with him.
I mean, nothing new there, but Paul didn't think he
(03:01):
was going to have to do this again. After Brazil.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
He says, I'm having a couple parties. I need your
special skill set.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
And now Paul's approaching rock bottom.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
My job was to go out and find beautiful girls
at nightclubs in La and they could some sleep within,
some nod and I remember one day I got a
phone call from one of those girls and they said, Paul,
your friend shit on me. And I know he shits
on everybody. He's an asshole. She says, no, no, no, no, no,
(03:33):
he shit on me. I said, I know that's who
he is. She says, sh he actually defecated on me.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
Paul.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Time for Paul to find a new job. From iHeart
Podcasts in Campside Media, I'm Vanessa Grigoriatis and this is
Model Wars episode five. Now you might be thinking, oh boohoo,
(04:08):
Paul has to retreat back to Los Angeles, California, one
of the most famous and wealthy cities in the world.
Place where you have a lot of fun. Our favorite
Jeufro pimp, Paul Fisher, is just in so much trouble.
But at this time in the early eighties, as far
as the modeling industry is concerned, LA is a backwater.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
There's no modeling done in LA. I mean very little, swimsuits, nothing, nothing,
stupid shit. That's not where real models go. Real models
go to Europe, Paris, lond and Milan to become real models.
That's what I learned.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
So, of course Paul is going to try to get
back into the modeling business here and dominate. But if
he's going to start another modeling business, he has two choices.
He can return to New York, where he's already blacklisted
at every agency or often true, he can try to
change which the power structure of the industry, and Paul
(05:03):
being Paul, he's inclined towards the more outrageous option. So
one of the few modeling agencies making a GOVID in
LA at that time is East West. That's quite a name.
It's hard not to notice that even the big LA
agency feels like it has to reference the East coast.
East West is run by a South African immigrant named
(05:25):
David Altman.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
Here's David la In the eighties was you know, glam
metal bands, Motley Crue, Poison, Guns n' Roses.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
You know, we're talking the Sunset Strip, people with big hair.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
You'd walk down Sunset Boulevard, You'd come out of a
restaurant in the middle of the night and then oh,
my god, that's boy George, that's Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Allman actually got his start in the industry in New York,
especially when he was dating a model, a fellow South
African named Alexi Singer. She's got big, bright eyes, strikingly
precise features, and don't forget her ears.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Clients would say to me, oh my god, have you
seen that ears?
Speaker 2 (06:06):
And it was like, yeah, great ears, you know, amazing
ears for looking at and presumably for hearing. So Alexa
was on the cover of many magazines in the eighties
and the nineties.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
It was weird for me, you know, as the boyfriend,
because she would sometimes be on the cover of Vogue, Self,
Mademoiselle Glamor. And in those days in New York, he
had the newsstand, which was this wooden structure on the
sidewalk and you'd walk past the newsstand. It would be
like embarrassing that she would have. You know, she would
be on the cover of five or six magazines all
(06:43):
at the same time.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
It was almost unfair.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
When David and Alexa moved to la they started East West.
They set up shop on Hollywood Boulevard, across from the
Stars on the Walk of Fame. Their office was designed
to look a lot like the interiors that models would
see when they arrived Elite or Ford in New York City.
In other words, East West is basically tailor made for
(07:06):
Paul Fisher's West Coast comeback.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Middle of the day.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
He has five portfolios under each arm, and he walks
in and he says to me, I heard about you.
I love the name East West, and that can help
you grow your business.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
David notices that Paul seems to be wearing his interview best.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
He was wearing one of those vests, those tank top vests,
but those.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Ones that you see in New York.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
They wear them in the summertime with holes in it,
you know, those ventilated holes.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Yep, Paul is in a mesh vest. But he feels
like the interview is going pretty well.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
I loved him immediately.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
His energy you know, he's a compulsive, hard worker. He's
like the Jurisale battery. My brother, who was my partner,
loved him immediately.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
But David Altman has a harder time convincing his staff
to love Paul.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
Other agents in the office basically took one look at
him and said, look, if you hire this maniac, weati here.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
It takes a special kind of guide to create a
staff revolt after one interview.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
His energy, I think, in that kind of work environment
was perceived by other people as potentially threatening, and they
understood that with that energy, it wouldn't take very long
for him to be in charge.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
So David starts working to win over his staff. But
Paul is getting desperate. He's out of his friend's place.
