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COPYRIGHT 2005 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
On a cool evening last October, rain was soaking the photographers who lined a red carpet in front of the Buffalo Club, in Santa Monica. They were waiting for the film star Ewan McGregor, the guest of honor at a party celebrating "Long Way Round," a miniseries on Bravo that documents how McGregor and a friend rode their motorcycles around the world, more or less. Under a tent in the club's garden, one could hear a convivial rumble from the usual mixture of models, ad executives, and prowling young men with ambitions to direct.
In a corner of the tent, also waiting for McGregor and looking even more miserable than the photographers--he was clutching himself as if his appendix had burst--was Dave Wirtschafter, the president of the William Morris Agency. Agents from William Morris and its leading competitor, Creative Artists Agency, C.A.A., customarily sweep through parties in identical Armani suits and Prada shoes, swinging their arms wide for vaguely urban handclasps--Dude! Have you been handled, drinks-wise?--as they sift for news, guard their clients from rival agents, and aggressively seek to poach from those rivals. Hey, Tom Hanks! Huge fan. You, sir, are a national treasure. Agents are the moths of Hollywood, drawn to the town's brightest lights.
Wirtschafter, however, hates going out, hates being called bro or dude or buddy or baby, hates "Santa Clausing" clients with gifts, hates schmoozing and toadying--hates all the aspects of being an agent that have traditionally defined the profession. A fit, watchful man of forty-seven with a thatch of Dry Look-style hair, Wirtschafter was wearing a brown leather jacket and jeans and a jade Maori talisman on a thong around his neck. He looked as if he might be there to replace the keg.
He was there because his agency had put together "Long Way Round" after McGregor's own agency, C.A.A., turned it down--and because William Morris hoped to poach the star. "C.A.A. basically told Ewan it was a stupid idea," John Ferriter, the William Morris agent who orchestrated the miniseries and a companion book, says. "When I heard that, I was dumbfounded--you always have to pursue what the client wants to do." If Mel Gibson wants to make a Biblical epic in Aramaic, his agent's only sensible response is "Judea is lovely this time of year!"
There are some two hundred talent agencies in Los Angeles. The five largest, which represent about seventy per cent of Hollywood's working entertainers, have nearly ten thousand clients among them, a number that includes musicians, novelists, athletes, corporations, and Regis Philbin. Yet the Big Five's movie-division business depends, in significant part, on a few dozen stars. Because stars can green-light a film, having a cluster of them at one agency draws the best scripts and directors there, too. C.A.A., which represents, among others, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman, and Jennifer Aniston, has by far the best actors' list; other agencies compare it, bitterly, to the New York Yankees. "They're all in blue suits and they're all named Josh and they're all coming at you," Cara Stein, a William Morris board member and the co-head of the New York office, says.
William Morris began to rejuvenate itself when Dave Wirtschafter and Jim Wiatt, who is now the agency's C.E.O., were hired away from International Creative Management, in 1999. It makes some two hundred and twenty million dollars a year in commissions (plus about five million from investments) and is, financially, at least, within striking distance of C.A.A. But William Morris is by far Hollywood's oldest agency--it started in New York in 1898 as a vaudeville booking service--and it has a lingering reputation as a canasta room of yesteryear. It represents only about a half-dozen lead actors, including John Travolta, Reese Witherspoon, Kevin Spacey, Morgan Freeman, Tommy Lee Jones, and Kirsten Dunst, and one superstar: Russell Crowe.
For years, Wirtschafter represented mainly directors and writers; among his forty clients are Ridley Scott, Gus Van Sant, Larry and Andy Wachowski, Paul and Chris Weitz, Bill Condon, Brad Bird, Ron Shelton, and Spike Lee. Within the past fifteen months, however, he has branched out to sign Halle Berry and Chris Tucker and the pop stars Alicia Keys, Ciara, and Lil Jon. And, ever since he was promoted to the agency's presidency, there has been mounting pressure on him to meet, to greet, and to poach.
Turning to his wife, Dominique, Wirtschafter glanced at his watch--it was just after seven--and said, "There is a ridiculous element to this. If I saw Ewan and said, 'Congratulations, we met for five minutes in England,' he'd be, like, 'Who the fuck are you?' "
Dominique, an attractive screenwriter of black, white, and Cherokee heritage, who seemed actually willing to enjoy the party, said, "You are not only memorable--you are hot."
"Oh, please."
"Every woman here wants you."
