Great thread. So what would you say are the top 3 qualities of being a good agent?

1. You have to be able to establish relationships with people. With clients, with studio people, with managers, with producers, with money people and with other agents. If you cover, you need people to slip you scripts, tell you info before your CAA counterpart, push for your guys in critical meetings, etc. If you're a senior agent, you have to be able to call senior people and get them on the phone quickly. You have to know when you can apply pressure and when it's time to accept defeat. You have to be cognizant of when you have leverage. I was pretty bad at this part because I thought many people were shallow, dishonest and just generally annoying. Good agents think this about most of the people they deal with, but just see it as part of the job.

2. You have to be intelligent and think ahead. People are constantly trying to **** you, you have to see it coming and have a plan.

3. Passion. If you burn out, you won't be effective. This was another failure area for me. Once I had a kid, I just didn't care enough to be effective.

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runnin...l_not_read.php

Hm - I don't think that's true in TV. I think the back-end rights (where profit participation points get negotiated) for TV don't necessarily include a cut to the agencies unless they packaged the deal. Otherwise, they just get a cut of say Kelsey Grammer's salary from working on Frasier (not his back-end). I used to run these analyses back in the day, but it was a while ago so maybe I'm misremembering. But that's also why I asked about the movie thing with Keanu Reeves/Matrix, have no idea how those deals are structured.

Anyway thanks for the insight - always thought the businesses were sort of cash cows and directionally put companies like WME and CAA as bigger business (like if I had to guess without thinking, figured like $1 billion in revenues or something).

But never thought about the fact that largely, you can size the agency industry by taking 10% of all talent fees. (Understood that agencies make some money on talent packaging for TV series, but they never get to more than 10% profit participation so it can only be so much, and there are very few hits that even make back-end so that is another severely limiting factor)

Like it's kind of crazy to think for all the (as you described) crazy attention lavished on a top talent like Matt Damon, really, the agency makes like what, $5 million at most a year off him? (I can't imagine Damon making more than $50 million a year.) The amount of craziness seems out of proportion with how much money he actually brings in the door. I mean if you're gonna work crazy hours and be insane all the time, seems like there's a much better path with better outcomes if it's just about the money (which I assume it can't be?)

Definitely not a bad business if you are a CAA/WME partner, but it's somewhat weird how little value they capture relative to how much money is actually in the Hollywood ecosystem. The agencies have a ton of power and are critical as a force in sustaining the Hollywood ecosystem.

Of course they are only commissioning people they represent. Not sure what you mean.

Oh, the Frasier example? I meant that say UTA represented Kelsey Grammer and did his deal for Frasier. They would set up a profit participation structure for him. And the agency doesn't necessarily get a percentage of those revenues (should Frasier end up generating syndication revenues , which it did). Or another example is residuals for writers - I don't believe talent agencies get a piece of that.

(This was a response when you said that agencies commission all the money their clients make - I don't believe that's the case, hence my question about Keanu/Matrix.)

And the Matt Damon example was - well, I mean, not to scoff at WME getting like $5 million a year for representing a big time Hollywood client, but the crazy behavior of agents (as you describe) doesn't seem "justified" with that level of revenue (which in the scheme of Hollywood, not all that much money).

And ultimately not trying to get too into the weeds or anything.

I was just in my mind trying to "size" the agency industry (like how much total revenues was in it for all the agencies) - and from there understand how much a big player in the industry like WME could drive in revenues, and from there understand how much profit they took out. Was way lower a number than I would've guessed before thinking about it.

Anyway - it seems like overall, while WME has the strongest TV talent roster (didn't know that before the thread), it seems like CAA is overall strongest - maybe I'm a bit biased in my understanding because I have a sports bias to my understanding of TV economics, and CAA has the premier sports agency.

Great thread, thanks for sharing Riverman.

What personal factors did you use for an edge?

Things like Gambling and Poker I assume you have a greater understanding for than the average joe and I assume this wasn't shut out during working hours. Any insight into this for us while you were at WME? (I'm not making any judgements obviously but you are a regular poster on poker forum OBV)

If you built a 12 person agency with people from 2p2 who would you choose and what roles would they fill? Assume you are the top dog.

I've read that before, that's some funny ****, good read if anyone hasn't read it

For anyone interested in the business of the agency (not the lifestyle or hijinks):

http://www.deadline.com/2010/10/caa-...terest-to-tpg/

Deadline article about TPG's 35% stake (TPG is a major private equity shop) in CAA, some notable pullouts:

Generally thought that Deadline piece was a good read. I'd say the $300 million annual revenues for CAA cited above (an oft-repeated stat that gives it some credibility) is higher today, probably largely driven by the sports agency as well as some financing deals they're in (some payoff by now from this TPG investment fund hopefully for CAA's sake). But the cited cashflow problems is not surprising based on Riverman's stories of T&E excess and the limited amount of revenue brought in.

Not sure how many agents CAA has, but the agent per revenue is probably not much more than $2 million per agent. While at that level, feels like it could maybe be a healthy business... now have an understanding of why CAA is pushing so hard into actually getting into where the real money for TV economics is (financing, investment, not just a commission business) and created this $500 million investment fund with TPG... also I like that CAA created a distribution mechanism from the TPG funding to reward all their employees, not just the partners.

I do recall WME has a business strategy team looking at business development deals, but I'm not sure how much money (if any at all) they have for actual investments/financing...

I get credited for an assist on this thinly veiled brag

I had always assumed this was driven more by the public. If people will keep paying to see another formulaic film with a big star attached I can see why studios would want to go the low risk/high reward route. If general tastes change or (more likely) distribution changes with technology and it becomes a lot easier/cheaper to make a film, do you think the quality of script writing could increase a lot? Or is it just way harder to do well than I'm thinking?

ok so what is a "covering" agent?

How many pages will an agent read of a script before deciding to give up on it? How much will they read of a good script before deciding they want to work with it?

At WME no agent is reading scripts that haven't already been bought by someone else, unless it's a client's spec. They don't have the time or inclination to help writers out of some hope they will one day be good.

Is the job really worth doing? The exit possibilities seem kinda thin, the work seems dull and not really mentally challenging and moving up within the agency is the only way to improve your career.

What am I missing?

That's my read as well. It sounds like an awful job.

That it's the way basically every media mogul out there began their career. Most people running studios and making legitimately huge money have passed through a major agency at some point.

Like if I still wanted to be in the industry, I would have gotten a job at a studio. Working for someone legit at Warner Bros, for example, can put you on track to be a studio executive yourself, which in turn can lead to eventually running the studio, which is the job everyone in Hollywood wants.

I hear you, but if media is not for you, the exit possibilities suck. So, either you make it within the industry or you are better off not even starting a career in there. Would you agree?

The top-down approach wrt to career paths is not a good way to look at it. You can get rich in a million ways, and those people had a terrible job at some point.

I mean I obviously agree, I quit.

What field did you switch to? Seems like it would be hard to get back into law. WME experience probably looks good for a lot of sales positions.

I didn't switch to anything yet. Luckily my wife makes good money so I'm not in a rush. I take care of my 6 month old for now.

Of course my parents and basically everyone else I talk to wonders what the **** a 28 year old Princeton grad with a law degree from a good school is doing with no job, but that's ok for now.

I have no interest in practicing law and honestly have no idea wtf I'm going to do.

Clearly LFS should hire you to do something. Maybe for his new HVAC litigation division.

FREE MONEY

Pro poker player obv.

Edit: Or stakehorse Cardo at the Commerce.