The Writer, The Agent and The Reader

The Agent opens in London

2009-06-03T19:17:00.005+01:00

I am very happy to report that The Agent will open at London's BFI Southbank on September 18th, 2009, following a release in Scotland to coincide with the Edinburgh Book Festival in August.

The Agent blog review by Juliet E McKenna

2009-04-28T10:06:00.005+01:00

There is a long review of The Agent by writer Juliet E McKenna on her blog at http://jemck.livejournal.com/80826.html. An extract:

Crucially, the conviction of both actors makes these two men and their standoff engaging for those with no interest in the book business. The human drama is compelling, as both men are by turns unexpectedly likeable and then surprisingly unsympathetic, as they betray themselves out of their own mouths. Writers will identify with Stephen’s desperation but should be wary of sympathy for his sense of entitlement. Agents will applaud Alexander’s commercial acumen but I don’t know one who wouldn’t advise him to cut his hopelessly extended client list. In part both men are justified, when they attack each other’s attitudes. Equally, both are missing their own culpability.

How will this circle they’re trapped in ever be satisfactorily squared? Not in the way you think. The best writing has a splinter of ice at its heart and so does this film. The third actor credited is Maureen Lipman. While she’s only briefly heard and seen, the sincerity of her performance is vital to the final act. In the light of everything that’s been said and done to that point, the conclusion ensures the film becomes an order of magnitude more complex and thought-provoking. Earlier throwaway lines assume vastly more significance.

The Agent in Bradford

2009-03-19T18:55:00.003Z

The Agent had its first two UK screenings as part of the Bradford International Film Festival this week. It was the first time we have shown the final version of the film which now runs at 80 minutes with a remixed soundtrack. The audiences seemed to love it and as always there was a lively discussion about writers and agents after the screenings.

From the festival office:

"From October onwards, the Festival Selection Committee spends long, square-eyed evenings whittling the hundreds of submitted films to find the core of our Previews and Premieres. It’s always an absolute joy when a film grabs you instantly, announcing itself with confidence and style in the opening minutes – and The Agent is just such a film – a witty, sparky delight from start to finish."

Another Agent review

2009-02-22T21:16:00.004Z

Review of The Agent by Tom Vincent, programmer of The Bradford International Film Festival.

"The story of a frustrated writer and his agent, The Agent is a smart two-hander with a nimble, well-paced script, spot-on performances, and some compelling arguments. Skilled but self-doubting writer Stephen hasn’t heard from his agent Alexander in the four months since sending in the final draft of his new novel, Black. Grasping the nettle, Stephen hotfoots it to Alexander’s office to demand a response. What, he asks, gives Alex the right to decide what people should read? And why do so many worthless books make money? Flustered, Alexander brushes away the questions away, but an ultimatum soon develops…
Debutante director Lesley Manning’s The Agent makes it to the screen via a hit source play, which enjoyed a successful run at London’s Trafalgar Studios in summer ‘07. And though it’s easy to appreciate The Agent’s origins as theatre, Manning brings a great deal of filmic nous to her adaptation, making it thoroughly satisfying as cinema. There’s the great sense of pace in the super-honed script and in Manning’s own lively editing. Lead actors Kennedy and Beck, both veterans from the play, have fun with our shifting sympathies and flesh out fascinating roles with real conviction. They’re really intriguing characters: both men are, after all, merely doing their jobs to the best of their abilities. The trouble is art and commerce are sometimes uneasy bedfellows.
There are many great arguments running through The Agent: how should an artist cope when their work becomes a commodity, should agents worry about standards of ‘art’, could we think about art be different in a re-imagined world? That these ideas are explored with such wit and energy as in The Agent is to be celebrated. Watching it is like the most exciting day at work you never had."

The Agent in Bradford

2009-02-18T15:47:00.004Z

The screening dates at the Bradford International Film Festival are confirmed:
Wednesday 18th March at 5.45pm
Thursday 19th March at 10.30am
Both are at the Pictureville Cinema.
Details are here.
From festival brochure: "A frustrated novelist visits his slippery agent to ask him: just what is it that he does all day? Interesting and entertaining from the get-go, this zips along in fine talky fashion to a heart-racing, office-bound showdown. A smart two-hander with a nimble, well-paced script, ‘just-right’ performances, and a gripping set-up – in 80 minutes who could ask for more?"

The Agent goes to Bradford

2009-01-23T20:27:00.003Z

The first public screening of the brand new 80-minute version of The Agent with the final soundtrack will premiere at the 15th Bradford International Film Festival (March 13-28, 2009). Dates and times will be announced shortly.

