Lawyers Do Deals and Hold Court

Craig Emanuel is piecing together financing packages for three or four films for clients. “It’s more efficient to be here,” he said.

For Howard Frumes, “this is my school of international economics and relations every year.”

Jeff Konvitz says he is working from 10 a.m. to 3 a.m. every day for 10 days, but “I haven’t had so much fun in my whole life. This is the high point of the year for me.”

Emanuel, Frumes and Konvitz, all from Los Angeles, are among the hundreds of lawyers from around the world who make the annual pilgrimage to the international film community’s premier gathering.

The lawyers play a singular role here as they cobble together complex transactions involving companies from many nations. They represent the actors, directors, producers, banks, sales companies, distributors and insurers that have to come to terms before a foot of film is shot.

Sometimes what they do is similar to what lawyers do in any other business: drafting technical documents that conclude and define a negotiated deal. But here their job is increasingly about knowing who can and can’t be trusted and how to structure immensely complicated deals to get movies financed. They have to know everything from Bulgarian tax shelters to the financial implications of Canadian-French co-productions.

For the core of L.A. entertainment lawyers who specialize in the independent film industry, coming to Cannes is almost essential.

Konvitz, 53, said he is representing a bank in the final stages of a major financing that requires 46 agreements in different countries. “All the players are within a few blocks of each other,” Konvitz said, waving his hand toward the hotels along the Croisette, Cannes’ landmark seaside boulevard, where movie companies from all over the globe have set up temporary offices.

He’s been coming to Cannes as an attorney for about a decade, but before that he made the trip as a writer and producer. In 1974, Konvitz wrote a bestselling novel, “The Sentinel,” that was later made into a movie. More recently, he produced “Spy Hard,” starring Leslie Nielsen, and this week he announced plans for “2001: A Space Travesty,” also with Nielsen.

Konvitz said the L.A. lawyers at Cannes “all know each other. . . . We’re on opposite sides of a deal one day and the same side the next.”

The focus for Emanuel, 38, managing partner with the Beverly Hills boutique Tenenbaum, Emanuel & Fleer, is representing directors and other talent. His firm represents Woody Allen, Steven Seagal, Gary Oldman and Peter Weir, among others, usually for a fee of about 5%.

“The economics of representing talent is better than doing transactions work,” said Emanuel, who arrived in the U.S. from Australia eight years ago, waiting tables and playing piano in a bar before joining the law firm.

“Being a good lawyer is important,” he said. “But there are lots of good lawyers. Increasingly this is about being able to pick up the phone and get someone who can make a decision about a project.”

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Emanuel has so far resisted the temptation to become a producer but admits to being frustrated by the limitations of lawyering. “It’s a service business, and you’re not building an asset,” he said.

Frumes, 48, represents producers and distributors as well as talent. One of his clients is director Shekhar Kapur, whom he calls the “Spielberg of India.”

The Harvard law graduate and former legal aid lawyer said he enjoys strategizing with clients and “putting the pieces together, like a puzzle.” He recently joined the Los Angeles firm of Alexander, Nau, Lawrence & Labowitz.

Frumes avoided Cannes “for a long time because it had the image of a holiday. Then I came and I realized I worked harder here than I did at home.”

He said he gets little sleep and “you never know when you’ll suddenly be in a business conversation.” In Cannes, he said, “hierocracies disappear” so that you can talk with anyone about the business.

Frumes orders dry toast during a morning interview on the terrace of the Hotel Martinez, where the crowd outside occasionally interrupts with a roar as a movie star arrives or departs the hotel.

The international part of the business has interested him since 1978, when it amounted to less than 20% of film revenues. Today a film is regarded as having done poorly overseas if 60% of revenue doesn’t come from outside the U.S.

“There’s constant change in the business,” Frumes said. “Here I can spend a week and a half and catch up on all the changes around the world.”

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Other lawyers also show up in Cannes, including Barry Fischer, who is pursuing his life’s dream.

It’s called “Legend of the Twin Tigers” and the plot starts 5,000 years ago with evil forces. Then you have the tiger spirit--Al Pacino would be right for that. And the raven spirit, Michelle Pfeiffer perhaps. It ends up in the present day, but along the way there are parts for which Arnold Schwarzenegger and Cher would be perfect.

Fischer, 47, explains: “The idea is part Chinese mythology, part Ulysses and a little ‘Star Wars.’ ”

After 12 years working as an attorney in Marina del Rey, Fischer decided to produce his first film. So here he is in Cannes with an earnest demeanor and copies of a freshly completed script.

What he doesn’t have is anything resembling financing, distribution or the connections to make the project happen. He says he came to Cannes to find those things, as well as leads on a director and cast.

Joel Schumacher would be ideal, though Fischer wouldn’t turn down Ridley Scott or Martin Scorsese.

“The climax is this battle of the spirit world over New York City, kind of like that great scene in ‘Ghostbusters,’ ” he said excitedly.

His idea, he notes, lends itself to computer games, a TV series, an animated series and toys.

What makes him think he can be a movie producer?

“Before I was a lawyer, I was a concert promoter in New York. What made me think I could do that? I just did it.”