Rob Long looks back on the representation business at a time when entertainment was flush with cash. Agents would tolerate high-maintenance clients because business was booming, and god forbid, you actually tried to leave yours. Presentations, cupcakes, floor seats would follow. Now? The happiest agent you’ll meet in Hollywood is the one you just fired. But bad times mean good times are around the corner as Rob explains what François-Henri Pinault and Casey Wasserman are seeing that you aren’t.
Listen here: Apple | Spotify | Google Podcasts
Transcript here.
Very encouraging post. Show Business does wax and wane. By 1930, vaudeville was on it's last legs except for radio. The Talkies had arrived and the studios needed to spend money to make the transition. The depression didn't help their money woes. Or that some of them had expanded too much. So they hoped to pay the actors less. However, the only scheme that worked to sell pictures was selling the stars. They had tried selling the stories, but it was the stars that readers of motion picture magazines wanted to read about. And thus the movie agent entered. Studio chiefs tried to get rid of them since the agents made them spend money that they didn't want to pay. They barred them from the lots or made them use the back door. But agents survived and kept coming up with new ways of wresting money from the studios. The Studio System never died but it changed in the 1950s and then again in the 1970s. Lew Wasserman is credited with embracing rather than fighting television. He championed the block buster for film. So I hope his son has some tricks up his sleeve like Rob thinks. (My comments are from "The Agency: William Morris and the Hidden History of Show Business" by Frank Rose)
"I wish to be cremated. One tenth of my ashes shall be given to my agent, as written in our contract." – Groucho Marx