Narc Director Joe Carnahan had been a client for 10 years of Endeavor’s Phil Raskind who sequed to WME. The agency most recently got him The A-Team directing gig. CAA has its work cut out for it: Carnahan has long had a reputation as a hothead. He walked off the Mission Impossible 3 pre-production after getting into it with Cruise. And blew up White Jazz after a similar situation, this time with George Clooney. I’ll forever remember when he started bashing the Writers Guild on his blog and then had to apologize. (See my previous, Joe Carnahan Retracts Recent Blog Post)
Helmer Joe Carnahan Leaves WME for CAA
By NIKKI FINKE | Tuesday February 9, 2010 @ 8:53pm PSTTags: Agents, Directors, Movies
This article was printed from http://www.deadline.com/2010/02/helmer-joe-carnahan-leaves-wme-for-caa/
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Carnahan is a great talent. This is yet another big blow to WME.
Where does it go from here for WME? It seems like something major has to give at some point.
I agree. The talent keeps on rolling over down to Century City…Maybe more of them will catch on and follow. WME is such a mess. The hallways are still breathing fear…Just being there is like constantly looking over your shoulder to make sure you don’t get a knife in the back. When are they getting rid of Fogelman?
Partners defect or leave to start their own shop, agents under them leave, panic ensues and Ari E sells to a sucker while he can.
Sorry… great talent?
he owes Raskind everything who killed for him all the time despite the fact he’s made one good movie. A fluke. A Team trailer looks pathetic. good luck CAA.
Don’t know if PR would put the time into “killing for him” if he wasn’t very talented.
A great talent, huh? Seems a little over board from the guy that brought us SMOKIN’ ACES. Plus I imagine his commission in a year is probably equal to about a month’s worth of KING OF THE HILL package checks.
I assure you he is not the domino that will bring the place crashing down.
Carnahan wasted the biggest hype since Tarantino when NARC came out. He pissed off everyone in Hollywood and then made a piece of crap like SMOKIN ACES. No he has been relegated to B level shooter for garbage like A Team. He clearly is a joke, and if it wasnt for Liotta and Patric, would still be in no wheres ville.
Ari Emmanuel is as big a loser as his brother RAIM
I dealt with Joe directly as an assistant few years back when he was doing Smokin Aces. He was always a good guy towards me.
Just wanted to put that out there.
Carnahan is a HACK HACK HACK…
That “A-Team” trailer is the laughing stock of Hollywood. He’s a no talent hothead who can’t get a movie to stick around town, from his “Escobar” film to “The Gray” to “White Jazz”… he has become synonymous with Billy Walsh.
The film world won’t miss him when he’s directing A&E pilots next year.
I actually feel sorry for CAA. Wow, that’s a first.
Carnahan has been CAAed. Good luck and continue making big budget garbage. Joe, you blew it, have no street cred, and better just work on your BS schmooz game now, it’s official- You are on your way to Michael Bay.
Mr. Carnahan also directed an excellent pilot “Faceless” which was not picked up by Fox a few years ago. A great premise for a series that should still be made today. Anyone?
Raskind is a good agent. Always pretty fair and good about returning calls to producers (which is saying a lot. Carnahan is a hothead – but a talented hothead. Most director/writers are. Wonder why Raskind couldn’t hold on to JC? Writer/Director talent agents are notorious for giving advice to their clients based purely on the payday and not the quality of the project. I suspect this is what went on here. I’ve heard fantastic early reviews of “A-Team” it’s a shame for WME. Hopefully JC won’t get lost in the director/writer talent shuffle at CAA.
Jeez joe,
You had so much promise. Now every real actor turns you down, you do a big blow up movie based on mindless TV show, and now you make the panic move to CAA so you can cash in even more?
Damn, maybe it was just the performances in NARC that gave you the false glow.
Another one bites the dust.
Geeze, how many more big clients will WME lose to CAA?
Carnahan would probably be the first to admit he’s got a short fuse. After all, that was part of his email address years ago…
Regardless of what you want to say about Joe…that HAD to hurt!
