As someone who has been on the receiving end of this agent's charm, bragging prowess on behalf of his clients and wrath--yes, I survived being yelled at by Ari Emanuel--I commend to you Kim Masters' report on the man running the new WME combine. UPDATE: The NYT also profiles Hollywood's Power Broker.

Masters makes the inevitable comparison between uber-agent on the rise Ari Emanuel and the last Hollywood Samurai, Mike Ovitz (whose Bible was The Art of War). But while Emanuel can be manipulative, this power-agent is more impressive than Ovitz was in his prime. Ovitz played mind games; I never believed a word that he said. On the other hand, Masters suggests that Ovitz's CAA filled a Hollywood power vacuum that no longer exists. CAA still dominates the agency field, and the WMA/Endeavor merger had to happen because the economy sucks.

Masters reports that at Fox:

Emanuel held up renewal of a major deal with Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, while demanding that his agency receive a mutimillion-dollar fee for “packaging” the show. Studios routinely pay those fees when an agency puts together key elements in a program—say a writer and an actor. What’s extraordinary in this case is that the show had been on the air since 1999. Fox was staggered that Endeavor demanded the fees—outgoing News Corp. President and COO Peter Chernin is said to have described Emanuel’s demand as “extortion.” But the show had a break from 2002 until 2005, when it returned thanks to strong ratings in re-runs and big DVD sales, so Endeavor argued that it was entitled to the money, and Fox, normally one of the toughest customers in the business, caved.

And a few years back, the model for Ari Gold in Entourage and then-partner Marty Adelstein:

...calculated how many average minutes they were on network television thanks to their floor seats at Laker games. Then they contacted NetJets, a company that provides ownership stakes in those coveted private jets. They offered to wear NetJets T-shirts or hats at those games in exchange for access to the G-V of their dreams. NetJets passed and the two wound up with an unsolicited offer from Captain Morgan’s Rum—with the condition that the Captain sit with them at games. They passed.

It is no surprise to anyone in Hollywood that Jim Wiatt is exiting the new WME combine. Only the timing is an issue. He's getting out while the going is good. When I did my poll on who would wind up running WME, 90% of respondents voted for Endeavor's Ari Emanuel over WMA's Wiatt. The younger, stronger, nimbler, smaller, poorer entity won out over the older, slower, weaker, bigger, richer one.

The inevitable has started to occur: massive layoffs are under way at William Morris Agency in the wake of its merger with Endeavor. The smaller agency is expected to dominate the film, indie and television side of the new entity, while WMA will run the music department.

An email purportedly from CAA has been going the email rounds. Variety.com's Dana Harris breaks it down for you. The full-length memo is on the jump.

Update: also going the viral route is this pitch.

Hollywood has been abuzz for months with the possibility of a William Morris/Endeavor merger. The problem is the personalities involved. This deal is fraught with fragile and hungry egos. Kim Masters examines the merger of the old establishment talent firm (WMA) and the more aggressive agency on the rise (Endeavor). Yes, there's mutual need and greed. It's actually hard to imagine how it would ever work, given the volatile mix of power-hungry agents and their entrenched institutional cultures.

Call Nancy Nigrosh a recovering agent. After 25 years, she has left her recent post at Innovative Artists as a talent agent after decades of repping writers and directors for film and television. Now that she's free from the shackles of agenting, she's leaving what she calls her Parting Shot#1. If she's right, Hollywood's days of labor unrest are not over.

The Lone Screenwriter

It's time to take one last look back at the two and a half decades I spent as an agent. Of all the questions I’d had over the years, there’s one that most burned and bothered me:

Why is it so ingrained in Hollywood that one person alone cannot write a producible screenplay?

The Writer's Guild Of America's 2007-8 strike was supposed to be about a bigger piece of the pie for the future distribution of a writer's produced work… the pie in the digital sky.

But the real truth is that the actual day –to- day script development process based on writer elimination has created the real strife. Historically this practice has led to the cyclical bloodletting every time the guild’s contract with the buyer /employer gang known as the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers, expires. If something doesn't fundamentally change, there will be more strikes in the future, as each contract expires, creating a negative cycle of meltdown Hollywood and its doting mama, California, can ill afford.

Novelists, playwrights and poets are not rewritten by other writers. Even journalists do the deed pretty much alone. But screenwriters not only routinely and eagerly replace each other, they are tactical in their competitive quest for credit, credit that is not only emotionally gratifying but financially existent. Without credit, future opportunity, immediate and contingent compensation, dissolve. All that hard work to get beyond base camp, undone. Back to square none. Meaning - what do you tell your family, friends, former classmates, neighbors, and people you’ve yet to meet - that you did work on something glamorous for possibly years even, but in the end, your name didn’t scroll by?

And the other question that will not leave your mind is the calculation of cash you didn’t get and residuals you will never see.

