在某个工作日的午饭时间，如果你漫步在贝弗利山(Beverly Hills)的威尔希尔大道(Wilshire Boulevard)，迎面而来的很有可能是一番洛杉矶人难得一见的景象：在这个以悠闲工作方式自诩的城市里，工作场合穿着休闲装实际上是符合礼仪的，但依然有人身着套装——漂亮、挺括的套装，步履匆匆，耳边夹着手机或低头狂按手中的黑莓或iPhone手机。
这些西服革履的人是明星经纪人，他们出没于将贝弗利山和附近世纪城(Century City)的摩天大楼连接起来的威尔希尔大道和圣塔・莫妮卡大道(Santa Monica Boulevards)一带。世纪城商业区是在20世纪福克斯公司(20th Century Fox)制片厂原有的土地上建造的。
代表美国娱乐圈70%的演员、导演、音乐人和剧作人的好莱坞4大经纪公司总部就设在这里。本城最大的经纪公司——创新艺人经纪公司(Creative Artists Agency)设在世纪城一座庄严的大厦内，外界普遍称其为“死星”(“the Death Star”)。不远处米高梅大厦内的则是国际创作管理公司(International Creative Management)，该公司是碧昂斯(Beyoncé)和好莱坞新星梅根・福克斯(Megan Fox)等明星的东家。转回贝弗利山，在离璀璨夺目的贝弗利山威尔希尔酒店(Beverly Wilshire hotel)不远处，是威廉・莫理斯奋进娱乐公司(William Morris Endeavor Entertainment)，它是去年由好莱坞最德高望重的经纪公司与最年轻的经纪公司合并而成的。街对面是联合艺人经纪公司(United Talent Agency)，其客户包括强尼・德普(Johnny Depp)、哈里森・福特(Harrison Ford)和格温妮丝・帕特洛(Gwyneth Paltrow)。
虽然在日落大道公告牌上出现的是演员的面孔，但经纪人才是好莱坞娱乐圈引擎得以正常运作的润滑油。他们挑选出好的剧本，交给客户——无论他们是演员、导演还是制片人，然后与电影制片厂签约，这样电影才能进入制作。在这个需要合约就像需要氧气的城市里，他们就是合约制造人。他们将电影打包——将导演、明星和剧本粘合在一起，提高客户及自身的报酬。结果，制片厂老板要做的全部工作，就只有签支票了。
经纪人的角色随着岁月的流逝不断演变，但万变不离其宗，一如1912年的情景。当时，俄罗斯移民的儿子阿贝・拉斯特福格(Abe Lastfogel)受雇于威廉・莫里斯在曼哈顿的办事处。他一级一级慢慢升迁，最终掌控这家经纪公司，在这里，他将星探代理转变成一种精美的艺术，培养和聘用激情满怀，随时准备为客户披荆斩棘、赴汤蹈火的男男女女。
好的经纪人时刻将客户放在首位，这种特征从他们踏上这个工作岗位的第一天——往往在邮件收发室里，就已经灌输给他们了。这是个无情的地方，时间长，工作辛苦，收入微薄。然而邮件收发室已成为在好莱坞的一种成人礼，任何一个能够在这一行混饭吃的人都必须通过这一关。
前唱片公司老板、百万富翁，与史蒂芬・斯皮尔伯格(Steven Spielberg)和杰弗里・卡岑伯格(Jeffrey Katzenberg)一起，同为梦工厂电影工作室(DreamWorks movie studio)联合创始人的大卫・格芬(David Geffen)是在威廉・莫里斯在纽约的邮件收发室开始其职业生涯的，他称那里为“哈佛演艺商学院——只好不差：没有分数、没有考试，一份小小的薪水和一些伟大的实习机会”。派拉蒙电影制片厂前首脑巴里・迪勒(Barry Diller)也是从那里起家的；创新艺人经纪公司合伙创始人，如今环球电影制片厂的老板罗恩・梅耶(Ron Meyer)亦然。
每年，为数众多的顶级MBA学生和取得执业资格的律师都试图从某家大型经纪公司的邮件收发室起步，打进娱乐圈。“这是一个长期艰苦工作的工程，” 联合艺人经纪公司合伙人，威廉・莫里斯邮件收发室的校友之一，51岁杰瑞米・齐默(Jeremy Zimmer)对我说。“如果你没有准备好去经历一些艰难困苦，那你对这一行就不会有真正的、足够的热爱。要获得成功，你必须爱上它。”
热爱合约是经纪人生涯的另一个先决条件。在《纽约客》(New Yorker)杂志最近的一篇人物特写中，国际创作管理公司半传奇式的经纪人山姆・科亨(Sam Cohn)评论道，好莱坞很多经纪人的名字都叫：“莫蒂或马蒂，他们穿着露出胸毛的衬衫到处招摇，开口便是，‘我们最多出300啦'”。尽管外露的胸毛可能消失，尽管通讯录为黑莓所代替，其它的模式则延续下来，如果说还有其它任何改变的话，那只能是如今的经纪人比过去几十年里的前辈更富于进取精神。
在5位前威廉・莫里斯合伙人于1975年成立创新艺人经纪公司之前，经纪公司之间的竞争充满了绅士风度。据苏・曼洁斯(Sue Mengers)的说法，“在英国，如果一位影星被某位经纪人代理了，除非这位经纪人死了，否则别的经纪人休想接近这个客户。这显得非常愚蠢，”她告诉我。苏・曼洁斯是20世纪70年代登上男性统治的经纪人世界顶峰的女性，她的客户包括芭芭拉・史翠珊(Barbra Streisand)、吉恩・哈克曼(Gene Hackman)和阿里・麦克格罗(Ali McGraw)。
