Billion-Dollar Kiss

by Jeffrey Stepakoff

  Right before Beth left the agency, a new junior agent joined the firm. After graduating from Amherst and then Harvard Law School, Ted Chervin worked as a federal prosecutor in New York City going after mafia members and drug dealers—think Vin Diesel in Armani. He then came to Hollywood and made partner at the agency very quickly.

  After working on Wall Street in mergers and acquistions at Bankers Trust, my guy, Dan, had just finished his MBA at Wharton and was asked by former UTA (United Talent Agency) partner Robb Rothman to be his junior agent at another well-regarded literary boutique, the Rothman Agency. Robb represented numerous upper-level writers and showrunners, including many from The Simpsons. Within months Dan had an enviable roster of talented new writers, many whom he just went out and found. Within a few years, a lot of these writers were creating and running shows. Dan soon made partner. In my mind, Ted and Dan typified the new breed of agents, many of whom also came from law and business schools. These young turks brought with them the same kind of orientation and sensibility as their friends who argued in courts or who went to Wall Street. Many of these new agents not only had the same skill sets that litigators and traders had, but the same personalities, too. They were hotshots of the highest order. TV writer and author Hadley Davis described the new atmosphere at her lit agency, Broder-Webb-Chervin-Silbermann, as that of a Wall Street investment bank. “You have the sense that Ted and Chris [Silbermann, another new partner] get to the office at three A.M., trade Hong Kong gold, and do one-handed push-ups until the rest of Hollywood wakes up,” Davis told me. My agent at Rothman Brecher was the same. His voice was always hoarse from negotiating deals sixteen hours a day. Dan applied his business school background to assess my value in the market and then negotiated very aggressively. Though he kept trying to get me to go back on the TV-staff market before I was ready, he had me paid significantly more money than any previous writer at Disney Feature Animation. He literally helped make a new market. And as I moved back into television, my quote quickly doubled. Indeed, the new agents who were coming to Hollywood seemed more like they came from the training program at Solomon Brothers than the one at William Morris. And unlike the old-school agents who were literally from a different generation, these new TV lit agents had a lot in common with their clients. Saying she was a “full-service agent,” Beth would try to fix me up with girls she thought would be good for me, like her daughter’s nanny. Where Beth was maternal, Dan was a contemporary. Where she was an authority figure, he was a close friend (and still is). In fact, I came to think of Dan not so much as an agent, but as an equity partner in my career.

  Along with the writers and agents came a new breed of executives as well. Hollywood has always attracted the young and determined, but never before had so many very young people been in positions of such high power before. As advertisers grew increasingly focused on marketing new products to younger audiences, executives who were part of these audiences, and thus personally understood their likes and dislikes, quickly grabbed the reins from older, long-entrenched executives. Over the course of a couple years in the mid-nineties, a sort of industrywide coup d’état took place. Just as I found with the agents, these new execs I met were my age, had had similar experiences, and were interested in the things in which I was interested. This takeover had a direct impact not just on how business was done, but on the kinds of shows that were created. The takeover ultimately changed the entire nature of television programming. The vast majority of schedules on most networks (perhaps with the exception of CBS for a while) soon became targeted specifically at the well-under-thirty-five crowd. Soon entire networks would aim their entire schedules at the youth demo.

  At thirty-two, Jamie Tarses was the youngest president of a television network—ABC—in history. Shows like Friends, which she was personally responsible for developing, were a direct reflection of the kinds of sensibilities these new execs brought to the business. I distinctly remember a meeting I had with the thirty-three-year-old VP of creative affairs at Warner Brothers, David Janollari, who was also instrumental in developing Friends from the studio side. We talked about TV shows we liked, but mainly we talked about backpacking in Thailand. It was cool. Everyone who was taking over at the nets and studios were like-minded spirits of the same generation. Kevin Reilly, thirty-four, became the exec VP at Brillstein-Grey and would soon become the head of NBC. In his early thirties, Eric Tannenbaum became head of television at Columbia TriStar. At twenty-eight, Susanne Daniels became the first head of prime-time series for the WB, and at twenty-six, Jordan Levin became head of comedy development and current programming for the WB. A few years later, in their early thirties, they would be the network’s copresidents.

  In all industries it is common for executives to know each other. At the top levels, they often know each other well. But these new young entertainment execs were much more than business associates. Even though they worked for competing companies, these new executives dated each other, partied together, went to Cabo and Hawaii together, lived together, and in some cases, married and divorced each other. At the same time that the major networks and studios were being consolidated by just a handful of companies, the individuals who took over the entertainment divisions at those companies all came from a small, tight-knit coterie, an exclusive club of sorts.

  Not surprisingly, the new agents were also very tight with the new executives. Like college drinking buddies, they were all hanging out together. There were spats and rivalries like you’d find with any close group of friends. But mostly there was an understanding, a collective pact, that there was an unprecedented opportunity not only to make a fortune, but to redefine popular culture. It was a very exciting time. I attended parties where groups of new young agents and execs would all be in attendance. Around 1995–96, it seemed like everywhere you went that one hit from the Rembrandts (the Friends theme) was playing in the background, like some sort of anthem. Shop talk was de rigueur, no matter what the venue. The new executives had a vision of what television could be. And the new agents had access to the people who could bring these visions to fruition.