This belief and its subsequent practice of multiple screen authorship is a unifying principle that not only does not serve its community of believers, but actually endangers its members from achieving prosperity in a scarce economy.

Paula Wagner and Rick Nicita are a power couple indeed. Hollywood is speculating not only about UA's future under Tom Cruise but the fates of departing CAA agent Nicita's clients. Early word has Al Pacino, Jeff Bridges, and Kevin Costner taking rival agency meetings, while Cruise and Kidman are staying put. Oliver Stone and Anthony Hopkins are also in play.

As the fallout from the recent Writers Strike, combined with a de facto Actors Strike, continue to depress the entertainment business, LinkedIn is trying to help. The five-year-old social networking site, which boasts more than 23 million users and was recently valued at $1 billion, is trying to let industry folks know how to use the site to land work, as well as keep their contacts up-to-date.

LinkedIn entertainment marketing manager Rob Getzschman is specifically targeting the needs of entertainment folks by establishing a presence in Hollywood and offering tutorials to anyone who wants them, especially freelancers. The Los Angeles Film Fest had to turn people away from a LinkedIn presentation offering an unpgrade worth $2000. Getzschman is already going around to the guilds and agencies; he says one agency has asked all its assistants to join up. He blogs on the site about a cure for strike blues and offers a strike survivor guide. "If a strike is threatened," he says, "the time to build your network is not when you need it, but before you need it. Then you waste precious time putting it together."

Point is, especially in Hollywood, networking has always been key to finding work, as well as recommending and introducing other people, all functions on LinkedIn. The concept of finding and adding friends is familiar to anyone who has used MySpace or Facebook, but LinkedIn is more focused on the workplace. "It's a passive cocktail party," says Getzschman. "You're always there."

RELATED LINK: The LAT profiles LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman.

This fascinating Charlie Rose interview with the three amazing brothers Emanuel--doctor Ezekiel, who has written a radical book on healthcare, Democratic congressional powerhouse Rahm, and Ari, the hard-charging, politically-passionate head of Hollywood agency-on-the-rise Endeavor--reveals that Ari, who is the model for Ari Gold on HBO's Entourage, is sweet and respectful to his impressive siblings. The three were raised with high standards in Chicago by demanding Jewish parents, who asked them to argue their cases at the dinner table with bravado and authority, and sent them to Israel every summer. Our children should all do so well.

Rahm, a frequent visitor on Charlie Rose, is a real charmer on video. He could go far...

An "anonymous agent" from CAA posted this online comment on the departure of Robert DeNiro, which is now getting emailed all over town:

1. Why did Bobby leave us?

They promised they could turn back time.

They promised they could get him 20m a picture.

They promised they could get a release for his "Something happened," a Barry Levinson show biz pic that's has no market, and Mark Cuban lost a fortune on.

They promised they could get him the $1m production fee on every picture he does, that he and his partner put their names on, and do nothing to earn.

They promised they could convince Hollywood that they should still pay that 1m vig on top of his acting fees.

They promised him they'd find a respectable release for the Pacino picture he did last summer, that basically stars two 65 year old guys as detectives - while the audience is under 35, and has no interest in seeing.

As I said, they promised him they could turn back time, and make him 50 again, and relevant, and hot, and interesting to today's movie going audience.

And they probably promised that they'd find a way to erase the memory of all of America about the number of god-awful paycheck films he did during the past ten years.

DeNiro had a choice ten or so years ago. He could either go the Nicholson route - very selective, very particular, protect the brand - or go out sending himself up in tripe like Analyze this, which made money but turned him into that "old psycho guy."

And he could of concentrated on quality stuff, but instead wanted to keep funding his little empire in New York.

A year ago, Bobby came to us complaining that he was losing a fortune underwriting the film festival every year, and wanted us to find bigger corporate sponsors.

We tried, but the stumbling block was always the same thing: The corporations all thought that the Tribeca film festival was a not-for-profit organization, sponsored by the city. But when they got under the hood, they found out that it was all for the greater glory of Bobby and Jane and her husband, and the corporate stuff shied away from it. Bobby held us responsible for his own greed, his own avarice, and his own megalomania.

And it's just like the studios now ask us: Why should we pay this guy- who doesn't open a movie - the payoff to his production company, just so he can add his name as a producer.

Sure, there's more; he thought we should have delivered an Oscar for his paint-drying slow 3 hour Good Shepherd. But we couldn't.

And finally, if really want to understand why now, why today, look at the review today in Variety for the Pacino "86 Minutes" stinker. It's directed by Jon Avnet, (a career ending review), who just happens to be the director of Bobby's next movie. (With Pacino.)

Bobby blames everybody but himself for the way he's squandered his career, and refused lots of quality pictures because they wouldn't give him producer credit.

Good luck in the Hotel Business, pal.

