Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - Breaking the Hollywood Boys’ Club with Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas

Episode Date: July 9, 2025

This week, Anthony sits down with Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas — Hollywood powerhouse and now author — to discuss her debut book Climbing in Heels. They explore her unconventional path to success, the barriers women face in the entertainment industry, and the enduring value of integrity. Elaine reflects on the impact of the Me Too movement, the power of storytelling, and the role of friendship in navigating career highs and lows. At the heart of it all is her message: the only thing standing in your way is you. Get her wonderful new book "Climbing in Heels: A Novel" here: https://amzn.to/4eKtc9o 📚 Get a copy of my books: Pre-order "Solana Rising: Investing in the Fast Lane of Crypto" https://amzn.to/4epOh8W "From Wall Street to the White House and Back" https://amzn.to/3Sxk7Xz "The Little Book of Bitcoin" https://amzn.to/4e2Vnz1 "The Little Book of Hedge Funds" https://amzn.to/4jccAJv "Hopping over the Rabbit Hole" https://amzn.to/40yFbRI "Goodbye Gordon Gekko: How to Find Your Fortune Without Losing Your Soul" https://amzn.to/44ehn6m Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and this is over. open book, where I talk to some of the brightest minds about everything surrounding the written word. That's everything. That's from authors and historians to figures in entertainment, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Before we dive in, make sure to follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcast. And don't forget to leave a review. Good or bad, I want to hear from you. I want to hear whether you're enjoying it or where we can improve. And I can take the

hits. So let me know. If you don't like something, say it straight. Now let's get into it. Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Very happy to be joined by Elaine Goldsmith Thomas. The title of the book is Climbing in Heels. This is a novel. And Elaine, of course, is a Hollywood agent. She's turned producer and now author. But man, is this a great book? You know what? This is my era. This is the problem with this book. This is my era. Elaine, it's good to have you on before we get into the book. Tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you make your way to Hollywood and writing and all this fun stuff that you're doing? Oh, gosh. I think I've always been a writer. And, you know, there's no straight line in careers. I think the secret to any career, Ante,

you would probably back this up is the ability to pivot to to go one way and then go oh fuck that's not working oh sorry i don't know am i allowed to say that um and uh turn around and find another way and i you're on anthony scaramucci's podcast you're allowed to curse there you go thank you that's what we do well in that case yes i was um born in l a i was born in the san fernando valley my mother i was born in bequoima my mother my mother i was born in beckoima my mother called it Arlida. Then we moved to Sepulveda and my mother called it Northridge. I never really knew where I lived. I just knew it wasn't good enough for my mother. But I also knew that image was more important than truth. And I watched how she sort of nudged our reality to become her truth or her

truth to become our reality. Right. So I think my ambition was she was both my fuel. and my kryptonite. And I think that, you know, all she wanted was to live closer to Ventura Boulevard. You know, that was the great divide between, it was like the hills and the hills not. If you lived in the hills, man, you were something. If you didn't, you lived where the housekeepers lived. We lived where the housekeepers lived. So, you know, my path to Hollywood was wanting, I didn't even want to get to Hollywood. what, I just wanted to live in the hills. Probably something like that. Anyway, you know, I went to school.

I helped, much like one of the characters in my book, I helped a boy I was deeply enamored with. I helped him get an agent. I realized there was no science to it, that people put their fingers in their mouths to see which way the wind was blowing. And I understood that passion speaks. And I was passionate.

I was passionate to get the yes. So I worked a whole summer before going to college to get him an agent. And I finally did. And he ended up getting little rolls for a while. I thought he was going to be chiseled into the Mount Rushmore of Hollywood. And then he dumped me. But I never forgot how good it felt to get the yes. And when I graduated college, I remembered how good it felt.

You know, my dad was a salesman who taught me that you have to really believe in what you're selling. And then you have to connect. You have to figure out a way in. And I guess the ambition of my mother and the drive and tenacity of my father formed and informed me. So there you go. You know what? I love the honesty in the story. We're all driven by different things, our emotions, our connections to our families,

and we idealize our lives to be, right? So I love the honesty in your story. Let's talk about this fictional story. The story is set in the 1980s agency world. Okay, so there was no misogyny in that world. There was no male chauvinism in that world, of course, right, only? as I like to say, there's a lot of blow and blow jobs. And you can't judge these women.