1975年，由迈克尔・奥维茨(Michael Ovitz)、罗恩・梅耶、迈克尔・罗森菲尔德(Michael Rosenfeld)、比尔・哈勃(Bill Haber)、罗兰德・伯金斯(Rowland Perkins)创立的创新艺人经纪公司带来了高度竞争的新纪元，以及一系列所谓的“经纪公司大战”。其中，创新艺人经纪公司、国际创作管理公司和威廉・莫里斯无不欲置各自的对手于死地而后快。这5位经纪人——都在威廉・莫里斯就职——正在考虑开设他们自己的公司，而此时，威廉・莫里斯的一位高级合伙人风闻了他们的计划并炒了他们的鱿鱼。在没有客户的情况下，他们必须迅速而激进地展开工作以便建立业务，向客户承诺报酬更高的合约和更具决定意义的成功。客户纷至沓来：梅丽尔・斯特里普(Meryl Streep)、简・方达(Jane Fonda)和汤姆・汉克斯(Tom Hanks)纷纷加盟。
迈克尔・奥维茨是创新艺人经纪公司的典型人物，他艰苦卓绝的工作大大提升了经纪人的作用，这也部分的归因于公司一长串具有票房保证的客户名单，后者在与制片厂周旋的过程中，发挥了前所未有的作用。他品味高贵，对毕加索(Picasso)、利希滕斯坦(Lichtenstein)和罗斯科(Rothko)的油画情有独钟；他委托贝聿铭(IM Pei)设计了新总部，这位建筑师设计了巴黎卢浮宫的玻璃金字塔。他还通过谈判为其客户争取到巨额报酬，签订了“先期总票房”(“first dollar gross”)协议，保证明星们在制片厂回收第一分钱投资之前取得电影票房的大块收入。
创新艺人经纪公司的统治地位在20世纪90年代中期受到短暂的威胁，当时一些创立公司的合伙人开始离开公司。罗恩・梅耶去了环球电影制片厂，在那里，他发现自己坐在谈判桌另一头讨论明星的片酬协议——创新艺人经纪公司过去的同僚常常坐在他的对面。与此同时，奥维茨离开公司去了华特・迪士尼(Walt Disney)跟随当时的首席执行官迈克尔・艾斯纳(Michael Eisner)，成为公司的二把手。
一个由布莱恩・洛德(Bryan Lourd)、凯文・霍维恩(Kevin Huvane)、理查德・拉夫特(Richard Lovett)和大卫・奥康纳(David O'Connor)领导的新团队接掌了创新艺人经纪公司，尽管好莱坞有很多人预言这家经纪公司完蛋了，但奥维茨的接班人们却依然兴旺发达。对现有顶级客户的威胁并未出现，而今的创新艺人经纪公司有着令人艳羡的明星阵容，这些客户包括史蒂芬・斯皮尔伯格、威尔・史密斯(Will Smith)、乔治・克鲁尼(George Clooney)、布拉德・皮特(Brad Pitt)、詹姆斯・卡梅隆(James Cameron)、汤姆・汉克斯、汤姆・克鲁斯(Tom Cruise)和奥普拉・温弗瑞(Oprah Winfrey)。
（未完待续）
作者马修・加拉汉是英国《金融时报》驻洛杉矶的通讯员
译者/诸彦青
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001032460
Walk along Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills on a weekday lunchtime and you just may come across what is, for Los Angeles, a comparatively rare sight. Here, in a city that prizes itself on its relaxed approach to business, where casual attire is practically de rigueur in the workplace, there are men wearing suits – smart suits, sharp suits – moving rapidly, mobile phones clamped to ears or heads bowed over fingers stabbing at BlackBerrys and iPhones.
These besuited men are talent agents and their stomping ground is the stretch of Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevards that links Beverly Hills with the skyscrapers of nearby Century City, the business district built on land formerly owned by the nearby 20th Century Fox studio.