Comment by A CAA Agent < April 9, 2008 @ 10:54 pm

Here's what Defamer calls DeNiro's best performance in years. And here's a related item at Hollywood Elsewhere, complete with amusing comments.

John Horn gives a strong analysis of why the agencies have been so skittish lately, with more moving around of the musical chairs than usual. The agency moves, which, Horn reports, favor agency-on-the-rise Endeavor over UTA, are a reflection of an industry that is anxious about its future, he writes. Not only are agencies themselves consolidating and realizing that they cannot sustain inflated incomes and expenditures, but agents are having to tell their clients that their prices are going down.

UPDATE: Michael Fleming in Weekly Variety points out that where UTA client Judd Apatow winds up is the key question going forward:

The next big battleground among percenteries could well be comedy hyphenate Judd Apatow, the longtime UTA client who was labeled as “in play” when the three agents moved to Endeavor.

It will be important for UTA to demonstrate stability, because both Endeavor and CAA will be coming hard after the one-man comedy factory.

Stevens worked on Apatow’s team at UTA, but he has a bad relationship with Apatow’s manager, Jimmy Miller, stemming from the exit of Jim Carrey. But Miller has a strong relationship with Endeavor chief Emanuel, with whom he steers the career of Baron Cohen.

CAA will emphasize the presence of Dan Aloni, who was part of Apatow’s rep team while he was at UTA.

At UTA, Apatow’s primary rep is David Kramer, considered one of the best dealmakers at the agency.

[Photo montage courtesy LA Times]

In the wake of Bart Walker's defection from CAA to John Sloss's Cinetic Media in New York, CAA has recruited Cinetic vet Dan Steinman to come aboard their indie financing unit, led by Rick Hess. Steinman will continue to put packages together and find financing for indie projects and will help the CAA sales arm on such pictures as Sean Penn's Into the Wild, Robert Redford's Lions for Lambs, and Rian Johnson's Brothers Bloom, which was financed, packaged and recently sold to Summit by CAA for more than $10-million for North American rights. CAA's Micah Green, who first brought Steinman into Cinetic, was instrumental in bringing him over. Steinman was also lured by the opportunity to work in an arena with greater talent resources.

Here's Tatiana Siegel's Variety story.

At age 75, Pat Kingsley is finally letting go of the chairman/CEO reins at PMK/HBH. Writes Variety's Michael Fleming:

Partners Cindi Berger and Simon Halls have been elevated to share the title of co-CEO, and Nate Schreiber will become president. He had been exec veep of Brands and Events.

The troika will steer the agency with a trio of managing partners: HBH co-founders Stephen Huvane and Robin Baum, and PMK vet Jennifer Allen.

Kingsley was tired of the paperwork, basically. She was ready to step down a year ago, says the veteran press agent, who co-founded Pickwick Public Relations with Lois Smith some forty years ago, then merged with Maslansky-Koenigsberg in 1980 to form PMK, and then merged with Huvane Baum Halls under the ownership of the InterPublic Group in 2001. For years, Kingsley's most famous client was Tom Cruise, until Scientology got in the way.

The continuing corporate aspects of her role--budgets and financial projections- grated on her, finally. "It's a tough job," she says. Now Kinglsey will do what she wants to do--handle movie campaigns and such clients as James L. Brooks and Jodie Foster--and "concentrate on the fun stuff," she says.

Here's an excerpt from my Risky Business column on Cruise and Kingsley:

Anyone who has ever dealt with Kingsley knows that going up against her takes guts and the full backing of your organization. Because she would use her entire arsenal to protect her most powerful client. She'd withdraw the cooperation of her agency's other stars if necessary. She'd refuse to cooperate on other stories, or ban a publication from ever getting another Cruise interview. (It took Premiere Magazine several years to work itself back into her good graces after one tough "Mission Impossible" story.) Kingsley controlled the select magazine covers Cruise would do for each picture, the friendly interviewers he was comfortable with, the photographers who shot him to look his best. She controlled his image, knew that he didn't have much to say, preserved his mystique as a movie star. Her PR philosophy has always been, less is more. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Keep the fans guessing. Hold the star in abeyance. Keep everyone lining up clamoring for more.

Ed Limato is finalizing a three-year deal to bring many of his top-drawer clients, including Mel Gibson, Denzel Washington and Richard Gere--to the William Morris Agency, reports Variety.

After 32 years, ICM agent Ed Limato can leave the agency with his clients in tow, reports Michael Fleming.

Full article on the jump:

ICM veteran Ed Limato is leaving the agency. I never thought I would see the day.

UPDATE: Here's Michael Fleming's story filed Sunday.

