Ask a Former Assistant: Conan Smith (Buchwald)
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Conan Smith
Head of Comedy at Buchwald
Interviewed by Gillian Madans; Commercial Assistant, Agent Trainee, and Comedy Coalition Member at Buchwald
Thanks for speaking with me today, Conan! I've learned so much from you over the past year as a Comedy Coalition member at Buchwald, and I'm excited to share some of your great insight with our readers.
Can you please tell us a little about your background? How did you break into the industry?
I started at the William Morris Agency as an intern in 1990. I didn’t even know what an agency did at that stage of the game. My dad was a client there. He was a newscaster / anchor here in New York for 20, 30 years. So he called his agent and got me the internship, and then I just really dug the business.
They had a thing there called the agent training program, where you start in the mailroom. First, you had to go through a series of interviews. I think I was probably interviewed a dozen times by different agents and department heads. And they ask you questions and see what you want to do in the business, and if you pass, you start in the mailroom, pushing a mail cart, learning everybody’s names, who does what, when, where, and how. Mind you, this was before cell phones, computers... We had a fax machine, which was a big deal back then! So that was how you broke into the business there.
There were probably five, six, or seven trainees in the mailroom at any given time, and when an assistant's desk opened up, you’d apply for that job. Before that would happen, you would float and cover people who were on vacation or out sick for the day, so you could get a sense of what you gravitate towards. In my case, it was a comedy agent whose assistant was leaving. We were friendly, and I said, “I would love to work for you,” and I got the gig! And that was my first assistant job there.
And then… So this is a funny story. I was working for him for maybe two months. And the president of the company called him up to his office, and I never saw him again. And then they call me up. Turns out he was stealing from the company. A client would book something, he’d put it into the system, then he’d cancel it, and the client would just pay him the 10% directly. I didn’t know a thing about it. I would never condone anything like that. When they called me up, I told them I knew nothing, but I was pretty sure I could do his job. That’s what I said to the president of the company. And he laughed his ass off. I didn’t get the job, but I think he appreciated the moxie of a kid thinking he could do it. To this day, we’re good friends.
So then I needed another job. At the same time, the head of the TV department’s desk opened up. And he was a very powerful guy at the company. I got his assistant’s job. I spent a year, maybe a year and a half there. All the while I kept up with the other comedy agents there because I still loved the comedy side of things. They hired a new comedy agent to come in after they merged with another company. And I said to my boss, “I’d like to have more of an elevated role in what I would like to do here in the comedy space,” so they promoted me to a junior agent to work with this guy. So from there I was able to go out and sign people and bring them in. I was a junior agent for six months, and they promoted me to a full agent from there. All in all, it was probably a three year period from the start of the internship to when I was promoted to an agent.
What drew you to comedy?
In the late 80’s, my mom was in town—I was in college; I went to Hofstra—and my brother came too, and we ended up going to the old Catch a Rising Star, which is on the Upper East Side. And Andrew Dice Clay was there, and this was before he was famous, and I remember him picking on my brother. My brother got all bent out of shape because he didn’t like what he was saying, but I thought it was hilarious, but that was probably one of my first times in a comedy club. And I just remember the situational stuff the comedians would do—and that’s the stuff people I’ve signed along my career do.
What would you say are the main differences between a big agency like WME and a medium-sized one like Buchwald?
There’s a lot more sandboxes to play in. Here we have our TV and film department, commercial, unscripted; the bigger places like that have motion picture lit, TV lit, all separate entities. We have those different disciplines here at Buchwald too, but they’d also have a complete personal appearance department that covered all the music, they’d have someone that would help clients that wrote music write soundtracks. I think the multitude of other areas they can play in made them a bigger entity. It doesn’t mean bigger is better. Anyone at Buchwald can do any of the stuff those guys can do, but at the end of the day, it was more of a dedicated department the way they did it.
You also spent time in your career as a manager and producer. What drew you back to agenting?
Don Buchwald. Tony Burton (another agent at Buchwald), and I were friends, and he knew that I might be sniffing around to get back into agenting. The management company we formed, we sold. It wasn’t going in the direction I felt it should be. So I got to talking to Don, and he was great. He asked me how I’d do it and what I would need, and I laid out my ten point plan. And he told me, “You got it. Let’s do it.” Next thing you know, I’m back at Buchwald creating the comedy division for them, which took a minute to get going, but since then we’ve had some nice wins.
A lot of people confuse being a Talent Manager and a Talent Agent. In your eyes, what are the main differences?
To me, I’m the same. When I’m an agent, I’m more managerial, and when I was a manager, I was more agentey. It’s important to know both sides of the coin. When I represent somebody, I’m much more than someone making a deal. I’m about helping shape what they’re doing to make it sell. That’s one of the things clients like about me. I give my two cents. It’s not just about booking something, it’s “let’s work through this script. Let’s do a notes pass” and get it to a point where we get to sell it, rather than just setting up a pitch meeting and trying to sell it. Helping it get there is half the battle. I think I have a good sense of what sells. And when you have your fingerprints on it, it’s more fulfilling because you helped the creative process, and I think I'm much more creative than just a deal maker.
What is the biggest challenge you've faced in your time as an agent?
Probably losing some clients along the way. That was always frustrating to me. I was never one that was like, “You have to sign these papers.” If you don’t want to be here, I don’t want you here, and vice versa. But when you lose a client, it’s a tough thing sometimes because you put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into it. But there was a guy who was chairman at Willam Morris, Lou Weiss. I’d tell him what happened, and he said, “They come, they go; who called?” Just to put it in perspective. Clients come and clients go, but we’re the constants in this business: the agents, the managers, the support staff. It’s an ongoing churn of clients coming and clients going. After he said that to me, the lightbulb went off. I’m not going to get that emotionally involved if it’s a business decision by them. I’ve dropped clients for reasons that made sense for me too, so at the end of the day, you have to find your work-life balance with that.
Can you tell us about a success story or a moment you are particularly proud of in your career?
It would have to be Gina Yashere with Chuck Lorre. Chuck Lorre was going to hire her, and she didn’t want to do it. She told me to call him up and tell him she wasn’t interested. I never made the call. I let it go. Instinctually. And a couple of days later she called me and said, “Do you think you can get the deal back?” and I said, “I know I can, because I never made the call,” and she laughed her ass off. And it made her a millionaire from that. So she’s a pretty happy person.
What are key skills you need to be an agent to multi-hyphenates?
You have to listen, you have to read, and you have to be able to effectively give your opinion on things. Because that’s why they hire you. A monkey can make a deal. To project your feedback creatively to help what they’re making or doing is a key quality to have. Honesty is another one. Don’t blow smoke. What good is that going to do? To me, you’re judged by the type of person you are and if people want to be around you because you give them sage advice. That’s the play. You have to be cognizant of that.
Lastly, what advice would you give to current assistants in the industry?
Read everything you can possibly read. Be knowledgeable about every aspect of the business that exists. You never know. If you don’t know the players, what’s being bought, and the other aspects of what we do, you’re not going to be able to make an educated decision on where you want to be and what you want to do. Discover and learn stuff. Make friends too. These friends are going to follow you for the rest of your career. You have to be a person people want to be around, because then a lot of things will flow to you rather than just having to chase things.
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