Wirtschafter's smile was unexpectedly boyish: "Yes, all the model-actresses are lusting after the married agent in the corner."
"It's been a challenge for Dave to deal with actors, to learn to be more verbose," Halle Berry told me later. "I feel honored when he goes out with me, or even puts on a new shirt, because he's so not about the bullshit of this town. He came to my party recently"--a book party that Berry gave for her acting coach--"and, yeah, he did sit with Dominique in the corner the whole time. But a year ago he wouldn't even have come."
Many of the best agents radiate energy and charm and wisdom, and seem to understand and approve of you, the essential, inner you, in a way that even your college sweetheart never did. At the same time, to paraphrase Walter Matthau's remark about poker, agents often exemplify the worst aspects of capitalism that have made our country so great. When George Shapiro, who is now a well-known talent manager, was at William Morris, he had his assistant answer the phone: "George Shapiro's office--kill for the love of killing!" And one C.A.A. agent woos talent with the credo "I want to be your asshole," or, when he's in a more introspective frame of mind, "I want to be your bitch."
Wirtschafter tries to be an exception. His client Randall Wallace recalls an episode from 1992, when he was a relatively unknown writer and M-G-M had offered to buy his next two scripts for four hundred thousand dollars, and seemed willing to let him direct one. "Can we get more?" he asked Wirtschafter. "When somebody believes in you like that, you don't try to squeeze them," Wirtschafter replied sternly. The scripts became the films "Braveheart" and "The Man in the Iron Mask," "so everyone came out right, and it proved Dave's point," Wallace says.
Yet, as Wirtschafter has taken on some of the top agent's time-honored duties--signing stars, and even visiting an occasional set--he has increasingly found it necessary to employ the top agent's time-honored weapons. That night, he was essentially lying in wait for someone else's client--even as other agencies were stalking his list. One rival agent took note recently when he saw the writer and director Neil LaBute, a Wirtschafter client, all alone at a script reading. "Dave is waiting to do the directing deal for Neil on two scripts Neil didn't write, instead of getting involved in the creative gestalt," the agent said, rehearsing his agency's potential poach. "I'm seeing Neil not getting representation for his truth as an artist." (For his part, LaBute says, "Dave is the best kind of Little League father--he's watching supportively from the stands, not wrestling the other fathers to the ground and beating them senseless.")
The agent continued, "Dave is smart and honorable and hardworking, but is he funny, does he get it? He's trying to be less of a phone jockey, less of a paper mover, but with his antisocial sensibility and his life away from this country"--the Wirtschafters have a home in New Zealand, and every time they take a vacation there other agencies spread the word that he has gone for good--"it's hard. It's all an attempt to deal with as few people as he can, because he doesn't get the vibe off people that he's cool."
At the Buffalo Club, it was seven-forty, and there was still no sign of Ewan McGregor. Theresa Peters, another William Morris agent, called McGregor's publicist on her cell phone, and reported, "They haven't even left the hotel."
Wirtschafter brightened: "Great, let's go!" Fifteen seconds later, they were out the door. After McGregor arrived, at eight-thirty, he asked John Ferriter who else from William Morris was there. Ferriter, who says, "People always appreciate the support of your presence," gave McGregor a list of six agents, without feeling it necessary to mention that Wirtschafter and Peters were supporting the star, at that moment, by their absence.
Wirtschafter often likes to be free of his clients in order to focus on them; that night he read scripts until ten-thirty. Wirtschafter doesn't "paper" his directors with scripts. He sent his client F. Gary Gray just one in a six-month period, and Gray ended up directing the movie--"Be Cool," which stars John Travolta and came out two weeks ago (to tepid reviews). Ridley Scott says, "Dave is the best I've ever met at reading everything worth reading and selecting the few things I should read."
Shortly after Wirtschafter fell asleep, the phone rang: it was his client Bryan Singer, the director of "The Usual Suspects" and the forthcoming "Superman Returns." Earlier that day, Singer had agreed to let Warner Bros. announce that he'd finally cast his Man of Steel, an actor named Brandon Routh. Then, at an evening screening, he'd let the news slip. "I suddenly went crazy and wondered if I'd totally blown it," Singer says. "I needed to talk to someone who could see the chess game several moves in advance, and that's Dave."
Wirtschafter reassured the director that "no one has been disadvantaged," and Singer hung up, greatly relieved. "I'm neurotic, and Dave is Zen," he says.
After Singer's call, Wirtschafter couldn't get back to sleep. He usually drops off for only about three hours a night, anyway,...
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