Polone: “Why Everyone in Hollywood Is Paying More for a Manager”

Agent turned manager-producer Gavin Polone has a must-read weekly series with Vulture. Today’s article provides excellent insight into what is going on in Hollywood in terms of agencies and managers. Here’s an excerpt:

When I started as an agent in 1987, talent managers were most commonly thought of as appendages of musicians and a minority of actors. If someone said “manager” to me back then, I would have thought of Colonel Tom Parker, who guided the career of Elvis Presley for a reported commission of 25 percent (most managers today, like agents, take 10 percent). The majority of actors and practically all writers, directors, and producers only had agents, who not only found jobs and set up projects on behalf of their clients, but also were hand-holders and career strategists. Agents have a franchise, established by state law, which says that they can procure employment and negotiate deals, while talent managers, who are unregulated and solely provide career guidance, are technically prohibited from those actions.

Now it seems that almost all actors and a high percentage of writers, directors, and producers have managers, and those who don’t are thinking about getting one. The reason for this change can be found in the news reports written about talent agencies these days, most of which involve a cycle of mergers between agencies and the subsequent firings of suddenly superfluous agents. And the few remaining agencies are financially restructuring and making high-profile investments in side businesses, as ICM did in buying out a majority of their former owners and changing their name to ICMPartners, and CAA and WME did when they sold part of themselves to, respectively, private equity funds Texas Pacific Group and Silver Lake Partners. Whenever I read one of these stories, my first thought is, Great for the talent managers — because all of this distraction and job cutting only means that agents don’t have the time nor interest to be as attentive as they once were and that gap in the process of representation still needs to be filled by someone.

As far as aspiring screenwriters are concerned, managers have become an almost indispensable part of the process of breaking in and getting established:

* There are a lot more managers nowadays compared to agents.

* Managers are much more open to receiving unsolicited inquiries.

* Managers are more committed to working with writers to develop material, shape pitches, etc.

* Because managers get commission plus producing fees, they can be more motivated to seek out fresh talent and develop them over time.

Obviously these are all generalizations, each agent is different, just like each manager is different. But as Polone points out, the changes that are occurring in Hollywood with agencies, basically now only two-and-a-half major ones left, are making managers that much more important in a writer’s career.

For the rest of the article, go here. And seriously, you should read Polone’s column every week. 

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