I’m a NYer through and through-after a stay in LA in between strikes. I kinda want to share how I got hippocketed by my first agency and the nonsense that ensued but I’m sort of afraid to haha (Not that they’re remotely interested in finding me here....)
Hip-pocketing is such a telling thing about a rep's lack of talent and competence. A good rep trusts their instincts and invests in clients based on the quality of their work and the potential for a professional career. A pathetic rep requires others to validate their client's value before agreeing to permanently rep them.
Sasha’s comment about being afraid of blowback for sharing her story raises a point I’ve been wanting to ask you, Cole. Presumably you’re no more likely to have attracted this sort of BS from agents - you’re just more likely to share it publicly. Is it because you’ve reached the point in your career where the blowback won’t matter, or because you’re at the point in your life where you don’t really care?
I'm certainly not at any point in my career where things are secure. I have no special privilege I've built up, no suit of armor built of success. It's a combination of the fact that 90% of my work is outside the US so I don't need to play their stupid games anymore, US agents and I have mutually sworn each other off so there's nothing to gain or lose from them anymore for me, and, probably most importantly, I believe I've reached the point in my career where I want to help others avoid the traumas I experienced. But probably more than all that when it comes to the fucks I have left to give, I don't know what else these people could do to me because, trust me, they've done a lot more than what I do talk about.
Can you talk any more about the unspoken industry code of secrecy (fear?) when it comes to this stuff? Does it come down to “only troublemakers make waves’?
There's a lot to that question, and the answer to any of its tangents is quite complicated. In this case, emerging writers are expected to be compliant and, more than that, are expected to want to make a lot of money. Anything that complicates that agenda makes you a problem. In my case, I often made waves by trying to have a career I actually wanted rather than just making a lot of money. Very few of my US agents have ever seemed remotely interested in who I was as an artist. I was a line on a spreadsheet to them. Lines don't call to complain or pass on jobs. Their only value is the numbers you can insert into them, and those numbers are supposed to grow. I feel like I'm getting overly flowery here for no reason, but the short of it is: you do X or you get labeled "difficult". And if you get labeled "difficult", it's very, very difficult to shed that reputation even if you have evidence that you weren't to blame. As a young writer, your voice has no reach. An agent can send out a mass email to ever potential producing partner in town and tell them to avoid you. Working out how to navigate having agency and actively helping others turn you into something you hate is very, very hard.
Subscribed! And so happy to have found your Substack. ♥️🙏🏽 Funny (not really), a while ago a took a bunch of (LA) meetings for a pilot I wrote that did well on The Blacklist. I was told the writing was fantastic, etc, but there was no way a Korean (or Asian) woman could carry a dark comedy. 🤷🏻♀️ This was right before Killing Eve. It really c*ntpunted me for a long time. Only recently began writing again but am way more drawn to international TV since living in Europe the past few years after that aforementioned c*ntpunt. I look forward to learning from - and following - your journey. Thank you for putting it out there.
Hollywood's so-called "axioms" -- which I should really write an article about -- are not just soul-crushing. They often contribute to the creative breaking of artists and the driving of them from the industry, costing the world potentially exciting new voices for no other reason than lazy, unimaginative, and quite often systemically sexist/racist thinking. Don't give up. I'm glad to have you here, and I'll do my best to offer some wisdom from my lived experience -- and the experience of other artists' experience -- along the way. Please don't be shy in the comments sections!
I think I told you a while back how bad my war stories were, which is why I always tell my artist-friends I'm there for advice. I might not know your specific pain, but I know shitty business practices and the human beings who embrace them.
Thank you for sharing this Cole. I haven't had an agent since 2016. My three TV writing jobs have come as a result of my personal connections. When I scroll twitter, I see writer after writer extolling the virtues of their reps and talking about the meetings, pitches and staffing opportunities coming their way as a result. I ask myself, "What am I doing wrong?" I'm now starting to realize that I'm not doing anything wrong. It isn't about the art or my writing or how I come across in meetings. It's about compliance and keeping the money cogs turning. Those that can accept those terms will rise. Those that challenge these terms in the slightest will have to blaze their own trail.
Most of my US-based friends are either screenwriters or producers. I know of very few screenwriters who think their reps actually care about them enough to actually help care for their career rather than cash in on it until it's no longer hot. I know very few producers who genuinely like the agents they work with; when I'd ask them for advice about whom I should sign with, I would always get the same variation of "They're all the same - terrible. It's up to you to get the work." I don't know who these people are extolling the virtues of their agents, in particular. They're probably getting the work themselves and, in a few years when they realize their reps aren't actually helping do anything for their career, will begin to complain like the rest of the more experienced of us.
