So many actors I speak with around the world consistently ask about getting a personal manager. My usual comment is that you should get one when you have a career to manage. Legally, according to CA state law, managers are not allowed to seek employment for there clients (actors).
However after reading a very infromative article in today’s Hollywood Reporter, writer Stephen Galloway point out that things may be shifting in a piece titled, “The (not so) secret lives of Hollywood managers”
The article goes on to say….
Although they’re legally barred from procuring work for clients, managers routinely perform that function. Now, some say it’s time to change the rules.
Just a few brief years ago, the industry was buzzing with fear. Michael Ovitz, in his brief post-Walt Disney Co. incarnation as head of Artists Management Group, had summoned managers to a secret meeting in which his colleagues discussed pending legislation and how best to deal with it. As rival agents and other insiders struggled to find out what was going on behind those closed doors, word spread that managers were poised to take on agents at their own game, challenging a long-standing statute that forbid them from finding work for their clients — or at least from doing so without an agent’s help.
All of a sudden, it looked as if managers would be able to do everything: produce, manage and handle clients without those pesky agents in between. Revolution was in the air.
How quickly things change. Six years since that secret meeting, Ovitz has all but vanished, and prominent managers like Brad Grey have exited the management business for the studio system. Contenders for the Ovitz throne, such as the Firm, have had to deal with a mini-exodus of managers to other companies, and managers as a whole are under pressure from the Producers Guild of America to take fewer producing credits on their clients’ films. Additionally, 1978’s Talent Agencies Act still legally prohibits them from procuring jobs for the people they represent, though the fact that almost all managers procure jobs for their clients is one of the worst-kept secrets in Hollywood.
For the entire atricle see it here.
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