Is This Really My Life?

Today, Jason and I officially signed with United Talent Agency for representation in Television and Film.

Here is the official UTA web site and also here’s another run down on the Agency, in case your curious.

This is what all the hullabaloo and anxiety and excitement was about the past few days. Heck, it’s ongoing!

This agency is one of the of the Hollywood Big Four, which are CAA, WME, ICM, and, of course, UTA. These four agencies are the largest, strongest, and most successful in town. UTA alone has over a hundred agents and 2,000 clients in all media – film, television, production, music, literary, and online. Here’s a brief example of UTA’s client list:

Key clients include actors Johnny Depp, Harrison Ford, Owen Wilson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Lopez,Paul Giamatti, Anthony Hopkins, Tim Robbins, Seth Rogen, James McAvoy, Ewan McGregor, Rachel McAdams, Paul Rudd, Don Cheadle, Elizabeth Banks, Kirsten Dunst, Tracy Morgan, Martin Lawrence, Simon Pegg, Bryan Cranston,Patrick Dempsey, Mark Ruffalo, Ice Cube, and Keenen Ivory Wayans; filmmakers and screenwriters Joel and Ethan Coen,Judd Apatow, Andrew Adamson, Wes Anderson, John August, Noah Baumbach, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Julian Fellowes, Curtis Hanson, Charlie Kaufman, Ehren Kruger, Peter Morgan, Mike White, F. Gary Gray, Lasse Hallstrom, Greg Mottola, Jimmy Hayward, Adam Shankman, Phillip Noyce, Nicholas Stoller, and Sylvain White; television writers and creators Dick Wolf, David Chase, Alan Ball, Tom Fontana, Ed Bernero and Steven Levitan, as well as non-fiction television producers Tom Forman, Allison Grodner and Sally Ann Salsano.

It is, in so many words,  a major, major break for us – hopefully one that will put us over the top.  I really can’t stress that enough. This is easily on par with my acceptance into UCLA – a day dreamed about, hoped for even, but one that I didn’t ever expect. You can’t allow yourself to do that, expect something like this to happen to you. Many, many writers in this town never attain this kind of representation and have healthy, happy careers. But, you do dare to dream. These Agents (Ramses IsHak & Mike Sheresky) were our top pick, as well as UTA, when we started this process two months ago. So we are not only ecstatic that we got Agents, but that we got these two Agents. Here’s what one friend, who’s been a creative exec in the industry for the past year said our about our new Agents:

Swear I am not just saying this to make you feel even better than you already do, but those two agents are seriously the nicest, most talented duo in the industry. Love them!!!! You guys could not have done better… seriously. So happy you are working with them!

It’s still kind of hard to process. It’s really just the beginning and there’s still a ton of work to be done. Heck, I don’t have a job, or much money, and I’m about to move in two weeks and don’t even know if I can get a job now – not if we want this momentum to continue on.

Well, that’s for tomorrow. Tonight, at least, I can bask in climbing another mountain in this crazy business. A fairly major one at that.

Thank God, I didn’t leave early and miss this miracle.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 16th, 2010 at 1:57 am and is filed under Entertainment Business, Film, Hollywood, Television, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.