Believe me, it did.
360 is moving everyone to caa watch it UTA, ICM, WME.
I have a feeling “The Losers” are going to beat the “The A-Team” in the box office.
I think Joe is passionate about his work and his vision, but I wouldn’t call him a hothead. He’s incredibly talented and, from my experience, a really nice guy. I’ve had the honor of spending quite a lot of time on one of his sets, and the only hotheaded behavior I saw was when he was pulling a practical joke.
If this keeps up, WME will only have young talent. Yet, that’ll be beneficial to the talent, who would normally be ignored by the agency who was busy trying to book A/B-listers.
Great talent? The guy’s a hack and a hothead to boot. But just like CAA, he spends a lot of time worrying about the homeless and the ozone layer.
Obviously the issue is not WME, the problem is the codling of agents and managers as it always backfires as the talent has to blame someone for their behavior on set. The irony is that Phil is cool people and probably his new agent at CAA is a good agent so unless Carnahan wishes to change… the good news for Phil is re-shoots on A-Team are coming up so inevitably CAA will get a dose of the stupidity, it’s not like the talent will suddenly change their work ethics! Isn’t there a bunch of A-list producers on that movie with gross points where is their diplomacy with this mess.
shut up and deal rings in my ears….he had time to craft a hand written apology, and we got ‘shut up and deal’.
a great talent? narc was a good, but unimpactful movie on the marketplace. smoking aces was simply unwatchable. movie making is a collaboration…you dont piss off tom cruise on a successful tentpole franchise, and the last person george clooney lost it on was fabio…me thinks caa will tell carnahan to shut up and deal, and then he’ll still lose his next two gigs to raskind repped mcg.
Interestingly, for all the talk of William Morris being the weaker of the two agencies, it’s the Endeavor side that can’t hold on to its clients… DeNiro, Shia, Carnahan… All Endeavor.
If you know both cultures, it’s easy to see why… William Morris was more dysfunctional as a whole, but individually, there are/were some “adult” agents there doing real business… Once you go under the top four partners at Endeavor, however, all you have is a buch of dumb frat kids.
I couldn’t agree with you more on this one. William Morris actually has/had really great agents both “adult” and “younger”. I think the WMA problem was that Fogelman ran the place under fear and there wasn’t communication. Old WMA had a lot of great agents who worked hard and just needed that communication to get to the next level. The Endeavor frat boys will fizzle out once Ari & Co. look at the bottom line again at the end of the year. The economy is too hard right now for Ari to keep on the frat boys who are still spending $75 on a lunch with a third rate writer. It adds up…Whatever happened to hard work, discipline and doing the right thing?
No Patric, No Liotta= No NARC. This is the guy who made Smokin Aces and now helming A Team.
Don’t forget “Bunny Lake Is Missing.” Was a few weeks out of pre-production and decided to rewrite the script himself. Reese was right to walk away even in the 11th hour.
another example of what a terrible agent donnelly is… He so wanted to be the lesher heir apparent, but cant even clean leshers loafers. Where is lesher btw?
WME seems to be bleeding clients…have they signed any A-lister recently? Hmm….perhaps the merger was not such a good idea.
I wonder if VERVE is looking for any assistants???
The merger looked good on paper, but when it was all said in done it was a horrible idea. The William Morris legacy has been destroyed because Wiatt, Irv Weintraub, and Dave Wirtschafter were greedy and didn’t think the 5 million and 7 million paychecks were enough money. Think about this…If the merger didn’t happen WMA would still be in business, all those agents and assistants still would of had there jobs, the legacy would of continued, etc etc…In the end, WMA was actually a great agency and still in the top 3. They just had an image problem. With strategic thinking (no merger needed) they could have done something special instead of cop out. Get rid of Fogelman who was running the Mopic department or reduce him to another position. Change up a few management positions and reward people and not instill fear. The merger was not well thought out at all.
I second that. Carnahan is also a good dude. Straight forward and honest. People like that often clash with their antagonist…phonies, fakes, fraudulent and fearful insecure people.
Thank you.