Ask Phil: Frustrated Client

My email address will be at the end of every column, so please send in your questions and comments about life at the intersection of screenwriting and mental health. It’s a busy intersection!

Dear Phil,

My agent is driving me crazy! He won’t return my calls, ignores my emails, I’m not getting notes on my scripts, it’s like I don’t exist to him. I find myself thinking about it all day, and it’s stressing me out both emotionally and physically. What can I do?

Signed, Frustrated Client

Dear Frustrated Client,

I hear you on this one, Frustrated Client. The agent/client relationship you’re describing was one I struggled with for a long time. An agent’s job is to get their clients work, which is a business relationship that most people don’t experience in their chosen fields. I remember friends in other industries talking about their networking woes or salary negotiations and feeling relieved that I had an agent to do all that for me. However, now I see how that can become a trap. You’re walking around resentful and angry all day because you’ve farmed out responsibility for your career to your agent, you don’t like how it’s going, and you don’t know what to do about it.

The best way you can eliminate some of this frustration is by taking back the responsibility for your own career. Learn to be your own agent. Do more of your own networking, reach out to former co-workers for catch-up chats, do the things you would want your agent to be doing for you. I wish I had done this earlier in my career. I was so eager to farm out all the networking to my agent that, if I saw that a former co-worker sold a pilot, I would call my agent and ask them to call instead of picking up the phone myself, because I didn’t want to seem desperate or admit that I wasn’t working.

By putting in the work of being your own agent you won’t be sitting around waiting for a phone call from your actual agent. And your actual agent will appreciate this! I think agents like working with clients who hustle on their own more than the ones who keep calling them to “check in” and “see what’s going on.” A much better phone call to your agent would be about how you networked your way into talking to a showrunner who’s between shows and is up for reading some of your material, could he send them a script? Or explaining that a friend introduced you to a producer at a party who’s up for sitting down for a general with you, could their office set up the meeting? The worst phone calls to make are the weekly “what’s going on?” calls. In those situations, you’re not bringing anything to the table.

Many creative types have a hard time pitching themselves. Some combination of imposter syndrome, low self-esteem, and other attributes that in my experience tend to appear more in creative types makes promoting ourselves difficult. I used to approach this by externalizing a part of myself to become my own agent, to the point where I would draft emails to producers and executives talking about “My client, Phil Stark.” It was much easier for me to tell a producer about how great Phil’s new script was, how much Phil loves their show, and how Phil would be such a perfect fit on their staff," than it was for me to tell them about myself. After drafting these emails I’d go back and replace every “Phil” with a “me” and be amazed at how confident I sounded.

You’ll notice that in these suggestions I haven’t mentioned writing at all. That’s something you should always be doing: brainstorming, writing, pitching, the never-ending cycle of development. What I’m talking about here is the representation side of the business, both how your agent represents you and how you represent yourself. The more agenting you do on your own, the more empowered you will feel, the more your agent will appreciate you hustling, and the more likely that in the future you’ll feel less frustrated than you do right now.

Therapist and screenwriter Phil Stark answers reader questions about topics at the intersection of screenwriting and mental health. Got a question for Phil? Email him at starktalktherapy@gmail.com