Transcript: Trying to Fire Your Agent

Rob Long on what used to happen, what happens now, and how it's all going to come full circle

This is Rob Long with Martini Shot for The Ankler.

The Buddhists believe that we all live an infinite number of lifetimes, which is a lovely belief, depending on how rich and powerful you are during those lifetimes.

Or am I not getting the point of Buddhism?

This elastic idea about lives and second chances, though, is something everyone in Hollywood can relate to. They may not get the part about rising above fear and desire — fear and desire are basically what the entire business runs on — but they should understand the concept of the infinite lifetimes.  

A career in Hollywood is like the Buddhist lifecycle. Sometimes you're a Tibetan prince. Sometimes you're a sad little insect. Mostly, you're somewhere in the middle with the more intelligent livestock. 

Either way, you're on the move. You're either heading to the mountaintop palace or slipping down to the dungheap. The Wheel keeps turning.

A friend of mine parted ways with his longtime agent three years ago. It was as amicable as these things can be, which is to say not very amicable, but he had made up his mind and had been wooed by another agency and that was that.   What made it complicated, though, was that another agent at his former agency had a kid in the same baseball league as his kid.  The day before he fired his agent, he and the other agent were chatting happily in the bleachers about good places in Hawaii to take kids.  

This is what people talk about in the bleachers during a kid's baseball game to avoid doing things like keeping score — which is forbidden — or cheering the kids on in too specific a fashion — Let's go everyone! is allowed; Take Third, C'mon, Hustle isn’t.