The Agent in Nantes

2008-12-12T13:13:00.005Z

The Agent screened last night at the Cinéma Katorza in Nantes as part of the Univerciné Nantes Cinéma Britannique Festival run by Agnès Blandeau. The Katorza is an excellent cinema, bringing original language films to Nantes, which usually are hard to find outside Paris. I was there for the Q&A session following the screening, and was again very pleased that the film inspires discussions about the mechanics of the literary industry.

Earlier I was interviewed by Kate Thomas for EuradioNantes, mercifully in English, and this morning I went to run a workshop with students from the University of Nantes organised by the festival's previous director Elaine Dubourdieu. The students read out pieces of work they had prepared for the workshop, which were very impressive, especially considering that English is not their first language. I tried my best to put them off a career in writing for their own sanity, but I'm afraid I have failed miserably.

The Agent will screen again at the Katorza on Tuesday at 4pm.

The Writer

2008-12-10T00:11:00.003Z

Before The Agent came The Writer. I originally wrote the screenplay of The Writer in 1995, a horror film about a writer who was hired by a bunch of filmmakers to polish their hopeless horror script - but my agent at the time didn't like it, so we parted company. It hence attracted development funding from the now defunct European Script Fund and was subsequently optioned by no less than four producers, none of whom, alas, made it happen (so maybe my former agent did have a point).

The best thing that has come from The Writer so far was that one for the producers had the good sense to ask Lesley Manning (of Ghostwatch fame) to direct it. Lesley and I got on very well and worked very hard on The Writer. It was about to go in production when the money disappeared a week before shooting was meant to start.

It took me about two years to get over this experience. In my darkest days I wrote the play The Agent, a writer's way of dealing with rejection, and of course when I was looking for a director for it, Lesley, who I had got on so well with, was my first choice. She jumped at the chance and we staged the play (twice) and then made the film.

Through The Agent film we made good connections and I am very happy to report that it looks like The Writer will be ready to go into production next summer with Lesley as director and myself as writer/producer, and much of The Agent team back on board. It's set to be fully financed, albeit at a low budget, but still a big step up from what we spent on The Agent.

Fingers crossed it all goes well.

The Agent - first French review

2008-12-06T14:03:00.003Z

The first French review of The Agent just appeared in Kinorama. Here it is for those of you who read French.

"Stephen est écrivain. De ceux qui vivent leur relation au papier avec leurs tripes, incapables de s’imaginer autrement qu’auteur, même avec toutes les affres qui y sont associées. Mais Stephen n’est pas un écrivain à succès. Il est publié, aussitôt oublié sur les rayonnages de la culture, et attend du milieu une reconnaissance qui ne vient pas, espérant d’une part vivre de son art, et d’autre part pouvoir se considérer enfin comme un auteur à part entière.
Ayant mis un point final à son dernier roman, c’est plein de cet espoir qu’il va voir son agent. Ce dernier, archétype du commercial qui vend des livres comme on vendrait des chaussettes, lui annonce de but en blanc que son écrit ne verra pas le jour. S’engage alors une joute verbale entre le faiseur et le vendeur, qui va jusqu’à la menace et au chantage. Contraints d’aller jusqu’au bout de leurs arguments, l’un et l’autre se dévoilent par les mots, décrivant au passage les moindres tenants et aboutissants de leurs vies et métiers respectifs.
Adapté d’une pièce de théâtre de Martin Wagner (le scénariste du film, qui sera présent au Katorza jeudi 11 décembre à 17h50), ce duel oral est aussi passionnant que touchant. Stephen, par désespoir, est acculé à des comportements qui ne lui ressemblent pas, et fait vibrer la corde de l’émotion grâce à de très beaux monologues. Les échanges entre les deux sont taillés au cordeau, d’une précision et d’une finesse de langue redoutables, et accentuent tour à tour la tension ou la passion qui animent ces deux hommes.
L’issue du duel est incertaine jusqu’à la dernière minute, faisant de cet Agent un portrait original aux réparties mordantes." Nathalie Rézeau, Kinorama

The Agent in Nantes

2008-12-05T09:06:00.005Z

The Agent will be screened in competition at the Nantes British Film Festival next week. It is screening at 5.45pm on December 11th and 4pm on Tuesday 16th at the Cinema Katorza.