He's living on borrowed time in a studio apartment.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
I had been evicted out of that studio apartment for
not paying rent for two months. I had to be
out that morning. I had a white Berlinetta, a white
Berlinetta Camaro, no gas, no money to my freaking name,
I'm going back for my fourth interview. I wake up
in the morning, I know I can't go back to
the place because now I'm a Victag's why the night
before I take all my belongings, which is like a
(08:59):
stereo and a couple of paying I like nothing.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
But that night Paul's last Romanian crap gets stolen out
of his car.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Now I go over to David Allman for my fourth
and freaking final interview. Don't have a place to live now,
don't have any clothes, not one piece of clothing left
on my freaking name. The car is like running on
freaking fumes. I walk in to meet David Allman and
after fifteen minutes he goes, you know what we decided Paul,
one of my bookers. She thinks you're too intense and
too aggressive. We just don't think we have a home
(09:29):
for you. And I went, whoa, David. I got no money, bro,
Everything was just taken out of my car. I said,
by the way, if you don't want to hire me,
I don't want to work for you. If you think
that woman that used to work at Wilhelmina is going
to take you to the fucking Promised Land, then you
(09:49):
deserve her. I could take this place and put it
on the freaking map, bro. With everything I just learned
in New York, I could run this place, not her.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
The staff is West had read the situation perfectly.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
In other words, he went into another room. He spoke
to his brother Michael. He came back, he said, he said,
come with me, and he moved me into his home,
and he bought me clothes and he took care of me.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
He was sleeping in his car. Okay, he lived in
my house for a while. It's called identifying potential and
then resourcing the potential, and then empowering the potential so
that they can be the best that.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
They can be.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
So now that Paul has a job, he makes it
his mission to put Los Angeles on the modeling map.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Bro people laughed at LA. If there's one hundred modeling
jobs a day done in New York, there's three TV
commercials done in New York. In LA, there's one hundred
TV commercials done in LA. Three modeling jobs.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Remember, it's the magazines in New York that are running
the fashion industry. So that's where Paul is setting his sights.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
How do I take girls that live in LA and
book them directly into New York, bypass the New York
modeling agencies and go directly to Vogue. I knew them.
I knew the editors. I had met them when I
was in New York. I met mister Avadat, I met
mister School, I met them all. I hung out with
all these people for minutes here in minutes there. I
knew them, I knew of them. And so what I
did is I said, you know what, fucking fucking le
(11:32):
fuck Fords and Gwillian Klick. I'm going directly to the
New York clients.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Yeah, Paul's ready to run another model war. He's talking
about Wilhelmina and Click. Those are two other major modeling
agencies which are both based in New York.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
I would wake up at five o'clock in the morning.
David would be freaking sleeping his ass off with his brother.
I'd be inside the agency, literally sleeping in the office.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
I would walk into the office at seven thirty eight
o'clock in the morning and it would walk in and
he was like sleeping. He was sleeping in the office.
I was like, dude, what's up. And he would go
to the restroom and he'd splash water on his face,
run water through his hair, brush his teeth with his finger,
(12:18):
and then looking good.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
I want to get up at five o'clock by the
time New York opened up. I'm an animal. I'm directly
booking into New York. So I'm taking girls that live
in LA and I'm booking them directly into New York.
And my reputation spread like freaking wildfire, and they hated me.
The New York agency's freaking hated me. I'm becoming John Casablancas.
But in LA, I'm the man for sure.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Okay, So that's what's going on in LA. But Omar
still in New York. He's landed a job actually with
John Casablancas's agency Elite. But now Paul convinces Omar to
move to LA and to build East West's men's division, and.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
We want to show him how this shit is done.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
The band is back together and Paul has all the
success that he ever wanted, so now it's time for
him to throw it all away. As Paul and Omar
(13:30):
are scheming to revitalize LA's modeling scene, David Altman made
sure he was smack in the middle of Hollywood's A list.
There was no shortage of egos, and unfortunately, Paul's continued
to be his worst enemy.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
There was a woman who opened a restaurant in a
nightclub on Beverly Boulevard called Helena's Invitation, Only she had
to invite you, so you couldn't apply to be a member.
