CAA still the biggest star in talent agency universe?
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If you can’t get our film reporter John Horn on the phone today, it’s probably because he’s checked into one of those swank Malibu rehab centers for a few hours of seaweed wraps and sauna massages. That’s what happens to reporters when they spend a week on the phone with very, very tightly wrapped talent agents trying to nail down a bragging rights story about which Hollywood agency has the most top clients in this year’s most high-profile summer films. His story, which runs in tomorrow’s Calendar section, offers an intriguing glimpse into which agencies wield the most clout in today’s film business.
Want to know how insanely competitive the agencies are these days? When Horn was reporting the piece, one rival agency exec argued that CAA couldn’t claim credit for Heath Ledger’s starring role in the upcoming ‘The Dark Knight’ since the actor was, well, dead. John’s story was such a hot topic among nervous agency chiefs that Deadline Hollywood Daily’s Nikki Finke, who considers the agencies her exclusive preserve, felt the need to badmouth the story before John had even finished writing it. It’s true that it’s hardly a news flash that CAA has the most clients in the summer films, but seeing the pecking order--laid out in black and white--was pretty interesting stuff. The real eye-opener for me was how many high-profile Hollywood types are managing to survive without an agent at all, an A-list that includes ‘Indiana Jones’ producer George Lucas, ‘Hancock’s’ Charlize Theron and ‘Wanted’s’ Angelina Jolie.
John has been tracking the agency wars for a while. But this new story raised a few questions for me. Here’s a look at some of John’s inside analysis:
1) Why is CAA the runaway winner? Why have they remained the dominant agency for so long?
John Horn: Producers and studio executives all say the same thing: They are simply the best at doing the job--they know more, work harder, and are smarter than the competition. There are stories of how many e-mails CAA head Richard Lovett sends before 6 a.m., and that kind of dedication (or is it mania?) certainly appears to have filtered through the ranks. But there are scores of equally hard-working agents at the other agencies, so that doesn’t completely explain it. In a way, CAA seems to have benefited as much from being the No. 1 shop as much as for the hard work it took to get there. Hollywood is filled with insecure people, especially actors. And if you have a choice among talent agencies, why not go to the place with the most clout? Won’t that make you feel better about your prospects? The problem with that thinking is that if you’re a 30-year-old actress at CAA, you might be competing with 20 other people within the agency for the same parts. The agency’s competitors have tried to use it as a sales hook to sign people--’Come here, where you’re our top priority!’ But other than Gwyneth Paltrow, how many A-listers can you think of who have left CAA recently?
2) I know how competitive the agencies are. How bad was the politicking as you reported this story? Were the agencies a big pain in the neck to deal with?
John Horn: Let’s just say if the agencies spent as much time working on global warming as they did trying to spin me on this story, the Earth’s temperature would already have dropped several degrees. In a way, it’s understandable: The town runs on perception more than reality, and a tally like this can reveal where the reality beats the perception. But since the story’s methodology is admittedly subjective, I was happy to listen. Outside of trying to get me to ditch the story entirely, the biggest push was to consider second-tier performers and second-tier films: how essential Jason Lewis was to ‘Sex and the City,’ whether your friend Rob Schneider was a key ingredient in ‘You Don’t Mess With the Zohan’ or that ‘The Rocker’ was going to be a sleeper hit. I will say that William Morris and ICM were the most content to let the facts speak for themselves. You can do the math and figure out who wasn’t.
3) As I briefly scanned the list, it looked like there was considerable agency packaging at work. What would be a good example or two of that?
John Horn: It’s not at all like the days of ‘Legal Eagles,’ where Mike Ovitz’s CAA could assemble so many key pieces in one (admittedly unwatchable) movie. Still, several movies have one agency’s fingerprints all over them. The director and two leads of ‘What Happens in Vegas’ are all CAA clients; William Morris has most of ‘Wanted’ and ‘The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor’; and United Talent can claim the lion’s share of ‘Pineapple Express.’
Angelina Jolie photo from Universal Pictures