Hollywood’s ‘Baddest’ Agent Is Out of a Job

He’s the picture of the way a lot of people believe Hollywood looks and acts.

His long, shaggy hair and dark beard present a menacing look when augmented by the black Armani on his 6-foot-2-inch frame.

Exceptionally cocky and outspoken, he posed for a Vanity Fair magazine picture wearing brass knuckles, for Buzz magazine standing astride a conference table with his arms folded defiantly. He was hailed by Details magazine as “Hollywood’s baddest young agent.”

He boasts of a black belt in tae kwon do, drives a Ferrari, views his work as nothing short of war and thinks nothing of bad-mouthing former employers or competitors publicly, or even, as he once told Details, calling the studios he does business with “the greedy landowners.”

He is also one of Hollywood’s most talented agents, earning millions for his clients, such as writer David Koepp (“Jurassic Park” and “Mission Impossible”), talk-show host Conan O’Brien and “Seinfeld”’ creator Larry David. With that success came a seven-figure income for him.

Yet Gavin Polone, at 31 one of Hollywood’s baby power brokers, was out of a job at United Talent Agency as of noon Sunday in what he calls “your basic Pearl Harbor sneak attack.” Fellow United Talent Agency agent Nick Stevens called to tell him he was being terminated. One allegation from UTA is that Polone was abusive toward Nancy Jones, an agent there who worked under him.

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Polone denies it, calling suggestions that he harassed Jones an excuse to bounce him from the agency. He called himself in a Times interview Monday “the most productive member of the company,” suggesting the rift had more to do with managing an agency where younger, aggressive agents have long grumbled that older partners with diminishing client lists pay themselves out of proportion to what they bring in.

“I’ve done a good job. Maybe I’ve been too intense at times and maybe overly focused on getting the work done. But I’ve never abused anybody,” Polone says.

He says he and Jones were once close friends--she even introduced him to his current live-in girlfriend, he says--but that a disagreement developed over her performance.

Jones has “no comment at this time,” her assistant says.

So sudden was the firing, Polone complained, that he wasn’t even allowed to fetch his checkbook from his desk or his tax returns from his drawers.

For its part, UTA portrays Polone as more interested in his own welfare than the agency’s.

“You form a company. You run it, you build it and five years later it’s a major force in the industry,” partner Jim Berkus says. “Over a period of time, you begin to realize that there is a certain shared philosophy by a majority of people who run the company and there is a minority philosophy shared by a few that doesn’t coalesce with what the majority wants.”

Other UTA sources say Polone’s personal skills leave something to be desired. “If people were going through a rough time, his immediate reaction would be to ridicule them in a nasty, snide, ugly way,” one UTA executive says.

But others found his bluntness refreshing.

“Gavin is insane, but there’s a purity to him,” says one veteran agent who knows him well. “In an industry in which diplomacy is everyone’s first name, there’s not one diplomatic cell in his body. You always know where you stand.”

The fallout was immediate. Screenwriter Koepp sent a fax to the agency early Monday telling it he would no longer be represented by it. “When all the facts are known, it will be clear that this incident is a naked and rather inept power play on the part of UTA,” Koepp says.

There hasn’t been this much interest in the goings-on of these particular offices since Michael Milken ran his junk bond operation out of the same Beverly Hills space in the 1980s. UTA boasts of representing such big stars as Jim Carrey and Sandra Bullock. Yet the 45-employee agency ranks well behind Hollywood’s largest: Creative Artists Agency, International Creative Management and the William Morris Agency.

It has also been among the most dysfunctional of Hollywood families. A retreat once deteriorated into a shouting match between factions, one former agent recalls, and the company last year hired a “corporate therapist” in an effort to persuade agents to get along. Some agents are known to have gone for more than a year without speaking to each other.

Where Polone might go next is unclear. He has hired lawyers at Sidley & Austin. On Monday he was taking calls from supporters, but he hasn’t yet started looking for a new job.

The fact that he trashed nearly all of UTA’s competitors could hurt his job prospects. But if he brings enough clients with him, it may not matter at all.

Times staff writer Elaine Dutka contributed to this report.