643 - Agents and Managers 101
Scriptnotes Podcast
John August
4.8 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 14 May 2024
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this compendium episode, John and Craig demystify the the relationship between writers and the people who represent them, looking at how to acquire, work with and (if necessary) fire your agents and managers.
How do you get an agent or a manager? What are they looking for in a potential client? What frustrates them? How do you position yourself for success? And what should you be looking for in an agent? How should they treat their clients? What is in their job description? How do you navigate disagreements, and what are best practices for when you have to part ways?
In our bonus segment for premium members, John discusses how and why he changed his mind and signed with his first-ever manager just a few weeks ago.
Links:
- Episode 2 – How to get an agent and/or manager
- Episode 172 – Franz Kafka’s brother, and the perfect agent
- Episode 7 – Firing a manager, and trying new software
- How ‘Go,’ the Wildest, Druggiest, Horniest Cult Movie of 1999 Got Made (And Almost Didn’t) by Paul Schrodt for GQ
- Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
- Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
- Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
- Craig Mazin on Threads and Instagram
- John August on Threads, Instagram and Twitter
- John on Mastodon
- Outro by James Llonch (send us yours!)
- This episode’s segments were originally produced by Stuart Friedel. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.
Email us at [email protected]
You can download the episode here.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome my name is John August and you are listening to script notes |
| 0:05.4 | a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters |
| 0:09.4 | today on the show agents and managers how do obtain them, how do you work with them, and if necessary, how do you fire them? |
| 0:17.0 | To answer these questions, we will be traveling back all the way to the start of this podcast to search for the answers. |
| 0:22.8 | That's right, it is a compendium episode |
| 0:25.6 | where you'll hear three segments with me and Craig |
| 0:28.1 | back when we were much younger and still full of Umbridge. |
| 0:31.0 | Drew, tell us about the clips that you've picked and what we're going to hear today. |
| 0:34.0 | Yeah, so we're going to start with episode two. |
| 0:37.0 | episode two, God, yeah. |
| 0:39.0 | At the very beginning. |
| 0:40.0 | So that's how to get an agent or a manager, so that's, you know, no two writers get the reps the same way, |
| 0:45.0 | but this is sort of about finding how to get the right agent or manager |
| 0:48.1 | to notice you. |
| 0:48.9 | Yeah, I feel this kind of PTSD with this very early episode |
| 0:52.0 | because I was cutting them all |
| 0:53.2 | myself in garage band and so now we have Matthew but it was it was a very |
| 0:56.9 | manual process for you guys sound so laid back in the early ones yeah but now we're |
| 1:01.8 | just all stress yeah and now we're just all stress. Yeah. And then we're going on to episode 172, which is the perfect agent. Do you remember the perfect series? We had all the. Oh, yeah. So the perfect agent, so it's sort of now you have an agent and how does this |
| 1:14.4 | relationship work, what do you expect from your reps, and how do you build and maintain |
| 1:18.0 | that relationship? Great, for sure. And then our final segment is firing a manager, which is one of Craig's favorite. |
| 1:24.1 | Craig's favorite and he's historically brought a lot of umbrage to this. |
... |
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