  Right as all these new executives, agents, and writers came to town, right as all these new networks and studios popped up, and right as all these new domestic and foreign markets opened up, there was convergence—an explosion, that resulted in the widespread employ of the aforementioned development deal. Although these high-paying arrangements, which make writers exclusive to one studio for a long period of time, were fairly rare historically, during the mid-nineties, development deals started being passed out like new WGA cards.

  The only way all the independent production companies could compete with the massive new studio-networks, like Disney-ABC, was not just to hire writers, but to take them off the market and away from the competition for as long as possible. The objective of the game for anyone who wanted to be a real player soon became to lock up as much writing talent as possible.

  Suddenly, writers all across town began to receive offers for these kinds of deals, where they would be given massive amounts of money to think up new ideas exclusively for one company. Sometimes these deals had a production component, meaning that the writer was required to work on a show for a period of time, say year one, and then develop for a period of time, say year two and year three. Often writers were asked to develop new ideas but also remain on a series as a “creative consultant.” I would soon work on staffs with many creative consultants who were on development deals. When they showed up, they often had a hard time opening the doors to their offices because weeks of scripts and memos had been slid under their doors and were piled up on the inside. Suffice to say, most consultants spent most of their time developing as opposed to consulting. Often, agents made deals that allowed writers just to develop, literally to just sit and think. Often a promising new idea for a series would start to make its way through the complex pipeline toward production, only to be sent back when it hit a bump—studio notes, trouble with an actor, failure to negotiate acceptab
le licensing fees—for “further development.”

  During this time, it became standard procedure to give the third-tier writer on a thirty-fifth-highest-rated show millions of dollars to sit in a room for a couple years with a NERF basketball and try to think up the next Veronica’s Closet. And those writers who were fortunate enough to actually be on a legitimate hit were offered even bigger deals to stop working on it and just think. There were approximately five hundred development deals a year made in Hollywood during this time. Most writers averaged a couple million dollars a year to develop. Some were paid a lot more. A friend who was even younger than me, David Rosenthal, earned $2.5 million a year from Fox Television to just, as one former colleague said, “think funny.” It was not unheard of for some writers to earn five million a year or more. In 1998, Jeff Astrof and Mike Sikowitz, Ted Chervin’s clients, former executive story editors on Friends, college buddies who had just moved to L.A. for the Warner Brothers comedy writing program seven years earlier, were given $10 million over four years by Warners to think up ideas for new shows.

  As crazy as it seems, if a studio wanted to be in the business, they had to follow the actions of other studios. They had to take writers off the market if they wanted to be a real production company. This created an atmosphere where every deal was the result of an auction and every auction resulted in an all-out bidding war. The prices just kept getting higher and higher. As soon as it seemed that a ceiling had been reached and the major players had an implicit understanding that they would not bid the price of talent any higher, a hungry and well-funded new upstart would join the battle and drive the prices up again.

  As one might imagine, the aggressive new business school–savvy agents had a field day. In 1998, TV writers collectively earned $355 million, 47 percent more than they had in 1994. Writers were becoming just as hot as the dot-com stocks that were also coming into favor. And our representatives just played these companies that wanted us against each other, driving up our prices to levels that the original WGA members—hell, members even ten years earlier—would never have dreamed. Trying to put a value on a new writer who might come up with a hit show really was like trying to put a price on a pint of Bochco’s blood.

  In the eighties, a writer might be paid five figures, usually low to mid five figures to develop a pilot. But now, brand-new writers—I mean, right out of school—were being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop and write a single script. Many of these new writers remained untrained throughout their careers, even if the script they were writing went into production, because the writers with experience who could actually mentor them were so outnumbered by all the new talent. Anyway, those that did actually have some experience in the business were busy—thinking up their own ideas. Their compensation ran well into the seven and eight figures. Take a look at the kinds of deals that were being reported in the trades:

  Alexa Junge, writer-producer, Friends, two years, $2 million.

  Paul Manning, supervising producer, ER, three years, $2 million to $3 million.

  Charlie Craig, executive producer, Prey, two to three years, $2 million to $3 million.

  Tom Hertz, coexecutive producer, Spin City, two years, $3 million.

  Mark Driscoll, executive producer, Ellen, two years, $4 million.

  Brannon Braga, coexecutive producer, Star Trek: Voyager, three years, $5 million.

  Pam Brady, writer-producer, Just Shoot Me!, three years, $6 million.

  Jay Scherick and David Ronn, writer-producers, Spin City, three years, $6 million.

  Rene Balcer, executive producer, Law & Order, three years, $6 million.

  Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa, executive producers, The King of Queens, three years, $7.5 million.

  Warren Bell, executive producer, Ellen, three years, $9 million.

  Chris Keyser and Amy Lippman, executive producers, Party of Five, three years, $12 million.

