Tinsel Town’s a Tough Sell

How do you sell a star whose reputation as Hollywood’s bad boy had put his career on semipermanent hold? Agent extraordinaire Arnold Rifkin, president of Triad Inc., used the direct approach. He went directly to the producer of a movie whose hero fit the star’s persona to a “T” and pitched a fastball right over home plate.

Rifkin, who gave up a thriving shoe business to bank on a showbiz dream of prosperity amid the stars of Sunset Boulevard, has made it BIG!

While pioneering the concept of a total talent agency, he and partner Nicole David redefined the old notion that an agent’s purpose was to sell stars for parts in movies. Instead, Rifkin’s agency sells package deals from the scripts that cross his desk to the final film editing, Triad is involved in every phase of the initial deal. Rifkin scouts production companies, directors, writers and stars, along with the music that’s become an integral part of every top grossing film. Once he has a viable story, the mix and match deal making gets under way.

In this high stakes game of convince and beguile, the selling often takes place after hours, between takes, or on the tennis court (not to mention while taking a lunch). A business day can turn into a meeting marathon where even a star’s hairdresser has to be in on the deal. None of the hoopla fazes Rifkin who knows just where his buns are best buttered. His career never crowds out his family. Doing the best for his client – without ever promising the moon – are the stars in Rifkin’s eyes.

Before the kliegs light up, before the cameras focus in tight, before the actors walk on the set – Arnold Rifkin makes the deal.

As a founder of Triad Artists Inc., one of the largest talent and literary agencies in the world, Rifkin is responsible for finding roles for top stars in the business, as well as vehicles for well-known writers, producers and directors. His company’s roster of clients reads like a Who’s Who of Hollywood: Bruce Willis, Julie Andrews, Blake Edwards, Whitney Houston…

The keys to his success, this dynamic and influential agent claims, are persistence, a positive outlook and a passionate belief in whatever he’s doing.

A perfect example of all three at work was the behind-the-scenes part Rifkin played in the resurgence of James Caan’s career. Best known for his leads in Brian’s Song and The Godfather, Caan fell from grace with the film community during the filming of Francis Ford Coppola’s Garden of Stone. The movie failed at the box office and Caan garnered a reputation for being ultra difficult – a label that dogged his career and pitched it into a major-league slump.

Studios refused to hire him until Rifkin heard about a part that seemed a perfect comeback vehicle for this consummate professional. The movie was 20th Century Fox’s Alien Nation and it called for an actor who could project toughness, yet vulnerability – Caan trademarks.

“I had gotten hold of the script through the agent in my office and we decided that there was nobody a better age, a better `physicality’ or better equipped than James Caan,” Rifkin remembers, then adds, “And we went on an all-out campaign.”

His targets were the director, the producer and the studio. Each had a separate agenda, and each had to be approached differently.

“Basically a producer is looking for the actor best suited for the movie and one who also fits in well with the rest of the deal. The studio wants somehow to be guaranteed how much money the stars in the movie will bring in on opening weekend. The director wants to be sure that he doesn’t spend the next 12 weeks with someone he can’t get along with, someone who is not right for the part,” Rifkin explains.

While the perfect scenario would be for all three to walk into his office and say, “Wow! We think so and so is right for…,” that rarely happens in real life. Usually, however, there will be at least one participant who will listen to an agent’s pitch.

“You try to get one ally,” Rifkin says. “Once you hook one, then you work on the rest.”

With Alien Nation, his ally was the producer, Gail Ann Heard. Heard, who also produced the successful sci-fi thriller Alien, became obsessed with Caan for the role. But she was afraid of rumors she’d heard. Once Rifkin realized this, the rest was simple. He decided that the two should meet.

“Once you isolate and discover the issue that holds the deal back, then you can address that specifically instead of dealing with shadows,” he says. “Confrontation, I feel, is very healthy as long as you can do it.”

Such an approach is typical. Always positive, Rifkin never tells people that they’re wrong. Instead, he prefers to be passionate about why he’s right, then give them room to discover the correctness of his viewpoint for themselves. Like most successful salespeople, he’s usually on the money. That is something others in the industry have come to admire and trust. When Rifkin talks, people listen – and give him the benefit of the doubt.

“If you always have come on strong about something that you believe, and you are passionate enough that you are willing to put your credibility out there with your opinion, very often that past catches up to you and secures you a position in the present,” he says.

With someone like Heard, who had let the Tinsel Town rumor mill taint her viewpoint, Rifkin tried a light approach.

“I always jest with people who say to me, ‘Yeah, but I heard…’ I say to them, ‘Do you want to live your life thinking something is true because someone has told you, or do you want to find out for yourself?’ Imagine living your life being told that this car or that car is no good and never taking the opportunity to drive it for yourself.”

