Those were the dark days. Tinseltown and Silicon Valley still don’t intersect as neatly as Hollywood and Vine, but a growing cadre of “cyberagents” is at long last gaining the trust of wary techies and positioning itself for interactive entertainment’s potentially tremendous payoff. Once-skeptical id has now signed up L.A. powerhouse ICM to cut a book deal, and Trilobyte has retained specialists at the venerable William Morris Agency to help put together an interactive movie. With CD-ROM budgets beginning to rival those of small films, swarms of independent agents are competing with the established firms’ freshly minted new-media departments. Commissions are still relatively small. “I’m not out to make a killing. I’m out to make a living,” says Harvey Harrison, a Phi Beta Kappa Yale philosophy major turned cyberagent. But still, “the money is getting better every year.”
Harrison, with his boyish enthusiasm for computer games and his sartorial inclination toward T shirts, jeans and hiking boots, hasn’t had to adjust his strategy to win the hearts and minds of the software set. But for more traditional agents, the transition into the new-media world can be rougher. “They’re still a little behind the times,” says Michael Backes, founder of San Francisco-based Rocket Science Games. “It’s hard to have dinner at Mortons while you’re checking out a Game Boy [videogame].” Savvy agents, says Trilobyte’s Devine, have learned to avoid the flashy airs and fantastic promises that may light up an actor’s eyes but leave techies logging out. “We’ve seen agents take a different approach, not come try to razzle-dazzle us with Hollywood,” he says. “Now it’s a very roll-up-your-sleeves approach.”
As agents see it, the software developers, too, have had to work a few bugs out of their mindsets. In film or TV, you can’t cross the street without an agent to show you where the crosswalk is. Not so in the new-media world, where many have managed just fine without forking over a percentage of their earnings. “You have to educate the people as to why they need representation, what is the value added,” says Eneino, Calif., cyberagent Stu Miller. Wilbur was pleased with ICM’s book deal, and wishes his finn had used the agency to negotiate a movie contract. “It would perhaps have been a better deal,” he says. Devine has come full circle as well: “My dream,” he jokes, “is for my agent to wake me up at 5 a.m. to tell me I’m up for an Oscar.” An Oscar, perhaps, for most dramatic turnaround.
