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Nobody knows better than agents that payback is a bitch. So the publisher of an autiobio by the former TV honcho at the William Morris Agency, Sam Haskell, has smartly timed the release to the WMA-Endeavor merger. I and other journos got a taste this week, and the book bashes Jim Wiatt for forcing out Haskell and other key board members in what was a 2004 palace coup. At the time, many thought Haskell left on his own. Instead he was blindsided. Things got so bad that Sam sought solace at his church. He was that rarity among top Hollywood TV agents: goyim. WMA knew from Italian-Americans in its midst (affectionately dubbed “faux Jews”) but not from Haskell, who hails from the spit-sized town of Amory, Mississippi. There’s even a street named after him. It wouldn’t surprise anyone if this book is a precursor to Haskell, a Republican, running for Congress with the help of his Mississippi buddy Trent Lott, the ex-Senate majority leader. Oh, and here’s what is also hilarious: the book is repped by Endeavor.
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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You look up “class act” in the dictionary, and Sam Haskell’s photo should be right next to the definition. One of the few people in the business who really proved nice guys can actually come out first, and from what I understand he helped William Morris keep its doors open. Maybe the business is too ruthless these days for someone like him, which is really a shame, but his kindnesses will be remembered for a long time to come.
Sorry biz, for OUR “fragile mental states.” We just can’t be that emotional rock that you women are.
-the men
Here’s what it is.. WMA and all the tv packaging shops long ago gave up the art of client representation as they made themselves drunk on packaging deals that sold out the clients and made the agencies rich… Haskell was the keeper of the WMA packaging flame… Spending all of his time patrolling the halls, making sure that all the talent and lit agents were packaging first, representing the client’s best interest second… He himself had only one client and that was WMA which was a good client to have when the packaging biz was at its zenith…. But things changed for the worst in the packaging biz over the last 10 years… So much so that Wiatt, upon arriving at WMA, realized he had a huge problem in the tv department… The guy who ran it, Haskell, had no cliets nor did the department… Thus as he tried to hire star lit agents outside of the company, he found that nobody good was going to come in and work for a guy like Haskell who had a weaker client list than they did… Thus Wiatt knew that he had to root all of the WMA TV guys out and so goodbye Walt Zifkin and Jerry Katzman, retire already Lou Weiss, stay out of the way Norman Brokaw and then he set his sights squarely on removing Sam Haskell which was easy to do because nobody wanted him in charge from the start… … Wiatt got them all out by packing the board with very young agents he brought in who owed Wiatt for their appointment and so had to vote the way he wanted…But ultimately Wiatt hasn’t been able to take the place to the next level and so has no choice reagarding his own survival but to deliver WMA into the hands of those who can make a go of it… Haskell and his ilk are angry only for the reason that they spent their careers holding others back at WMA and ironically never thought it would be they who would be exiting the building… Karma finally caught up to them all and it has been very enjoyable to watch it all go down…
Everyone is Hollywood is a diptych: two matching parts. So it should surprise no one that the mention of Sam Haskell elicits two vastly different perspectives. My experience with Sam Haskell was nothing short of pleasant — he was always congenial and generous. But he was also an agent with a job to do. I think most of the people working at WMA now have only the latter to claim. Unfortunate.
Ditto to what “Biz” said.
Wiatt is an evil person… None of you will ever know this unless you have had a family member who Wiatt has tried to get ahold of.
Isn’t someone in his position suppose to have top clients? Eddie Murphy… OUUUU big boy !
Payback is a bitch m fker !
TroyS got it right- Sam Haskell was an egomaniac and he always seemed to try to put himself in the spotlight
when he should have remained in the background. I remember those silly parties that he and his wife Mary
used to throw. Sam loved having his picture in the paper and he loved being the celebrity. When Sam’s client stable started to decay, karma caught up with him and he was ousted from William Morris. He moved to a small town and tried to run for political office and
tried to keep his name in Hollywood circles. It was a nice thing to no longer see Sam’s picture in the paper.
If Sam does the talk show circuit and if his former client Kathie Lee Gifford puts him on The Today Show as a favor then I will just have a good laugh.
I think “Hypocrites All” says it best about the real WMA situation. And Anon’s comment ‘Everyone is Hollywood is a diptych: two matching parts” should be engraved into the sidewalks of Century City. As for religion, maybe some people should find it; there is something greater than just us, after all isn’t there?
As a former studio exec, I knew both sides of Sam H firsthand. I loved working with him as a packaging agent, because I knew exactly where I stood. And I got screwed over by him, because when I told him exactly why I couldn’t give him what he wanted, he went over my head in a way that ended up costing me my job (and my career path). And I still think he was a damn sight better than 90% of what was out there and that he got screwed by WMA (as did a number of my agent friends). I sincerely hope this book manages to give him the closure he needs and that he gets to continue to live the life he wants.
I would be a sizeable sum that F. couldn’t deliver Haskell a packaging fee and so was excoriated for it… That is the evil of packaging, everybody’s best interest, the talent, the individual agent repping the talent and the studio exec developing for the talent are all subjugated to the needs of the outsized packaging deal… A deal that makes the agency paramount to the talent who without which would have no ability to negotiate for in the first place… It is a fundamentally awful thing that has strained the relationships and credibility of the agencies to the core with talent and the creative community alike… Some day a frustrated talent will take an agency to court over a package and the whole thing will come to a crashing end… Notice that every time talent does threaten to sue over getting screwed by an Agency packaging deal on their show like Roseanne once did that she immediately receives an out of court settlement because nobody on the agency side wants to let a judge see how conflicted they are in their representation of their clients…