S4E7: Field Of Dreams

[00:00:00] Speaker A: This podcast is a collaboration between Costard and Touchstone Productions and the Dads from the Crypt podcast. If you build it, he will come. If you build it, he will come. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Al Nut to Make a Movie podcast. I'm Alan Katz. Before we launch, if you enjoy this podcast, please do it. The kindness of hitting whatever like button your podcast player has. It makes a huge difference to the algorithms that decide our fates here in podcasting. Even better and an even bigger kindness, but super appreciated. Share this podcast with people you think would enjoy it, tell them we exist and might just entertain and delight them the way hopefully we're entertaining and delighting you. If ever there was a metaphorical field of dreams, it's Hollywood. And in order to get anywhere near that field of dreams, you're going to need either an agent, a manager, or a producer at some point. Hey, what if you could get all three in one person? In this episode, I chat with Jeff Field, the man who manages my entertainment career for real. He's been my manager for close to a decade now. As a matter of fact, when Jeff took me on, he took me on as a reclamation project. That's how deep in a hole I'd driven my career. But Jeff saw signs of life, and for that I am eternally grateful. On a purely psychological level, it's important to feel connected in some way, like the impossible. A comeback, for instance, isn't necessarily impossible, as you'll hear. Manager describes only one of the three Hollywood jobs Jeff's held before he became a manager, mostly of writers, producers and directors. He was a top flight agent at the William Morris Agency, which eventually became William Morris Endeavor wme. In addition to managing careers for clients, Jeff has also produced work for his clients. Producer is such a slippery title in this context. What it means is that as a producer, Jeff was essential in putting his client's vision on the screen. Even under the best of circumstances, getting anything made in Hollywood is stunningly hard. Having a producer who understands how creatives think can make a huge difference as they the producers, navigate the minefield of production. Again, the goal is to put a creative vision on screen or inside a podcast. It demands tact and diplomacy when necessary, but also a good sense of when to be aggressive and how to recognize that you hold all the good cards in a negotiation. Taste is important too, and emotional honesty? It's not an easy cocktail to make or maintain. That's why only a handful of people have successfully traveled from agency to management to producer of quality. Lots of former agents are now producers. Lots and lots of managers too. I suspect it was that three step filtration process that gave Jeff an extra layer of curing, let's call it. Plus of course, his taste and honesty. If you like hearing how Hollywood dealmaking sausage gets made at the grinder level, this episode is in your sweet spot. Jeff's a terrific storyteller and wait till you hear what some of that sausage turned into. Ultimately, you've made an interesting journey from once you got here to agent to manager to producer. You've made this journey from one thing into another. That's ultimately the arc that I have in my head that, that I'm, I'm pursuing. Yeah, yeah, so, so that, that's the overall story arc in my head, but. Oh, but there are so many detours along the way that, that I want to explore. Yeah, you, you, you're, you're from the East. You grew from the Midwest. [00:04:45] Speaker B: I'm actually, I grew up in, I grew up in Indiana. So most people, no one guesses that because I think I'm, you know, I'm a New York Jew. Right. You know, so there we go. So I, I had me fooled. Everyone I asked, I asked everyone, I say, okay, I'm going to have you guess where I'm from. No one ever guesses it. [00:05:03] Speaker A: So I would never. Because I know that you, ultimately, you went to Brandeis. So I thought, oh, okay, you know, north northeast Jewish guy. I, I know that I started out. [00:05:13] Speaker B: My freshman year at Indiana University. My parents both taught at Purdue University, so I was an academic, you know, brat. And then I, then I ended up, I had to get the hell out of Indiana and so ended up in Boston. [00:05:26] Speaker A: Let's go back that step. Your parents were both academics at Indiana at where? [00:05:31] Speaker B: Purdue. At Purdue University. [00:05:32] Speaker A: At Purdue University. Okay. What did you, what did your mom teach? [00:05:35] Speaker B: My mom, My parents both majored in and got degrees and advanced degrees in English American literature. And then my mom ended up teaching in the business school there and left. She taught writing and all that in the business school and then she left there and went into county government, you know, which in the Republican Indiana was always an interesting thing. And then my dad taught in the English department and they, they, they, they wrote articles and books together and all that. They focused on my dad, focused a lot on Thomas Wolf and Southern American authors and also Jewish American authors. So Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud, you know, they wrote a lot about all those guys. So. And it was ironic that my dad, perhaps his favorite author was Thomas Wolf, who was a virulent anti. Semite. So there we go. [00:06:28] Speaker A: So why, that's, that's really interesting. What was it about Thomas Wolf that so appealed to your dad? You have any idea? [00:06:33] Speaker B: I don't know. I've never been able to finish one of his books, so I can't tell you. But he loved, he loved his writing and all that, and it was just his. His thing. And actually, if him or his editor had actually written his last book. Right. To try to really solve that controversy and went through all the original paperwork and all that of, Of Thomas Wolf. So all the manuscripts, all the notes and all that kind of stuff was pretty. And he, you know, fascinating for him, not so fascinating for me, but there we go. [00:07:01] Speaker A: Yeah. It's really interesting that. All right. The Jewish intellectuals can appreciate the work of virulent antisemites. I've. I'm somewhat of a T.S. eliot fan. [00:07:13] Speaker B: Yeah. But, you know, and all these people, the people who like, you know, Wagner and people who, you know, it's. There's this. [00:07:18] Speaker A: My dad, My dad loves Wagner, but. [00:07:20] Speaker B: There'S this whole thing in, you know, in film and television, all that. And also. Which is, can you appreciate someone just for their art, even though they're despicable as a person? And we have this. And that's all that plays into the whole cancel culture that goes on right now today. Because if someone is just like a despicable human being, Kanye west, can you appreciate his music, if you're really into that kind of music, despite the fact that the guy's batshit crazy and anti Semitic and racist, whatever it is. So to me, that's always an interesting thing. And can you separate those two things out? And I always thought it was really interesting for my dad because he was very much, you know, he was a Zionist. He was this and this and that. He could appreciate and remember that Thomas Wolf, also, his mistress was Jewish. Right. You know, so this woman who's a casting director in New York was his paramour. Right. And she was Jewish, so who the hell knows? And then he was cozying up to Hitler. Right. So I don't know. You know, it's just none of it makes any sense. So anyway. [00:08:29] Speaker A: And the world doesn't get any less strange day by day. [00:08:33] Speaker B: Jesus. Very, very true, very true. So. [00:08:36] Speaker A: So you grew up in this academic environment. As you grew up, what is it you thought you were