More about agents

 
There's a joke that goes around about agents; a writer returns to his home to find his house burned down. Police stand outside as he's horrified and asks what happened. Police say his wife was attacked, kids kidnapped, dog killed, house burned down and... his agent called.

Writer listens quietly and the turns to cops and says,  "My agent called?"

Agents - they love you and they forget you and the good ones take you out to lunch two or three times a year. 

In the "old days" there were lots of agents around hungry for someone who is known, or someone who might get known and then the agents will get a nobody at all, but might be known.

That was me way back in 1980's. I made Ghostkeeper and was pretty hot in Canada, however I lived in Alberta where the only movies made by locals were little shorts and documentaries. 

Living away from the film centers of Vancouver and Toronto and Montreal, there was not much of anything in the way of "agents". However some agents gathered a handful of film  writers, although episodic writers were better known.

I got a job in Toronto without an agent, but a company that made video features for international companies. Usually the films were action styles, and cost around $10,000. I wrote and directed three of them. I think I got around $1000.00 for the whole movie.

Then, after having a breakup from my wife, I wrote a weird story about a girl's baseball team who traveled through redneck country and got in trouble. You can find it on youtube and my credit was "Story by Jim Makichuk".  Actually about 75% of it was mine but I got a credit.

I had a great title, but they changed it to Blood Games.

Cheap, huh.


Then, I met a director at the Toronto Film Festival who knew a friend who met me in Vancouver and recommended me. The director told me he could get an agent. Turned out, he connected me to my first agent.

So I started in LA with that movie and wrote a screenplay based on a radio program I listened to driving to L.A. I had to write it fast as the producer was going to shoot in 2 weeks. I sat in a hotel in Toronto for 2 weeks and turned out it on the first day of filming.

And it turned out to be a good movie. Much better than Blood Games.

And I got the director's agent who wasn't very good. But I got another agent and another and kept "moving up", as they say. Ended at Endeavor which is a major agency. However my agent quit and so did I. 

But agents are still around, always looking.  

One more thing; I'm having problems with Blogger, it should enter my blog but takes 4 or 5 times before I can get my real blog. Getting someone to fix the damn thing.