Ah, a ringing phone -- the sweetest sound in the world to a talent agent. A smile crosses Perry Zimel's face as he quickly picks up the receiver. "Wen-dee. How are you, hon?" he croons. "I'm good. Listen, they'll pick you up at the airport, okay? They'll drop you off at the hotel, then the next morning a car will take you to Zemeckis."
That's Zemeckis as in the Academy Award-winning director. It's Canadian film star Wendy Crewson on the line and she's about to meet with Robert Zemeckis about co-starring in Harrison Ford's next picture.
"It's all taken care of, hon, okay?"
Crewson is indeed well taken care of. Her agent, Zimel, another Canadian, is her representative to Hollywood and the Canadian film industry. And he's more, much more. He's her mother hen; a nurturing influence in her life, not at all like the fat-cat, schmoozing, Armani-suited movie agents of lore.
Baby-faced, slight of stature and whippet thin, Zimel, 34, looks like a Broadway chorus boy, talks like an Eagle Scout and acts like a Jewish mother. In fact, he is one of three principals at Oscars Abrams Zimel & Associates, one of Canada's top talent agencies.
As the film industry in Canada has grown in both size and sophistication, Zimel is one of a new breed - one of the toughest negotiators in the entertainment industry, a motion-picture agent with enough power and confidence to shake Hollywood like the San Andreas fault, yet an agent who doesn't "do" lunch and only rarely deigns to set foot in California.
"I've had the opportunity to move to the States many times," says Zimel. "Forty-five percent of what I do is stateside, but I like doing it here. I love this country."
Even though he's based in Toronto, Zimel's power in the U.S. market steadily increases as Canada continues to be an ever-more vital resource for Hollywood. This year, the U.S. entertainment industry released a study of "runaway productions," suggesting it lost $2.8 billion (US) on movies and television shows shot outside the United States. Although the Directors Guild of Canada claims this figure is grossly inflated, what is not in dispute is that Canada reaped a whopping 81% of that total.
Zimel says, "A lot of productions that would normally shoot in the United States come to Canada. They're not going many other places; they're coming here. Our dollar is low, we have great tax incentives and we have exceptional talent and phenomenal crews who are highly trained. Our directors, our writers, our actors don't work because they look right. They work because they are right."
And all that Canadian talent needs someone to negotiate for them. Part of the reason Zimel is so successful is that he's more than just a deal-maker - he's a career-maker, keeping an eye on the projects his clients are doing this year as well as 10 years from now."
"When you go through the list of people who are really good at what they do - and there's a handful of people in this city who are really good agents - Perry just sort of stands out," says Cynthia Dale, one of the stars he represents. "Perry loves the business," she says, "and that's no mean feat. You can get incredibly bitter in this business, but it's still all alive and exciting to him."
Until two years ago, Zimel was with the prestigious talent agency Great North Artists Management. After a decade at Great North, he joined with his sister, Gayle Abrams, and Michael Oscars to form Oscars Abrams Zimel & Associates. He represents about 65 of OAZ's 200 clients, including actors Christopher Plummer, Margot Kidder, Kate Nelligan, R.H. Thompson, Gloria Reuben, Paul Gross and Alberta Watson, as well as directors Jerry Ciccoritti, Gail Harvey, Steve DiMarco and F. Harvey Frost.
"He has a forward-moving, aggressive, positive, deal-maker energy," observes actor Henry Czerny, his client for the past 14 years.
Zimel says he's "a sporadic insomniac" and it's not hard to believe. "His work ethic kind of rubbed off on me," says Czerny. "He made me realize that if he's working this hard on my career, then maybe I should get up a little earlier and just put a little more of my nose to the grindstone."
Czerny says he can remember Zimel taking an ordinary lunch hour only once.
Besides working all the time (24-7 is how he puts it), Zimel has also cultivated a reputation, among his clients at least, for being pathologically honest. "There's a lot of non-truths in this business," he says with unexpected solemnity, "and I don't like that. I live my life in truth."
"I got so fed up with people lying to me, I just had enough," says Margot Kidder, a veteran of the Hollywood mill. "There's just so much B.S. down there in L.A., you know? And Perry's not into bullshit at all. He doesn't schmooze. He just pretty much tells it like it is."
One of Zimel's greatest champions, Kidder now uses him as her sole representative in both the United States and Canada. "In L.A., what they do is, if they haven't got you a job for ages, they take you to some elegant lunch and they tell you how wonderful you are and how much interest there is in you - and often they're just making it up so that you'll stay with the agency," she says. "Perry doesn't do that. He's a real straight shooter. He'll go, 'God, they thought you were too old for that part,' or 'They didn't like you in your last picture.' You really know what's going on."
