(BPI) LOS ANGELES-Ten agents will exit the William Morris Agency before the end of the year, marking the first significant cutbacks since new management joined WMA this summer. The departures were expected.
Meanwhile, in an effort to cash in on the youth market, Don Buchwald & Associates and Talent Group Inc. have pooled their resources to spin off a third agency, the Buchwald Talent Group, to represent the teenage set.
Three of the agents leaving WMA are longtime veterans: Johnnie Planco, Gene Parseghian, and Carol Yumkas. Others to depart are Christian Donatelli, Carl Waynberg, Stephen Bulka, Steve Caserta, Rachel Shapiro, Jeff Field, and Niki Mirisch.
The departures include reps from WMA's Los Angeles and New York offices. Some of the agents will leave immediately, while others will continue through the end of their contracts.
Among them, the departing agents handle such clients as Judi Dench, Christopher Walken, Lauren Bacall, Daniel Day-Lewis, Joseph Fiennes, Jason Alexander, and Paul Schrader. It is unclear whether these clients will remain with the agency.
Word of the agents' departures filtered through rival agencies in New York and Los Angeles last week. Several competing agency toppers said they would be interested in deals with some of the departing WMA agents-and especially their clients.
Among WMA agents reached for comment, many offered explanations for their departures. Reps for WMA declined comment.
Among the cutbacks were several "servicing" agents-second-team agents-whose strength is working in tandem with more-senior counterparts for big-name clients. The practice is said to be anathema to new president/co-CEO Jim Wiatt, who considers it a waste of money and personnel.
The most significant cuts came from the New York motion picture department, which last week saw the exit of talent agent Frank Frattaroli. With longtime agents Yumkas, Planco and Parseghian leaving, only three movie talent agents remain at WMA's New York office-Michelle Stern, Jeff Hunter, and Eunice Lee.
Parseghian was a partner in Triad (along with former WMA president Arnold Rifkin) before that boutique agency was acquired by WMA in 1992. "I am in the process of determining what is best for myself and for my clients," Parseghian said.
Planco, who has worked at WMA for 28 years, said the decision to consolidate much of the motion picture talent department in the Los Angeles office was one he could not follow. "I don't like it out there," he said. Planco said he would like to leave the agency "before the end of the century" and views the break as "a very pleasant opportunity."
What will happen with his clients-including Bacall, Willem Dafoe, Samantha Morton, Scott Glenn and Schrader-will "depend on where I'm going," Planco said.
It has been rumored that Planco might partner with Parseghian and Frattaroli in a Big Apple-based talent venture. Planco declined comment.
Waynberg, who said he plans to move to the buyer's side at his next post, submitted his resignation Sept. 13 to senior vp and head of motion picture lit Alan Gasmer and has spent the past few weeks determining where his clients will land. He served as an assistant to Rifkin for more than three years before he was made an agent in 1997 and was perceived as a stalwart Rifkin supporter.
"A decision was made on the West Coast to make the motion picture department here smaller," said Yumkas, who spent 18 years as a motion picture and literary agent in the New York office. "I was the recipient of that decision."
The agents' exits come as the agency business has been roiled by vast economic and personnel shifts. WMA, which seemed in many ways to have plateaued as a major agency, has been revitalized with the arrival of Wiatt and David Wirtschafter as president/co-CEO and head of the movie department, respectively, while other agencies have had to contend with a shrinking marketplace.
All agencies are coming to terms with serious production and development cutbacks at most major studios, with companies like the Walt Disney Co. slicing movie production in half and others proving far more reluctant than before to make the big spec-and-pitch purchases that were daily fodder for the industry a few years earlier.
Buchwald's World
While Buchwald will continue to operate its talent and lit business and TGI in Los Angeles will keep its commercial company, the two firms will transfer their young clients to BTG, a new agency slated to open for business in two weeks.
In addition, Buchwald & Associ-ates is in negotiations with Arletta Proch to fold her Kelman/Arletta Agency in L.A., which specializes in representing children and young adults, into BTG.
There are more than 100 agencies in Los Angeles and New York that specialize in the representation of young talent.
Added Tim Angle, president of Don Buchwald's West Coast division: "When TGI started its youth department, most of the work for young actors was in commercials. As the opportunity rose dramatically for young actors in film and television, TGI needed a strategic partner more experienced and well versed on the talent side of the business to fully represent the clients."
BTG will open with a staff of six agents-three in talent, two in on-camera and one in voice-overs. One agent comes from Buchwald, two from TGI, two are new hires and one hire has yet to be made.
Loch Powell, formerly of Coast-to-Coast Talent Group, has joined BTG on the talent side and brings with him such clients as Aaron Paul, ("I'll Be You"), Jesse James ("As Good as It Gets"), and Christopher Khayman Lee ("Safe Harbor").
Don Buchwald's Philip Leader will be transferred to the new division in talent, where he will continue repping clients including Camilla Belle ("Back to the Secret Garden"), Joseph Ashton ("The Education of Little Tree"), and "Moesha's" Marcus Paulk.
TGI's Debbie Palmer will run the commercial side with Eddie Winkler, who comes to BTG from the Gold/Marshak/Liedtke Agency.
TGI's Bob Elyea will run the voice-over and animation department.
BTG's talent department will be located in the same Wilshire Boulevard office building as Buchwald & Associates, while BTG's commercial division will be housed a few blocks down the street with TGI. The agencies will be grooming BTG's youth clients to segue into Buchwald & Associates and TGI as they get older.
Don Buchwald & Associates was formed in 1976 in New York and opened its L.A. office in 1992. The agency has more than 35 agents on both coasts in five separate departments.
TGI, formed more than 20 years ago in Los Angeles, handles actors in the area of commercials, voice-overs and animation.
Zorianna Kit and Dana Harris write for The Hollywood Reporter, as do Stephen Galloway and Thom Geier in New York, who contributed to this combined report.