🎙️ This is a 5AM StoryTalk Podcast BONUS EPISODE. Be sure to read/listen to also read this week’s feature episode — “The F*cked Up Amount of Work It Takes to (Not) Sell Something in Hollywood Today”.
📖 READ this bonus episode below.
So, here’s the thing: there are a lot of amazing agents in Hollywood.
But here’s the other thing: there are a lot more terrible ones.
From my experience, this is a cultural/institutional problem, in which agencies attract smart people who want to work in the entertainment business and then slowly, methodically corrupt them and turn them into assholes in expensive clothes incapable of ever being entirely truthful to their clients because their two greatest objectives — preserving their position and maintaining the rep-client power-balance (the illusion they know everything and everyone and you do not, thus you cannot survive without them) — make being so a professional risk.
For example, I once asked my former agent what they thought about me rebooting a comic book property for television after its feature adaptation fell flat several years before. The agent told me they were looking into the situation at the studio, which I followed up about several times over three months, increasingly frustrated, until said agent realized my query wouldn’t go away and finally admitted they hadn’t read the comic book nor seen the film despite emphatically saying they knew both well. Consequently, they hadn’t even bothered to approach the studio about it.
Now, this agent could’ve simply said this upfront, but the fear of admitting they didn’t know something was too much for them. Agents cannot admit to ignorance about anything regardless of how it harms your career. Lying and hoping I’d just forget about it just made far more sense to them - and this wasn’t even about anything important.
By the way, the comic book property in question was V for Vendetta, commonly considered one of the greatest comic ever published. It had been written and produced by the Wachowskis and released by Warner Bros.
Now, I’d also probably try to avoid admitting I knew nothing about such a legendary piece of IP and that I was too lazy to even Wikipedia it on behalf of a client who had already sold two TV pilots and two feature projects that year (which I only mention because it might be understandable that said agent didn’t give a shit about IP I was interested in because my career was dead or something like that — which was definitely not the case here.)
Today, let’s discuss one of the most egregious examples of representatives deceiving me — this time about something genuinely serious — and what you can learn from it. As I always, I hope to better arm you to survive your own experiences in Hollywood.
The set-up: I get a call from a producer I respect. They ask me if I’m a fan of a director, whom I will not name, but let’s just say they’re one of the biggest international filmmakers in the world, feted wherever they go, and absofuckinglutely I’m a fan of them, I quickly declare. For the sake of this story, let’s call them Spliff McDicky, keeping with my habit of giving people I’ve worked with silly, anonymous names.
That’s good because the producer has a project with McDicky, and the producer thinks I’d be perfect for it. After I pick my jaw up off the floor, things progress quickly and I find myself attached to adapt a novel for McDicky. We’ll take it out to the town as a pitch, but first, given how much talent loves this director, we’ll go out to actors first.
A few names come up, but we settle on Brock Rockwell. No, not the actor I described this week in my audio essay “The Fucked-Up Amount of Free Work It Takes to (Not) Sell Something in Hollywood” today. I’ve just decided I love this ridiculous name and will now use it for every leading man I talk about in these stories but am unwilling to specifically name because I don’t want to burn the wrong bridges or get sued.
Brock is sent the material by my agents who, I should add, work at the same agency as Spliff McDicky. It’s a team effort, and I’m assured this is going to make a huge, splashy deal. “You’re getting a movie made, just don’t mess it up,” I’m told multiple times in multiple iterations.
These agents soon inform us that Brock is wildly interested, as he’s a huge fan of McDicky’s. I’m told they’re just going to hash out the details with his team. He wants to meet McDicky, too.
High fives all around. “Yeah, bro!”
I don’t actually say this: “Yeah, bro!”
But they do.
It’s the kind of thing you heard a lot at agencies before they began to hire more than the handful of women that they used to use to avoid accusations of being misogynistic frat houses full of Ari Gold wannabes.
(Side note: This half-assed effort did not work, as nobody ever mistook agencies as being anything other than boys’ clubs until around 2020).
Anyway, back to my tale…
This has all been so easy, I think — being Spliff McDicky’s pick, landing Brock Rockwell — I can’t believe it. But I’ve worked hard and tell myself this is what all that hard work was always going to eventually get me.
A couple of months pass.
Any attempts to get my agents to update me about what’s going on gets some version of, “We’re working on it. These things take time.”
Sure, that makes sense…right?
A couple more months go by.
Everyone on the project wants to go pitch this, but we don’t have a star yet even though we were told we have a star. Do we not have a star after all? Who knows? My agents certainly won’t say.
This is all confusing and, with every deflected question, increasingly infuriating.
Spliff McDicky can get us any meeting we want, so, with the producers, we decide to take a few while our agents continue to work on Brock. Better to play it safe.
It’s now two weeks until McDicky and I have to pitch this project to buyers.
McDicky is flying in for it between shoots, so it’s a whole affair. My agents keep insisting I need to calm down, as I’m sending daily emails at this point trying to work out what’s happening (or not happening). They’re working on Brock, they insist. They’ll make it happen, bro.
It’s now a week out from the pitches.
Still no Brock.
I email my agents and outright tell them they need to stop “pretending to be agents” and get this done.
In reply, I’m told I need to get control of myself.
But I’m desperate and don’t understand why any of this is happening.
I call a good friend of mine who happens to also be tight with Brock. “Listen, I would never ask this if it wasn’t such a big deal for my career. Can you just text Brock and ask him if he’s ever heard of this project?” I ask.
