This week Gray talks all about management, with special guest Jenny Frankfurt.
Jenny Frankfurt is a film and television literary manager/producer who owns the company Highstreet Management in Los Angeles. She currently represents such writing talent as Sterling Anderson, David Madsen, Norma Vela, Joel Thomas, Malcolm Kohll, Jill Campbell, Crystal Hubbard, Phil O’Shea and others – most based in Los Angeles and the UK, but others throughout the US. She has sold television shows (both reality and fiction), features, and staffed television shows for almost 20 years.
After graduating from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Jenny began her career in representation by working at the William Morris Agency in New York, where she worked for a legendary film, tv and playwrights agent, who represented such writers as Eric Bogosian, William Mastrosimone, Warren Leight, Eric Overmyer and Jon Robin Baitz.
From NYC Jenny moved to Los Angeles where she worked at ICM with clients such as Susan Sarandon, Louis Malle, Johnny Depp, Lasse Hallstrom and Will Smith. After deciding management would give her more freedom to produce and influence her client’s careers, she started working with manager Rick Yorn and clients such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Cameron Diaz, Claire Danes and Benicio Del Toro.
Jenny tried her own hand at producing the independent feature Johnny Hit and Run Pauline, to which Emma Thompson was attached as Executive Producer. Jenny then started working with the infamous manager Benny Medina at Handprint Entertainment, and incorporating all the time she had recently spent in London, started specializing in working with British and European clients including Spice Girl Geri Halliwell and writers, directors and production companies such as James MacInnes, Saul Metzstein, Daniel Bronzite and the production company F&ME. She soon became Head of Handprint’s Literary Department.
Follow her on Twitter: @TryingTrue
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First published November 18, 2012.