Rifkin, pausing to reflect for a moment, reveals perhaps as much about himself as those he deals with.

“The most important thing people can do to make the decision whether someone (or something) is right for them or wrong for them is to make the decision based upon their own encounters,” he says.

Heard, evidently, subscribes to the same philosophy. She met with Caan, and her opposition melted. She was hooked; and Rifkin had his ally.

He explains, “By the time they were done, she said, ‘Let’s unite and figure out the best way to approach the studio and get them to approve Jimmy.'”

Rifkin credits his persistence and positive attitude to his father who ran a business in Manhattan. The younger Rifkin earned money modeling during graduate school, then quit to open up a store near his father’s. The two worked together for several years until a customer, Nicole David, offered to put up the money so Rifkin could open a retail clothing outlet.

“I did that for a year or two, then decided I wanted a change,” Rifkin recalls. “I sold out my interest…and moved to Los Angeles.”

The budding entrepreneur bought a shoe store and moved the operation to Los Angeles. The business was a success, but Rifkin was restless. When he met up with David again, he was ripe for a career change.

“I convinced her that whatever she was doing, there was no down side, only an up side. I said that I wanted to be an agent and we would be partners. We started Rifkin-David in 1972,” he recalls. “And that was it.”

Little more than a decade later, Rifkin-David merged with two other companies — Adams, Ray and Rosenberg, a literary agency, and Regency Artists, which represented music and variety acts – to form Triad Artists Inc. The new company is one of the few “full-service” agencies in existence. That’s especially important in the era when so many musicians are making a crossover into film, and where the soundtracks to movies like Flashdance and Beverly Hills Cop play such a significant bottom-line role.

Today, Triad has 75 agents out of a staff of 235. Their job is to go out into the market and cover every conceivable area of information. Like Rifkin, they want to know what people are talking about, what is being written, what projects are under development, what is getting the green light – and what isn’t.

“Now the studios depend upon us to let them know about new writers we have signed, about new material we have read, new actors we’ve signed. So they are constantly in communication with us as well as my people calling them. Therefore, we have a constant exchange,” Rifkin explains.

To keep on top, this busy professional reads one script a day on weekdays and an average of six to nine on weekends. They may be unsolicited scripts, films that have gotten a green light or ones he’s specifically checking over for a client.

“It’s our responsibility to find properties as early as possible to make it happen for someone we feel is right and ready,” he says.

Working with actors, according to Rifkin, takes a certain amount of diplomacy and tact. Whether it be a big name like Bruce Willis or an unknown, neither wants to know that he isn’t wanted for a part. A sensitive agent intuitively understands this.

“You have to be careful how you relate the status of the situation, because if you are right, then ultimately you procure the job for the client and the client is getting a deal. You want to make sure that the relationships that you kick off get started on a positive note. So even though there may be resistance by one of the three elements, you never want the actor to feel that the resistance is personal.”

Rifkin’s tactic is to tell the actor that he isn’t the first choice, that the studio wants, say, someone with a bigger name. Then he adds that he is going to go in there and fight to make sure he gets the part anyway.

“Nobody can guarantee anybody anything,” he says. “But I tell the client I will do everything possible in my power…to create the opportunity to have you go in and get the job. Ultimately, when the actor, the performer, the director – whatever capacity you are representing – goes in on that initial meeting or that final meeting, all we can do is set the stage.”

That attitude underlies Rifkin’s think positive philosophy. “Approaching anything with a negative attitude only encourages rejection that much sooner,” he says.

“I want very much to win,” Rifkin explains. “And I think getting on a tennis court and saying, `I can’t beat this guy,’ is the same thing as saying, ‘I won’t make this deal.’ And it probably won’t happen. But getting on the court and saying, ‘I know that I am better than he is, I just need a mental frame to adjust to his game so I can find out his weaknesses, instead of his finding out mine.’ That is the difference.”

Despite the difficulties of working with temperamental stars and difficult studios, Rifkin says his biggest challenge is learning how to balance his work load with his family life. Finding time to spend with his wife and children is tough in a world that doesn’t stop just because it’s Thanksgiving or Christmas.

“I have discovered that, no matter what else happens during the course of the day, I have three people in my life – my two children and my wife – who are going to love me in spite of the fact that I was not brilliant today in effecting something. They love me for who I am. I am just realizing this is the most important thing that I can enter this life and leave this life with. So what I have to learn is how to accomplish my priorities, to be the best I can at what I do during the day, and be the father, the lover, the friend, the confidante, etc., to my family. There is only so much time to devote to anything. So I better be as good and as positive as I can during the hours I have available.”