  David Milch, executive producer, NYPD Blue, four years, $15 million.

  Brad Hall, executive producer, The Single Guy, four years, $15 million.

  Mike Judge, executive producer, King of the Hill, four years, $16 million.

  Steven Levitan, executive producer, Just Shoot Me!, four years, $16 million.

  J. J. Abrams, executive producer, Felicity, four years, $16 million.

  Tim Doyle, Ric Swartzlander, and Matt Berry, writer-producers, Sports Night, three years, $18 million.

  Bruce Helford, executive producer, The Drew Carey Show, four years, $20 million.

  Chuck Lorre, cocreator, Dharma & Greg, four years, $20 to 32 million.

  Phil Rosenthal, executive producer, Everybody Loves Raymond, four years, $50 million.

  Remember, these numbers are strictly for developing and producing services. Again, writers were often paid these sums just to think up new ideas. These figures do not include the additional compensation such as script fees, assorted payments, residuals, or, most significantly, back-end participation in syndication revenues, which typically ran well into the tens of millions during this time.

  In short, the demand for new shows was so high that anyone in any way affiliated with a working show for a season or two was offered additional money to develop a new one. Nearly all coexecutive producers were offered at least a million dollars to develop new shows, and nearly all executive producers were offered at least an extra few million, for starters. According to the Los Angeles Times, 20th Century alone handed out more than $100 million in development deals to just a handful of writers in the several years leading up to 1997.

  That was when, in 1997, I went back on the staffing market. It felt different than it had just a few years earlier. During the years that I spent freelancing and working at Disney, the entire industry had gone through a great sea change driven by enormous sums of money and the promise of even more. The whole town was filled with a sense of breathlessness—you felt it in meetings, talking to colleagues, heard it in your agent’s voice—it was somewhere between exultation and panic.

  When I was a kid there was a game show that I used to watch that featured a phone boothlike glass box filled with cash. A contestant would step inside and a fan would blow that cash all around the box. The idea was for the contestant to grab as much cash as he or she could before the machine was turned off. This is what it felt like to be working in television in Hollywood at this time. Except none of us knew that the machine would soon be turned off.

  TEN

  The Seasons of L.A.

  “We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective.”

  —MICHAEL EISNER, IN AN INTERNAL MEMO

  The 1997–98 staffing season was a record one for television writers. More writers were employed that season and earned more money than ever before. During that season, 2,968 television writers were employed, with about half of them, 1,557 writers, in prime-time broadcast network television (as opposed to cable and first-run syndication). And the vast majority of those jobs were full-time staff positions. Yet despite the records and the mad rush for writers, there were still 7,883 active WGA-West members, out of which about 6,000 were in the TV category. And many, if not most, of those TV writers who got jobs those years already had jobs when staffing season began. That is, they had spent the previous season working on shows that had gotten picked up, and when those shows got picked up they got picked up. Everyone else that season played the staffing game, competing for approximately 500 open staff positions on prime-time network shows. I was one of those competing.

  Now, this was a bit disorienting for me. I needed to get, as it were, back in the game. I needed to get back in the rhythm of the game. You see, if you work in TV, your life is subject to a cadence that is driven by the business. Let me explain.

  While the rest of the country has winter, spring, summer, and fall, in L.A., the weather is always pretty much the same. Yeah, sure, it rains for a few weeks around February—such a rarity that
it’s always a top news story and causes drivers to behave as though flaming meteorites were falling from the heavens—and the Santa Anas blow the hot Mojave winds into the city for weeks in late fall, causing a sort of nuclear winter feel for the holidays. But for the most part, the weather in L.A. is famously consistent: seventy-twoish and sunny, disconcertingly perfect. Still, L.A. has its seasons, though unlike the rest of the country, these seasons refer to phases of the television business. There is pilot-development season, pilot production season, pickup season, and staffing season. And trust me, as powerful as Mother Nature can be, the influence of the industry’s seasonal ebbs and flows are even more so.

  Traditionally running from July 4th to Thanksgiving, pilot-development season is when the studios and networks make decisions about which projects to green-light for development. On any given day during this time, an executive will read five or six scripts and hear at least a dozen different pitches. Likewise, writers, often with agents and attached executives in tow, schlep their dog-and-pony show pitches to all the various studios and networks.

  One of the truly quirky aspects of the TV business is that writers have a much harder time selling a script for a new show that has been conceived, developed, and entirely written, than a fifteen-minute verbal pitch. Yes, it’s counterintuitive, but this is the process. You’d think, particularly given not only the expense but also the fact that writers really do like to write, that the studios would be more interested in purchasing something tangible, but they are not. The “million-dollar spec” phenomenon that exists in the movie industry has no parallel in television. Studios do not bid against each other for the right to acquire a hot TV pilot spec the way they will for the right to acquire a writer. The reality is that most pilots are purchased for their potential. This is partially a function of the fact that when an executive purchases a pitch from a writer, as opposed to a written script, this gives the executive the opportunity to be part of something, to substantiate his salary. He wasn’t just the guy that bought a script. He was the guy who developed such and such hit show.