Typical Day
Abram Morris, a mid-level agent, wakes up at 7:00AM and grabs the script he half-read the night before. He fell asleep reading it while also watching the DVR'd episode of Law & Order: SVU his client got a credit for writing.
He puts on a t-shirt, goes to the kitchen/living room/dining room of his 800-square-foot Brentwood apartment and grabs a yogurt, some bran, and hot cup of organic roast. Then he plops down on his couch, turns a few more pages of the script, and shoots off a Blackberry message to his assistant. He tells his assistant to write an encouraging pass email to the writer by the time Abram gets in. The script is good, but who's going to buy it since the last two sci-fi films like it stunk up the box office last year?
Before working out and showering, he finishes Blackberrying his email and forwards his assistant twenty-three to-dos and follow-ups for the day. By 8:30AM, Abram is in his car on his way to the office in Beverly Hills braving the L.A. traffic. It takes him thirty minutes to drive the three-and-a-half miles from door to door.
At the office, he greets his assistant, sits at his desk, drinks his coffee, and skims through the online editions of Variety and The Hollywood Reporter before heading down to the conference room to sit through the agency-wide meeting about the projects his agency is looking to package up and sell. By the time the meeting is over, it's 11:15AM, and it's time to start making calls.
Abram perches himself back at his desk and orders his assistant to get his newest client Mark Neubwriter on the phone. Mark called yesterday wanting to talk over the terms of his new contract. Mark's got some questions and he's confused. It's his first deal, so Abram's assistant gets Mark on his cell, and Abram talks him through his contracts terms, the purchase price, his creative rights, the publication fees, what he'll get for the first re-write, and how he'll participate in the profits if the movie ever gets made.
"Of course you'll get royalties," Abram tells Mark. He explains to his client the deal that he has made: the difference between the gross points deal he got, and the net profits share he never wants. Gross points, he explains, gets him a part of the total revenue, but net points only gets him a part of the net profits—i.e. what's left after expenses. Which, after Hollywood accountants work their magic, never ends up being a thing. Shockingly few movies in Hollywood have ever had a net profit to share.
At 11:45AM, Abram hangs up the call with Mark just in time to be five minutes late for driving into Burbank to have lunch with the creative executive that he met last Thursday at a premier. It's a due-diligence lunch, no deals to be made now, but maybe a couple years down the road she'll be able to help him out with a deal.
When he returns to the office at 2:00PM, he checks his messages with his assistant, interrogating him until he provides the afternoon's most pressing to-dos. Then, he calls up his client, Kelly Crimewriter, to congratulate her on the airing of her episode of Law and Order: SVU.
While Kelly's in good spirits and he's got her attention on the phone, Abram lets her know, gently, that her pet project, the Alanis Morissette bio-pic, has been turned down everywhere he's submitted.
"Did you try the independents?" she asks.
Abram assures her he left no stone unturned. Since he doesn't want to end the call on a downer, he gives her some silver-lining news: He's going to send her new pilot out to the agency's hot TV director to see if his attachment will help a sale come through.
"Fingers crossed," he tells her. "We both know it's good."
After hanging up with Kelly, Abram cruises through more emails and has his assistant check on a couple clients' checks the agency is expecting. Then he sees on his calendar that he needs to jump on a conference call with his client's lawyer to work through the contract details of the auction sale he verbally settled last week.
Though he was hoping to finalize all the terms of the contract yesterday, the producers have gone back on the pay schedule for his writer's third rewrite guarantee. Together with his client's lawyer, Abram calls up the producers and talks through what's keeping them from settling this Abram's way. Since the call ends with things getting resolved, he instructs his assistant to calendar a follow-up for tomorrow morning first thing.
At 6:00PM, he calls his assistant into his office to chat about what scripts the reading interns have recommended this week. He listens to his assistant's report and instructs his assistant to give him his thoughts by Friday on all the scripts they recommend.
Abram's dinner is at 7:00PM, so he checks his email at his desk once more then asks his assistant where his dinner reservations are for the night. Abram is catching up with Jenn Warner and her two brothers, whom Abram doesn't particularly like, but since they bought his client's rom-com last spring, he goes out of his way to make them believe they're best friends.
After dinner, there are drinks, during which Abram manages to convince Jenn to commit to meeting with his client, Kelly, to discuss the pilot she is shopping around. He'll have his assistant call her's and they'll put something on the book. Then, after one last nightcap and some talk about what scripts are selling where, Abram gets in his car and drives home at 9:15PM.
In his car, driving home, the Los Angeles traffic isn't bad. He finds a parking spot on the street, grabs his bag, and heads up to his apartment. He'll catch up on a couple more of the programs he's DVR'd, then struggle through another prospective client's script before he falls asleep.