Agent geography

Sharon Waxman in the New York Times looks for, and mostly doesn't find, larger meaning in the move of Creative Artists Agency and International Creative Management out of Beverly Hills into nearby Century City. "I don't see it as symbolic of anything other than the growth of the agencies from a personnel point of view," said Guy McElwaine, former agent and now president of Morgan Creek. Waxman provides good history of the clustering of talent agencies along Wilshire Boulevard, and a guide to the landscape:

Before the 1990's, the agencies were scattered around Beverly Hills, on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood and farther afield. Then in the heyday of Mr. Ovitz in the late 1980's and early 90's, the buildings along Wilshire Boulevard became a kind of talent gulch, where agencies and management and production companies created a power nexis, rubbing elbows while sharpening their knives.

In that decade small armies of agents (almost always in suits and ties, preferably Armani) could be seen marching up and down Wilshire Boulevard, often in the direction of the Peninsula Hotel bar, or the Beverly Wilshire Hotel lobby, ready to pitch a client or poach one.

All of which has made a rather cozy world of cutthroat competition.

Geographically, talent row begins at C.A.A., which moved into the I. M. Pei building in 1989. It continues along Wilshire, past the Endeavor Agency; United Talent; the former quarters of Artists Management Group, now defunct; William Morris at El Camino Drive; the Gersh Agency on Cañon Drive; Brillstein-Grey at Doheny Drive; and then the Firm near Maple Drive, ending with I.C.M [at La Peer Avenue.]

At the center of the strip is the Grill on the Alley, which shrugs off the move of two large agencies a little farther away. "Perhaps we can get a shuttle going to Century City," said manager Michael Goddard.