going to do in this world? [00:08:47] Speaker B: I wish I'd had a very, like, clear, concise idea about what I wanted to do. And sometimes I still wonder if I do. I, you know, I have friends who knew they were going to be a doctor from an early age. One of my closest friends knew that he wanted to be a transportation engineer from the time he was like 10, right? And he went and got a master's degree and you know, and that's what he did, you know, a transportation, A. [00:09:11] Speaker A: Transportation engineer is what he wanted to be. [00:09:13] Speaker B: Successful transportation, he was successful trains and all this kind of stuff. And he, you know, he's a brilliant guy. And he got his master's degree at Berkeley when I was in law school there. And you know, so he, you know, and he's a good friend of mine to this day, and he knew what they wanted to do. Another friend, a close friend of mine, he knew he wanted to be a doctor and his parents are both brilliant academics at Purdue. And he became a doctor, right? And so, I mean, I think some of it was influenced by my parents and probably not the best way, but anyway, because I think I should have probably gone to business school rather than law school. I ended up hating law school, started getting interested in the entertainment business. I thought it may be a combination of creative and business aspects of it and also thought it would be not so lockstep as far as if I. It was all based upon who your clients were and what projects you did. So it was much more reward based than being a lawyer. You know, in retrospect, maybe I should have stayed being a lawyer, you know, I don't know. But anyway, that's what I did. So I went to law school and did not like law school and realized that, oh my God, I don't think I want to be a lawyer, right? [00:10:15] Speaker A: So why, why Brandeis? [00:10:20] Speaker B: That was just not a very. My parents, even despite the fact they're academics, absolutely in my school, helped me zero about figuring out what school. So I should have coming out of high school, you know, all the stuff that they do now, counsel people, all this stuff, I had no counseling. I should have gone to an Ivy League school. I should have gone to one of all these schools I could have gone to. I had no clue. And I was incredibly naive and stupid about it. And if I had been smart about it, I would have made a much smarter choice as where I went to college. And I wouldn't have even gone to any university initially. And I just didn't, I didn't have my act together. And my parents were a little of no help because they thought I should just go for the least all expensive alternative, right? [00:11:05] Speaker A: So there we go, that is so ironic. [00:11:08] Speaker B: It is. [00:11:09] Speaker A: It's like the fact that most psychiatrist kids are as fucked up beyond all health. [00:11:15] Speaker B: Totally. So I just, you know, I mean, in retrospect, if I had. If I had really given it some thought and really I have friends and I know people who are much more strategic about the way they make career decisions. All that I unfortunately was not so. Okay. [00:11:33] Speaker A: So shop is kind of presented itself as okay. This is better than what I thought I was doing. [00:11:40] Speaker B: I thought it would be more creative. I thought it'd be more interesting. I thought it'd be fun. I thought I'd meet cute girls. I thought it'd be, you know, I mean, I don't know. I mean, it was like, you know. And I also thought it would be reward some of my, you know, the fact that I could. I had a law degree. I understood that I was very good at negotiating. I was always been. That's always been a strength of mine, being able to make deals on things, being able to be aggressive about things and all this stuff. So I felt like it would play into my strengths and I was not going to be in my mind happy as a lawyer. So I didn't pass the bar when I first took it. So I retook the bar and I just. I went into the mailroom and way more sentencing and it was just like. And it was like, you know, it was again, not terribly well thought out. I mean, in some ways it was. In some ways it wasn't. I ended up being. I just. I found. I figured out all these people in the entertainment business and just started calling people and contacting them and it was really fascinating. I mean, I contact Woody Allen's producers. I found this guy who had lectured at my entertainment law class at Berkeley, and he was John Shulman, who was the head of business affairs at Warner Brothers. I contacted him, this very famous entertainment lawyer, Eric Weissman, who became a friend of mine. I contacted him and so I just. I just started reaching out to all these people and just saying, you know, what would you do? What do you. And so many of them basically said, go work at an agency. It's going to be. That's when the teach you about the business and all that kind of stuff. And I was interested in being an entertainment lawyer, but it was a catch 22 situation where no one, no one, they all wanted you to have entertainment law experience, but there wasn't any way to get the experience. And the firms that I interviewed with were all like, they stuck all these people in dead End litigation jobs. They were working like 90 hours a week hoping to get into the entertainment practice. And when I asked the question, they said, well, no one ever did it. No one ever made the transition. And so I just realized that, you know, maybe this was a better way to go. And I don't know, you know, I just ended up there. [00:13:45] Speaker A: The mailroom at William Morris is, it's literally an institution. [00:13:51] Speaker B: Yes, they, they wrote, they wrote a book about it, right. You know, called the Mailroom, I think, or something like that. [00:13:56] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It is, it is like how the training begins. [00:14:04] Speaker B: They called it the Harvard Graduate School. Show business. [00:14:07] Speaker A: Did you find it all right? In retrospect, I guess at the time you might not have appreciated that that's what you were getting. But in retrospect, did you get a Harvard like education? [00:14:21] Speaker B: I think it was definitely what you made of it. And I basically said, I am not going to waste any time. I am going to just be like as aggressive and sponge and I would pigeonhol agents get them to let me read scripts for them. I, I ended up like agents taking me out to lunch because I was just like, I was just on it, man. I just was not going to take no for an answer on anything. And not, and not. I did not want to be a statistic of one of those people who didn't make it. It was not, that was not an option. So I was, I was really, really aggressive about everything. I would really was just like, I was not going to, it was going to take no prisoners. I was just going to. All these other people were like, thought, because there are a lot of people in the mail room who parents were in the entertainment business. Their parents were wealthy. They, you know, they, they were having, they expected. They, they, they thought that the business owed them a living. And my attitude was I have no connections. I have, I don't know any. I don't have anyone who's going to give me a leg up. I've got to make it happen. And so I was just not going to, I was just not going to let it, let it, let any of the opportunities be wasted. And it was an incredibly frustrating and bureaucratic place. You had all these old guys running the company that were just awful people. That didn't help you out, that didn't. That, you know, there's so many stories I have about that, but it was obvious that you just had to basically through force of will make, make stuff happen. And, but it was, it was fascinating because at the time we, everything came through the Mailroom. So you