Hollywood's four biggest agencies, representing more than 70 per cent of the entertainment industry's actors, directors, musicians and writers, are headquartered here. Creative Artists Agency, the biggest player in town, is in an imposing Century City building widely referred to outside the company as “the Death Star”. A short distance away in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer tower is International Creative Management, the agency that is home to, among others, Beyoncé and rising Hollywood starlet Megan Fox. Back in Beverly Hills, a stone's throw from the gleaming Beverly Wilshire hotel, are the offices of William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, formed last year by the merger of Hollywood's most venerable agency with one of its youngest. Across the street are the headquarters of United Talent Agency, where clients include Johnny Depp, Harrison Ford and Gwyneth Paltrow.
It is actors' faces that appear on the billboards along Sunset Boulevard but agents are the oil that make the entertainment industry's engine run smoothly. They identify good scripts and put them in the hands of their clients, whether they are actors, directors or producers, and then they strike deals with the studios so that movies can be made. They are the dealmakers in a town that needs deals like oxygen. They can drive up their clients' pay, and their own, by “packaging” movies – attaching a director, star and script – so that all the studio chief has to do is sign the cheque.
Over the years the agent's role has evolved but the basic principles are the same as they were in 1912 when Abe Lastfogel, a son of Russian immigrants, was hired as an office boy in the William Morris office in Manhattan. He slowly rose through the ranks to run the agency, where he turned talent representation into a fine art, training and employing eager men and women who were willing to crawl over broken glass for their clients.
Good agents will always put the client first, a trait that is drummed into them from their first day on the job which, more often than not, is in the mailroom, an unforgiving place where the hours are long, the work tough and the pay meagre. Yet the mailroom has become a rite of passage in Hollywood and anyone worth their salt in the industry will have passed through one.
David Geffen, the former music label boss and billionaire co-founder of the DreamWorks movie studio with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, started his career in the William Morris mailroom in New York, which he has referred to as the “Harvard School of Show Business – only better: no grades, no exams, a small stipend and great placement opportunities”. Barry Diller, the former head of Paramount Studios, also got his first break there; so did Ron Meyer, a founding partner at CAA and now head of Universal Studios.
Each year dozens of top MBA students and qualified lawyers try to break into the entertainment industry by starting in the mailroom at one of the big agencies. “There's a paying-your-dues process,” Jeremy Zimmer, a 51-year-old partner at UTA and an alumnus of the William Morris mailroom, tells me. “If you're not prepared to go through some tough stuff, then you don't really love the business enough. And you have to love it to be successful.”
Loving the deal is another prerequisite of agent life. A New Yorker magazine profile of the late, semi-legendary ICM agent Sam Cohn remarked that most Hollywood agents were named “Morty or Marty and go around wearing shirts that show off their chest hair saying things like, ‘We'll max it at three hundred thou'”. Though visible chest hair may have gone and Rolodexes been replaced by BlackBerrys, other stereotypes endure. If anything, today's agents are even more aggressive than in previous decades.
Before five ex-William Morris partners launched CAA in 1975, competition among agencies was genteel. According to Sue Mengers, who leapt to the top of the male-dominated agency world of the 1970s with clients who included Barbra Streisand, Gene Hackman and Ali McGraw, “In England, if a star actor was represented by an agent, that agent had to die before another agent approached the client. That seemed so stupid,” she tells me.
It was the creation of CAA in 1975 by Michael Ovitz, Ron Meyer, Michael Rosenfeld, Bill Haber and Rowland Perkins that ushered in a new hyper-competitive era and a series of battles known as the “agency wars”, in which CAA, ICM and William Morris tried to pummel each other into oblivion. The five agents – all working at William Morris – were thinking of starting their own firm when a senior William Morris partner got wind of their plan and fired them. Without clients they had to work quickly and aggressively to build a business, promising clients better pay deals and more critical success. The clients arrived in droves: Meryl Streep, Jane Fonda and Tom Hanks all came on board.
The man who epitomised CAA was Michael Ovitz, who helped carve out a larger role for agents thanks, in part, to the firm's vast list of bankable clients, which gave it unprecedented leverage with the studios. He had expensive tastes and a fondness for paintings by Picasso, Lichtenstein and Rothko; he commissioned a new headquarters from IM Pei, the architect who designed the glass pyramid at the Louvre in Paris. He also negotiated enormous pay for his clients, securing “first dollar gross” deals that ensured the stars got paid a chunk of the movie's box-office receipts before the studio had recouped a penny of its investment.
CAA's dominance was briefly threatened in the mid-1990s when the founding partners began to leave. Ron Meyer went to run Universal Studios, where he found himself discussing pay deals for stars from the other side of the negotiating table – often with former CAA colleagues sitting opposite him. Ovitz, meanwhile, departed for Walt Disney as the number two to then chief executive Michael Eisner.
A new team, led by Bryan Lourd, Kevin Huvane, Richard Lovett and David O'Connor, took up the reins at CAA. And, though many in Hollywood forecast the end of the agency, Ovitz's successors have flourished. The threatened exit of top clients did not transpire and today CAA has an enviable pool of talent with clients that include Steven Spielberg, Will Smith, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, James Cameron, Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise and Oprah Winfrey.
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