alfornos found this. This probably explains how Amanda Pays
got cast in "Fire" and why DD was seen dining with Jennifer
Connelly and Paul Bettany in New York during the TRUST THE MAN
filming -- Pays and Bettany are also clients of Greene.
===>
The Hollywood Reporter
Dec. 06, 2005
Niche-Oriented
By Tatiana Siegel
Hollywood is filled with stories about glass slippers and glass
ceilings. For every Cinderella tale of overnight success, anecdotes
abound about women hitting snags on the showbiz corporate ladder.
Some women -- perhaps wary of fairy tales or reluctant to put
their fate in someone else's hands -- have seized their own
destinies by starting unique and prosperous businesses. Such
savvy entrepreneurs as the Gotham Group's Ellen Goldsmith-Vein,
Central Talent Booking's Joanna Jordan, Melanie Greene
Management's Melanie Greene and Silver Spoon Entertainment
Marketing's Melissa Lemer have hit pay dirt by spotting
underserved communities and creating niche services.
For Goldsmith-Vein, the neglected customer base was animation
talent. To fill that void, the former New York banker founded
the Gotham Group in 1994, a then-fledgling management firm for
animation directors, writers, producers, illustrators, artists
and content creators.
Like many successful reps, Goldsmith-Vein began her Hollywood
career as an agent at WMA. While working in the TV packaging
division, she realized that the burgeoning animation field was
being largely ignored by the agency world. "I think the major
agencies were focused on the television packaging business,
representing actors and servicing the feature-film community,"
says Goldsmith-Vein, who learned the intricacies of kids'
programming from WMA colleague Toper Taylor, who later became
a force in the field as executive producer of PBS' "Arthur,"
among other series. "At that time, people thought that there
wasn't an enormous amount of money to be made in the kids'
business."
But Goldsmith-Vein guessed correctly that family-friendly
content would become consistently profitable. Today, animated
fare frequently tops the boxoffice charts and spawns lucrative
TV series. Likewise, Gotham reigns as the premier animation
management firm and boasts nearly 300 clients including
producer John H. Williams (2001's "Shrek"), helmer Henry
Selick (1993's "The Nightmare Before Christmas"), writers
Ron J. Friedman and Steve Bencich (2003's "Brother Bear")
and creator/executive producer Butch Hartman (Nickelodeon's
"The Fairly OddParents"). The firm, which employs 20,
also has ventured into producing and has several projects in
development, including Paramount's "The Spiderwick Chronicles."
"I didn't get into this business because I thought I was going
to make millions of dollars. I got into the kids' business
because I love the family entertainment business,"
Goldsmith-Vein insists. "I loved it then, and I love it now.
I probably love it now even more because I've got (two)
children; I'm a real hit around the house. I'm (also)
the popular mom at school because I know Kim Possible."
Goldsmith-Vein also has leveraged her firm's wide-ranging
client list, which includes Simon & Schuster's children's
and young adult libraries, as well as Dark Horse Comics,
into amicable relationships within the representation
community, including an alliance forged with WMA in 2002.
"The autonomy has given us the opportunity to access all
of the agencies, all of the other management companies
that aren't squarely in our business," she explains.
"They don't really view us as a threat."
Similarly, Jordan benefited from a relationship with a former
employer when she formed CTB in 1999. The London native,
who was an in-house booker for CBS' "Late Show With David
Letterman" for five years, found more support than she
anticipated when she embarked on her solo mission.
"I let the 'Letterman' brass know that I was leaving to
start an independent booking company," Jordan recalls.
"They said, 'Let us be your first client.'"
Jordan says the field was wide open at that time, with only
a few freelance bookers who jumped from one syndication show
to the next. "My idea was instead of hiring one freelance
person to book one show, they would be hiring a team of people
that also would be working for multiple outlets at once,"
she says. "I always had this idea to (assemble) a group of
people who specialize in all the different areas -- movies,
television, politics, human interest, sports."
What started out as a small enterprise based in Jordan's home
office has blossomed during the past six years into a thriving
business with 20 full-time talent bookers. With offices in
Los Angeles, New York and Washington, CTB schedules guest spots
for wide-ranging properties including CBS' "The Early Show,"
Comedy Central's "Weekends at the DL" and MTV's "Punk'd,"
as well as broadcast outlets such as A&E, the Discovery
Channel and XM Satellite Radio. Most importantly, the firm is
approaching Jordan's goal of $5 million a year in annual revenue.
"We're a machine," Jordan says, likening her well-oiled
operation to publicity firm PMK. "We're on the front lines,
working with all kinds of producers."
Jordan also has expanded her business into such previously
untapped areas as magazine bookings. The opportunity fell
onto her lap when a friend began working on the launch of O:
The Oprah Magazine. Jordan says the magazine's staff wanted
to book big names for profiles, but they were having a hard
time because they didn't have the cover to offer.
