IF ROBERT NEWMAN KEPT A TALLY of his triumphs as an agent, which he doesn’t, Robert Rodriguez would probably be number one on the list.
When Newman signed him in 1992, Rodriguez was 22, with nothing to his name but a trailer for a tiny Spanish-language movie, El Mariachi, that he was making with $7,000 in credit card advances. Now, at the age of 33, Rodriguez is working on the third installment of Miramax’s big-budget franchise Spy Kids and finishing Once Upon a Time in Mexico for Sony and Miramax. He will have final cut on those films, which is not uncommon for a director with his track record. What is uncommon is that Rodriguez has always had final say In addition, he has veto power over the marketing campaigns for his films and shares in the spoils of all revenue streams that flow from his work. “A studio can’t even put a poster out that I don’t like,” Rodriguez says. “By not following the typical handbook rules, Robert has got me — this guy in Texas who makes weird movies — in a very unreal position.”
Rodriguez gives Newman a lot to work with. The director not only writes his own scripts but serves as his own cinematographer, editor, and composer. Rodriguez can make a movie relatively cheaply. Everything he’s made has been profitable. Newman makes the most of these assets. Studio executives say the way he’s handled Rodriguez’s career is brilliant in that it is based, at any given moment, on a precise understanding of what the market will bear. In moviemaking, as in comic book trading, you drive the hardest bargain when you know what you’ve got and what it’s worth to those who are bidding on it. Newman has protected Rodriguez’s worth while driving it steadily upward. Rodriguez is widely considered to have one of the best directing deals in Hollywood.
On El Mariachi, Newman insisted that Columbia Pictures give the director a larger-than-usual slice of the video proceeds. More than a decade later, Rodriguez still gets residual checks. On 1995′s Four Rooms, a quartet of interconnected shorts, Rodriguez — like all the directors on the project — got final cut. Newman used that as grounds to insist that Rodriguez get final cut on his next film, the full-length feature From Dusk till Dawn, written by Quentin Tarantino. Newman also argued for Rodriguez to be paid as much to direct the film as Tarantino had been paid to write it — a smart move, given that after Pulp Fiction, Tarantino was commanding a big salary. Since then, Newman has made sure that all merchandising, soundtrack, and sequel rights to Rodriguez’s films are frozen pending further negotiation.
“I tell the studios, ‘You’ve got to make another deal with Robert,’” “says Rodriguez. “They’re like, ‘What? When did this happen?’ Until they do all the numbers, they don’t realize how over a barrel they are.”
SUE MENGERS, THE INDUSTRY’S first female superagent, used to warn her younger colleagues at ICM about the fickleness of clients. “Honey, remember one thing,” she’d say. “They’ll always leave you. So don’t let ‘em into your heart.”
Newman has lost a handful of clients over the years — among them directors Guy Ritchie (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) and Gary Fleder (Kiss the Girls). But Darren Aronofsky’s departure really stung him.
Aronofsky sought Newman out at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, telling him, “I’ve been looking for you.” That year, the 28-year-old director’s movie Pi, the story of a mathematician who has discovered the meaning of existence, won the festival’s dramatic directing award. Newman signed him and set to work. The agent had a part in putting together his next film, Requiem for a Dream. Then Newman got Aronofsky hired to direct the next installment of a going franchise — Batman: Year One — even as he was pushing the director’s third original script, The Fountain, through development at Warner Bros.
Both films were departures for Aronofsky — major studio pictures with hefty budgets and big stars. The Fountain was reportedly going to cost more than $70 million and was to star Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. But Warner Bros. wasn’t pleased with the script — a “psychological journey” that spanned 1,000 years — and was worried about ballooning costs. Pitt was weighing other offers.
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