She would have to look at you and go, do
you want to be a member, And then she'd write
her home number down on a napkin. You could pay
(14:08):
her a lot of money which would allow you to
come to Helena's and bring one person. The next table
next to you was that was Sean, and that was Madonna,
and then over there was Jack Nicholson.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
And what was Jack Nicholson doing?
Speaker 4 (14:21):
He was doing in real life, like with his eyebrows
what he did in the movies.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
And there was Warren Bay. Anyway, it was a fantastic SCE.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
In this intimate, shoulder to shoulder celebrity setting. It sometimes
mixed in interesting ways with all that eighties macho bullshit
that was wafting through the air.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
If you went to Helena's, which I did, and you
sat next to Madonna and Sean Penn, and you looked
at Madonna in a way that Sean thought was inappropriate,
maybe three seconds longer than Sean thought it should be.
(15:04):
Anything could happen.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
In this telling. The eighties were all about guys putting
a lot of product in their hair and going out
with their girlfriends, often models, and then fighting people.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
You know.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
Axel Rose had a reputation for being very aggressive.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Mickey Rourke.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
You know, Mickey would walk out a restaurants and got
pissed off that the paparazzi.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Were there, and he took a swing at them. It
was normal.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Introduce So Paul says, he's not at Helenez on the
particular night we're going to describe. He's actually at another
exclusive club that's called Flaming Colossus that was once described
by the La Times as a place for black clad
fashion models and the sort of expatriate continentals who designed
(15:53):
sportswear or do a little cinematography on the side.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
I had a girlfriend at the time, beautiful black girl
named Katrina. I was in love, two years in love,
and then one day we broke up and I walked
into the nightclub and there was Katrina was some freaking
big old dude with his arm around her.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
In the paleolithic era known as the nineteen eighties, this
is an act of war.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
I beat him to a pope, dragged him through the
fucking club. He ended up in the hospital. I went
to work Monday morning, and David Alman looked at me
and he said, hey, hey, hey, hey, that boy you
put in the hospital. That's Pam Piper's brother. Pam Piper
was one of our most famous models at the time.
I said, see, well, so what is that I have
(16:43):
to do with anything. You're gonna have to apologize to
Pam and to the boy. Go to the hospital and apologize.
Fuck you go apologize, or I have to fire. You said,
you're gonna fire me. I run this place. I run la.
You can't fire my ass. I'll take the whole fucking
place down. I'll take everybody with me. He said, well,
you're fired. If you don't do it, he fired me.
(17:08):
David Alman fired me.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
She was upset because her brother, you know, apparently, you know,
was roughed up, and I think simultaneously, like maybe.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
He was annoying me. I don't really remember, like maybe
Paul was annoying me, you.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Know, that seems unlikely.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
I think Pam.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
Issued me an ultimatum, if you don't give him the bullet,
I'm out of here. And she was somebody that was
highly respected by other models, So he suddenly became a risk.
So Pam basically like called me up and said, look,
you know what, if you don't you know, this guy's
like a complete nutjob. If you don't get rid of him,
(17:44):
I'm out of here. So I gave him the push.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
You know, basically, Paul is out of a job. Yet again,
some of us would be despondent, but you could say
that Paul goes into Jerry Maguire mode. You remember the scene.
It's when Jerry's leaving his fancy sports agency and he's
trying to convince the entire staff to leave with him.
Speaker 5 (18:09):
Anybody else wants to come with me. This moment will
be the moment of something real and fun and inspiring
in this god forsaken business, and we will do it together.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
I went over to my little apartment that I had.
I called every one of the models to come with me.
We had like one hundred and fifty miles at the time.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Who's coming with me? Who's coming with me?
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Nobody returned my call. They all told me to fuck off,
including Omar.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
This is embarrassing.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
Omar ran the men's Omar had one hundred and fifty guys.
I said, Omar, come over. He goes, Paul, you don't
got no money, I said, I do. I just borrowed
ten thousand dollars from my grandpa. He was, Paul, how
are you going to compete with anybody doing with ten
thousand bucks? I said, all the models are going to
come with me. He said, no, they're not, Paul. No
one's coming with you. What what?
Speaker 2 (19:04):
No one is coming with Paul. It looks like he's
out of luck and on his own. So Paul made
his big plea as he was ousted from East West,
but it looked like nobody wanted to go with him,
not even Omar, who we all assumed was the renee
(19:27):
Zellwegger to Tom Cruise's Jerry McGuire. But just like Jerry McGuire,
it turns out Paul does have one person in his corner.