William Joyce on The Agent

2008-11-17T14:30:00.001Z

William Joyce, who published a superb collection of essays on writing called Miller, Bukowski & their Enemies, has written a new essay on The Agent. Here are the opening paragraphs, reproduced with kind permission:

"The Agent by Martin Wagner is a play that reveals through its two sniveling characters why we find people more and more full of shit as we get older. The plot line tells me it is a play about a writer who feels his literary agent has forsaken him but it’s really a feverish dialogue on a stage (and now in film form) about why words don’t work. When words don’t work, we maim each other. Or we drink too much or sniff some sort of plant ground up or in powder form or in pills to get the courage to say what we really think. Neither the agent nor the writer are on anything. They are outrageously normal. This is another way of saying both have gone the respectable route. They hold jobs, pay taxes, more or less cohabit with the opposite sex, have been careful not to insult anyone, and when the curtain opens they are pretty much like us – thoroughly miserable. They have been sweet citizens and they are paying the price.
The price is that they use language like a feather duster. Words are a little device to keep the machine clean and greased. As a result, neither the agent nor the writer believe in the tools of their respective trades. The writer isn’t sure whether he has written strong books and the agent couldn’t tell a good book from a bruised cucumber. Early in the first act, the writer Stephen says to the agent, 'You know what sells but do you know what’s good?' The agent, Alexander replies, 'And what is the difference?'
And lest we blame a breakdown in words on the industry that’s supposed to nurture them, the agent quite correctly says, 'There are no real readers out there anymore. People read to write, or they read to buy, or read to sell...'
What has been eliminated here is pleasure. In this case it’s the pleasure of reading. But it could be the pleasure of almost anything – growing tomatoes, playing a flute, whistling in the rain, listening to the silence. The implications are constant and enormous in this drama and the implication here is that no one or anything is delicious and fruitful in itself but only in the leverage over other humans which can be gained from it. How often does your telephone ring from a caller who isn’t trying to use you for something?"

Hopefully the full article will be published soon. The painting of William Joyce is by Pam Coulter Blehert - many more are at blehert.com.

Der Agent opens in Germany

2008-11-13T11:44:00.009Z

On Thursday the 16th of October, in the middle of the Frankfurt Book Fair, the German translation of The Agent opened at the Torturmtheater in Sommerhausen, a charming small theatre between Frankfurt and Nuremberg. I went to the opening, and met the most dedicated and talented team a writer could have hoped for, headed by Veit and Angelika Relin (who also did the set and costume design respectively).

After producing the play at the Old Red Lion and the Trafalgar Studios, arriving at the Torturmtheater I felt like I had slipped into a parallel universe. I half expected to be handed a bill for the production costs at the end of the evening. But no, this time I get paid - a concept I still have to get used to.

The play was very sensitively and inventively directed by Oliver Zimmer and the wonderful actors Christoph Maasch (the agent) and Maximilian Berger (the writer) brought great humanity to their parts.

Philipp Weiche gave his voice to Charlie, following in the footsteps of Lee Boardman (Old Red Lion), Alan Samson (Trafalgar Studios) and Maureen Lipman (the film). The translators were Natalie and René Freund. Isabel Mergl was the assistant director, and the technicians are Michael Furkel, Steffen Schroll and Falk Steinle. Thanks to you all!

A German audio extract of the production is posted at the Sprechbude.

The play is doing well, and will run until Christmas - I'll post the reviews soon.

The Agent premiers in Dinard

2008-11-13T11:11:00.016Z

The Agent had its world premiere at the Dinard British Film Festival (Festival du Film Britannique de Dinard) on the 3rd of October. It was shown in the Salle Hitchcock, which turned out to be a 300-seat inflatable (!) cinema set up in a car park, but the atmosphere was great.

We only had 80 people in on the first night, and were prepared to face only a handful of film-goers on the second screening on the Saturday morning, but to director Lesley Manning's and my delight (and horror) there was a huge queue across the car park, and the screening was sold out. The audience responded very well, and so did the critics.

