The Un-agent Agent: He represents top directors. He drives a hard bargain. Mostly, though, Robert Newman just loves to sit in the dark
Originally appeared in Los Angeles Magazine March 1, 2003
BY: Amy Wallace
Robert Newman knows every movie theater in Los Angeles — where it is, what kind of seating it has, how many trailers it shows. Six of those theaters are on his speed dial. The numbers link him not to a recording but to a person who can tell him how big the screens are, which shows are most crowded. He loves crowds. He has never understood private screening rooms. He won’t watch a movie with just ten people if he can help it. He tries to see everything, preferably on opening weekend. If he hates a movie and walks out, at least he got a feeling for the audience, what the vibe was. “You walk in,” he says. “You have a point of view. The trailers go on. Okay. Done. Count me in.”
Most people think agents like Newman are soulless hucksters, chameleons, shape-shifters, Sammy Glicks. Insincerity of the “love ya, baby” variety is commonplace in Hollywood, and agents — conduits who connect actors, directors, and writers to movie studios and television networks — are usually masters of the art. For them, phoniness can be a skill, a way of manipulating whomever they’re addressing.
No wonder agent jokes never go out of style. There are jokes about aggressiveness (What’s the difference between a pit bull and an agent? Jewelry) and about disloyalty (What’s the difference between a bantam rooster and an agent? A rooster clucks defiance. An agent fucks da clients). There are jokes that cast agents as unctuous (Two agents meet at a dinner where Sophia Loren is receiving an award. First agent: “Why Sophia Loren? She’s so over.” Second agent: “She’s my client.” First agent, without missing a beat: “Let me finish”). The most biting jokes skewer agents for ignoring their clients (A screenwriter comes home to find a pile of smoldering rubble where his house used to be. “Your agent came to your house,” a policeman tells him, “slaughtered your family, burned your home to the ground, and then danced on the rubble in hobnailed boots.” The screenwriter looks dazed. Then his face brightens: “My agent came to my house?”).
Newman, who is 44, is head of International Creative Management’s motion picture literary department, which means he leads a 25-agent team that shepherds the careers of about 250 directors and screenwriters in exchange for 10 percent of their earnings. Newman’s list includes actors Lucy Liu and Jet Li and the Oscar-nominated screenwriter John Hodge. But he is best known for representing directors, many of whom are widely considered the Industry’s most vibrant and original. Among them: Robert Rodriguez (Spy Kids), Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge), Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas), Danny Boyle (Trainspotting), Jonathan Demme (Philadelphia), Lee Tamahori (Once Were Warriors),Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amelie), Peter Cattaneo (The Full Monty), Wayne Wang (Smoke), Sofia Coppola (The Virgin Suicides), Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter), Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast), Scott McGehee and David Siegel (The Deep End), Alex Proyas (The Crow), Iain Softley (The Wings of the Dove), and Todd Solondz (Happiness).
“If Robert Newman opened a movie studio with just his clients, it’d be a kick-ass studio,” says Mike De Luca, the production chief of DreamWorks SKG. Still, neither his clientele nor his job title fully conveys the singular place Newman occupies in the Hollywood firmament. It’s not that Newman is more intimidating than other agents. The guys at Endeavor Agency, for example, who give out Louisville sluggers as agency Christmas gifts, cultivate a tougher image than the wiry Newman could ever hope to pull off. It’s not that he’s the next hot young player at Creative Artists Agency or William Morris or United Talent. Last year, when Details magazine listed 12 “Special Agents” 35 and younger who “have made the town forget Mike Ovitz,” Newman was too old to be included. What sets Newman apart is this: Of the hundreds of agent jokes, not one applies to him.
ROBERT NEWMAN’S HANDSHAKE SWOOPS TOWARD YOU, HIS thumb rigidly perpendicular to his fingers, and it culminates in a single tug, firm but brief, as if he’s ringing a bell. The effect is assertive and a bit playful. “Newman here!” he says by way of greeting. His good-bye is simply “Later!”
« 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 ALL »