read everything, right? And a lot of it. So for instance, one of my jobs was they had these things they called the distribution. They had the minutes from all the staff meetings. So the minutes from all the staff meetings, you xeroxed off on pink paper and distributed them on all the agents, numbered them, distributed them on all the agents desk. And every agent wanted them in a different place. Someone wanted an inbox. Someone wanted to face down to their desk. Someone wanted whatever. And you did it. But that all the meetings were. You. You read all the minutes, right? So I knew all the stuff was going on in all the staff meetings. And they had these distribution statements, which they stopped doing eventually because they realized that every project that William Morris had ever put together or had an interest in, they would. You would see the distribute what the profit participation was, and you would literally see it was like printing money, man. Like Steve McQueen movies and Marilyn Monroe projects and Elvis Presley projects, all this stuff. And they're like, literally every quarter, like, $4,000 in this project, $3,000 in this project, $7,000. And. And it was like hundreds of them, right? Thousands of them. And you just realize, like, oh, my God, that's why all these guys are paying me crap and sitting there and driving their Jaguars and making, you know, millions of dollars a year. Because this. It's just. For a hundred years, they had been generating this revenue and. And also all the TV packages, because at the time, William Morris was the only company that packaged. Got 5 and 5. 5% on the front and 5% on the back end. All the other agencies got 3 and 3. So they, you know, the Cosby Show, Roseanne, all these shows, Danny Thomas's shows, All these shows. They had packaging fees coming in from that too. [00:17:44] Speaker A: All. And it's all passive. It's all. It's all just sits there. It just massive. They made fire hose. [00:17:52] Speaker B: They made something like, I don't know, $150 million from the Cosby show or something like that. The agency they made, you know, was when we had half a package for Roseanne, because we represented the showrunner, but Triad represented Roseanne. And then when they merged, then they had the whole package on that show. They had Cosby, but then they had a different world. And they had this show and then this show, but there's so many things. And variety shows. And also remember that this was in the age of TV movies. And there was a guy named Arthur Axelman there who's the king of TV movies. He had packaged over 100 TV movies, okay? So they got a packaging fee in every single TV movie. So, yeah, the budget was, let's say, two and a half million dollars on the movie. But they're getting 5% of that budget, right? So they're getting $125,000 on this TV movie because all TV movies, who gives a shit? Well, you think about like 30 TV movies a year, whatever it was that they were doing, it was incredible. [00:18:50] Speaker A: But they're getting, but, but, but they're getting that buck and a quarter just for having made the deal. [00:18:55] Speaker B: Well, it's more than that. They output, I mean, packaging originally and this is a whole other can of worms. Packing originally was you really packaging. You're putting it together, you represent show running star. You're putting the whole project, you take it to a street, you take all this. It became, later on, it just became like you just represented like, you know, you represented someone who meant a package who was a big enough name that, that could drive the project. And so I think some of the projects were really packages that they really put together. And other times they were just like, they represented the right person. They represented someone who is a big enough star, a big enough showrunner, whatever. And you know, so the guy I was training under, he represented Hugh Wilson and he. Wilson, you know, meant a package in TV because of WKRP in Cincinnati and all these other shows. So that was a, you know, that was a big thing. And so one thing I realized, you know, I was starting out, that I want to represent some of these people because it's a, it's a lot of money, right? [00:19:48] Speaker A: The, the, the representation business, the agency business as it figured out all kinds of different ways to, to monetize, to, to control the idea of packaging. No, that, that wasn't always the way. When, when William Morris founded the agency and was, was booking vaudeville acts, he wasn't doing packaging fees. [00:20:14] Speaker B: I don't know. I mean, but they, they, I think they even. [00:20:17] Speaker A: When did that happen? [00:20:17] Speaker B: I don't know. I don't know for sure. But you know, look, way back there's one guy named Saul Leon that I became. I was friendly as a crusty old guy, curmudgeonly old guy, but he, he was the first TV agent who started in the radio department. They made a T. The TV agent was in the radio department, right? So I think that they, I think that they may have packaged radio shows. I don't know. [00:20:42] Speaker A: So it really, it could be a rather old. [00:20:44] Speaker B: But I think, I think it existed for a long time and then, and the Studios and networks were relying on the agencies to put stuff together and bring them to them, I think. And so, and then, then you know, look it and their argument always with the talent was look, then you don't have to pay commission. Right. Because we're commissioning the show. Right. And so, so then the, that's important. Okay, well I can save money. I don't have to pay commission. [00:21:09] Speaker A: That, that, that is an important distinction as to why a, a production company would, would accept a package fee. Because in, in essence there's, they think there's, there's someone is saving money in their minds. [00:21:22] Speaker B: Yeah, but I mean there's someone did a whole article about it a while back and, and just you know, figuring out how that affected the back end and all this kind of stuff and that's when the whole agency, the, the whole guild fight over packaging. The interesting thing was in my mind was, was I think it was a very detrimental in some respects because I run into situations where agencies literally wouldn't help you with a project because they didn't have a package. And so. But on the other hand, did it really affect pbs? The whole argument was well, it's going to affect the back end of all these showrunners and stars but in reality the only people really affected are the people of the, the Shonda Rhimes Oak and those people who have massive gross back end deals. The showrunners who are not massive stars. Not the David Kelly is not those kind of people. It's really not, not the Greg Berlanti's. It's really not going to affect them to that great a deal. But anyway, that's a whole other story. [00:22:21] Speaker A: So you eventually. How long were you at the William Morris Agency? [00:22:27] Speaker B: I was there for about 10. 