Here are a the handful of reviews from Dinard:

"There was a pleasant surprise in two excellent stage to screen adaptations... The second is The Agent, a new ultra-low budget effort from Lesley Manning. Made for just £23,000, the screenplay is adapted by Martin Wagner from his own play, again pretty much boils down to two men talking, but it’s a cracking argument. Focusing on a slippery literary agent (William Beck) and an author in need of a confidence transplant (Stephen Kennedy) it’s a bit like Swimming With Sharks and In The Company Of Men, but with the tension dialled back a little, to allow for a more realistic scenario. This is an impressive, no-frills piece of intelligent entertainment."
Sam Toy - Empire Online

"I also enjoyed a pair of accomplished two-handers. Marek Losey's Pinteresque debut The Hide and Lesley Manning's debut The Agent, a black comedy made for £25,000. They all deserve distribution."
Philip French - The Observer

"Although Lesley Manning’s The Agent and Marek Losey’s The Hide betrayed their stage roots, both were quietly compelling two-handers set in confined spaces. The Agent – with a budget of £23,000 - is a blackly comic drama about a desperate writer (Stephen Kennedy) taking events into his own hands when he tires of his agent’s procrastination and evasiveness. William Beck plays the oily agent who’s trying to slip out of an awkward predicament with a plausibility that suggests one too many lunches at The Ivy."
Adrian Hennigan - BBC Film Network

After the screenings we decided to take out two minutes at the beginning and treat ourselves to a final mix at DeLane Lea, so the film's final final version will be ready in time for the next screening, at the British Film Festival in Nantes (Festival du Film Britannique) on December 11th. Which means The Agent will have been in post-production for an entire year - that's low budget film-making for you.

Der Agent goes to Germany

2008-05-31T10:42:00.004+01:00

After the run of the play The Agent at the Old Red Lion and the Trafalgar Studios, it has just been announced that it will be produced in Germany at the Torturmtheater in Sommerhausen. Der Agent will run for three months starting mid-October, which, probably unintentionally, coincides with the nearby Frankfurt Book Fair.

And all this thanks to my German theatre agent Eva Feitzinger (I confess I do have three agents working on The Agent in Germany, Holland and Poland.)

The Agent - post production

2008-05-31T10:30:00.008+01:00

It's been a while, and making films with little or no money is always very time-consuming, but The Agent is now nearing completion.

We have a month to go until its first official screening, as it's been invited to take part the London UK Film Focus at the BFI Southbank at the beginning of July, where sales agents and buyers will have a chance to see it. We still have to mix the sound, score the music and grade it, but it seems that it can be done in time.

A few days before the LUFF screening will be the cast, crew & friends screening. I'll post details on how to get tickets here mid-June.

Mistakes were made (but not by me)

2008-05-29T11:43:00.008+01:00

Our publishing company Pinter & Martin received a real boost today when Carol Tavris, co-author of the wonderful Mistakes were made (but not by me) was interviewed by Evan Davis on Radio 4's Today programme. You can listen to it by clicking here.

It's a lovely, very readable and smart book, and its success will allow us to publish lots more interesting books (and hopefully pay for some of the post-production on The Agent!)

More info on the book is here. And readers of this blog entering 'writeragentreader' at check out can get an extra 10% off (on this and any other titles).

The Agent - finished shooting

2007-12-26T16:06:00.001Z

Happy to report that The Agent finished shooting on schedule - but a little over budget - on December 16th. It was exciting but very hard work, and immediately followed by a much needed break for Christmas. What a year it's been - first The Agent premiered at the Old Red Lion in Islington, then we did the whole thing again for the Trafalgar Studios run in the summer, and now we have a film in the can.
Amazing that we finished on time - on the first day all the equipment was stuck in a lift for six hours, then we had a power cut which lost us another half day and one of our crew members fell down the stairs - luckily no major injuries. I was very fortunate to have a cast & crew who was as determined as I was to get the filming completed on time.

We'll start with post-production in January - the 14 hours of rushes look very promising, and hopefully we will have the first presentable version in March or April.

The Agent - now filming

2007-12-08T18:49:00.000Z

We're half way through shooting The Agent. The rushes look great, and apart from the camera being stuck in a lift for half a day, we're doing well and are more or less on schedule. Maureen Lipman has joined the cast as the publisher.

William Beck and Stephen Kennedy are doing great recreating their parts from the Trafalgar Studios run of the play, and moving some of the action outside the confines of the office has added a new dimension to the story.

It's my first feature as a writer and producer and I am learning fast.

The Agent - sponsor the film

2007-10-04T15:43:00.000+01:00

We have raised 50% of the finance for the film based on my play The Agent, and are raising the remainder through sponsorship. For £50 (approx 71 Euros or 100 US dollars) you will receive:

- a screen credit
- a DVD of the finished film
- a copy of The Agent book
- two tickets to a special preview screening in London

For more info and to sponsor The Agent, visit Pinter & Martin

Agent provocateur

2007-09-25T23:07:00.000+01:00

Martin Wagner on the vital relationship between author and deal-maker

Saturday September 22, 2007
The Guardian

If your dream agent would be Frasier's Bebe - the bloodsucking fictional agent who'd sell her own grandmother to clinch a deal - you're probably an unsuccessful writer watching too much TV. And you will find it hard not to be intrigued by the recent upheavals at PFD (The Peters Fraser and Dunlop Group), one of the UK's most powerful literary and acting agencies. The impending arrival of Caroline Michel, MD of PFD's arch-rival William Morris and former publisher of Vintage, has triggered resignations by several of PFD's key agents. But while the literati enjoy tracking the fortunes of A-list agents, whose writers include Julian Barnes, Simon Schama and Robert Harris, does this change at the top mean anything to us less important authors?