I don't even know if you can judge the men through the prism of 2025. It is, it was the world, you know, people say to me, how did you do it? And when you're facing terrain like that, you just do it. You look at the mountain in front of you and you begin to climb. You don't judge it. if you judge it, then you're playing the referee in the games down the field, right? You can cry foul, but you won't be in the game. And the characters in my book wanted to be in the game, and I wanted to be in the game.

So, and the terrain that I was faced with was, yeah, incredibly misogynistic. Some of the guys, not all of them, they called their, it was, you wanted to be a sexy Terry, if you could. but if your wiggle was more waddle or you were too loud or too smart or too ambitious, you had to figure another way to get that job as one of the characters in my book had to figure out a way in because there was no, the three women that really are at the center of this book, there's no straight line for them. So they had to leverage every opportunity metaphorically in heels. Okay, so there's Beanie, Mercedes, and Ella.

Those are the three women. Who is Elaine the most like? Are you the most like Ella? Oh, thank you. No, I am probably Beanie. I am probably most like Beanie. I mean, I guess they're all a little bit like me and not. But Beanie is closest to me because Beanie was also born in the Valley.

Beanie was drawn in the Valley. Beanie was driven. You know, all three of these women were sort of shaped by their mothers. Beanie wanted to please her mother. Ella was repelled by her mother, who was an ex-debutant, who believed that separate was equal. And Mercedes sort of became her mother. In other words, she leveraged every opportunity trying to find a rich man. to protect her. And each one of them, the shadow and echo of their mother informed their trajectory.

I probably was like Beanie. Though her path wasn't mine, Beanie did work for a misogynist. Beanie was introduced to cocaine and, you know, a lot of porn. and, you know, and she worked for a guy who very much did not want her to succeed. She knew too much. She was too smart. So while that wasn't me, it was a lot of people that I knew. And so I sort of, you know, the ability, fiction, gosh, I posted something on my Instagram the other day. I can't remember the quote now.

It was something that through fiction, you're able to tell the truth. I'm going to find that quote because it was such an amazing quote. Fiction allows you to turn left, right? The quote is Camus and it's fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth. And I think it allowed me the ability to tell people what it was like in the 80s, especially for women who weren't the Angie Dickinson in the Rat Pack. You know, they weren't one of the guys that they could. hang out with that that didn't threaten them.

And it also allowed me to turn left and invent things. And there are a lot of facts in the book and a lot of fiction. All right, it's summer and let's be honest. There's nothing worse than tossing and turning in a hot room sweating through the sheets like you're on a bad cable news hit. I've had those nights and they can be miserable, which is why cozy earth's bamboo, Sheets are a game changer. These sheets are temperature regulating, incredibly breathable, and they help you sleep several degrees cooler.

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apparel and more. Trust me, you'll feel the difference the very first night. Sleep cooler, lounge lighter, stay cozy. You know, I find that fiction is probably the best pathway into understanding humans because of what you just said. You've got the license now because it's fiction to tell the truth in the story. And so when you're- Well said, Anthony.

Well said. But I think it is. And it's the reason why I love fiction. I really, I learned so much from fiction. I think of William Shakespeare, how much he teaches us about human behavior. But I want to climbing in heels for a second because I think your life is that, right? You climbed in heels. And you took the obstacles in front of you without victimhood.

Even if you were being victimized, you shed the idea of victimology. and you just kept going. And I think that I think the message is something that should resonate today. How should that message resonate today in 2025? Well, it seems to be resonating. They're calling it the be treated of the summer. People are young. What's interesting is young women are reading and going,

wow, the 80s seem great. And I go, I go, yeah, I guess so. And people who are older are reading it and Riley smiling. I mean, yeah. Again, it's that metaphor. You can play the referee. You can say foul, but you're missing the game. So you kind of have to look at whatever obstacle is in front of you.

