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UPDATE 2:25 PM: Claire Danes has signed with WME.
EXCLUSIVE – 10:45 AM: ICM has just lost Claire Danes and may be about to lose Rosario Dawson. I’m told Danes, who’d been Carol Bodie’s client, was spotted at WME the other day and is taking agency meetings. Dawson is still at the agency but also is “taking meetings” — and believed heading for CAA.
Also, writer/director Billy Ray has fired his longtime Broder/ICM agent Bruce Kaufman to sign with CAA. Kaufman helped him become an in-demand screenwriter and then a writer/director. It’s “a display of shocking ingratitude,” one source outside ICM told me. “Evidently, Ray has to blame someone besides himself for why no one will finance his uncommercial dramas. What makes it even more ironic is that Ray’s father was an agent, so you’d think he would have taught his son something about loyalty.” Harsh.
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WHAT ?!!!?? CLaire Danes is leaving ICM?? Oh my God, what will ICM do now?? They are finished!! How can ICM possibly survive without Claire Danes??…… The above posts about how agents “dump” the talent when the talent isnt “hot” is true. Respect works both ways.
I never met Billy Ray (or Bruce Kaufman), but if he was treated the way many BKWU loyalists like myself were treated when the agency took over ICM, he doesn’t anybody anything.
And I bet that half these anonymous posters pro- Billy or pro Kaufman are either Billy or Kaufman.
You are friends with an agent? What does that mean? They won’t go out of their way to ef you over?!
I’ve known and worked with Billy for almost 20 years and he is one of the most talented, decent, honest and straightforward guys you will ever find in this business. He had one agent for that entire period and followed him from Triad to Broder and then ICM while building a very successful career so the criticism by the “outside source” is both unfounded and misguided not to mention cowardly since the person who said it doesn’t have the guts to go on the record. When it comes to switching agents remember the words of Bill Haber (a founder of CAA for those of you who don’t know your Hollywood history), “the only unerring truth of the agency business is this: It may take two years or twenty, but the client ALWAYS leaves.”
put a nail in Bruce Kaufman. Billy Ray was the last of his once amazing client list (including Andy Tenant, Peyton Reed, Dector and Strauss). so sad but that’s how it goes.
ouch. obvious spoken by someone who couldn’t cut it as a writer or director and was fired by bruce. i guess all his other clients don’t mind all the success they’ve had with him. billy might have been the oldest, but not the biggest. shonda rhimes ring a bell???
Wow. Does anyone stick to their longtime agent anymore?