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jemck at 09:22am on 28/04/2009
jemck at 09:22am on 28/04/2009I should say I have no connection with this production. I only received an invitation to a preview screening coz I picked up on an article about agents by Martin Wagner and blogged it here. So I was curious and the screening was in the school holidays. Off I went and I’m very glad I did.
The film focuses on that crucial relationship between author and agent. Second-time novelist Stephen Parker arrives for a meeting with his agent Alexander Joyce, to discuss his recently submitted manuscript. Well, he submitted it four months ago. Alexander’s just got round to reading it. The meeting doesn’t go at all well, but Stephen has come prepared. Though any aspiring writer would be very ill-advised to try this particular strategy to get an agent’s full attention.
He succeeds in convincing Alexander to send the new novel out for an instant auction. Then the two of them wait out a long afternoon hoping for that phone call which means a real deal for Stephen, and the money and fame that will surely follow. That’s what an agent does, isn’t it? They’re the gatekeepers who choose who’ll succeed and who won’t, in this multi-media age. Literary merit comes someway down the list after marketability and appearance, doesn’t it?
From the opening sequences on, it’s clear Martin Wagner knows every trial and tribulation of the writer’s life, as Stephen finishes his final draft, waits tensely for his wife to read it and then posts it along with all his hopes and dreams. Crucially, Wagner also understands the realities of literary agencies, where busy agents like Alexander juggle superstars and deserving midlisters, snatching scraps of time to read submissions. The business of publishing inevitably decides their priorities, dominating their professional relationships at the cost of others.
For an agreeably wry comedy ostensibly peddling one of the most persistent fictions about the publishing industry, the film gets across an awful lot of practical information about the writing business. That alone means it should be compulsory viewing for writers’ circles and any student on a university creative writing course. Anyone organising a literary festival should seriously consider a screening.
But “The Agent” is much more than that, thanks to the writing and to the central performances. Both William Beck and Stephen Kennedy are fine character actors in the best tradition of British stage and TV drama, which means they can instil real life and passion into what might otherwise become mere exposition. So even novelists, agents, editors, who’ve so often heard those industry home truths about the chemistry vital between author and agent, about the necessary belief in a book on both sides, will hear a ring of truth in the dialogue’s immediacy.
If you’re not immediately able to put faces to the names of Beck, as Alexander the Agent, and Kennedy as Stephen the Author, you’ll know them when you see them. Or hear them in the case of Stephen Kennedy, if you’re an Archers’ fan – he plays Ian Craig. William Beck played Grumio in the RSC’s The Taming of the Shrew in 2008, and also Launcelot Gobbo in that year’s The Merchant of Venice.
Intelligent direction (Lesley Manning) and cinematography (Jonathan Harvey) definitely lift the film above its origins as a stage play. Changes of place ensure what’s essentially an extended conversation never becomes too static, with the backgrounds often offering a tacit comment on what’s being said. When the two men finally find themselves with nowhere else to go, the claustrophobia of a single set comes into its own. The pace throughout is swift, the whole story concluding in a commendably brisk 80 minutes.
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” has been well received at various film festivals and I hear it should open in Glasgow and Edinburgh to coincide with the Edinburgh Book Festival. Unfortunately that’s a bit too far away from Oxfordshire, so I’m keeping an eye open for further screenings close to home. I’m already contemplating which writerly and journalistic friends I’ll be taking to see it. I look forward to lively and heated debate over the post-film glasses of wine.
more from the producers' website here
The film focuses on that crucial relationship between author and agent. Second-time novelist Stephen Parker arrives for a meeting with his agent Alexander Joyce, to discuss his recently submitted manuscript. Well, he submitted it four months ago. Alexander’s just got round to reading it. The meeting doesn’t go at all well, but Stephen has come prepared. Though any aspiring writer would be very ill-advised to try this particular strategy to get an agent’s full attention.
He succeeds in convincing Alexander to send the new novel out for an instant auction. Then the two of them wait out a long afternoon hoping for that phone call which means a real deal for Stephen, and the money and fame that will surely follow. That’s what an agent does, isn’t it? They’re the gatekeepers who choose who’ll succeed and who won’t, in this multi-media age. Literary merit comes someway down the list after marketability and appearance, doesn’t it?
From the opening sequences on, it’s clear Martin Wagner knows every trial and tribulation of the writer’s life, as Stephen finishes his final draft, waits tensely for his wife to read it and then posts it along with all his hopes and dreams. Crucially, Wagner also understands the realities of literary agencies, where busy agents like Alexander juggle superstars and deserving midlisters, snatching scraps of time to read submissions. The business of publishing inevitably decides their priorities, dominating their professional relationships at the cost of others.
For an agreeably wry comedy ostensibly peddling one of the most persistent fictions about the publishing industry, the film gets across an awful lot of practical information about the writing business. That alone means it should be compulsory viewing for writers’ circles and any student on a university creative writing course. Anyone organising a literary festival should seriously consider a screening.
But “The Agent” is much more than that, thanks to the writing and to the central performances. Both William Beck and Stephen Kennedy are fine character actors in the best tradition of British stage and TV drama, which means they can instil real life and passion into what might otherwise become mere exposition. So even novelists, agents, editors, who’ve so often heard those industry home truths about the chemistry vital between author and agent, about the necessary belief in a book on both sides, will hear a ring of truth in the dialogue’s immediacy.
If you’re not immediately able to put faces to the names of Beck, as Alexander the Agent, and Kennedy as Stephen the Author, you’ll know them when you see them. Or hear them in the case of Stephen Kennedy, if you’re an Archers’ fan – he plays Ian Craig. William Beck played Grumio in the RSC’s The Taming of the Shrew in 2008, and also Launcelot Gobbo in that year’s The Merchant of Venice.
Intelligent direction (Lesley Manning) and cinematography (Jonathan Harvey) definitely lift the film above its origins as a stage play. Changes of place ensure what’s essentially an extended conversation never becomes too static, with the backgrounds often offering a tacit comment on what’s being said. When the two men finally find themselves with nowhere else to go, the claustrophobia of a single set comes into its own. The pace throughout is swift, the whole story concluding in a commendably brisk 80 minutes.
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” has been well received at various film festivals and I hear it should open in Glasgow and Edinburgh to coincide with the Edinburgh Book Festival. Unfortunately that’s a bit too far away from Oxfordshire, so I’m keeping an eye open for further screenings close to home. I’m already contemplating which writerly and journalistic friends I’ll be taking to see it. I look forward to lively and heated debate over the post-film glasses of wine.
more from the producers' website here