10 years, I think. Yeah, I was an agent for like nine or ten years and I was in the, you know, mailroom, assistant dispatch, delivering packages, all that for like two years, you know, so probably a total like 12. [00:22:41] Speaker A: I think you eventually would go on to become a manager. [00:22:45] Speaker B: Yes. [00:22:46] Speaker A: Now the difference between an agent and what an agent does versus what a manager does, what in essence in the process does an agent do? That a manager that sets them apart from a manager. [00:22:59] Speaker B: It used to be, I think a much more distinctive delineation and it's really not as much anymore I think that managers are supposedly not supposed to procure employment, not supposed to be involved in negotiation, deals, etc. Etc. In reality that's not the case. I'm not just telling clients what to wear to a meeting or Something like that, you know, I mean, so, so it, I think originally, look, when I started out at Wayne Morris, I think there was one director on the entire roster who had a manager, one out of everyone that they represented. Now I would venture to say if you looked at most agencies client lists, at least 75% of the directors have managers, I would say at least, you know, and probably the same thing with writers. And, and so it used to be the only people who really had managers were people in music and people who were actors. Right. And so as the agencies started doing less and less of what procuring jobs, you know, focusing much more on packages, much more on representing much larger entities, companies, you know, I mean, much less just focused on talent representation. I think managers started people. I mean, I always tell people I don't have clients who just pay me, you know, 10 or 15% because they like me and want me to help me pay on my mortgage or help me put my kids through school because they just feel like they need the extra assistance because they're not getting it necessarily from an agency. And then the agencies can do certain things that, you know, someone who's, especially a small manager, a small, you know, has a, has a, like a sole proprietorship or something like that cannot do. You know, there's a whole dispute. People say, well, you know, then you have a big management company versus a big agency and what's the difference? And all this stuff. But I think a lot of it is just the personal attention, the focus much more on the long term, the focus on not just booking someone in a job, but is it the right job putting them together with the right people and also trying to put projects together really, you know, and just being a catalyst. I think part of what you do is try to manage the agents agency relationship as well. So you're trying to make some stuff start to happen. So then the agents get involved in more and then they can, you know, they have more clout and they have more and they have relationships that you may not have and they can help push things forward. And I've been in situations where, you know, I needed that agent, senior agent to call, like, you know, someone is senior person in the network and they were able to do it and make something happen that maybe they didn't even say anything different than what I was saying, but they just had the relationship where they had the clout to be able to make something happen that I couldn't make happen. But on the other hand, I did a lot of the work getting it to the point where then, you know, needed that to be done. So it's, it's. But it's, you know, if you. It's a gray line. It's a very indistinct line between what we do. And the fact is, a lot of agents now do not get that involved in the negotiations. And often I am dealing with the negotiations with a lawyer much more than the agents are involved. [00:26:10] Speaker A: Now. [00:26:10] Speaker B: That may also have to do with my expertise in that. I'm really good at that. And so, I mean, not, not to sound arrogant when I say that, but that's something that I'm. That's something that I'm good at. [00:26:22] Speaker A: You've been doing it a long time. [00:26:23] Speaker B: Well, and also I'm very creative with deal making. And part of the thing, it's, you know, it's a very interesting challenge to me how to get both sides to agree on something. And the goal is, which has happened to me on occasion, where you have both sides that basically say they got what they wanted and they thank you for making it happen. And you basically manipulated the situation so everyone ended up at the right place. And the fact is, I'd say 80% of the time when I'm making the deal, I know where we're going to end up. It's just everyone has to go back and forth and do all their, you know, process to get to that point. [00:27:00] Speaker A: Could we say that the difference between an agent and a manager? An agent is kind of looking out for your next job and a manager's looking out for your career to a point. [00:27:12] Speaker B: But I think that, I mean, it's not like the agents don't want you to have a good career. I mean, the agents also have a much bigger, you know, they're, they're dealing with a much larger scope of thing. They have met many more clients. They have the whole agency that they're dealing with and all the politics of that and all that. So, I mean, that's maybe a little bit overly simplistic, you know, way of looking at it. But I think that, I mean, the ideal situation is you have a team of an agent, manager and lawyer that are working, you know, lockstep. And we keep each other informed about what we're doing. When I need their help with something, I do that. When I don't. But they also have a great deal more information at their disposal than I do because they have all these agents out talking all the studios. They. When someone has a director fall out of a project, they're not going to call me necessarily Unless there's a specific client that I represent, they'll call the UTA or CAA or WME and say, okay, or gersh, we have this client. We have this opening in this project, and who do you have? And so that's something that they have much more access to than I do. And they also, look, they represent, you know, the New York Times. They represent this. And that's something I just don't, you know, necessarily have as much access to. But there's also pros and cons to all of that. Sometimes their agenda may not always be best for the individual client, or maybe they're just not. Don't have the time to do that. And I have maybe more time to hopefully manage a situation. And sometimes you have things that are blowing up and falling apart and. And you have to spend the time and energy to try to get it back on track. And, you know, if it's maybe not the biggest client on their roster, the agent may not have the time to do it. But that's something that I can do, and I don't begrudge them that. But then, you know, but just like anything, there's good agents and bad agents. I mean, there's good managers and bad managers. And so, you know, some of them are really, really great at what they do and I think are really, really valuable teammates. And other ones are. [00:29:14] Speaker A: Brian De Palma once explained to my friend Gil Adler, early in Gil's career, they did a movie called Home Movies Together. And Gil was amazed by the fact that Brian had a manager, a lawyer, an agent. And Gil said, God, why are you paying out to all these guys? And Brian said, you need all the help you can get. And, you know, it's like, that seems to be true. [00:29:36] Speaker B: 25% of something is better than. Than 15% of nothing, right? So, you know, if. If it. Again, if it helps, great. Now, Now, I think, unfortunately, a lot of times I've not. I've been in situations where clients have thought the management was expendable and they didn't need me. And there's often cases where they were wrong and. But, you know, it's. You know, they'll have a. I've been in a situation where a spouse will basically tell the. Tell their. Their. Their partner, like, why are you paying this extra 10% to this guy? You don't need him. You know, you. So, you know, or you. You've done all the work to get them to this point, and then they say, well, I don't want to pay anymore, right? And so there's a lot of, you know, greed and ego and insecurity and all that wrapped up in it also, too. [00:30:24] Speaker A: I, I, I know we're not really supposed to talk about Woody Allen anymore, but I keep thinking of Broadway Danny Rose sometimes. [00:30:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, but there's all these things about agents and all that. Look, I, I went from one reviled career to another. I went from being a lawyer to an agent, you know, to a manager. It like murders row