Sorry these things happened to you. Your real life horror stories are somehow worse than fiction. I find it incredible that agents could be like this, but that's what your insights are for, I suppose. The feral animal analogy was a good one
Your article totally chimes with me. I had very similar experiences with literary agents here in the UK: the first one just disappeared one day, whether they left the industry or retired or just fell drunk into a ditch, I dunno; the second one didn't listen, lined me up with stuff I didn't or couldn't do, then moved to a different agency and changed his phone number (subtle hint there); the third and final one told me my work was great then didn't do a thing with it for eighteen months. I'm an indy now. It's tougher and more laborious, and I could probably earn more driving an Uber, but I love the freedom and the autonomy to choose my own path.
I'm sorry to hear you've experienced all of this, James, but I'm glad to hear my story confirmed you're not alone. It's a hell of a business, brutal and destructive. The only reason I think we do it is because we love it.
I have also been through three agencies, currently with my fourth and hopefully final. The first agent, I left (amicably) to sign with a much bigger multinational company who could get me the kind of work that would allow me to quit the myriad of day jobs I had keeping my life as a playwright afloat. And for awhile it was amazing. Really. I was in the New York office and I knew everyone on the floor and the relationships felt personal as much as "just business." They were great. Until LA got involved. When I started working with the LA office, I was spread too thin, listening to too many people, unprepared for a manager and (like you) Midwestern at heart. Which means, I believed every single thing everyone said. For me, it was never a game or a strategy; it was real life and these were real relationships. I left that agency in order to go somewhere that I thought could help me get my foot in the Hollywood door with more personal attention and care, and I was wrong. That third agency turned my career upside down and then blamed me for the mishap. They didn't submit me for jobs I could have written in my sleep, often with people I already had relationships with - and worse yet, they lied to me. But I stayed, doing everything in my power to make it work. When I moved back to New York, they dropped me and I spent a decade agent-less, making my work, keeping my head down, trying to shake the feeling that it was all somehow my fault. I did try to go back to the second agency but they were closed to it. And I kept making work anyway. I'm repped again now, I'm (mostly) happy -- or as happy as one can be in this TV and film economy -- and keeping the relationships strictly business.
Ooofff. I always wondered if I might have been more at home with the industry abroad, approximately 200 yrs ago
Where are you located, Sasha?
I’m a NYer through and through-after a stay in LA in between strikes. I kinda want to share how I got hippocketed by my first agency and the nonsense that ensued but I’m sort of afraid to haha (Not that they’re remotely interested in finding me here....)
Hip-pocketing is such a telling thing about a rep's lack of talent and competence. A good rep trusts their instincts and invests in clients based on the quality of their work and the potential for a professional career. A pathetic rep requires others to validate their client's value before agreeing to permanently rep them.
Sasha’s comment about being afraid of blowback for sharing her story raises a point I’ve been wanting to ask you, Cole. Presumably you’re no more likely to have attracted this sort of BS from agents - you’re just more likely to share it publicly. Is it because you’ve reached the point in your career where the blowback won’t matter, or because you’re at the point in your life where you don’t really care?
I'm certainly not at any point in my career where things are secure. I have no special privilege I've built up, no suit of armor built of success. It's a combination of the fact that 90% of my work is outside the US so I don't need to play their stupid games anymore, US agents and I have mutually sworn each other off so there's nothing to gain or lose from them anymore for me, and, probably most importantly, I believe I've reached the point in my career where I want to help others avoid the traumas I experienced. But probably more than all that when it comes to the fucks I have left to give, I don't know what else these people could do to me because, trust me, they've done a lot more than what I do talk about.
🌷
Can you talk any more about the unspoken industry code of secrecy (fear?) when it comes to this stuff? Does it come down to “only troublemakers make waves’?
There's a lot to that question, and the answer to any of its tangents is quite complicated. In this case, emerging writers are expected to be compliant and, more than that, are expected to want to make a lot of money. Anything that complicates that agenda makes you a problem. In my case, I often made waves by trying to have a career I actually wanted rather than just making a lot of money. Very few of my US agents have ever seemed remotely interested in who I was as an artist. I was a line on a spreadsheet to them. Lines don't call to complain or pass on jobs. Their only value is the numbers you can insert into them, and those numbers are supposed to grow. I feel like I'm getting overly flowery here for no reason, but the short of it is: you do X or you get labeled "difficult". And if you get labeled "difficult", it's very, very difficult to shed that reputation even if you have evidence that you weren't to blame. As a young writer, your voice has no reach. An agent can send out a mass email to ever potential producing partner in town and tell them to avoid you. Working out how to navigate having agency and actively helping others turn you into something you hate is very, very hard.
Subscribed! And so happy to have found your Substack. ♥️🙏🏽 Funny (not really), a while ago a took a bunch of (LA) meetings for a pilot I wrote that did well on The Blacklist. I was told the writing was fantastic, etc, but there was no way a Korean (or Asian) woman could carry a dark comedy. 🤷🏻♀️ This was right before Killing Eve. It really c*ntpunted me for a long time. Only recently began writing again but am way more drawn to international TV since living in Europe the past few years after that aforementioned c*ntpunt. I look forward to learning from - and following - your journey. Thank you for putting it out there.
