How to Manage Your Agent

A Writer’s Guide to Hollywood Representation

Gervich Chad, Chad Gervich

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138134805
• eBook ISBN: 9781136070938
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

First published in 2013. Have you written the script for the next box office blockbuster or hit TV show and just need the right agent to sell it? Not sure whether to accept an if-come deal or a script commitment? Debating which manager is the right choice to steer your career? Well, worry no more...How to Manage Your Agent is a fun, friendly guide to the world of literary representation. Enter the inner sanctums of Hollywood's power-brokers and learn how they influence what pitches get bought, what projects get sold, and which writers get hired. Find tips from top-level executives, agents, managers, producers, and writers to help you maximize your own representation and kick your career into overdrive! You'll learn: How agents prioritize their client list... and ways to guarantee you're at the top; When to approach new representation... and what you need to capture their interest; Hollywood's secret buying schedule... and how to ensure you're on it; The truth about packaging... where it helps and when it hurts; Which agents are best for you... and where to find them; Advice on acing your first agent meeting... and why so many writers blow it; Managers' tricks for creating buzz... and when to use them yourself; How to fire your agent... without killing your career; When you don't need representation... and how to succeed without it. The value of good representation is undeniable-especially in a world where agents and managers control which projects (and careers) live or die. How to Manage Your Agent puts you on the inside track to get your work the attention it deserves!

Part I

Represent!

1 No Vocation Without Representation

As President of NBC Entertainment for nearly a decade, Warren Littlefield had navigated many sticky situations. He’d managed the notorious Jay-versus-Dave battle for The Tonight Show. He’d shocked the industry by paying $13 million an episode to keep E.R. on the air.¹ And he’d made cultural history by standing by an odd little show that had received a “weak” score on its pilot report and got pulverized in its first season … only to metamorphose into one of the most groundbreaking series of all time: Seinfeld.

Yet now, as he stared out the third-story window of his office at the Littlefield Company, his TV production company in partnership with Disney’s ABC Studios, Littlefield faced a dilemma unlike anything he’d ever encountered. He had nothing going on. In the ten years since departing NBC and launching his company, Littlefield had had some successes–he’d shot several pilots and got five shows on the air (Keen Eddie, Love Inc., Do Over, Foody Call, Like Family), but not one that had lasted longer than a season.

“My head was bloody from banging it against the wall,” says Littlefield. Not only had any big hits eluded him, but he felt he wasn’t even being presented with the writers, directors, and underlying properties needed to develop a big hit. He watched in frustration as writers like Law & Order: SVU’s Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas teamed up with other production companies like The Mark Gordon Company to create Eli Stone. And CSI: NY’s Peter Lenkov partnered with K/O Paper Products (Cowboys and Aliens) to reboot Hawaii Five-0.

“I needed more choices in order to go into production,” Littlefield says. “It was this feeling that ‘I don’t exist outside the rules of the land.’ It was about survival.” Littlefield knew what the problem was: he didn’t have an agent, a representative to scout the marketplace, bringing him appropriate projects and writers to develop and produce. Throughout Hollywood, most professional artists–writers, producers, directors, actors, designers, composers, hosts–used an agent or manager, some kind of professional representative, to help find work and negotiate deals. But Littlefield, by his own design, didn’t have one.

“A number of [agents] had pursued me since I left NBC,” he says, but “I thought being Switzerland would make more sense. That way we could do business with everybody.”

Unfortunately Littlefield was wrong. Sure–being unrepresented did, in theory, allow him to do business with artists from all agencies, but it had also forced him to accept a grim truth: no one paid him allegiance. So while the Littlefield Company could, hypothetically, do a show with a writer from powerhouse agency William Morris Endeavor (WME)–which represents writers such as Homeland showrunner Howard Gordon and South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker–WME was more incentivized to partner clients with its own production companies, like J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot (Lost, Alias) or Queen Latifah’s Flavor Unit Entertainment (Single Ladies, Just Wright). (Bad Robot has since switched from WME to rival agency Creative Artists Agency, or CAA.) And sure, the Littlefield Company could do a show with a writer repped at United Talent Agency (UTA)–like Rene Balcer of Law & Order or Ted co-writers Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild–but UTA’s clients were busy being introduced to UTA’s own producers, such as Ice Cube’s Cube Vision (All About the Benjamins, Are We There Yet) or Gavin Palone’s Pariah (Premium Rush, My Boys).

“If you’re trying to go through a process that has so many obstacles and barriers … [you have to] follow the flow of the water,” says Littlefield. “It’s having a source that’s supplying you with talent and content. In the world of television today, most of the development is a format from another country, or based on a book, or there’s something presold about it … so [having an agent that can supply that] gives you a leg up in a very, very, very competitive environment.”

Littlefield knew what he had to do. He picked up the phone to dial an old friend. A decade ago, Brian Pike had been one of Littlefield’s drama executives at NBC. Today, he was a TV agent at CAA, one of the most powerful agencies in Hollywood (representing actors such as Anna Kendrick and Chris Hemsworth, writers like Jonathan Kellerman and Stephen Gaghan, and reality personalities like Gordon Ramsay and Hoda Kotb).

“I’ve been waiting for you to be ready for this,” said Pike, listening to Littlefield’s proposal.

“So with the respect of the muscle of CAA and the personal relationship with Brian,” says Littlefield, “that’s where I jumped in.” With CAA at his back, Littlefield felt the change immediately.

“All of a sudden it was, ‘We want you to meet with this writer,’ ‘We want you to meet with that writer,’” says Littlefield. “Now, make no mistake–you don’t just sit back and let your agency shove stuff in front of you. But it’s a very important artery going into your heart. [It] gives you content, gives you artists, and when you have that direct line of access, it only helps.”

