Aronofsky, who declined to be interviewed, apparently got scared that the project was falling apart. Last July he left ICM to go to CAA, which also happens to represent Pitt. Five days after Aronofsky defected, Warner Bros. announced that it had given the film the go-ahead. Aronofsky had made a trade-off, leaving Newman in the hopes of locking in Pitt and holding his movie together. But one month later — and just weeks before the film was supposed to begin shooting — it fell apart again.
“Pitt Splits Fountain,” said the Variety headline. Pitt wanted to play Achilles in a movie being directed by another CAA client, Wolfgang Petersen — Troy, an adaptation of The Iliad. Aronofsky’s movie was, and remains, dead in the water.
“I’ve always thought Darren was talented. That hasn’t changed,” Newman told me. That’s all he would say. But in an earlier conversation he said this about his client list: “It’s not a numbers game. I just look for what interests me. New films. New relationships. That’s what’s exciting to me.”
This year at Sundance, Newman arrived excited. Four of his directors had films in the festival–Danny Boyle, Mike Figgis, Alex Proyas, and an unknown named David Gordon Green, who signed with ICM last year. A few months after signing him, Newman landed the 28-year-old one of the most sought-after projects in Hollywood: the long-delayed adaptation of John Kennedy O’Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces. It begins production this spring.
ONE SUNDAY LAST DECEMBER, Robert Newman flew to Toronto to visit client Nick Hamm on the set of a movie he’s directing that stars Robert De Niro and Greg Kinnear. The following Monday Newman flew to New York for the Broadway premiere of Baz Luhrmann’s production of the opera La Boheme. He also stopped in at the premiere of Gangs of New York. Tuesday he flew back to Los Angeles for the premiere of Chicago, whose ensemble cast includes Lucy Liu. On Thursday he left for China. He arrived in Beijing on Saturday, attended the premiere of Jet Li’s Hero that night, then got up on Sunday morning and flew 6,257 miles home.
“I’m not too lagged,” he said on his return. He was in a good mood. Director Wayne Wang’s Maid in Manhattan was number one at the box office. Jonathan Demme had landed his first ICM-procured job: directing Denzel Washington in Paramount’s remake of The Manchurian Candidate. What’s more, The New York Times that day had reported that La Boheme had presold $500,000 in tickets, becoming the hottest show on Broadway.
Several weeks earlier, when Luhrmann was still smoothing his opera’s rough edges in San Francisco, Newman had flown up for the West Coast premiere. Two of the five major movie studios — 20th Century Fox and Universal Pictures — sent their top executives. There were publicists, lawyers, agents. Kevin Spacey and Andy Garcia milled around. Standing in the gilded lobby of the Curran Theater, publicist Pat Kingsley hovered near her client Nicole Kidman, and gave former Warner Bros. chief Terry Semel a hug. “It’s like L.A.,” she told him.
Newman despises opera — “It’s fucking unlistenable,” he’d declared on more than one occasion. But he looked jubilant as he surveyed the dark theater. It was Luhrmann’s moment. It was also Newman’s. The agent wasn’t merely a part of the Hollywood lovefest surrounding the director. He had created it.
After the performance the agent joined the crowd at the cast party. Past midnight, Newman, who had eaten no dinner, sat down with a plate of paella that he looked eager to devour. Then, at the next table over, he saw a seat open up next to Kidman.
Kidman has been an important actress to more than one Newman client. Her performance in Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge made the movie. At a party at Newman’s house she had met another of his directors, Jonathan Glazer, and soon agreed to star in his upcoming thriller Birth. So when Newman spotted the empty seat, he couldn’t let the opportunity pass. He slipped over and passed along Glazer’s regards. They talked for 15 minutes. Dinner could wait.
The next morning Newman bummed a ride home on Universal’s jet. The flight could have been downtime, but he was still working. Before the pilot closed the door, Newman had already expressed Luhrmann’s gratitude to Stacy Snider, the studio’s chairwoman, and her production chiefs, thanking them for making the trip. In Burbank the door of the Gulfstream popped open, and Snider and her lieutenants hurried down the stairs toward three Town Cars that waited with engines running. Newman was last off the plane.
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