There’s No Such Thing as a Free Swag Bag

When you first come to Hollywood, the appeal of free stuff is understandable. When I was starting my career, my husband and I dined regularly at the buffet tables of second-rate premieres. We occasionally took centerpieces home with us, and when by some miracle we ended up with a gift bag, we would bring it home and spread the contents on the floor like children on Halloween night. But this made sense. We had no money, we were working impossible hours and we were living in a one-room guest house. Free stuff was our food stamps. Free stuff was our reward.

But even then there were hints that the appeal of free stuff continued as one moved up the Hollywood ladder. Once, in a buffet line at a fancier-than-usual premiere, we saw an expensively dressed woman open her purse and shovel in an entire bowl of Jordan almonds. Later, when I became a studio executive, I saw that the negotiations for actors’ perks took longer than the negotiations for their salaries. I remember an executive arguing, “We’re paying the guy $6 million; the least we can do is buy him $5,000 worth of exercise equipment.” This actually sounded logical until someone pointed out that the thinking was exactly backward. But the actor got his exercise equipment in observation of an unspoken rule: Salary is a measure of how much you’re valued; free stuff is a measure of how much you’re loved.

You might think “love” is too strong a word, but the emotions associated with free stuff can be as raw and intense as a toddler’s attachment to his blankey. And if you don’t believe me, watch what happens when it’s taken away. As evidence, I submit what has come to be known in my household as the Gift Bag Incident.

A few years ago I went to a Women in Film dinner and found myself sitting with a group of people I didn’t know. They all looked nice enough, but I wasn’t paying much attention because all I could see was the Gift Bag. It was the most beautiful one I’d ever seen, covered in elaborate silk flowers. I really thought I was over free stuff by this point, but when I saw it, my heart sort of...stopped. I carefully placed it at my feet, postponing the pleasure of looking inside until I got home.

But at the end of the evening, I reached down and it wasn’t there. And then I noticed the woman on my left surreptitiously handing a gift bag to a woman across the table. “Excuse me,” I said to the woman on my left. “Did you accidentally take my gift bag?”

Before she could answer, the woman across the table blurted out, “There wasn’t one on my seat!”

I was stunned. “So you took my gift bag?” I asked her.

“I didn’t get one,” she replied.

“But now I don’t have one,” I said.

“I paid $150 for this event,” she shot back, “and there wasn’t a gift bag on my seat.”

“But I paid $150 too,” I said.

“But there wasn’t one on my seat,” she wailed.

“But there was one on my seat,” I said, trying not to wail. “And now you have it.”

“But I didn’t get one!” she nearly shrieked.

“And she paid $150,” pointed out the woman on my left, as if this were new information.

By now I realized I had a choice: I could be the kind of person who gets into a catfight over a gift bag at a Women in Film dinner, or I could leave.

“Fine,” I said. “You keep it. The only thing I ask is that when you get home, you tell your children that you stole it, and that stealing is OK as long as you paid $150 for the event.” And then I left, head held high, no heavy flowered gift bag to weigh me down.

OK, I didn’t say that. I just left without a word. But I wished I’d said that. Only later did I realize that the truly appropriate response would have been, “Of course you can have it if it means that much to you. Please enjoy it.”

But I’m not sure that Jesus himself, if he’d seen those silk flowers, could have been that selfless. It was so beautiful. And so free.