A year later, the Littlefield Company had a new series on the air–ABC’s My Generation, written by CAA client Noah Hawley. CAA also brokered Littlefield’s first book deal (for 2012’s Top of the Rock: Inside the Rise and Fall of Must See TV). They secured him the TV rights to Brandy Engler and David Rensin’s memoir The Men On My Couch: True Stories Of Sex, Love and Psychotherapy–also represented by CAA–which Littlefield and Happy Endings producer Gail Lerner sold to ABC. They facilitated his partnership with Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas to adapt the British miniseries Metropolis for the CW, ² and with Watchmen writer David Hayter to adapt The Damned, a supernatural comic book series, for Showtime.³ And they helped Littlefield team with Academy Award-winning writer/directors Joel and Ethan Coen for FX’s TV sequel to the Coen brothers’ Fargo.

Obviously, any Hollywood wannabe would kill for these kinds of hook-ups. Yet few people get them. Getting an agent is considered one of the major stepping-stones in building a Hollywood career, but there’s no real blueprint for making it happen. It’s tough to get work with no agent … yet most agents only want clients who have worked. What’s a talented young writer, director, actor, or producer to do?

To make matters worse, agents remain some of the most mysterious, elusive, and misunderstood players in Hollywood. Most avoid the spotlight and shun interviews. Thus, there are few places to get honest, helpful insight into how agents work … and where to get one. And when fictional agents appear in movies or TV shows like Jerry Maguire or Entourage, they’re usually depicted as slick, shady sharks in Tom Ford suits, screaming into cell phones as they cruise through Beverly Hills in Ferraris and BMWs.

“[Agents] get a bad rap,” says Christine Crow, director of development at Millennium Films (Olympus Has Fallen, The Expendables). “It’s the nature of being a representative that you’re constantly trying to hustle for your clients … [but] not all agents are slimy, sharky personality types.”

The truth is: most agents are dedicated, caring, passionate people who work hard to get clients fruitful deals and opportunities. Having said that, many agents do work in strange and secretive ways … and they often have their own hidden motivations and agendas. So you want to get the most from your agent? … Understand what they want, how they get it, and how you can fit your career goals into their needs and objectives.

To do this, let’s look at why most of us need–or think we need–representation in the first place.

WHY DO PEOPLE NEED REPRESENTATION?

While we don’t always think about it, we actually use representation in many parts of our lives. Sometimes we need to find work, so we hire an employment agency. Other times, we need to buy or sell something–a house, insurance policies, a car–so we hire a representative who understands that particular market. When we need someone to represent our legal interests we hire a lawyer.

These same situations–and many others–crop up in the entertainment industry. Some matters are the province of agents, some fall to other types of representation, like publicists or managers, but understanding when and why we need representation is often helpful in identifying which type of representation we need–and how to use them. In Hollywood, there are nine basic uses for representation:

One: To Find Employment

Artists working in the entertainment industry are–ninety-nine percent of the time–freelancers. Whether you’re a writer, director, actor, costume designer, script supervisor, accountant, or grip, you bounce from job to job, company to company. Even if you manage to land a fairly steady gig on a long-running TV show like The Big Bang Theory or Bones, or as a producer with a two-year studio deal at Universal, you are a freelancer. Once that job ends, you’ll be hurled back into the unemployment lines to fend for yourself and find a new gig. This is true for first-timers like Ashleigh Powell, who sold her first screenplay, Somacell, to Warner Brothers in 2012, to veteran producers like Tyler Perry, who produces the Madea movies and TBS’s House of Payne.

“The first job always seems like the hardest to get,” says TV writer Rick Muirragui (Suits, Men of a Certain Age), but “once you’ve done it before, you have a little more confidence in going to get another job. So in that regard, yes–it gets easier. But at the same time, it’s scary … [and] the fear never goes away, because you’re a freelancer; you could be on a show that lasts six episodes or six years.”

Thus, many people hire representation to help them find employment, just like professionals in other industries might use employment agencies such as AppleOne or Lucas Group. In fact, many states categorize talent agents right alongside regular employment agencies, holding them to the exact same laws and classifications. (More on this in the next chapter.)

“[I am] essentially a headhunter,” says one Hollywood agent. “I am responsible for getting my clients–producers, production companies, or freelancers–jobs!” Agents and other representatives do this by gathering information and forming relationships with buyers and executives throughout the industry, making them privy to job opportunities and information other industry professionals may not know about. After all, the industry is vast and complex–it would be impossible for a working writer, director, or composer to work full-time and stay on top of upcoming openings. There are generally two ways artists get work in Hollywood:

1. “Work-for-hire” jobs, where you’re contracted to work on someone else’s project–rewriting a script, animating a movie, playing a character, directing a TV episode.

2. Selling your own original material: a screenplay, pitch, miniseries, etc.

“We’re used car salesmen,” says manager Jeff Holland, a founding partner of The Cartel, “but our ‘vehicles’ are our clients’ material, our scripts, our directors and their reels. You’re selling, just a different type of widge...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Frontmatter
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Author’s Note
• PART I Represent!
• PART II: Television Agents
• PART III Feature Agents
• PART IV: Digital Media
• PART V: You and Your Agent
• appendix1 Glossary
• Appendix Two: Agency Contact Info and Resources
• Appendix Three: Websites, Blogs, Twitter Feeds, and Podcasts
• Appendix Four: Periodicals, Books, and Scripts
• Acknowledgements
• Notes
• Index