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But I'm Not a Lawyer, I'm an Agent
- leroy_masochist 8y agoA fun read rife with lyrical, bilious insults....but he doesn't really explain the economics of "packaging"
- JdeBP 8y agoThere is other stuff to read: * https://www.webfilmschool.com/movie-money-part-8-6-packaging-agents-the-30-50-million-deal-im-repped-by-6/ https://www.webfilmschool.com/movie-money-part-8-6-packaging... * https://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-wga-vote-code-20190331-story.html https://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-wga-vote... * https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/gavin-polone-tvs-dirty-secret-783941 https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/gavin-polone-tvs-dirt... * https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/what-exactly-are-packaging-fees-a-writers-agents-explainer-1198974 https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/what-exactly-are-pack...
- leroy_masochist 8y agoThanks!
- Angostura 8y agoI thought that for a good writer, that was actually terribly written. An author intoxicated by the ebullience of his own verbosity.
- wyldfire 8y agoIndeed. "fuckbonnets"? This article would have been much better without these.
- schrectacular 8y agoTo each, his own, I suppose. I thought that was hilarious and didn't detract anything from the message. I can see why it would be off-putting though.
- empath75 8y agoThis guy wrote The Wire, which famously had a scene comprised entirely of two detectives saying ‘Fuck’ in different tones of voice while examining a crime scene. I’m not sure what you would expect.
- uhhhhhhh 8y agoNot everyone can match this guys brilliance, that's for sure.
- EliRivers 8y agoI disagree. This is an excellent way for the author to express himself. The meaning is clear, and the author avoided cliche and in doing so ensured that I would respond freshly to the word. If he'd simply said "fuckwad" or "bastard" or some other word I read a lot, my response would have been muted. It also makes it clear to me that his feelings towards these people are raw and fresh. The author has achieved excellent communication; I can literally feel his anger towards and frustration with these people (I'm feeling it right this second, as I type), rammed into my mind with a pithy "fuckbonnets" - it's almost like a kind of emotional punctuation. The article is much better with this.
- sevensor 8y agoPersonally I avoid profanity in my writing, because I don't think it would add anything. But this essay illustrates that it can add quite a lot, if you know how to use it. Deployed with expert timing and creativity, in the context of other effective rhetoric, it conveys the depth of Simon's outrage and disgust. I still don't think I would achieve anything by peppering my comments with f-bombs, but I think he has earned them.
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- bovermyer 8y agoI guess you were reading as a writing critic instead of trying to understand the point of the article. Interesting.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- taneq 8y agoWell I liked it.
- mcguire 8y agoI'm still pondering "fuckbonnet". See michaelbuckbee: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19571258 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19571258
- nickelcitymario 8y agoThat word was my favourite part of the article. The whole thing was fascinating, but "fuckbonnet" is poetry.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- darkerside 8y agoWriting like that, in a showboating over-the-top style, is effectively its own special genre. It's not supposed to be economical. It's not solely meant to communicate a specific message. It's the "hold my beer" of writing. It's the kind of writing other writers appreciate for what it is -- like the jokes that comics tell each other -- not meant for general consumption. If you want to label it as "bad writing", you're certainly within your rights. But it's reductive, it misses the point, and worst of all, as an insult, it's rather boring.
- thanks1banks2 8y agoNon-native speaker. I loved the writing and find it engrossing!
- empath75 8y agoWas someone accusing david Simon of being a bad writer?
- village-idiot 8y agoYes. Scroll down and try to read the low contrast entries at the bottom.
- SilasX 8y agoIt seems to have completely disappeared. Too bad, too, because I make the same criticism myself, of the New Yorker style of "make me wade through 500 words just for an inkling of what this is actually about". But yeah, it's a matter of taste.
- village-idiot 8y agoKeep in mind that he’s writing to convince other writers, statistically you probably aren’t the target audience. My gym buddy who’s a professional tv writer says that this entry had a big impact on getting WGA to do something.
- michaelbuckbee 8y agoThis is pretty dense with industry-specific terms, but I think I figured it out. "Packaging" is a talent agency bundling up different creative roles (writer, producer, actor) for a project (film or tv show) and then pitching that group of people for that specific project to the studios. The agency takes a percentage of the _project_ revenues instead of a percentage of each individual _talents_ pay for the project. This is apparently the standard way things work in Hollywood now and has some consequences: 1. It screws up the "Agent" part of the talent agency. They no longer directly represent an individual's interest (like a Real Estate agent or a Lawyer) because they just want to get people into a "package". This is the main problem described in the article, that there are some massive conflicts inherent to this process. 2. Packaging projects make agencies way more money than directly representing clients. 3. It reverts movie and tv making back to something like the studio days. Every actor isn't really able to work with every director, in order to get something made they need to be "packaged" which means working with someone else from within the same agency. 4. It messes up people lower on the rung more than top tier folks because they're less able to buck the system.
- lupire 8y agoReal Estate agents are famous for not representing their customer's interest. In real estate, half the time (buy-side) your agent is being paid their entire income for the transaction by your adversary. In several states, "your agent" is legally required to disclose the fact that they are not your agent!
- AlexTWithBeard 8y agoAs usually, the disclosure is done as two crimpled pink pieces of paper with light gray print. The text on the paper tries to be legally correct and understandable by non-lawyers at the same time and fails to achieve either of these purposes. Been through that. Still angry.
