Blacklists, Gray Hairs: Ageism From Agents

In Nina J. Easton’s Off-Centerpiece in Film Clips (“Agents Take Notes: There’ll Be a Quiz After the Movie,” Calendar, July 28), she writes that a recent USC film graduate “estimates that in the last couple of weeks he has talked to 65 agents at 11 companies.”

Are these the same agents who seldom return their client’s telephone calls? Are they the same people who regard any writer or director over the age of 30 as untouchables? And more serious, are they the same agents who have created a youth cult, a wall of prejudice that prevents many talented men and women with excellent credits from working?

The answer to the questions is yes. And I’ll tell you how I know: I’ve experienced it.

It would be interesting to see one of these agents in need of a serious heart operation. Would they choose the 50-year-old surgeon who’s done the operation hundreds of times? Or would they choose the kid who just got out of medical school?

Why do these people discount and ignore experience? There is no logical answer, and therein lies my deep frustration. Time and time again I hear stories about older writers (middle-aged) who send in younger relatives to take meetings, passing them off as co-writers. Both the directors and writers guilds have done cursory examinations of the problem but with no real results. A blacklist has been created and everyone is turning their heads.

It is very much like the white list, the ghostly paper that the networks, advertising agencies and advertisers have. This list doesn’t say who not to hire, but rather who is OK to employ. Certain writers, composers, directors make the list when they deliver a product that everyone deems acceptable. It’s an exclusive list, but one that you can get on with a little bit of luck, or knowing someone willing to fight for you. But this list is not as pernicious as the blacklist mentioned above because it’s not as absolute.

I am a writer who has recently returned to the marketplace after a few years’ hiatus. During those years, I have taught screenplay writing at the university level. Agents that I knew from the past have either retired or cut down on their client list, not wishing to add more. But all of them, each and every one, said the same thing: “Forget trying to get a younger agent. They won’t respond once they get a hint of your age.”

They were right. One doesn’t mind rejection because of the material. It is the idea that the material will not be read nor considered on its merit that makes me angry.

A student of mine just won a student Academy Award. One week after, he had a personal manager and an agent. When I told him my troubles, he said this: “Last week my agent asked me how old I was on the way to a meeting at Fox. When I said I was 28, I was advised to be 25 from now on.”

I know a director who is 50. He has over 300 episodic directing credits as well as several movies of the week to his credit, all of them very successful. Not only has he been unemployed for two years, but he can’t even get an interview.

No one begrudges the young film students getting attention. What is sad and criminal is to see men and women who have paid their dues learning a demanding craft, shut out and ignored for one reason: They have passed a certain age.