Chances are that if you are a writer a little further down the food chain, but lucky enough to have an agent, they won't be doing much for you. Restless writers, like I used to be, may change agencies frequently, only to find out that after a brief honeymoon all is back to normal - for most writers changing agencies is like rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic as they watch the promises of their career go down the drain.

As far as agents were concerned, I was unashamedly promiscuous as a young writer. Like most budding writers I had been hoping for instant success, spurred on by endless headlines of first books getting improbably huge advances, but, for me at least, reality was invariably very different: there was the agent who reluctantly agreed to send out three chapters of my first novel to two publishers to prove to me that it was no good (one got on the phone straight away, wanting to read more); there was the agent who kept forgetting the title of my screenplay (The Writer, is that so hard to remember?); and there was the agent who has yet to find time to read an 80-page novella I sent them some years ago. So when yet another ineffectual agent suggested that I write about what I know, I decided that the thing I know most about is ineffectual agents.

My play The Agent premiered at the Old Red Lion this spring and transferred to the Trafalgar Studios in the summer. It's either a "riveting portrait of ruthless barrow boys of the soul" (Sunday Times) or "witless" (The Independent), so I guess you have to judge for yourself whether my former agents should be happy or disappointed to have me off their books. To write a play poking fun at agents may sound like commercial suicide, but the best agents, to their credit, are vultures (über-agent Andrew Wylie isn't knicknamed "the Jackal" for nothing), and happily embrace a play which questions their profession if it makes commercial sense. Hence the agent who sold it to Holland without batting an eyelid.

I produced The Agent myself, which is a little drastic. So where does a new writer who doesn't want to turn into a producer or publisher start? Visions of piles of unsolicited "slush" should be enough to turn off most self-respecting writers - divided into two categories according to one agent I spoke to: one of typescripts to be rejected straight away, and another of typescripts to be rejected a little later. And that's just the agents; imagine what it takes to get a fair hearing from a publisher. Most publishers won't even look at "slush", effectively outsourcing the discovering of new talent to agencies.

The problem is that there are many more writers than the market can bear, and to most publishers writers are about as important as farmers are to Tesco - they know that there is an endless supply of produce. Of course most of the unsolicited writing that lands on agents' desks is rubbish, but how can we be sure that the occasional gem will be discovered? The short answer is that we can't and, sadly, neither agents nor publishers lose any sleep over it. The undiscovered writer is the acceptable victim of a system which, ironically, works for everyone concerned except for the very people who are its lifeblood.

Most young writers, keen for their first break, accept any offer from an agent, no questions asked. But right from the beginning the odds are stacked against them. An agent has many writers to look after - of course, how could an agency be profitable otherwise? - but a writer has only one career. So for a writer to be with the wrong agent can be lethal, while the agent has not much to lose, apart from a few wasted phone calls and stamps, and maybe a minor dent in his or her reputation. But like a bad marriage, a poor match between an author and agent can result in a lifetime of disappointment - for the author, at least.

Maybe one of the problems is that agents simply don't get paid enough? While a 15 per cent commission is plenty if you're representing an JK Rowling, what about 15 per cent of an author who could reasonably call himself a success if he got an advance of £2,000 for his first novel - a mere £300 for his agent?

But for most writers even having an agent who does nothing for you is better than not having one. Apart from the kudos, having an agent is also a safety-blanket that absolves writers from the responsibility of taking care of their own careers. I've been most successful since I stopped waiting for others - agents, producers - to do things for me. But this gradual realisation has been a painful process. I wanted to be "discovered", but was lucky enough to realise just in time that this was not going to happen. I decided that I wasn't going to take no for an answer, and the audience reaction to The Agent proved that my writing could be enjoyed once it bypassed the hurdles imposed by the system.

So while the dust settles at PFD, it's best for writers to take matters into their own hands. Take responsibility for your work and make things happen. In my case I'll be producing the film of The Agent, which is shooting in December.