there. [00:30:44] Speaker A: So, yeah, I guess Shakespeare said, first kill all the lawyers. I guess he didn't have an agent. So he didn't, he didn't know that. [00:30:50] Speaker B: That was exactly right. [00:30:52] Speaker A: Someone else to put on the firing line. [00:30:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:30:54] Speaker A: So a certain. All right, so nine years of being an agent at William Morris and you decide to leave and. [00:31:06] Speaker B: Well, the decision wasn't exactly made for me. Basically what happened is I signed a new contract and then they brought in new management. They brought in Jim Wyatt to run the agency, and he basically decided he was going to clean house. And I was one of those people that he had a very. His line to me when he met with me was, which shows what a great manager he was. Was, I don't know you, but I've got to let you go. Which I have always remembered. And I said like, okay, it's one thing if the guy said to me, look, I've done some research, I think you're a terrible agent. I don't think I'd want you here. Or I heard you're a real asshole and not a guy I want on my team here, but basically to say, I don't know you, but I've got to let you go. And you look at him and what do you say to that? Besides, like, you, your reputation precedes you and I wish you all the luck in the world. Right. You know, and so, so that's, that's basically what happened. And William Morris, of course, tried to screw me on my money. And I was very lucky that my moot court partner in law school and one of my closest friends who I also went to college with, is one of the top labor lawyers in the country. And so he agreed to take me on as a client. And he was not in the entertainment business, although he did represent the Writers Guild east. And he went to town and he, there's some things that transpired that all of a sudden they, I got my money. So anyway, what, to the end, they were, they, it was not a, it was a kind of a crappy company and it was really, the management was really awful. They, they, There was a guy I used to work with who started out in business affairs there and then became an agent. And he basically told me about their attitudes toward the agents and, and the people who ran the company. Their attitudes towards the agents were. They were like a necessary evil to their business. And, and they basically just line their pockets with what we did. And they were terrible people, you know, and so, and so to me, you know, it was no surprise that they would do something like this. And, and there's a lot of people there that were really despicable. So how did you feel about the. [00:33:31] Speaker A: Takeover when that happened by Endeavor? [00:33:35] Speaker B: I I, we were, I mean, at the time, William Morris was like, as I said to someone, what was happening was, is all these agents started leaving and go to icm. So Ed La motto, who's one of the great agents who represented all these amazing people at the height of their career? Mel Gibson, Denzel Washington, Richard G. Here, you know, blah, blah, blah, Michelle Pfeiffer, all these people. And he, and he left to go to icm. And then one after the other, these agents started leaving. Tony Howard, who was one of my mentors, left. She was one of the great talent agents, still is, you know, and was icm and now, now obviously CAA and Elaine Goldsmith, who represented Left, who represented Julia Roberts, who was the biggest star in the world at the time, or one of the biggest stars in the world. And all these agents started leaving. Reese Shapiro, who also represented it, and all these people. And so they were like bleeding. It was like. And I told someone I had just been made an agent like a year before, and I said I felt like I signed on as a deckhand on the Titanic, right? You know, it was just every time I would come into work every day, there'd be a new office with the door closed and the nameplate gone. And you say, oh, shit, who left? And because I was low man on the totem pole, I was the most junior agent there. I didn't know what was going on, right? It was just like, oh, shit, like, what's happening now? Like, I. And then you'd get rumors because people were poaching all our clients because they basically were telling everyone, william Morris is closing its motion picture department. They're out of the business. And so people like calling up and say, are you closing the motion picture department? No, we're not closing. You know, you can't convince it. You couldn't sign anyone because no one wanted to be represented by you. They would all be signed. They were all signing with, you know, caa, or they were signing with icm, or they were signing, you know, we want to aggressive young agency. We'll sign with uta, right? So no one was signing with Landmarks. We couldn't sign anyone. We couldn't. And we couldn't hold our clients. We kept losing people. And so it was a really brutal time. And so they felt like they had to do something, you know, to stem the float. And, you know, one thing that they had done was they started trying to put all the agents under contract because they wanted to lock them in so they couldn't just leave. But then they brought in, they said, okay, we're going to solve the problem and we're going to bring in Jim Wyatt and he's going to, you know, turn things around. And they had also tried to bring in. They tried before, they tried to bring in Sue Mangers, right? You know, and that had not been. That was a whole. That was a whole other thing. So it was like it was a clown car. I mean, everybody in the company was a clown car. Whether I deserve to be let go or not, that's immaterial. It's the way they did it was just kind of, you know, messed up, but whatever, I. I got compensation. And then I just decided, do I want to go work at another agency or not? And I was just so burned out by the experience. I just said, well, maybe I'll just cry doing something my own, you know, and see what I can do. And of course, their clients, I thought they were going to come with me. That didn't. And. And, you know, so I was like, oh, what did I do right? And so, I don't know, it ended up meeting with all the agencies. That was a whole interesting thing and all that stuff. So it was an interesting time. [00:36:36] Speaker A: It's a fascinating experience to learn who your friends, who your real friends are in this town and who they are, really learn. [00:36:41] Speaker B: You really learn a lot. And that's one thing that I. That stayed with me. A lesson that I've learned is that often when the bad things happen to people, whether it's being divorced or a death or losing a job or whatever, that often people think it's somehow contagious and they just stay away from you. And there's other people that are really great, and there are people that were so great to me and people that were so shitty to me. But, like, for instance, I used to cover Paramount Pictures as an agent, and so I used to, when Sherry Lansing was a producer there, before she became the Chairman of the company and all that. I would go in to see her every week, and she was like, really nice, super smart, great taste. And when I got fired by Jim Wyatt. Okay, okay. Remember, her husband was represented by Jim Wyatt. [00:37:31] Speaker A: Billy Friedkin. [00:37:33] Speaker B: Yes. She calls me from her plane, right? And says, look, she says, I think you're great. I don't know what Jim's doing. Okay? He represents my husband, but I don't know what he's doing. But anything you need, anything you need me to help you with, I'll help you. And, you know, that's a nice thing to happen when you basically feel like you've been kicked to the curb, right? And there were other people. There was. There was a woman who. I had helped her get three jobs, okay, as an executive. Never called me. Never heard from her