What's Behind Red-Hot William Morris Memo

Hollywood has been gap-jawed over the leak to TheWrap last Thursday of a memo revealing the salaries and stock awards to top executives at the William Morris (now WME) Agency.

But that’s nothing compared to the anger coursing through what’s left of William Morris, directed squarely at CEO Jim Wiatt, for one, but also at the company’s COO, Irv Weintraub, who was revealed to be making a salary commensurate with that of the agency’s chairman, Norman Brokaw, at $4.25 million.

Weintraub is the man who wrote the memo in 2007, and the guy most embarrassed by its revelation, after it was faxed by John Fogelman, who has made the board of WME, to a number in New York. (See original Waxword column.)

.

To some angry, knowledgeable insiders, the memo confirms that Wiatt betrayed the venerable brand of William Morris, using Fogelman and Weintraub to manage the old guard, Brokaw and Walt Zifkin (the guy noted as having made $7 million “for several years,” which may have been his payout as he left).

All of this reinforces the view of those who believe that Wiatt sold out William Morris in allowing it to merge -- but in fact be taken over -- by Endeavor.

As one in this camp told me: “All of this is really bad Shakespeare.”

So a few basic answers to a few basic questions are in order:

Why was the memo handwritten, in the age of computers?

Because it was top-secret. Weintraub’s memo was a specific response to a confidential request from the top of the agency, “with instructions not to dictate it to a secretary or use a computer,” according to one knowledgeable insider.

William Morris is known as a traditional kind of place. They still use faxes. They like them. (The institution of a “WMA Internet Division” in the late 1990s was greeted with mirth among insiders, who knew that even top agents like Jerry Katzman could not open their email accounts.)

What was the point of the memo?

It appears to have been written to examine the breakdown of compensation within the agency in the wake of the departure of major figures like tv department chief Sam Haskell, chief operating officer Steve Kram, and music agent Richard Rosenberg in December 2004.

 

1 | 2 | 3