Cynthia Dale couldn't agree more. "When you're an actor, you're such a victim. Very seldom are you in control. Perry's attitude is, 'You're an actor and they should be grateful to have you in this part,' which is a wonderful reverse and an empowering thing."
Perry Zimel was born in Montreal, the youngest of five children ("My mother is a saint - which is pretty good for a Jewish person"), and he always knew what he wanted to for a living. "When I was 11 years old, I did an oral presentation in French class about what I wanted to be when I grew up - an agent de talent," he says. "But I never thought I'd be one. It just materialized."
It didn't materialize all at once, though. Zimel studied film and communications at McGill University before transferring to Ottawa to obtain a degree in criminology at Carleton. He used that degree briefly, working at Kingston Penitentiary with child abusers. It wasn't long before he decided against continuing a career in law and moved to Toronto.
Once in Toronto, "I did everything," he says. "I was a Young Drivers of Canada instructor, I worked with autistic children, I worked in a convenience store, I worked in a bookstore, I delivered things, I even worked on a pig farm. The only thing I have not done is wait tables."
Then he pauses and says, "Notice I said 'have not done.' There's this little piece of me that wants to wait tables. I love to take care of people. I think I'd be good at it."
It's probably a good thing that before he had a chance to strap on an apron and recite the specials, Zimel became an assistant at Bookings Talent and Model Agency. In less than four months, he switched jobs to be an assistant to Ralph Zimmerman, the founder of Great North.
"Ralph Zimmerman was brilliant," says Zimel. Zimmerman, however, is not quite as effusive about his former employee. When asked about Zimel, Zimmerman is gracious, yet restrained - which is certainly remarkable, given that when Zimel left two years ago to form OAZ, a large number of Great North's best and brightest clients defected with him.
"See, it's awkward, but I'll tell you this, and I mean it sincerely," says Zimmerman, with a tone of measured politeness, "He's a good agent. No question about it. He's very smart and very good. I've always felt that and I've always said it." But he didn't say more and refused to comment on his thoughts about Zimel taking away his clients. "It's not what you'd be thinking, put it that way," he said.
"Ralph Zimmerman taught me a lot," says Zimel. "He taught me to trust myself, which is a very valuable lesson in this business. He was very good at showing me that I had instincts that I should just run with."
Zimmerman also showed him how to use those instincts to be a great negotiator. "I love negotiating," Zimel says. "I always know where a negotiation is going to end before I even start. I always can tell from the get-go what's going to happen."
"Oh, he's very tough," says Dale. "He knows what he can get. He knows when to push it and when not to push it."
Director Jerry Ciccoritti found himself on the other side of the negotiating table from Zimel during the filming of his movie Paris, France. Zimel represents actress Leslie Hope, who was set to star in Ciccoritti's sexually frank film. "One of the things that I love about Perry is that he is so protective of his clients," says Ciccoritti, "and he did everything he could to protect Leslie in that movie. There was a lot of sex and a lot of nudity that Leslie was just all gung-ho for," he says. "I think at the time, she wanted a severe image change for herself. She loved the script and she and I got along, so she just wanted to jump in headfirst and Perry was like 'Whoa! Wait a second, honey'."
Zimel was subsequently quoted in a newspaper saying, "I had them make human hair extensions to the floor to cover her up."
"Leslie and I hear that story and we just laugh. The thing about the head-to-toe wig is a complete falsehood," chuckles Ciccoritti. "I tease him about that. It's apocryphal. Leslie got to do exactly what she wanted to do, but I love passing the story around."
Now Zimel is moving into film and television production. His first project, Kilbourn, an adaptation of Canadian writer Gail Bowen's popular Joanne Kilbourn mysteries, will air next season, starring Wendy Crewson and Victor Garber. But, he says, "You know what I think the best part of my job is? It's the partnerships that I have. I treat each one of my clients like we're partners in a company, so I work with people as opposed to for people."
Zimel really does speak in drippy clichés like this. Part of his charm is that he knows it: "I've never stopped representing someone because they're high-maintenance. I believe that anyone who's high-maintenance comes from a place of insecurity. If you make people feel secure with themselves, they can actually . . . Oh, my god I sound like a therapist," he giggles.
His clients, nonetheless, bask in this stuff.
Kidder cringes only when she thinks about the choices Zimel could make in his own career. "My worry is he's going to succumb to some temptation to go play with the big boys at CAA or something," she says.
Zimel, meanwhile, insists, "I'm in awe of all my clients, every single one of them . . . I mean, who really gets to negotiate Cynthia Dale's variety special while on roller blades in Maine? I negotiated the film Wendy Crewson just completed with Robin Williams, Bicentennial Man, in Berlin at four a.m. I even negotiated Leslie Hope's directing deal in Florence, Italy, while on a trip with my sister. It's a great life. A great life."