since. Ever, okay? Ever. Her husband. Her husband is the head of production at a studio. Never called me, right? And it was just like, there were clients who basically I talked to every day who was like, okay, he's toast. You know, it's like, I always used to joke about it, but it's true. I felt like I could cross the street in El Camino, which is where William Morris was, get hit by a bus. And there were some clients that would just say, like, my God, who's going to represent me? You know, that's what their response would be. Right. You know, it's like, you know, so. So you definitely learn there are people who are, like, unbelievably. And they're often not the people you necessarily think they're people unbelievably helpful and great, and. And there are other people who literally just ice and win, and you're never gonna hear from them again. The great measure of it was, you know, go out to lunch with them, right? But after this happened, right? And you're trying to figure out what's gonna happen. Am I gonna do that? Am I gonna take them somewhere else and meet all that? And if they paid for the lunch, that meant they weren't going to go with you because they felt guilty. So as soon as, like, you're having lunch with them and they say, let me get this. I said, okay, it's over. I'm not going to represent them anymore. It was like, invariably that was the. That was the. That was the demarcation line right there. Like, if they offer to pay, it's over. Okay? If. If only you'd have known there was someone that. I had literally shopped their script to 40 different places, gotten it bought, got Made and it literally takes me out to lunch, pays for it says, oh, yeah, I'm not gonna. Okay, fine, great. Yeah. [00:39:49] Speaker A: So anyway, this, this business does attract an unusual kind of a cat, shall we say? [00:39:57] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I would say. I mean, other businesses too. It's not, I mean, my parents were academics and there's as much backstabbing and all that in academia as there is in the entertainment business. It's just the entertainment, higher profile, sexier people doing it to you, you know, but. [00:40:13] Speaker A: And so much more money here. [00:40:15] Speaker B: Yeah, that's totally true. And I mean, and you know, some of it was my own fault, you know, because I didn't, I was struggling and I was like, you know, you get insecure, you've been, you know, fired and what are you going to do? And all this stuff. So there's things that I should have done differently in retrospect. I know, 100% I should have done differently, you know, and, and I would have handled certain things differently had I had my wits about me more at the time. [00:40:36] Speaker A: But is what it is, if only we got to live our lives in retrospect instead, wouldn't that be easy that, that. [00:40:45] Speaker B: You know, there's one of the best commencement addresses ever was Steve Jobs commencement address at Stanford. And he has this great. He tells. I'm going to tell you three stories. And one of the stories, the, the parable that he's trying to tell is he said the conclusion is you can only connect the dots looking backwards, you cannot connect them going forwards. And, and, and I think it's. I, I realized as I get got older and realized that I, I realized I kept knowing that I could connect the dots looking forward and I really couldn't. And so you realize certain things happen and you look back on and you say, okay, now I understand how that all fits together, but at the time, you have no clue. And I think it's a very, that was a very, very. It's a very smart way of looking at things. And you see it in politics, you see it in business, you see the entertainment business, you see it with your children, you see it with everything. And so I think it's really. And it's a really smart way of looking at things. And so at the time, I mean, I did not have any clue how the dots were connecting. And, and in retrospect, I was like doing Etch A Sketch and it was going all over the place. But anyway, so. [00:41:56] Speaker A: But you ultimately took you into managing. [00:42:00] Speaker B: Yes. [00:42:01] Speaker A: You found, you found that more satisfying. [00:42:06] Speaker B: In some ways. It's much more satisfying. In some ways, it's not satisfying. I mean, you know, in reality, you had no job security, really, as agent anyway, so. So that was all ephemeral. And there was. It was nice knowing when you did something that you got the rewards for. And also, if something screwed up, you could take the blame for it. It was disappointing that you. That many clients sometimes thought you were expendable, right? When you. And you could not. You knew, you knew that they were making mistake. You knew this happened. As an agent, too, you see that someone's like saying, you're saying, like, you are screwing up your career by doing this, because you're not going to find someone who's going to be as passionate and work as hard and, and all that, and they do it. And then, you know, I've had clients who come back to me, like former clients, three, four, five years later and say, you know, made a mistake. And I said, okay, well, your career was up here. Now it's down here. Why would I do this again when you were incredibly disloyal to me? Right. You know, so it's, It's a very interesting situation, but as a manager, you know, you. It's. It's tricky. I mean, it's. It's both good and bad. It's much more creative. You can spend more. I mean, it was an agent, I was like fielding. I had five phone lines in my office. I was fielding like 200 calls a day. It was like, you know, had two calls lined up when they were holding, while you get off one, go to another, go another. It was just, it was frenetic, right? It's much. The pace is a little bit more manageable, and you can do things in a little bit more thoughtful way as opposed to much more of what you're doing as an agent was just like. It was just like. It was like a shotgun approach, a little bit more. And everything else, it was just. And I think being an agent is different now than it was when I was an agent, but at the time, it was having a life outside of doing this. I mean, I had breakfast, lunches, dinners, screenings, going to all these film festivals. I was just like. I was like. It was like I was a whirling dervish. And the good thing is I have a lot of energy, so that was great. I mean, I was like. I was the guy. I mean, when I first started as an agent, I was covering five studios. I was like, I literally was working 90, 100 hours. Like, you know, like the, you know, investment banking Analysts work. Now, that's what I was doing. I was working, you know, get in at, you know, 8:30, working. I would go to dinner. I come back to the office after dinner, right? I would just be. It was just like insane, right? And so that's it. Were you. [00:44:36] Speaker A: Were you. Were you enjoying this at all? [00:44:41] Speaker B: I think I was. I mean, I think I was. I mean, it was. It was kind of heady thing that, you know, all these people, like, want your help. They. They all like, think that you're the key. You know, these people literally think that you. The only thing preventing them from being the success that they want to be is. Is. Is not having the right representative. And they've heard about you, and you've done this for this person and you've done this and. And people, you know, wanting to be part of your, you know, your orbit and all this kind of stuff. So it is. But on the other hand, it's. It's. It's super cutthroat competitive, right? People always trying to steal your clients. People always trying to, like, you know, and you're. The pressure on you to try to take other people's clients and all this stuff. And it was. Gets a little bit numbing at times, I think. And I think in retrospect, you know, it maybe