“How does the talent side feel, Aaron?” Richard Lovett asked.
Lovett leaned against the plaster outside the casting suite, checking his watch.
“A lot easier to sell a script than a person, isn’t it?”
Aaron kept his eyes on the heavy oak door.
“If the picture goes into production, my packaging fee clears either way.
But Nicole is my first signing.
I’d like the board to tilt my way.”
“That’s the business,” Lovett said.
“Everybody has an angle.
It just comes down to who walks in with more leverage.”
The door opened.
Nicole stepped out.
“Alright, Richard,” Aaron said, pushing off the wall.
“Catch you later.”
Lovett gave a brief nod and headed down the hall.
Aaron didn’t need to ask how the read went.
Nicole looked completely hollowed out.
“I blew it,” she said quietly as Aaron stepped up to her.
“Pacino just shut down.
I could feel the room turn.”
Aaron kept his voice low, stepping into her eyeline to block her from the studio assistants before guiding her down the hall.
“You’re brand new to the studio system with zero domestic credits,” he said.
“They threw a foreign unknown into a cold read with Al Pacino.
It was a bad setup.
Don’t let them see you sweat.”
He pulled his car keys from his jacket and pressed them into her palm.
“I’m stuck on the lot for a production meeting,” Aaron said.
“Take the car.
Go back to my place and sleep.
I’ll see you tonight.”
Nicole gripped the keys, looking relieved to have an exit strategy, and hurried toward the parking lot.
Aaron watched her walk away, taking a hard look at his roster.
The talent side of his business was bleeding leverage.
His two biggest plays were total unknowns—Nicole had just choked in a massive room, and Adam Sandler was just a kid from the stand-up circuit who hadn’t even officially dropped his agents at ITA yet.
His directors weren’t generating cash flow either.
Steven Soderbergh had a Palme d’Or on his mantle but was paralyzed by the sophomore slump, and Quentin Tarantino was literally bagging VHS tapes behind a counter in Manhattan Beach.
Aaron needed to get something moving.
Around noon, Aaron crossed the street to a diner just off the Disney lot.
He spotted Jennifer Connelly sitting alone in a corner booth.
She was high-end talent being completely mishandled.
Hollywood was still treating her like the teenager from Once Upon a Time in America, tossing her roles that required nothing but a pretty face.
Aaron walked over and placed his business card on her table.
“Aaron Anderson.
CAA.”
Jennifer picked up the heavy card stock, looking from the embossed letters to his face.
“You’re a very young agent.”
“They told you you were too young for the part,” Aaron said, pulling out the chair across from her.
“For Pretty Woman.”
Jennifer shifted in the vinyl booth, caught off guard by the blunt read.
“They did.
They need someone more weathered.”
Aaron looked at her.
She was a talent trapped in a teen idol’s career.
Hollywood kept pitching her projects that relied entirely on her looks, but he had looked at her actual resume.
Yale, then Stanford.
A college degree didn’t sell tickets, but that kind of intelligence meant she could dissect a script and hold her own with serious filmmakers.
She was trying to pivot to adult roles, and the industry was stubbornly refusing to let her grow up.
“You dodged a bullet,” Aaron said, tapping his business card on the table between them.
“That script is a dead end for what you’re trying to do.”
He leaned forward slightly.
“You want real filmmakers.
I’ll get you in those rooms.
I keep my roster tight—heavyweights only, zero filler.
I signed Soderbergh out of the gate, and he just took the Palme d’Or.”
Jennifer looked at the card again, a faint smile breaking through.
“Are you telling me you don’t have a lot of clients, or are you telling me you’re highly capable?”
“Both.” Aaron smiled back.
The charm was genuine.
“My mother currently handles some of my management,” Jennifer said, her guard coming back up.
“And I haven’t officially decided to leave school yet.”
“Take your time,” Aaron said, standing up.
“But when you’re ready to stop auditioning for fluff and start working with directors who want a serious actor, call me.”
He paused, holding her gaze.
“You’re an Ivy League kid.
You’re smart enough to know when your career is being mismanaged.”
Jennifer didn’t say anything, but she didn’t hand the card back either.
That evening, Aaron sat in the back row of a Burbank conference room for the Pretty Woman casting meeting.
He and the screenwriter, J.F.
Lawton, were strictly there as observers.
At the head of the table, Gary Goldstein laid out the board.
“For the female lead, we will go with Julia.
She pops on camera.
The read today was exactly what we needed.”
Garry Marshall and Steven Reuther nodded.
The decision was locked.
Aaron didn’t flinch.
He’d known Nicole was dead in the water for hours.
Reuther rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“We have a larger issue.
Pacino is wavering.
Beatty is aggressively courting him to play Big Boy Caprice in Dick Tracy.”
He looked around the room.
“We can’t compete with a massive comic book adaptation.
We need to look at backups.
I want to approach Richard Gere.”
The room went quiet.
In the back row, Aaron stared at Reuther.
Richard Gere.
The guy was a depreciating asset.
He hadn’t carried a genuine commercial hit since An Officer and a Gentleman in ’82.
A string of massive box-office failures had made him a walking liability.
If Gere anchored this movie, the packaging value would plummet.
As soon as Marshall called the meeting to a close, Aaron walked straight up to Reuther.
“Is there a problem, Aaron?” Reuther asked, bracing for a junior agent to throw a tantrum over Nicole losing the lead.
Aaron bypassed the actress completely.
“Are we actually letting Pacino walk for a comic book movie?”
Reuther blinked.
“He’s getting a massive offer on Tracy, Aaron.
He’s gone.”
“Gere doesn’t sell tickets anymore,” Aaron stated, keeping his voice level.
“He’s been bleeding momentum since ’82.”
He stepped closer, shutting down the distance.
“Pacino took a four-year break, but he’s still blue-chip talent.
With Godfather III on the horizon, his relevance is going to spike.
You cast Gere, this is just a hooker comedy.
You cast Pacino, it’s an event.
We can’t let him walk.”
Reuther let out a harsh breath.
“I want him too, but it’s a lost cause.
I’m calling his rep tomorrow.”
“Put me in a room with him,” Aaron said.
“Let me close it.”
Aaron wasn’t doing this to save the movie.
He was doing it because there was no way in hell he was going to let his packaging credit be dragged down by Richard Gere’s dead career.
Reuther stared at him, about to laugh the kid out of the room, until he remembered how this nineteen-year-old agent had manipulated Jeffrey Katzenberg into greenlighting the script in the first place.
“Alright,” Reuther said.
“Let’s see what you can do.”
________________________________________________________________________
PIC’s in the Comments.
Peace out,
Lucent