Paul Attanasio is an achieved movie and TV writer-producer, nominated for 2 Oscars and 4 Emmy Awards, whose credit vary from the flicks Donnie Brasco, Quiz Show and The Sum of All Fears to the TV sequence Homicide: Life on the Street, which he created, House, which he govt produced, and Bull, which he co-created and govt produced.
And whereas Hollywood didn’t consider in him early on, one particular person at all times did — his longtime TV agent Tony Etz at CAA who died yesterday on the age of 64 after an extended battle with Chordoma, a uncommon sort of most cancers.
“The world is very much diminished without Tony,” Attanasio stated of the Illinois native. “He was really a beautiful soul.”
Here are the recollections he shared of Etz:
A buddy of ours talks about Tony’s important Midwesternness: Midwestern decency and Midwestern grit. I don’t know you probably have spent any time within the Midwest, nevertheless it actually is crucial to understanding Tony. There is a legacy on the market of unhealthy harvests and difficult winters that by some alchemy brings out one of the best in individuals, reminds them to be pleasant and type, and put others first. Deep down, Tony had that grit.
Among different issues, he had the grit to outlive a nasty sickness for a few years along with his distinctive grace. He was formidable, sufficient to get right here from the Midwest and achieve a jostling enterprise. How it received expressed in Tony was not sharp elbows, however a boundless, Midwestern good nature, and decency.
I might say Tony was like a Dad, however for me, he was like my Mom: nurturing, a dependable supply of affection. He used to name me “beachfront property.” He thought I used to be the best author since Homer. I didn’t wish to let him down. Tony was a lot part of issues within the early days of my profession that my children’ stuffed animals used to speak to one another about him in stuffed animal voices. He was regular in a means that, in these days, actually, I used to be not. He used to log out each name by saying, “Hang in there.” It was like a catchphrase from Hill Street Blues. It was powerful on the market. We would get by means of it collectively.
The solely factor that wasn’t Midwestern about Tony was how he dressed. He was a pointy dresser. He offered much less like an agent than a left-wing professor of semiotics on the University of Milan with a bit little bit of household cash.
I feel individuals outdoors the enterprise don’t actually perceive what being an agent is. When you do it proper, it’s about love: all giving and no taking. Tony understood me in a means I couldn’t (and nonetheless can’t) perceive myself. He had the sensitivity to know what was distinctive to me (which I might continually doubt) however then the breadth of imaginative and prescient to know how that match within the bigger world (which I didn’t perceive in any respect). That was the key ingredient in no matter I used to be capable of accomplish in tv. I couldn’t have accomplished it with out him.
When I informed him that lately, he pretended to not agree, as a result of he had, additionally, that Midwestern modesty. But he knew I used to be proper.