it played off some of my worst character traits and instincts and all that stuff. So, you know, it's probably good that I didn't keep doing it, but maybe, you know, if I kept doing it, I'd be retired by now. Who knows? You know, so does all right, is. [00:45:43] Speaker A: Producing more satisfying than managing or agent. [00:45:48] Speaker B: Not. Not now. It's very frustrating. I think it's a. It's a very frustrating experience now. I think. I think that I look back at, you know, there's a legendary old agent who is a real curmudgeon, right? But his name was Lenny Hershan and William Morris. And Lenny. Lenny represented all these people. He represented Walter Mathau. He represented. He represented all these people. I mean, he just, you know, 20. Jack Lemmon and Walter Matho, he represented both of them. Them. He. He legendarily, he saved 20th Century Foxy said because he delivered the French Connection to them when that they were literally. The studio was about to go under when they weren't all owned by, you know, conglomerates. Basically their whole business was, you know, what movie are they gonna. You know, they wouldn't even have a TV division, I don't think, at the time. So he delivered, you know, it was. And they would, you know, they would party, they would have fun. They do this. And it was just a whole different business. So I think it would have been much more fun to have been an agent like 20 years before I was an agent. Right. And I think the same thing with being a producer. I think it's, it's so hard to get projects made right now, and it's so hard to get. You feel like you're constantly like Sisyphus pushing the boulder up a hill. And there's so many things that can go wrong. And there's so many. And there's, you know, it's just like, I think in society in general, the top, you know, few percent are. Get all the riches and everyone else is, you know, scrambling for scraps. And so, yes. Am I getting stuff made? Yes. Am I having some fun with it when it gets happened? Yes. But, but is it. It's brutal. It's really hard. You know why? [00:47:24] Speaker A: It really, the business has gotten, it seems harder and harder and harder. And it wasn't that easy to begin with. [00:47:33] Speaker B: Correct. [00:47:34] Speaker A: And getting onto the mountain is hard enough. Never mind that, man. The real problem is staying on the damn mountain. And that's. That seems to be the hardest part of the challenge, staying in the game. [00:47:51] Speaker B: And, you know, I mean, look, I, you know, I, I have a lot of institutional knowledge. I have a lot of. I understand how a lot of these deals work. I understand how to do stuff. And it's fun when I'm also working with younger people because it keeps me young and I learn stuff and I like being involved with clients. I'm always learning things from and maybe doing something really innovative or fun or different or a book that I find and I get excited about. So they're definitely that. And I'm hoping that We've gone through a really tough time over several years in this business between Covid, the strikes and, you know, now with the, the fires and the economic downturn and the over investment in streaming and the mismanagement of all the studio. All this stuff, all this stuff has happened. So I think that, you know, consolidation, everything else. So, you know, I'm hoping it'll be. It's not going to be easy, but I'm hoping maybe it'll be a little bit easier. And I think. But we'll see, you know, but yes, it's hard because as soon as you succeed, people want to knock you off. Right. And, and, and, and, and look, and, and like I said, there's things that I've done that were really smart in my career, things I'VE done that. Not so smart. And so you, you, you're trying to, you're trying to make it happen, but it's, it, it's not easy to make it happen. And then when you're making it happen, you know, then the cut budgets and do this and that, and so, but a lot of it is interpersonal skills. A lot of it is, is figuring out how to manage people, you know, and, and, and I think I was not very good at that early in my career. I was more of a hothead and the angry young man. And I've learned how to be much more diplomatic and, and also try to steer things a little bit better. And so, you know, part of it is my own growth. [00:49:38] Speaker A: You know, there's, and there's nothing wrong with, with growing up at the end of the day. [00:49:43] Speaker B: Yeah. So there we go. [00:49:44] Speaker A: So you've, as a producer, you've had to fight the good fight for some really fascinating projects. The one that you, you've just got your name on is Green Border, which is a, it's a tough piece of work, but what a, what an amazing piece of storytelling by your client, Agnieska Holland. Am I pronouncing her name Agnieszka? [00:50:11] Speaker B: Yeah, it's hard. [00:50:11] Speaker A: Agnieszka. [00:50:12] Speaker B: I know people come closer anyway, I guess about spelling it because no one can spell it anyway. [00:50:19] Speaker A: Oh, my God, there are too many letters. [00:50:20] Speaker B: What the fuck? So anyway, as she tells me, Polish is one of the hardest language. She speaks six or seven languages and she said Polish is one of the hardest languages in the world to learn. So anyway, so I've represented Agnieszka for a long, long time. She's also a good friend. And lately I've gotten involved as a producer on several of her projects and executive producer and really much more about trying to help put them together, sell them, et cetera, et cetera. And this is a movie that I'm very proud of, that I was associated with. I can't claim credit for, you know, the Inception. She told me what she was going to do, you know, three, four years ago with this movie. And I was like, wow, this is just amazing. And, you know, how are we going to get this finance? And then, you know, they had to do it surreptitiously because the Polish government, so they had to pretend they were doing a TV series. They had to do all these things and they had financing, fall apart. We were going to shoot it originally in the fall a couple of years ago. The money didn't come together. So then they Postponed as a spring. And then shortly before the movie was supposed to start, they lost a significant chunk of their financing, like 20, 25%. And I helped bring in a financier who's a great guy and he put up that money for the movie and helped get the movie made. So the movie would not, let me put it, the movie would probably not have gotten made without him or it certainly would have been made in a much different fashion because it was made dirt cheap anyway. And so he helped get it done. Named Fred Bernstein. He's a great guy. He, he's run studios, business affairs. He knows, he knows so much about, he knows more about, he's forgotten more about the business than I probably know, you know, and he's also just a really good guy and he's very loyal and he really, he, he supported her in this movie and it really made a difference. And, and that's one reason why I'm an executive producer on the movie. But I've represented Ignashka since I was a young pup. And, and she's just, you know, she's one of the most brilliant people I know and she also makes incredible projects and, and I, I'm happy to be associated with her. [00:52:39] Speaker A: The, the story is about people who are trapped on the border between two countries. It's a real, absolutely real situation. [00:52:49] Speaker B: It's all based on real circumstances of the people trapped in the, the border between Belarus, political pawns, refugees that are coming from places like Syria, et cetera, and are basically lured to the EU by the leader of Belarus and false promises. And they pay a lot of money to get there. And then they are pushed back and forth across the border because the Polish authorities don't want