6.3: Lessons from the Rise of the “Indie Film Agent”

The 1990s saw the constitution of a new field of expertise in the agency world, which gradually consolidated during the 2000s: a few agents, who represented the rare foreign star directors or actors, started focusing on foreign coproduction and distribution opportunities, developing alliances with European or Australian counterparts who had access to sources of film funding. Those who built this new field in the domain of independent film packaging and financing drew on their ability to understand and navigate international markets. In practice, these agents were familiar with the local players who participated in the main international film festivals; they had developed a unique knowledge of the local rules of the game and had established relationships with the authorities who decided on the financing and the making of movies. The practice they invented went beyond the traditional work of foreign sales agents, who usually came into the mix only at the distribution phase. Their activity contributed to reshaping what an “indie film” is and how it can get made, which increasingly became inseparable from finding international investors and distributors. This case study illustrates how changes in the agency world and the institutionalization of a new area of specialization linked to transformations in studio practice affect the definition of cinematic genres (in this case, the indie film), the options that are open for artistic careers (international circulation of actors and directors especially), and the (interdependent) remodeling of domestic and foreign markets.

Here, I will very roughly sum up the elements involved in such a process. It all started with individual “entrepreneurs” acquiring distinctive skills, both in film finance and in film production, and penetrating into new territories in the agency business, as well as into neglected geographic spaces (mostly Europe and Australia at first). Their success stemmed from this happening at a specific point in time: their initiatives coincided with changes in production activities, in particular those of the studios. This new approach to agenting initially seemed like a risky strategy: its pioneers engaged in a marginal dimension of the agenting practice. They mostly faced skepticism and defiance on the part of colleagues in traditional positions, who viewed only the projects that studios backed as viable options, and discouraged their clients from getting involved in what they saw as uncertain independent/international endeavors. However, the success of a handful of movies (Green Card, Until the End of the World, and so on) quickly made perceptions shift in the agency world. As a result, in a business in which being one step ahead of competitors is key, “international agents” were rapidly taken seriously, increasingly so as their new role was progressively institutionalized in big agencies.

[I] signed a lot of people, put a lot of movies together. And then, after a point in time, I ended up representing some movies where we didn’t represent the client at all. . . . Because I represented the money that financed the movies, and they didn’t know what to do with the movies. And so I became the person that helped them with making foreign sales decisions, with a foreign sales agent. In some cases, I even made certain deals myself, usually with France, Italy, and Germany, maybe the UK. But I developed an expertise for making U.S. domestic deals, no agents were doing that. Then, because of that becoming important, what was really funny was that, you know, agents aren’t stupid, their basic antenna is always looking around to whatever they should know and do, or that guy’s going to be ahead of them, you know, it’s like this. So I would say, within six months to a year, all the agencies hired somebody who was their international person. (Former talent and independent film agent, big agency, 2013)

This role, which was initially defined mostly as “international arrangements and deal making” (with foreign financiers and distributors), was progressively reframed and increasingly characterized in reference to the manufacture of “independent films” as this new subfield of agenting was being organized. The conditions for this new specialization to stabilize were established and reinforced by the studios’ strategy of almost completely withdrawing from the production segment of “big independent” films.¹⁰ From around 2005 on, studios increasingly focused on making film franchises and sequels of previous box-office successes and in general developed fewer projects.¹¹ New “solutions” then had to be found to respond to the decrease in job offers and the desire of commercially successful artists to do more “arty” movies. An agent in charge of financing and packaging independent movies in a midsize agency here describes his changing relationships with studio divisions:

We can be with the independent divisions of the studio, we can be with Focus of Universal, we can be with Searchlight of Fox, or Weinstein, or Lionsgate, or whatever. But Disney is not generally buying a lot of independent films. Warner Brothers is not buying a lot of independent films. Right? The companies that have such massive overheads, you know, if they buy a four-million-dollar movie that goes off and makes ten million dollars in profit, it so doesn’t even matter. The bottom line is they don’t even want to waste their time. . . . They produce less. But it has changed, right? The studios in the 70s and 80s and 90s, it has all changed. It’s like now all the studios are owned by conglomerates. It is all about the stock price. So they have to do things that move the stock. Financing a new movie doesn’t necessarily move the stock. (2013)