This is how I would translate it for now. Well. And I would say you, you, yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry. I want you to react to this. Okay, so I live in Manhasset. This is a suburban town. And every woman in this town watches Yellowstone or did watch Yellowstone.

And because there's macho alpha men kicking the shit out of each other in Yellowstone. And there seems to be a shortage of that sort of electricity in our society now. We seem like we have muted those people. So I feel like people that are reading your book and watching Yellowstone, there's something there to that. What is that? Am I missing something? Is there something there sociologically?

Well, it's so interesting that you called Yellowstone. When I think of Yellowstone, I think of that character who's Costner's daughter, who's kickass. I mean, you can't kill her. She's the Terminator. You know, they run her over, they burn her over. they burn her up, they blow her up. She just doesn't die and she keeps going and she keeps smarting and outsmarting them.

So when you say Yellowstone, I think, yeah, there are sexy men in there, but there's this kick-ass woman in there. I guess, yeah. I mean, I think there's something for everybody in there. That's your book, isn't it? That is my book. My book is about navigating, about, navigating, about, navigating the waves on a beach and understanding that if you get knocked down, you stand up and you try again.

You might try differently. You might, you might, you know, wear a life preserver. You might try differently. But it's about life is really about the climb. It's, you know, for those who haven't read it, I don't want to ruin the ending. But it really is the ascent rather than the destination. All of those cliches. And these women.

in the book are strategic and they have to be. I think we all have to be a little strategic when we're faced with the unexpected daily kind of eruptions of life, right, Anthony? I mean, I look at you in your career and you have an interesting, amazing career that you couldn't have planned, right? you know, my mentor, a woman named Sue Mangers, said to me years ago, I mean, she's sort of the model for Sheila Day in my book, one of the most powerful agents in the world. And she would say, honey, my career wasn't planned. It just happened. And I think much of life is about embracing what's

happening and the reactions we have to it. Because none of the of us could have predicted the trajectory. But if you have the desire, like the women in my book do, to leave their footprint in heels, then go for it. Because here's the truth. The only thing stopping you is you. If, Anthony, if you want to write a book, if you want to write a screenplay, you want to become an actor, do it. The only thing stopping you is you. And it took me a long time to understand that. I was a top agent in the 90s. I was a big, big time agent. I represented a lot of movie stars, a lot of women, you know, Julia Roberts and Jennifer Lopez and Madonna and Susan Saranda, a lot of, and men, Spike Lee, Tim Robbins. And I, I, I, and Nicholas Cage,

I was good at it, but it wasn't all I was good at. I was a writer and I was afraid to tell people, especially my clients, that that's what I wanted to do as well, even though being a storyteller made me a better agent. And you have to find the way to your ambition and you have to allow yourself to do more than one thing. Who says that we should make a decision when we're 20 and that's what we should be doing when we're 50? right um i think you're finding your way to your multi-faceted career anthony and i think it's it makes you more interesting it makes your path more interesting i wanted to be in hollywood only you did so so come to hollywood come to hollywood you're not dead have the balls yeah but just

yeah no but i just wanted you know but i just wanted that when i was a kid that's what i wanted but i was anxious about money so i went to wall street you know i went to walsher you know i went to Street, Elaine? Because that's where the money was. It was like Willie Sutton with the banks, right? I knew if I just had a middle, middling career on Wall Street, I would be rich enough to take care of my parents. That's literally the simplicity of the thought process of my career. But play the record out, Anthony. Okay? You're not dead. You're a thriving, huge, well-spoken personality who's done so many things. You'll be my agent. I don't we get some roles.

Oh, you wanted to act. Is that what you wanted to do? Yeah, of course. Yeah, I wanted to be a James Bond villain or something like that. Oh, oh, see, you could have taken the path. You could have taken the path to Hollywood after you made money and took care of your parents. You could have moved them out west. Like in your parallel universe, you move them out west.

You've got money so you can bankroll a movie. Then you could have done your own movie and started it. Well, that's why I got my son. I bankrolled my son and his movie. That was the key for him. You know, he said he got his first short film in Tribeca. You write, you write it to be doing his book. You, you're pulling a quote.

