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 Present and The Sum of All Fears to the TV sequence Murder: Life on the Road, which he created, Home, which he govt produced, and Bull, which he co-created and govt produced.
And whereas Hollywood didn’t believed in him early on, one particular person all the time 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 kind of most cancers.
“The world may be very a lot diminished with out Tony,” Attanasio mentioned of the Illinois native. “He was actually a good looking soul.”
Listed below are the recollections he shared of Etz:
A good friend 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, however it actually is crucial to understanding Tony. There’s a legacy on the market of unhealthy harvests and difficult winters that by some alchemy brings out the very best in folks, reminds them to be pleasant and type, and put others first. Deep down, Tony had that grit.
Amongst different issues, he had the grit to outlive a nasty sickness for a few years along with his distinctive grace. He was bold, sufficient to get right here from the Midwest and achieve a jostling enterprise. The way it received expressed in Tony was not sharp elbows, however a boundless, Midwestern good nature, and decency.
I’d say Tony was like a Dad, however for me, he was like my Mother: 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 manner that, in these days, actually, I used to be not. He used to log off each name by saying, “Dangle in there.” It was like a catchphrase from Hill Road Blues. It was powerful on the market. We might get via it collectively.
The one 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 College of Milan with somewhat little bit of household cash.
I believe folks exterior the enterprise don’t actually perceive what being an agent is. If you do it proper, it’s about love: all giving and no taking. Tony understood me in a manner I couldn’t (and nonetheless can’t) perceive myself. He had the sensitivity to know what was distinctive to me (which I’d 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 in a position to accomplish in tv. I couldn’t have accomplished it with out him.
Once I instructed him that lately, he pretended to not agree, as a result of he had, additionally, that Midwestern modesty. However he knew I used to be proper.