From such an account, it could seem that international agents simply expanded their niche by filling a void left by the studios. In fact, they actively contributed to the collective shaping not only of a specialized “market” (for “indies”) but also of the corresponding film genre and artistic categories. By building relationships with international partners in production and distribution according to their perception of a shrinking domestic market, they participated in feeding a self-reinforcing process. In turn, indie film teams gained importance in the agency business as the domestic box office revenue numbers gained more visibility compared to international numbers. The reversal of foreign and North American film revenues (respectively 70 and 30 percent,¹² when it used to be the reverse) has provoked anticipation and strategy in the industry, partly rearranging internal professional hierarchies. Consequently, in the course of a few years, entire divisions dedicated to financing and packaging independent movies became institutionalized and grew within the large and midsize agencies.¹³ In addition, independent “indie film” consultants and financial advisers multiplied, contributing to the formation of a whole professional sector. Practitioners claimed legitimacy based on the definition of a specialized competence enabling them to represent a whole movie, not “just” the artists involved with it. “The basic job of an agent is to put the client to work. That’s what you’d call a single point transaction. . . . But the thing about representing a movie is a whole other thing and nobody had done it, no agents had done this. And so, I even created a financial structure where we got paid a consultancy fee, because I was performing a service” (former independent film agent, big agency, 2013).

This interviewee underlines the different structure of remuneration distinguishing his job from other positions. His specific role relies on the valorization of a “unique skill”—“blending art and commerce”¹⁴—and on the exhibition of familiarity with and recognition from the world of film finance (and its bankers and investors). As a matter of fact, several of these specialized agents have a distinctive profile: they joined an agency late in their career after having worked in finance. The agency that hires someone with such a background is looking for both a level of technical expertise and a set of preexisting relationships with potential film funding sources, all the while expecting the new agent to approach movies as an “investment” like any other.¹⁵ However, for the most part, the financial dimension of the practice is not what takes prevalence in these agents’ self-definition.

As their job consists in assembling various eclectic pieces that make up an independent production, “indie film agents” can take pride in having both expert knowledge and creative autonomy. They indeed orchestrate the participation of diverse players—from financiers, producers, and distributors in various countries to creative personnel and their representatives (agents, unions, managers, and so on)—in a complex project. They draw symbolic power from this position of coordinator, which places them “above the crowd.” But they also describe this role as a challenge: they first have to overcome the reluctance of agents who hold different positions and often have contradictory interests (primarily choosing the most secure job option for their clients). It’s internally, in the agency world and often within their own company, that they fight their first battles. The precarious aspect of playing with such a composite system appears in this agent’s words:

Every agent, whether they want to admit it or not, has an agenda for their client. So, to get a movie made means you have to have a hundred different agents somehow come to the same agenda at the same time. I need this male actor, this female actor, this director, this writer, this producer, this line producer, this DP, this editor, and then the financier’s agent and manager and blah-blah-blah. The most difficult thing by far is trying to get everyone on the same page at the same time. . . . So, it is going to all the agencies, convincing talent to do a movie, convincing the team that they should do the movie for the right price, convincing the financiers that they should do this. It is getting a lot of different people to agree on one thing. To align all the different pieces and all the different agendas and find the right financier who says, “You know what? I’m doing that.” (Independent film agent, midsize agency, 2013)

As a result, these agents promote their area of specialization by stating that they accomplish “more than ordinary packaging,” in the sense that they have the responsibility of putting together entire movies. Their overarching position preserves them from the fragmentation that usually confines agents to the preproduction phase, with little control over the film-making process as a whole; by contrast, it places these specialists closer to the position of a director or a producer: “It’s not packaging, because packaging in my mind is just bringing on the director and an actor into it. If you’re also organizing all of the financing, you’re structuring, you’re setting up the distribution; it’s much more than packaging. It’s executive producing without the executive producing title” (independent film agent, big agency, 2013).

The value of working on international independent coproductions and the very meaning of independence for these agents have to do precisely with this self-attributed “producerial” power, which solidly ties them to the artistic side of the industry and distances them from the image of the agent as a mere salesman. This observation goes beyond the case of indie film specialists; it reveals the prevalence of most agents’ identification with creativity in their professional self-concept and also reveals the strength of symbolic hierarchies in even the most commercial sectors of Hollywood: “The producing that we do as agents, whether it is finding the money, or finding the other artists, or finding the script, or developing the script, or whatever it is: the not-just-making-the-deal-and-putting-them-in stuff, the other stuff, is rewarding and creates dimension to your service, and also separates the smarts from the clinicians” (talent agent, big agency, 2013).

At the end of the day, as successful as independent films may be both domestically and internationally, they are not as lucrative as big studio tent poles. Indie films are more unpredictable and require more energy from the agency side. In line with the rationalization of activity characterizing the largest agencies, and despite the growth of their independent film divisions, “going international” has not come to mean being central in the game. Studio production remains the priority, and packaging for studios the main focus.