And when I read your book, I was like, oh, my God, this woman, I mean, I don't know you, but you make us, like, fall in love with you because I'm going to read this quote. I want you to react to this quote, okay? Okay, beware that when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a woman. monster, Elaine, for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. Now, that's Frederick Nietzsche. And of course, I read that in the mid-80s. And Oliver Stone put that on Wall Street One, by the way. I don't know if you remember that. That was in the screenplay. That was Michael Douglas said that he won the, he won the Academy Award. He said,

you got to be careful when you're staring into that abyss. You could become that. Okay. And I've live my life. If you took that and you took Charles Dickens a Christmas Carol and you put both of those in the fly machine that we put Jeff Goldblum in in the 1980s, you fuse those two ideas. I didn't want to be Jacob Marley. I wanted to be the reformed Ebenezer Scrooge, charitable. And I didn't want to stare into the abyss of the greed on Wall Street and become that. and you did that in Hollywood. Okay, so how did you do it, Elaine? Yeah.

Well, by the way, that's a huge compliment, by the way. And I mean that because I mean that. Thank you. Thank you. And you deserve credit for that. Thank you. Thank you. What I like to say is, look, this book is about friendship and survival and betrayal. It's about standing up when they pass you by and saying, I won't quit when they want you to quit.

But it's also about how some of those women become very much like the monsters they worked for. And I think it's about forgiving them a bit. You hope you're not monstrous. You hope you can be better than the generation that came before. And if you are, you have to correct. I think that life changed with me too. I think that they shined a giant light on the outrageousness that was allowed in the Hollywood that you wanted to go to. It was outrageous, Anthony.

It was Harvey Weinstein. wasn't the exception. He was the rule. How did he exist? There were hundreds of him. He just kept going and continued. And somebody was smart enough. And, you know, I certainly applaud Ronan Farrow for shining a light on it. So now I think there is. is a big, you know, the entire world is watching itself. I'm not talking even about the outward, the outward monstrous behavior. I'm talking about the monsters inside, the entitled narcissists who are desperate to hang on to their power and their youth.

Okay, so when I close the book and I look up and say, okay, what, did I learn from the book? I learned that you can keep your integrity and you can climb in your heels and step over and around things and dodge and weave and have a successful career. It's not a perfect career. No one's career is. But you can survive if you keep your compass together. Is that what I got out of the book? I like that you got that out of the book. And I like that you forgave the women because I don't know that they always make the right moral choices or by other people's standards, but they did by their own compass. But the men make all the moral choices.

Well, you know, look, some of the men were quite decent in the book. Yeah, exactly. You think the men, the men, though, exactly. Yeah, I think that I, here's what I would say. Yes, do the very best you can with the terrain that's in front of you. and enjoy the climb. I think as you close the book, Anthony, what you recognized is especially with Beanie,

she had summited, right? And sometimes as you look back, when people say they miss the hungry years, it's the climb, it's the people you meet along the way, take note of them. But more than anything, I guess if I want people to take anything away from the book. I think, look, I think they're going to enjoy the read. It seems to be the

beach read of the summer. People are loving it. And taking a page from my book, it's never too late, Anthony. You want to go to Hollywood, go to Hollywood. Look it. I've got a lot of skin problems going to it's a beautiful face. Trying to stay moisturized Elaine. You took care of your parents. You financed your son. Now it's your turn. See, and that's what I think. I think these women found the way to the careers they wanted and they weren't always planned, right? And that's what climbing in heels is about. I mean, they're, you know, they're saying it's, you know, little valley of the dolls. It's a little steamy. Did you find it? Steamy, Anthony? I loved it. I loved it. You know, let me tell you something, okay? Everything about it is inside the dark channel in our minds, right? I mean,

come on. You know, we, we are all a little like this, whether we want to admit it to ourselves or not. Thank you. Even the most Puritan are a little like this. All right, so listen, I'm going to change this up on my producers. What I usually do is I end the interview with five words. And then what I ask the author to do is I'm going to say the word and you respond to it in a sentence or two. Okay, but I'm going with 10 this time because I think this is so interesting and some of them are people. And so you don't have to get too detailed. I'm going to say the person's name. You give me a sentence. Okay, you're ready? Yes, sir. What are you going to say? I say Jennifer Lopez. You say what?