- dd36 8y agoYour agent, no matter who is paying them, has a fiduciary duty to you. I’ve bought and sold a lot of property and can guarantee you that the fact that commissions are paid by sellers makes zero difference. Really, it’s coming out of the purchase price, which is netted to the seller but technically is being paid by you.
- motohagiography 8y agoWhatever they paid an editor to make that writers other work readable, it was not nearly enough. Agents are notoriously terrible people, but they get away with it because of conceits like these from the talent. Good God, my eyes. The ethics of taking both sides of a deal need to be more explicit, as it is very common, and in any agency market, considered ideal.
- dralley 8y agoYou're talking about the Creator of "The Wire", one of the most anointed TV series of all time.
- andrewingram 8y agoAnd Homicide (the book) is immensely readable, one of my favourites.
- scott_s 8y agoHis followup, The Corner, is one of the most devastating books I have ever read. The show The Wire also pulls from it.
- motohagiography 8y agoGood, then he can take it. Great writers write terrible things and it is valuable to them, and to everyone else when people call them on it. - Read Ian McEwan before and after he became a national treasure and people stopped editing him. - W. Sommerset Maughm's "Of Human Bondage," was an indulgent landfill of discarded ideas compared to his edited work. I could go on, but writing in the service of others vs. the onanism of intellectually retired artists are very different things.
- parksy 8y agoCan you at the very least expand on why it's so terrible, maybe a couple of examples so we can understand where you're coming from. All we really have is "Good God, my eyes" and similar epithets implying your stance that this is simply intellectual masturbation and hubris, but no real substance into what exactly makes you feel this reaction to the article. I am genuinely curious because I thought for what it was worth, it conveyed its point pretty well regardless of whether the guy is some big shot writer or not.
- funylon 8y agoHe learned about this "packaging" crap back in 2002. What took him so long?
- mattzito 8y agoThere's a union vote up for the relationship between the WGA and the big 4 agencies, and he is on the WGA council. So this is him giving a stump speech for voting for the restrictions on agencies. Here's an article on the subject: https://variety.com/2019/biz/news/wga-agencies-writers-agreement-april-6-1203178981/ https://variety.com/2019/biz/news/wga-agencies-writers-agree... > The WGA aims to revise its decades-old rules to bar agencies from taking packaging fees from production entities on TV series and movies, and the guild seeks to bar WGA members from working with talent agencies with parent companies active in the production arena.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- huffmsa 8y agoA tangent to this is the recent fallout from the Bones -- Hulu case. In that case, the guy representing Fox and Bones was also the guy representing Hulu. So he sold the rights for $0. He literally signed both party lines on the streaming rights contract. And thought he'd get away with it.
- scott_s 8y agoDavid Simon's books "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets" and "The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood" (co-written with former homicide detective Ed Burns) are the kind of stories that change your thinking forever.
- philip1209 8y agoIf you're interested in learning more - I recommend reading the book Powerhouse about the creation of the Creative Artists Agency.
- stereobit 8y agoAnd "Who Is Michael Ovitz" which tell the story from one of the founders.
- robterrin 8y ago"[Andreessen Horowitz] aims to flip the venture industry on its head by acting more like a talent agency - specifically Creative Artists Agency, which became so prominent in Hollywood that it was hard to do deals without them being involved." https://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/01/21/why-andreessen-horowitz-models-itself-after-a-hollywood-talent-agency/ https://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/01/21/why-andreess... This being Hacker News and all, I thought the idea that a16z is modeled on CAA would have come up already.
- icelancer 8y agoWho is Michael Ovitz is a great read on the formation of CAA and (what was then) the new world of packaging. This has been going on for decades.
- markbnj 8y agoProbably not much different in substance from the treatment of musical artists by the big recording companies, or of novelists by publishing houses, or ... insert any comparable paired relationship of creative maker and avaricious exploiter and you'll get the same outcome.
- dreamcompiler 8y agoI follow David Simon on Twitter just because his takedowns of idiots who attack him are so entertaining. Example from this morning: https://mobile.twitter.com/AoDespair/status/1113779904028598272?s=09 https://mobile.twitter.com/AoDespair/status/1113779904028598...
- zachguo 8y agoEntrenched middlemen become abusive gatekeepers. Is it inevitable across human society? Is there a way to prevent it from happening?
- closeparen 8y agoI got five sentences into this, thought “wow this sounds like David Simon,” looked up, and sure enough it was.
- bps4484 8y agoThis article is a little bit old because he mentions the upcoming union vote. The vote has now been cast, and 95% of writers have voted to only work with agents signing a code of conduct that bans packaging: https://deadline.com/2019/03/wga-members-overwhelmingly-approve-new-agency-code-1202585826/ https://deadline.com/2019/03/wga-members-overwhelmingly-appr... Funny side note I learned from my girlfriend who is an aspiring writer and has worked at an agency: agents call this practice "getting points on the package" which may be a term that rings a bell if you've watched the wire, https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Points%20on%20the%20package https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Points%20on%...
- alistairSH 8y agoTangent... https://theoutline.com/post/7023/what-is-a-douchenozzle-swear-nerds?zd=1&zi=s5i4uvdc https://theoutline.com/post/7023/what-is-a-douchenozzle-swea...
- weeksie 8y agoSpare me the j-school varsity social criticism takes, especially if they’re gonna go after that kind of language play without even referencing Armando Ianucci.
- lifeisstillgood 8y agoIt seems the easy win here is for everyone who gets packaged to walk into the studio the next day and say "cut out the agent and we will take the agency's 20% and give you back 5%" If acted on like a union (Equity) then the whole process would stop in a month