I will go with you one young model.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
She's actually only thirteen or fourteen years old, and her
name is Jennifer Jimenez. And Paul is over the moon
about this.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
She walked into my agency and I looked at her
and I laughed, and I said, okay, first of all,
take off all that makeup, little girl, and we're gonna
shave your head, then you're can you would meet a
friend of min named Bruce Weber. What yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
You're gonna take off all that makeup. I'm gonna make
you look like a little boy, and then you're gonna
go meet Bruce Webber. She came back the next day,
(20:12):
head shaved, no makeup on. I introduced her to Bruce Webber.
Bruce Webber booked her for the Azzadine Olaya campaign and
walk in the fashion show, booker for Calvin Klein, and
she was off and running. Put her on the cover
of Americanelle. Was the youngest girl ever on the cover
of Americanell.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
So it's just Jennifer, this one middle school kid who's
gonna come over and she's gonna join Paul.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
You can be with an agency, but it's the agent
that actually represents you, that loves you, that's who you
really want to be with. So in the modeling business,
you can be with any name brand, fancy agency.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
You want to be with, But does your agent love
you and Paul love Jennifer. So yeah, so Jennifer went
did the I mean I had no for me? It
wasn't even a quick and of course Jennifer went with Baul.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
So Paul founds a new agency in his apartment with
Jennifer Jimenez as his only client. It's called IT Models.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
How did I come up with the name it? I
had placed Jennifer with an agency in Paris called City
See it Y, one of the biggest agencies in Paris.
When Jennifer came over to my agency, I couldn't afford stickers,
I couldn't afford portfolios. So this little fourteen year old
girl has her city model's portfolio on our on my table,
(21:33):
my kitchen table. I don't have an office, I have
a studio apartment. And she takes a piece of tape.
She covers up the y, covers up the sea. She goes, Paul,
we don't need portfolios. We just call it it. You
just cover up the sea and cover up the wy.
I can keep my old portfolio from Paris. I went,
(21:55):
you gotta be freaking kidding me. It was born.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
So Paul and this teenage girl are joining forces that
IT Models, and Paul is once again clawing his way
back into the modeling industry, and little by little it's
starting to work. We're going to get into all of
that but before we are really overdue to discuss what
(22:23):
is modeling at its core, especially when you're dealing with
young girls. What is this world that Paul's trying to
climb to the top of. Next episode, Jennifer Jimenez is
going to explain it, and some of it is going
to be dark. Not all modeling stories are this dark.
(22:44):
Some of them really aren't. But we think it's time
for you to hear from one of the girls themselves.
Speaker 6 (22:52):
I kept saying, you should get your daughter into modeling,
you should get your daughter into money. Abnormal became the
new normal for me, you know, and I was being
looked at for the moment I started as an object.
I was remember this one teacher, drama teacher of all teachers,
and she was like, oh, you think you're going to
get away with everything because you have a pretty face.
And I just looked at her like she has no idea.
I just came back from Tokyo. I've been sexually assaulted,
(23:14):
like I'm paying for my family, like for us to survive,
and she's making fun of like me being pretty or
ugly or something like co fuck yourself, lady.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
That's next time on Model Wars.
Speaker 7 (23:34):
Model Wars was a production of iHeart Podcasts and Campside Media.
Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts. Model Wars was executive produced and hosted
by Vanessa Gregoriotis. Our senior writer was Michael Kenyon Meyer.
Julia K. S Levine was our producer and reporter. Our
senior producer was Lily Houston Smith, and our assistant editor
(23:56):
was Emma Simonov. We had story and production help from
Shoshi Shmolowitz, Ali Haney, and Blake Rook. Our production manager
was Ashley Warren and our studio recordist was Ewan Lyi Tremuen.
Sound design, mix and engineering by Mark McCadam. iHeart Podcasts
executive producers were Jennifer Bassett and Katrina Norbel. The show
was also executive produced by Rachel winter In, Campside Media's
(24:18):
Josh Dean, Adam Hoff, and Matt Schaer. If you'd like
to access behind the scenes content from Model Wars and
Campside Media, please go.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
To join campside dot com. That's j O I N
C A M P s I d E dot com.
Speaker 7 (24:33):
If you enjoyed Model Wars, please rate and review the
show wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Thanks so much for listening.
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