Coppage Takes Chance on Experience : Movies: Literary agent bucks suspected age discrimination to specialize in scripts from veteran older writers. They’re all selling.

In an era of $1-million spec scripts and sub-25-year-old star-deal writers, Hollywood agent Judy Coppage has spun off a specialty.

Most of her two-dozen writer-clients are over 50, one in his 60s.

Most are studio veterans with lengthy credits but foreshortened careers.

Many are hyphenates, -directors and -producers as well as -writers.

And many know the feeling of repeatedly hitting Hollywood’s rocky walls of rejection.

The Writers Guild of America and other entertainment unions have long complained about suspicions of age discrimination in hiring. The Guild’s regular Bieldy Report indicates that most writers hired by studios, networks or producers continue to be male and white. And under 40.

“Forty is the cutoff point,” says Georgia Mau of the Guild’s West Coast office. “Then you just don’t get jobs.”

Coppage, who had been a development executive at Paramount Television and Hanna-Barbera before opening her literary agency 10 years ago, sees the challenge differently, as a chance to fulfill that proverbial half-full glass of opportunity.

“Conventional wisdom is that younger writers, and I have several, are preferred today. I don’t think that’s true. Instead, many times I hear producers say they prefer an older professional writer who knows what to do, who is trained.

“Writers get better with age. It’s not a craft where you have to be young to survive. It’s not basketball or football. The experienced writer knows how to structure a script, write fast and understand what is wanted.”

Among her clients:

* Rod Thorp, whose early novel “Nothing Lasts Forever” was sold by Coppage to 20th Century Fox and producer Joel Silver and evolved into the “Die Hard” movies. Since then, he has sold three novels and has taken on several script projects.

* A.J. Carothers, a veteran writer-producer whose career goes back to TV’s “Studio One,” is currently working on a Broadway musical and has completed an original feature script.

* Harry and Renee Longstreet, with 20 years of film and television credits, sought Coppage’s representation four years ago, she says. Since then, they’ve sold and produced several TV movies and recently took rewrite assignments on two other movies. “They no longer lack for work,” Coppage says, pointing out that both wrote and are producing the USA Cable movie, “A Vow to Kill,” which goes into production June 21. Harry Longstreet will direct.

* Scott Davis Jones was recently signed to write the script for the Rosie O’Donnell movie “Girl Hoops.”

“Most of my older writers needed something new in their careers at some time, and I represented something different in their thinking. I’m very hands-on. In effect, I executive-produce their work. I have only one assistant who reads outside material. I read everything my clients ever wrote and are writing, including their revisions. I go through old scripts and novels. Then I get them writing.

“If a client relationship goes sour, we just split. I’ve only had one client leave who went on to make a lot of money--then he sent me his friend to represent him and then he never gave his friend any work.

“Better to give guilt than receive it. I learned that from my husband.”

It’s pure coincidence, Coppage says, that she works with older writers and that her husband, John Danner, is a gerontologist.

In recent years, several things may have favorably changed the landscape for writers--over and under 40--in Hollywood, Coppage says:

* The rise of cable with its demand for original movies, plus the strong search by broadcast networks for two-hour and special projects.

* “Lots of low-budget film companies are getting into business with $5- and $10-million productions. If your movie gets made, you get attention. It’s a lemming business,” Coppage says. “You’re not hot until someone says you’re hot.”

* The falloff of original development by studios and the resultant reliance on scripts from independent producers and writers. “More products are being sought,” she says, “because the studios aren’t doing development, just buying scripts and projects.”

* The influx of foreign money into production and the rise of syndication in television, resulting in increased work opportunities.

Although she specializes in older writers, Coppage now has four under-30s--two the children of one of her clients, another a 29-year-old from Elizabeth, N.J., who contacted Coppage with a query letter.

“He came in over the transom. I never met him. He wrote an action movie about racism and war crimes, and I have several people interested in it.”

In the grand style of Hollywood dreaming, she hopes soon to have a project that might get auctioned. That would mark a high point for her 10-year effort. “I just don’t give up on my writers. I brainwash myself with positive, positive, positive.”