"People were a little skeptical because it was a new magazine.
So, my friend said (to Oprah Winfrey's people), 'Oh, you should
meet Jo. She started this booking company,'" recalls Jordan,
who subsequently met with editor-at-large Gayle King,
and voilą, O became her first magazine client. "I wasn't
even thinking about doing magazines. I was the TV girl."
A friendship also proved fortuitous for Greene. The U.K.
native started her self-titled firm in 1987 with one client:
friend and fellow Londoner Amanda Pays, who starred on the
1980s TV series "Max Headroom."
At the time, female managers were a rare breed, with the
exception of rep-turned- jeweler Loree Rodkin, and there was
no single management company specializing in British talent.
"For some reason, I guess it was my karma -- I ended up with a
lot of British clients. They gravitate toward me, or I gravitate
toward them," says Greene, who started her Hollywood career
working in development for the late producer Julia Phillips.
"I just kept finding these brilliant actors who could do
American accents and were incredibly well-trained that wanted
to be working in America."
Today, Greene represents a small but diverse group of British
thesps including Paul Bettany (2003's "Master and Commander:
The Far Side of the World"), Lucy Davis (the BBC series
"The Office"), child actor Harry Eden (Sony's Roman
Polanski-directed "Oliver Twist"), Tom Hollander (2001's
"Gosford Park") and David Morrissey (Warner Bros. Pictures'
upcoming Hilary Swank starrer "The Reaping"), as well as
Americans David Duchovny and Harry Shearer. Her firm supports
13 full-time employees, including five managers. Additionally,
she holds a prominent position as a board member of BAFTA,
where she also co-chairs its screenings committee.
"Because I had worked for Julia Phillips, who was the first
woman to win an Academy Award as a producer, for (1973's)
'The Sting,' I just thought anything was possible," adds
Greene, who currently is producing "The Great Divide"
at Universal. "It didn't enter into my mind that it wasn't."
Lemer says she found her inspiration at a very young age.
"I've been around celebrities my whole life and watched the
gifting, what people have gotten for free," says the Silver
Spoon pioneer, a Beverly Hills native whose father is
producer Robert Lemer. "That's why I thought of this."
The result is the Silver Spoon Hollywood Buffet -- a spa,
party and dizzying display of celebrity consumption all rolled
onto one "Dynasty"-style mansion's lawn. Lemer co-founded
the company in 2001 and now throws five over-the-top events
a year before the Golden Globes, the Academy Awards, the
MTV Movie Awards and the Emmys, as well as a stand-alone
dog/baby-pampering fete. Although small, single-sponsor
suites have been around for years, Lemer pioneered the
large-scale, multisponsored, buffet-style shindig.
"I completely invented it," says Lemer, who cut her teeth
working suites at Frederic Fekkai and Raffles' L'Ermitage
hotel in Beverly Hills. "People have been doing suites for
so long. But I just didn't like it when you walked into such
a small area. And if I was with (friend) Tori Spelling,
I felt like a (jerk) because I wasn't a celebrity,
and everybody could see you."
That awkward feeling spurred Lemer into action. "I thought that
everyone should feel like they were born with a silver spoon,"
says Lemer, who, along with partner Lorena Bendinskas, oversees
two full-time employees and a fleet of seasonal part-timers.
"If you could make an event that was large enough where you
don't see people entering, you don't see people in one room
like a hotel suite, it's a lot more comfortable, a lot more
one-on-one interaction."
The genius of Silver Spoon, however, is not the inclusive
feeling engendered. Instead, Lemer's buffets create an
opportunity for celebrities to inadvertently promote products
for free. Every time a regular such as Nicole Richie or Nick
Lachey scoops up a free pair of $175 jeans at a buffet, the
shutterbugs are there to record the deed and thus provide
low-cost advertising for the product in the pages of Us
Weekly and InStyle. It's no wonder that sponsors pay hefty
fees to set up outposts at a Silver Spoon buffet.
"You never know what goes to a celebrity when you send them
something," Lemer says. "I think that if a company is going to
give something away, they should either be meeting the person,
or they should get a picture of the person holding the product."
In the process of cornering a segment of the entertainment
marketplace, all four women have created female-friendly
workplaces. At Gotham, Goldsmith-Vein has cultivated
"a reasonably good balance of females to males, about 50-50,"
she estimates. Meanwhile, Greene's management team skews female,
with three of the five reps being women. Jordan's CTB takes it
a step further with an almost unheard-of female-to-male ratio
of 16 women to 4 men. But Silver Spoon takes the prize for
creating a truly gender-specific labor pool: All of Lemer's
employees are women, right down to the interns plucked from
USC and UCLA. "Shopping, spotting trends, breaking brands
-- it's the type of job women excel at," Lemer says.
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