Agents I have known

I now have 4 marketing streams active, the last being faxes I just sent to some top agents, a very long shot. I don't presently have an agent, having chosen last year not to renew with the agent I had at the time.

And man, I've had far too many agents in my career.

The best I lost through no fault of my own.

• My first agent, a woman at Fifi Oscard, was wonderful. She even flew to Portland to meet me. She was a true champion of my plays but we never really scored. She left the business to have babies and her replacement and I didn't get along at all.
  
• Next was an agent at Abrams who was a fan of my screenplays. How's this for a way to lose an agent? She was stolen away by a mega-agency and could only take clients who had earned tons of money in the past year, which wasn't me. But she said I was among her best clients, and to contact her when I was making Big Bucks.
  
• I had a fine male agent but he worked out of Maine and wasn't well connected. He tried his hardest with SAD LAUGHTER, which he considered the best splay he'd ever read. But historical epics like this need Stars attached, which means connections etc.
  

These are my three most positive experiences with agents. None made me a ton of money -- in fact, agent or not, my best deals have fallen in my lap, and most of my money has been made on "writer for hire" deals, especially in film. Agents had nothing to do with these. I also learned how to play the grants game in the 1980s, when grants were plentiful, and lived a decent life on grants for longer than I thought it was possible.

I'm glad I don't have an agent now because it means I can approach anyone with what I consider to be a hot commercial concept. But we'll see ha ha. With four marketing windows open, the facts will start coming in soon. I won't be discouraged until 2011, however. If I haven't sold it by the end of the year, I'll rethink some things. But, as I said before, the project has the advantage of being timeless, based on a classic that is hugely popular once a year, into infinity.

This is fun. Or maybe it's just that I haven't done this kind of marketing in so long. It's like rolling dice or throwing darts. If you have the right attitude, you just go for it. Marketing is being at the carnival. Let me throw that dart at the balloon!