Hollywood's so-called "axioms" -- which I should really write an article about -- are not just soul-crushing. They often contribute to the creative breaking of artists and the driving of them from the industry, costing the world potentially exciting new voices for no other reason than lazy, unimaginative, and quite often systemically sexist/racist thinking. Don't give up. I'm glad to have you here, and I'll do my best to offer some wisdom from my lived experience -- and the experience of other artists' experience -- along the way. Please don't be shy in the comments sections!
Just subscribed to you based equally on (a) your story and (b) the magnificent phrase “c*ntpunted.”
@kb ha! You are too generous. Thank you! ♥️ Followed back. Did we just become best friends? Let's go do karate in the garage.
Damn man what a nightmare but so happy you found a way around it all 🔥
I think I told you a while back how bad my war stories were, which is why I always tell my artist-friends I'm there for advice. I might not know your specific pain, but I know shitty business practices and the human beings who embrace them.
Thank you for sharing this Cole. I haven't had an agent since 2016. My three TV writing jobs have come as a result of my personal connections. When I scroll twitter, I see writer after writer extolling the virtues of their reps and talking about the meetings, pitches and staffing opportunities coming their way as a result. I ask myself, "What am I doing wrong?" I'm now starting to realize that I'm not doing anything wrong. It isn't about the art or my writing or how I come across in meetings. It's about compliance and keeping the money cogs turning. Those that can accept those terms will rise. Those that challenge these terms in the slightest will have to blaze their own trail.
Most of my US-based friends are either screenwriters or producers. I know of very few screenwriters who think their reps actually care about them enough to actually help care for their career rather than cash in on it until it's no longer hot. I know very few producers who genuinely like the agents they work with; when I'd ask them for advice about whom I should sign with, I would always get the same variation of "They're all the same - terrible. It's up to you to get the work." I don't know who these people are extolling the virtues of their agents, in particular. They're probably getting the work themselves and, in a few years when they realize their reps aren't actually helping do anything for their career, will begin to complain like the rest of the more experienced of us.
Sorry these things happened to you. Your real life horror stories are somehow worse than fiction. I find it incredible that agents could be like this, but that's what your insights are for, I suppose. The feral animal analogy was a good one
I have so many of these horror stories that my career often seems to defy credulity.
Quite an achievement really. Maybe you could do a twilight zone type series but each episode is just a different agent/producer
Your article totally chimes with me. I had very similar experiences with literary agents here in the UK: the first one just disappeared one day, whether they left the industry or retired or just fell drunk into a ditch, I dunno; the second one didn't listen, lined me up with stuff I didn't or couldn't do, then moved to a different agency and changed his phone number (subtle hint there); the third and final one told me my work was great then didn't do a thing with it for eighteen months. I'm an indy now. It's tougher and more laborious, and I could probably earn more driving an Uber, but I love the freedom and the autonomy to choose my own path.
I'm sorry to hear you've experienced all of this, James, but I'm glad to hear my story confirmed you're not alone. It's a hell of a business, brutal and destructive. The only reason I think we do it is because we love it.
Great inside baseball stuff as usual - love the ins and outs of the business
Thanks, Michael!
I have also been through three agencies, currently with my fourth and hopefully final. The first agent, I left (amicably) to sign with a much bigger multinational company who could get me the kind of work that would allow me to quit the myriad of day jobs I had keeping my life as a playwright afloat. And for awhile it was amazing. Really. I was in the New York office and I knew everyone on the floor and the relationships felt personal as much as "just business." They were great. Until LA got involved. When I started working with the LA office, I was spread too thin, listening to too many people, unprepared for a manager and (like you) Midwestern at heart. Which means, I believed every single thing everyone said. For me, it was never a game or a strategy; it was real life and these were real relationships. I left that agency in order to go somewhere that I thought could help me get my foot in the Hollywood door with more personal attention and care, and I was wrong. That third agency turned my career upside down and then blamed me for the mishap. They didn't submit me for jobs I could have written in my sleep, often with people I already had relationships with - and worse yet, they lied to me. But I stayed, doing everything in my power to make it work. When I moved back to New York, they dropped me and I spent a decade agent-less, making my work, keeping my head down, trying to shake the feeling that it was all somehow my fault. I did try to go back to the second agency but they were closed to it. And I kept making work anyway. I'm repped again now, I'm (mostly) happy -- or as happy as one can be in this TV and film economy -- and keeping the relationships strictly business.
@Lindsay Devlin, is it possible we’ve met (a lifetime ago) in LA? Your name seems so familiar…