Complaint Review: Columbia Artists Theatricals - CAMI Theatricals - New York New York

I am an ex-employee of Columbia Artist Theatricals. What Marina Del Ray reported here was 100% accurate. It was a chaotic company. A nightmare. Somebody was always having a hissy fit or screaming. Jann and Gary I was told from the start that they were an item. They were infamous within the company for being alcoholics. The only sour grapes involved were the ones that Jann and Gary imbibed after they were fermented into wine. Gary and Jann were adults. Not infants. The idea that one of them was so useless to him or herself that he or she had to go and "get help" to stop drinking does not make that person automatically good or noble. They let themselves get messed up on booze in the first place. Rehab may be in vogue at the moment with all the celebrities checking in and out but it's still for the world's most infantile people. Everybody around a drunk winds up affected by their meanness and emotional instability. But then people like Marina are criticized for saying their actions are wrong. Well I worked there too and their actions really were wrong, like it or not. I remember there was one employee who left. Gary held up a picture of a baboon and said it was her and cackled like he thought he was funny. That's the kind of people these were. There was also a monstrous assistant called Doug who did most of Gary's work and treated the other employees like dirt. Doug started a lot of the screaming matches and he was sober. If Gary won an award recently I wonder who really earned it, him or his latest assistant. I wish a report like Marina's had been on here years ago before I took the job working with those people because if I had had warning I would not have worked there. Columbia Artists Management, the group that owns the Theatricals division, I don't know what you're thinking of, allowing what goes on there to go on.

This vitriolic "report" smacks of sour grapes, sore loser, disgruntled employee and all of the above. I have absolutely nothing to gain from posting a response and no personal interest except that I just can't stand this nastiness. I am familiar with at least one of the individuals slandered in this post and let me clarify something, "Marina del Ray." While, yes, sadly, there has been alchohol abuse in the past, one of the individuals has earnestly and seriously sought treatment in the last 2 years. With regard to the "mistress" business...I seriously doubt it -- but so what? I bet you voted for Clinton. As to the professional reputations of each of the individuals....just check their bios. You don't run a business for as long as CAT has been run by McAvay without doing something right. He has made money for CAMI and is well regarded in the industry and in 2004 was bestowed with the "Touring Broadway" industry award. I could comment on why Scrofani has been with the company for so long, but let's just leave it that maybe he is loyal to his friends (and vice versa, by the way). Obviously, he is getting something out of it, so why do you care? Before you mouth off on the internet, Marina, you should really make sure your facts are 100% and not just some bitter figment of your imagination.