
But I'm Not a Lawyer, I'm an Agent - jger15
https://davidsimon.com/but-im-not-a-lawyer-im-an-agent/
======
michaelbuckbee
This 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
Real 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!

~~~
dd36
Your 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.

~~~
nkurz
_Your agent, no matter who is paying them, has a fiduciary duty to you._

This isn't universally true. In some US states, the frequent problem is that
the agent who is showing you homes (and who you tend to think of as "your
agent") is not actually your agent (with fiduciary duty to you), but a
subagent of the seller (with fiduciary duty to them). Here's an excerpt from
recent report on this:

\---

For many years, a large majority of home buyers and sellers have worked with
real estate agents. Most consumers believe that these agents always or almost
always are required to represent the interests of the home buyer or seller
with whom they are working. ... Yet, real estate agents often are not required
by law to represent the interests of the buyer or seller with whom they are
working, and many do not.

In reality, there are a number of different types of relationships allowed in
most states between real estate agents and their clients.

    
    
      • Single agent: The agent works solely for the client
      and has fiduciary responsibility. A fiduciary agent
      is “obligated to procure the greatest advantage to
      his client.”
      • Designated agent: The agent is recruited by the
      listing agent to work with a buyer and has fiduciary
      responsibility to that buyer.
      • Subagent: The agent works with the buyer but has
      fiduciary responsibility to the seller.
      • Dual agent: The agent somehow is expected to represent the
      interests of both the seller and buyer in a home purchase.
      • Transactional agent: The agent works with both buyer and
      seller to facilitate a sale but has no fiduciary 
      responsibility to either party.
    

[https://consumerfed.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/the-
agenc...](https://consumerfed.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/the-agency-mess-
home-buyer-and-seller-confusion-report.pdf)

\---

So while it's possible that you live in a state where you are correct, where
subagency and dual-agency are forbidden, in the absence of a signed contract
for the services of a buyers agent, others should not follow your advice until
they are certain the same is true for them.

~~~
ry4nolson
So who does a Secret Agent have a fiduciary responsibility to?

~~~
klipt
Depends, are they a double agent?

------
robterrin
"[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-
andreess...](https://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/01/21/why-andreessen-
horowitz-models-itself-after-a-hollywood-talent-agency/)

This being Hacker News and all, I thought the idea that a16z is modeled on CAA
would have come up already.

~~~
icelancer
_Who 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.

------
darkerside
Writing 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.

~~~
empath75
Was someone accusing david Simon of being a bad writer?

~~~
village-idiot
Yes. Scroll down and try to read the low contrast entries at the bottom.

~~~
SilasX
It 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
Keep 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.

~~~
SilasX
Fair enough, this is a case where it would actually be more correct to use
that style!

------
bps4484
This 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-
appr...](https://deadline.com/2019/03/wga-members-overwhelmingly-approve-new-
agency-code-1202585826/)

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%...](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Points%20on%20the%20package)

------
huffmsa
A 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
David 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.

------
dreamcompiler
I 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/1113779904028598...](https://mobile.twitter.com/AoDespair/status/1113779904028598272?s=09)

------
leroy_masochist
A fun read rife with lyrical, bilious insults....but he doesn't really explain
the economics of "packaging"

~~~
Angostura
I thought that for a good writer, that was actually terribly written. An
author intoxicated by the ebullience of his own verbosity.

~~~
wyldfire
Indeed. "fuckbonnets"? This article would have been much better without these.

~~~
sevensor
Personally 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.

~~~
tomcam
Kurt Vonnegut said that when you curse you give him the right to ignore you.
And I agree with you.

~~~
vkou
Kurt Vonnegut has always had the right to ignore me, regardless of whether or
not I'm cursing.

------
markbnj
Probably 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.

------
philip1209
If you're interested in learning more - I recommend reading the book
Powerhouse about the creation of the Creative Artists Agency.

~~~
stereobit
And "Who Is Michael Ovitz" which tell the story from one of the founders.

------
zachguo
Entrenched middlemen become abusive gatekeepers. Is it inevitable across human
society? Is there a way to prevent it from happening?

------
lifeisstillgood
It 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

------
alistairSH
Tangent... [https://theoutline.com/post/7023/what-is-a-douchenozzle-
swea...](https://theoutline.com/post/7023/what-is-a-douchenozzle-swear-
nerds?zd=1&zi=s5i4uvdc)

~~~
weeksie
Spare 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.

------
closeparen
I got five sentences into this, thought “wow this sounds like David Simon,”
looked up, and sure enough it was.

------
funylon
He learned about this "packaging" crap back in 2002. What took him so long?

~~~
mattzito
There'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-
agree...](https://variety.com/2019/biz/news/wga-agencies-writers-agreement-
april-6-1203178981/)

> 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.

------
motohagiography
Whatever 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
You're talking about the Creator of "The Wire", one of the most anointed TV
series of all time.

~~~
andrewingram
And Homicide (the book) is immensely readable, one of my favourites.

~~~
scott_s
His followup, The Corner, is one of the most devastating books I have ever
read. The show The Wire also pulls from it.