them there, the Belarusians don't want them there. And they're trapped in this no man's land of these awful forests. And I mean, not awful, but, you know, forest, dense forests with, you know, inclement weather, etc. And there, and a lot of people died. And it's been, it was a terrible situation. And at the time you had an extreme right wing government in Poland that basically didn't want to have anything to do with these people. And you had the leader of Belarus who was a pawn of Putin who was trying to, you know, use them to get revenue. And so it was a, and so she was determined. You know, she's a real humanitarian. She, she, why she's done these movies about the Holocaust, etc. She likes doing movies that have something to say and often people who are overcoming extraordinary circumstances Ordinary people who are coming. And so you look at a lot of her films. So you have the border guard in this movie, etc. And the people with rest in these circumstances. And so she was determined to make this movie. And then while they were basically making it, then the whole situation happened with Ukraine and Russia, which was also cast a whole other light on this whole issue. Because here you had refugees who were people of color versus people who were white Europeans and so how they were treated differently by Poland, et cetera. And interesting enough, I mean, I am convinced that her movie had a big effect on the election because the government was defeated. Her movie was released three weeks before, before the election, and the government denounced the movie without even having seen it. Said that she was a Nazi sympathizer. I mean, stuff that makes no sense, right? And she was, we had to hire 24 hour armed guards for her in Poland. And then when she was in New York for the New York Film Festival and she had death threats and. But the fact is the movie got made. I think it had a huge influence on what happened there. And you know, and she was vilified for it and denounced for it, but she's very courageous and she got the movie made, you know, and through force of will and other producers that worked on it and everything else, and great actors and it's a great cast and you know, so it's, it was, it was a real important. I think it's a really important movie and I, I wish it had gotten a little bit more recognition here. I think unfortunately, the, the studio that released it didn't do, didn't promote it the way I would have hoped. But, but anyway, you know, I still get notes from people who see it and they send me a note and say, oh my God, this is amazing. You know, you know, when you tell her I saw this movie, it was fantastic. And so I think it's really great. And you know, the Director's guild came out with a statement in support of her when she was basically being, you know, censored by the government and everything like that. And I think that was really great. And so it's been a. But the reviews, I mean, it's like, I don't know if I've ever been involved in a project that has gotten those kind of reviews. I mean, it literally had somewhere between 100, 150 positive reviews. It's made all these top 10 lists. It's, it's like, it's, it's, it's incredible when you get a movie that gets that kind of response. And, and it's totally justified because it's a really terrific piece. [00:56:28] Speaker A: It's very, very compelling. It's. It's stuck in my head. But then again, her earlier. Europa. Europa, I. I can't get out of my head either. Yeah. But we could go on and on, Jeff, as we probably will. We've been talking for. For 50 minutes and we've scratched the surface and all the stuff I wanted to talk to you about. You're just going to have to come back, man. [00:56:53] Speaker B: I will. Well, I've got. You told me you wanted me to tell some stories, so I, I have saved the stories to tell you that will give you a whole other side of the business that will. It's like, truth is stranger than you know. So. [00:57:07] Speaker A: But, but. But I want you to appreciate that. That really, you brought such an incredible depth of. Wow. Just hardcore knowledge. If part of what. What, what I want, what I aspire for this, this podcast to do is to mentor a little bit. How does one get into this business? And so we talk about the nuts and bolts of the nuts and bolts. And really making it is one thing, but selling it and getting it. Getting it made and getting it sold. These are. If you can't do those, go home. [00:57:42] Speaker B: You're trying to convince people you're. The part of what you're trying to do is, is convince people of why they should do something. And, you know, I, I have this theory. I call it the Emperor has no clothes syndrome that you see in Hollywood all the time, that people. Projects get made. And you say, like, how the hell did this project get made? And it's like one of these things. Like, it's. The Emperor has no clothes. Everyone's afraid to say this. This. This doesn't make any sense. This sucks. And we should make it because this person's involved. This person's involved. And someone's afraid to say, like, no, we shouldn't make it. It's a waste of money. It doesn't make any sense. And then you have other. And people, you know, it's the old thing where people say, oh, we want something different, and then you give them something. They say, well, that's too different. And so, you know, I represent some kind of quirky people and all that stuff, and you bring them something and they say, no, that's too different. We can't do that. So you said you wanted something different. Well, it's too different. And so it's like, you know, you have all these stories about people and you said something and then you just. These responses that you get from people are just like, oh, my God. Right? And you just. And you're trying to overcome it, but there's only so much you can do, right? [00:58:39] Speaker A: It's a. My. It's amazing. Our heads don't explode on a regular basis. They're just exploded heads all over the business. [00:58:45] Speaker B: And I was thinking about doing a book based upon all the things that I and other people have been told when you submit a project or when you go into a meeting and all that. And it's just like. It's like the best because I've just. These things that I was told. I'll tell you one, and then I know you've got to go. Okay, so. So I remember I was trying to. Someone was trying to tell me they're submitting us. I think they were submitting a script for a client. It was a. It was an action movie. And they said, it's like Die Hard in a building. And I said, wasn't Die Hard in a building? [00:59:24] Speaker A: They don't understand that the. The put together. They don't understand it. They should stop. [00:59:30] Speaker B: And you know, Agneska Holland had this, you know, this. She was doing this project, Washington Square, and I represented the writer. And based on Henry James book. And so, so, and so the writer I was representing, I was sent the script to someone at, I think it was HBO for another project. And they said, you know, but this is a period piece. Don't you have anything that's period? And I said, do you know when Washington Square took place? Like, do you have any. You know, and it's like, realize that they had no clue. They had never read it, they didn't know anything about it, and it was just like, okay, what are you gonna say? So. [01:00:11] Speaker A: And on that bombshell, I thank you, Jeff, and I thank you everyone for tuning in as usual, we will see you next time. The how not to Make a Movie podcast is executive produced by me, Alan Katz, by Gil Adler, and by Jason Stein. Our artwork was done by the amazing Jody Webster and Jason. Jody, along with Mando, are all the hosts of the fun and informative Dads from the Crypt podcast. Follow them for what my old pal, the Crypt Keeper would have called terrific Crypt content.