Jennifer Lopez, I would say, limitless. I mean, if anybody inspired me, Anthony, it was Jennifer. She encouraged me to not be afraid. I've been writing under pseudonyms and I've been writing uncredited for years, Anthony. And I was too afraid to stand in my truth as a writer. I thought people would judge me or they wouldn't want to work with me as a producer. I was afraid. So she was the one who said, stand in your truth. This was a dancer who became a singer, a dancer who became an actor, who became a singer who became an international brand. And she empowered me to do it as well. There's a lot of actors who want to sort of hold their fame to their own chest.

And she said, you've got to live your dream. That's who she is. So I'm her producing partner. I don't know if you caught what I said. I don't know if you call what I said. I don't know her. She seems incredibly likable. And somebody like me growing up the way, way I grew up identifies with her. I have a soft spot for her. Yeah, no, I did hear that.

That's just me looking at her from a Disney. You know, it's funny, I don't know how many actors, if she's my producing partner, would have said, look, you go off on your book tour. You know, you do you, who would have held me on her shoulders the way she did. I think that's quite extraordinary. I do. Knowing actors like I do, I do. So let's go to these last. Okay. Let's go to these last couple. I'm going to have you repeat a few if you don't mind, okay? I want to start again with Beanie Rosen. I'd say Beanie is a, Beanie has survived her mother, her father, a misogynistic industry,

and found her way to her ambition. She is a survivor. Mercedes. Mercedes. Mercedes-Backs. Mercedes learned from her mother, who she thought was her sister, how to leverage opportunities to find a safe harbor and ended up doing that. Ella, Ella Gaddy. Ella Gaddy was so busy fighting tradition, wanting to find her own way and her own voice.

and, you know, really believed rules were for sheep, and she never wanted to join a flock. So she started her own. Okay, this is the last one. I'm going to give you the final word. Elaine Goldsmith Thomas. A work in progress. The best days are to come, Elaine?

The better... The best days are to come. The best days are ahead? Yes, here's what I want to leave you with, Anthony. if you can hear me, we don't only live once. We live every day. We die once. So every single day is a second chance to go to Hollywood, Anthony, to make your dreams come true.

The best days are right now. Now, when you fly to London tonight, just remember that. I'm going to come talk to you about you're going to be my career coach. You're going to be my career coach. You got it. You got it. The title of the book is climbing. in heels a novel, it is a phenomenal beach read. There's so much going on on the book, but

it's also allegories about human behavior and understanding the different channels in our minds. And I really tell you, I love the book, and I wish you great success with it. And I'm sure you're going to get a TV deal out of this book and other things. It's just that good. Oh, Anthony, thank you. Let me just add this. We have a TV deal. I'm writing it with Darren. I'm writing it with Darren Starr. We sold it. We have 10 episodes on the air on Peacock already.

So there you go. Maybe that's your acting role. Oh, I got to check it out. But you say it's 10 episodes. You haven't debuted it yet. You're in the process of- We're writing it. Writing it.

Okay, good. Yeah, well, there you go. I can play. Trust me, I can play a misogynist show in the 80s. There you go. Okay. I live there. I've been there.

Okay. Just something. Keep in mind. I see it now. John Ham, John Ham, that big, tall, handsome son of a bitch, is unavailable. Okay, you need some Tom Cruise-sized actors. I'm your guy. Okay, got it.

Thank you. Lots of lovely. Bye. I am Anthony Scaramucci, and that was Open Book. Thank you so much for listening. If you like what you hear, tell your friends, and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. While you're there, please leave us a rating or review. If you want to connect with me or chat more about the discussions, it's at Scaramucci on X or Instagram.

I'd love to hear from you. I'll see you back here next week. When a country's productivity cycle is broken, people feel it in their paychecks, their communities, their futures. What does this mean for individuals, communities, and businesses across the country? Join business leaders, policymakers, and influencers for CGs' national series on the Canadian Standard of Living, Productivity, and Innovation. Learn what's driving Canada's productivity decline and discover actionable solutions to reverse it.