Features: The Rise of the Producer's Rep

Micah Green is a natural salesman - confident, persuasive and press savvy, delivering juicy quotes as often as teenage girls say "like." He's also a tad cocky, but he's earned the right to be a little arrogant. Having joined film consulting firm Cinetic Media in 2001, and working alongside colleague John Sloss, Green has helped broker sales deals for a list of films that reads like a countdown of 'Top 10 Big Screen Doc Hits.' The Fog of War, Spellbound, Bowling for Columbine, Capturing the Friedmans, Control Room, and Super Size Me were all handled by the New York-based company.

Cinetic's reputation as a tough negotiator has earned its principals the respect of the industry, but they also have their fair share of detractors among distributors who question their practices. Green takes that as a compliment. "We are their biggest nightmare," he says. "They shudder when we get involved with a film, because we generally sell the films we pick up for the highest potential market value. That's not what most sell for. Most films not only sell for less than they're worth, but often for far less then their budgets. Frankly," he adds, "that's how most distributors would like it to be, because it's a safer investment for them."

For as long as there have been films, there have been people hired to sell them. But with docs performing well at box office, a new crop of middle men have emerged. Cinetic is among the most active of these, but it's joined by talent agencies, international sales agents and a growing number of producer's reps. Together with the advent of more commercial docs and an increasingly sophisticated film market, these reps are not only changing the way docs are bought and sold, they're determining which docs make it to the silver screen, and the prices they fetch.

And then docs made money

Hamish McAlpine, owner of Tartan Films, a U.K.-based theatrical distributor that opened an office in L.A. in July, 2004, has observed a swell of new faces selling docs. "Documentaries have suddenly become more valuable," he says, noting that good box office creates greater value in the tv and home video markets. "That's caused all sorts of people to jump in who were previously not interested." Among them are law firms, talent agencies like William Morris and United Talent Agency and even former acquisition execs.

New York law firm Epstein, Levinsohn, Bodine, Hurwitz & Weinstein recently expanded its sales activities, hiring a consultant to track films it could rep in the market. (Bodine and partners represent Michael Moore and helped negotiate the sale of Fahrenheit 9/11.) Unlike legal work or talent representation, notes founding partner and attorney Susan Bodine, film sales can produce a potential windfall. "Your ticket to being able to put a swimming pool in your country home comes from the sales aspect," she offers ironically.

And while docs were slowly inching their way into the mainstream market, the market itself matured. Says Bodine of the sales business in the '80s and '90s: "It was kind of Wild West and amateur. Today, many distributors are part of multinational corporations. Those kinds of changes are subtle in the way they influence the market, but they've brought a level of sophistication and professionalism to the activity of being a sales rep that wasn't there before."