A general view of the ICM Partners talent agency (Photo by AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)
Only weeks after The Hollywood Reporter outlined several episodes of workplace abuse and bullying by Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony (EGOT) winner Scott Rudin, another major entertainment industry scandal has broken.
Hollywood’s local paper, The L.A. Times, relying on accounts provided by past and present ICM employees, published a scathing series of accusations, all of which ICM has aggressively denied and dismissed.
ICM, which stands for International Creative Management, is considered one of the four major talent agencies in the entertainment industry (the others being CAA, WME and UTA.)
ICM was created in 1975 and is home to over 500 agents representing writers, actors, directors, producers, musicians and athletes from North America and around the world.
Even though ICM has rigorously denied the veracity of the accusations made against the corporation, its agents and partners, in this age of “cancel culture” where even the appearance of misdeeds is made public, the damage to the agency’s reputation will likely be severe.
Ever since the criminal allegations surrounding Harvey Weinstein originally surfaced in 2017, the entertainment industry has experienced a series of seismic “power-abuse” reveals, driving the entire business to undergo a necessary and crucial inventory of its culture, behaviors and “norms” — forcing not only abusers, but bystanders as well — into a scorching day of reckoning.
Today, the floodlight of scrutiny falls on ICM.
But anyone with any experience in Hollywood will confide that such reckless work environments as reported out in The L.A. Times hardly fall exclusively on one talent agency alone — let alone a single network, studio or streaming service.
Darwinian, “no-holds-barred” pressure-cooker workplace horror stories go all the way back to fictitious incidents recounted (based on real-life stories endured during Hollywood’s “Golden Age”) in Budd Schulberg’s classic 1941 masterpiece What Makes Sammy Run?
That novel, intended to be a cautionary tale about the abusive behavior of a socio-pathic climber named Sammy Glick, instead became a primer for eager, ambitious souls bent on making it big in Hollywood.
Tinseltown has always been a big believer in inhumane sacrifice as a means to get ahead.
Jeffrey Katzenberg is rumored to have coined a phrase when he was helping save The Walt Disney Studios
Swimming With Sharks — the revenge-thriller that was inspired by Scott Rudin’s boorish behavior toward his studio assistants — is only one of many Hollywood movies and TV series that have brought to life insane workplace environments that, insiders would attest, barely scratch the surface of what actually goes down behind-closed-doors. As coincidence would have it, disgraced Oscar-winner Kevin Spacey stars in that film.
Entourage — HBO’s half hour “coming of Hollywood-age” comedy featuring the character of super-agent Ari Gold, (inspired by the WME agency’s founder, Ari Emmanuel, who recently took his company public) showed the absurdity and extremes of talent agency life at full tilt.
By reputation and legend, the most severe training grounds are the talent agency mail rooms, where future Hollywood titans first cut their teeth by working at the very bottom rung of the industry food chain.
Scores of entertainment legends, too many to name here, got their start in these cutthroat environments.
Mail rooms are where young workers are rewarded as much for their stamina and ability to endure extremely low hourly wages doing thankless, mindless labor (and we’ve come to learn, suffering unspeakable abuse) in exchange for a shot at becoming an assistant and possibly matriculating to agent or studio executive status.
The ICM piece highlights many scandals and toxic incidents, but the current that swirls beneath all of it is the sense that this story is simply the tip of the iceberg and more reports, looking into other major agencies, studios, networks and streamers, are likely on the horizon.
Any dime-store shrink will attest that humans learn abuse, they’re not born with it.
If traumatized, one human is likely to pass on to another the very abuse they suffered, creating links in a chain that often are long, sturdy and difficult to break — let alone eliminate.
Until the entertainment industry devises a more humane approach to training programs outside of the traditional “agency mail room” — more ugly and awful reports are sure to emerge as past trainees, who are now agents or executives, consciously (or unconsciously) pass down to the new generation of Hollywood hopefuls, the severe and outrageous abuse once wrecked upon them.
Racism, bullying, sexism and that other timeless “ism” – ageism – are biases and behaviors that are difficult to get rid of, despite well-meaning articles, important lawsuits and cries from #metoo, timesup and other momentum-building watchdogs.
The loudest cry should be for fair and improved training practices, a real ladder for talented young people to climb (versus archaic mail room sweat-shops) that rewards talent as well as hard work.
Much greater flexibility from the creative community about where they hone talent and how they bring them along is also necessary, because as long as power-brokers insist that young people get training at one of the major agency mail rooms, this vicious cycle will continue unabated.
In theory and often in practice, talent agencies can be an excellent place for a young person to find their way in entertainment, but it shouldn’t be the only way, and newcomers shouldn’t have to tolerate bullies to prove themselves, or worse.
Will change come? Most likely.
More women are in power than ever before.
Executive suites and the sets of movies and TV shows (in front of the camera and behind it) are exhibiting greater and greater diversity since meaningful policy changes have been instituted and embraced.
Content, across the board, features characters, story-lines and environments that were once completely foreign to an industry that not long ago was obscenely monochromatic in its whiteness.
Still, despite important strides, the insides of studios, networks, streaming services and the fulcrum of power — talent agencies — are only now becoming the subject of real investigation.
For example, while there are female partners at all of the major talent agencies, not a single major agency is run by a woman.
Will ICM be the last to be probed, or will more “whistle-blowers” step forward and call out ICM’s competitors — many of them much larger companies, all likely feverishly reviewing their best practices and policies to make sure that they aren’t creating a culture of trauma and abuse worthy of an L.A. Times cover story.
