True Stories of Hollywood Agents.
by JeffLieber
Sat Jul 12, 2008 at 04:54:47 PM PDT
This little tale likely has NO political value whatsoever.
Please forgive me in advance.
- JeffLieber's diary :: ::
So, its 1994 and I've just moved to Los Angeles from Chicago and I've got a writing partner named Michael and we've got an agent named Jerry Dale and he worked at a place called Writers and Artists Agency.
Back then, Michael and I thought we wanted to be a half-hour comedy writers, believing we could fulfill the three jokes a page required in said medium.
(It turned out that Michael didn't really have the stomach for the business and I was really only a joke and a half a page guy and so... back to Chicago he went and on to thrillers I went.)
Anyway, one Tuesday morning Michael and I had a meeting with Jerry Dale in his office to discuss the upcoming staffing season and a movie we were going to write. We sat across his desk, sipped cold water brought to us by eager assistants then drove home discussing our soon to be burgeoning careers.
A few hours later, after lunch that same day, Michael and I ran up against an issue in our screenplay and decided to call Jerry back to get his opinion.
We picked up the phone, dialed and asked for Jerry Dale's office.
"Jerry doesn't work here anymore."
"Pardon?"
"Jerry is not with the agency. Thank you."
Click. Dial tone.
Panic from Michael and me.
We had dropped our entire lives to come to Los Angeles based on the fact that we'd been told by Jerry that he would represent us and now... he was "not with the agency".
We start making frantic phone calls to learn that YES he'd been sacked, though JERRY's story was that he'd found a better opportunity... working in casting for the Simpsons.
(Yes, that's CASTING for a cartoon and considering all the voices, save the celebrity, are done by the same group of actors, CASTING for the Simpson's was one small step up from COSTUMES for the Simpsons.)
With Jerry gone, we made an appointment with the head of the literary department, a guy named Rick Berg, in the hopes of finding a new agent before staffing started.
After all we were still funny, still talented, still eager. Right?
Wrong.
Rick Berg agreed with the eager part.
Not so much with funny and talented.
Jerry was our agent, Rick told us, and now that he was gone, Writers and Artists was not interested in representing us.
We nodded, shocked, and I launched into the "crossed the country with a dream" speech.
Still no go, especially since a scan of the lobby when we showed up and after we left should have told us that Rick Berg was going to hear the "crossed the country with a dream" speech a dozen times that afternoon.
Michael went limp and I went... well... ballistic.
I told him we were super talents. I told him we were going to change Hollywood. I told him he was going to be sorry if he got rid of us. I told him that if he got rid of us, we'd someday be big time writers and when that happened I'd send a copy of all my check stubs to Writers and Artists as a way of showing them what they had missed out on. I told him he was a shortsighted fool to not see what he was losing. I'm sure I swore a lot.
He told me to validate my parking and then to "get the fuck out".
I remember exiting into the lobby and punching the Writers and Artists logo.
Writers and Artists SUCKED!
The next eight months were professional hell.
Michael and I worked on our scripts... we took classes... we made cold calls, the only one which even got past an assistant was someone who mistook me for LEIBER (not LIEBER) of LEIBER and Stoller and then promptly hung up me when he realized his error.
Then, in the late fall, a lucky break.
An ex-girlfriend of a college classmate was an assistant to a talent agent, who knew the assistant to a literary agent at a place called Gold, Miller... and she was willing to read our scripts.
But she hated them.
So we rewrote them.
She hated them less.
So we rewrote again.
And this time she actually thought they were funny and passed them on to the agent, a woman named Evan Cordey, WHO ALSO LIKED THEM!
Evan Cordey asked us to come in for a meeting and we hit it off.
She said she'd sign us on the spot.
OH HAPPY DAY!
But... and to quote Pee Wee Herman, "Every Hollywood story has a big but"... Evan informed us that she was just about to leave Gold Miller in favor of another agency (there were a few vying for her services) and we'd have to wait for her to land at the new place before she could work for it.
Weeks passed... and then the phone finally rung.
"I've signed with a new agency," Evan Corday cooed," Congratulations! You are the newest clients of... the Writers and Artists Agency!"
Guess who the first person I met when I came in to sign agency papers?
Rick Berg, of course, and he greeted me with a warm smile.
Rick Berg didn't remember me at all.
For the next three years I DID, in fact, send them all my check stubs... along with a 10% commission.
And, in the end, Rick Berg was one of my favorite people at the agency.