The picture LAT writer John Horn paints of the War of the Roses divorce battle between ICM agent Risa Shapiro and Saw producer Oren Koules is not pretty. It reveals that the richer you are, the messier it gets. She wants a piece of his Saw sequels. He wants a piece of her ICM clients going forward. Ouch. They've settled, but not before Horn got hold of plenty of juicy details.

One has to question the wisdom of Innovative Artists revealing their own financially strapped condition to their rival agencies by denying health care coverage to their poorest employees. Did they think no one would notice? It's kicked up a firestorm. Plus, not giving employees notice that they would be uncovered for several weeks has not gone over well. This story is right out of Michael Moore's Sicko, which is kicking up its own share of controversies. UPDATE: On second thought, Innovative thought better of this idea and reinstated their employees' health insurance.

Writing about the Hollywood talent agencies is a dangerous game. You can't win. So the NYT's Michael Cieply figured out that you can get away with a story about the hazards of being the number one agency if you lead off by embarrassing them. Cieply states many facts about CAA's size and increasing dominance, but before he goes there, he writes about the defection of Hasbro Toys--which is behind the upcoming summer tentpole Transformers--to the William Morris Agency.

Thus Cieply managed to avoid infuriating the other agencies. WMA got to gloat over its win, while Cieply also handed little plums to CAA's other would-be rivals to keep them from going apoplectic. In the sensitive agency world, where each agent is trying to hang on to each and every slippery client, perception is everything. And with CAA especially dominant on the film talent side, nobody wants the newspaper of record to overstate that fact.

Also, many corporate clients are loss leaders for the agencies, mainly offering the agency chieftans chances to hang out with new media big-wigs at such places as Herbert Allen's Sun Valley annual retreat. But most agencies would trade in a decent movie star for a dozen corporate clients.

On the other hand, Cieply's piece contains a few twisted turns of phrase that my brain struggled with, like: "But the embarrassment comes just as [CAA] is trying to prove that it can mirror, if not exactly match, the intricacy and reach of the media conglomerates and consumer and technology companies that have come to define the entertainment world." Say what?

Meanwhile, Variety got its Transformers-hooked toy story in days before the LAT got around to it.

The 30 Rock star has had a helluva week. Following his ex-wife Kim Basinger's presumed leak of his phone rant against his daughter--was she 11? 12?--he has now left his agency, CAA. As a loyal Aaron Sorkin fan, I initially picked Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and didn't TiVo 30 Rock until recently. The show is a winner. Tina Fey is real, funny, and someone I can enthusiastically identify with. And Baldwin deserves his kudos. Hasn't he always had anger management issues? He's still a great actor.

UPDATE: I'll be curious to hear what happens to CAA's Kevin Iwashina, an indie-friendly agent who is also deeply involved in liberal politics. In a town where agents often travel in packs, Iwashina stood out as an individual personality. Which may be why he's leaving the agency monolith.

Ask execs at Fox why they lost their Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen's follow-up movie Bruno and they'll answer that they weren't willing to make such an expensive deal on a character far less likable than Borat. Meanwhile the folks at Universal--who have been making many pricey deals lately--are cheering their coup. Who's right? NPR's intrepid Kim Masters, who has turned her intermittent Slate postings into a blog called Hollywoodland, explains it all:

The eventual deal with Universal was all the sweeter for Cohen because at the time that it was struck, the research tracking audience interest in Borat looked a little wobbly and Fox—figuring that the movie needed to build a little word-of-mouth in the heartland where no one had ever heard of Cohen—cut the number of theaters in which the film would open. None of that sat well with the star. And Fox did not respond to the opportunity to make the Bruno deal with the alacrity that Cohen or his representatives deemed appropriate.

For its $42.5 million, Universal got rights to the movie in English-speaking countries, Germany, Austria, and let us not forget Belgium and the Netherlands (but apparently not Kazakhstan). Our Endeavor source tells us this is a bargain. Cohen's Ali G movie did $15 million in the United Kingdom in the pre-Borat days, he says, and Borat pulled in almost $40 million there. So (he argues), it made sense for Universal to wager that Bruno can pull in enough money even in its limited territories—one of which is the United States, after all. (Bear in mind that studios get to keep about half of those grosses. But the Endeavor source says Universal cannot lose money on the movie even if it's terrible.)

This source says the studios are annoyed simply because they were backed into a corner. "People say, 'We're never going to work with you again—fuck you,' " he says cheerfully. "Two months later, there's something they want. … The studios are getting less powerful, not more. Did we do the right thing for our client? That's a no-brainer."

UPDATE: Masters also introduced the involvement of Media Rights Capital, a company partly owned by the Endeavor Agency which reps Cohen, in the Bruno deal. Is this another case of an agency trying to wriggle out of its prohibition on producing movies? Here's Monday's NYT follow-up.

Why is the town so lazy and quiet this Friday? One theory is that one of the town's vital nerve centers has gone silent: CAA is on retreat. The agency is sequestered in Ojai.