Agents Are From Mars, Managers Are From Venus
This week's NY Observer takes a look at the Hollywood subspecies of "manager," the industry creatures who brave the constant fear of being fired by treacherous clients for the crime of finding them work for the opportunity to attach themselves to the same clients' projects as producers. But besides the legal differences between managers and their percentage-taking cousins, agents, the two types of reps seem to be made of different stuff:
[Underground Films and Management manager] Trevor Engelson, 29, is from Great Neck, Long Island, and he looks like a lankier version of Matthew McConaughey, although his patois is pure De Niro. Just a few years ago, he worked as an assistant at Endeavor in Los Angeles, but he felt he didn’t quite fit the classic Hollywood agent mold. His superiors there didn’t necessarily disagree. In fact, Mr. Engelson came close to being fired on a few occasions, once for “taking a piss too far away from the urinal.” “Somebody—the guy doesn’t work there anymore—walked in, and they thought I was standing too far away from the fuckin’ urinal while I was taking a piss,” Mr. Engelson said. “I got called in to a couple people’s offices and they yelled at me for a little bit.” Mr. Engelson’s defense? “I said, ‘I had a nice suit on—I didn’t want any splash-back!’”
While his explanation was a nice try, Mr. Engelson obviously didn't realize that he was being subjected to Endeavor's legendary Agent Piss Test, and expected to give no reason for his urinal activities. If he were truly Endeavor material, he would've offered only a steely, self-satisfied glare to the line of questioning, followed by his defiant urination on the surface of his badgering inquisitor's desk. In that day's failure, it seems, a manager was born.