Paul Attanasio is an accomplished film and TV writer-producer, nominated for two Oscars and four Emmy Awards, whose credits range from the movies Donnie Brasco, Quiz Show and The Sum of All Fears to the TV series Homicide: Life on the Street, which he created, House, which he executive produced, and Bull, which he co-created […]Paul Attanasio is an accomplished film and TV writer-producer, nominated for two Oscars and four Emmy Awards, whose credits range from the movies Donnie Brasco, Quiz Show and The Sum of All Fears to the TV series Homicide: Life on the Street, which he created, House, which he executive produced, and Bull, which he co-created
Paul Attanasio is an accomplished film and TV writer-producer, nominated for two Oscars and four Emmy Awards, whose credits range from the movies Donnie Brasco, Quiz Show and The Sum of All Fears to the TV series Homicide: Life on the Street,which he created, House, which he executive produced, and Bull, which he co-created and executive produced.
And while Hollywood didn’t believe in him early on, one person always did — his longtime TV agent Tony Etz at CAA who died yesterday at the age of 64 after a long battle with Chordoma, a rare type of cancer.
“The world is very much diminished without Tony,” Attanasio said of the Illinois native. “He was really a beautiful soul.”
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Here are the memories he shared of Etz:
A friend of ours talks about Tony’s essential Midwesternness: Midwestern decency and Midwestern grit. I don’t know if you have spent any time in the Midwest, but it really is essential to understanding Tony. There is a legacy out there of bad harvests and tough winters that by some alchemy brings out the best in people, reminds them to be friendly and kind, and put others first. Deep down, Tony had that grit.
Among other things, he had the grit to survive a bad illness for many years with his distinctive grace. He was ambitious, enough to get here from the Midwest and succeed in a jostling business. How it got expressed in Tony was not sharp elbows, but a boundless, Midwestern good nature, and decency.
I would say Tony was like a Dad, but for me, he was like my Mom: nurturing, a reliable source of love. He used to call me “beachfront property.” He thought I was the greatest writer since Homer. I didn’t want to let him down. Tony was so much a part of things in the early days of my career that my kids’ stuffed animals used to talk to each other about him in stuffed animal voices. He was steady in a way that, in those days, certainly, I was not. He used to sign off every call by saying, “Hang in there.” It was like a catchphrase from Hill Street Blues. It was tough out there. We would get through it together.
The only thing that wasn’t Midwestern about Tony was how he dressed. He was a sharp dresser. He presented less like an agent than a left-wing professor of semiotics at the University of Milan with a little bit of family money.
I think people outside the business don’t really understand what being an agent is. When you do it right, it’s about love: all giving and no taking. Tony understood me in a way I couldn’t (and still can’t) understand myself. He had the sensitivity to understand what was unique to me (which I would constantly doubt) but then the breadth of vision to understand how that fit in the larger world (which I didn’t understand at all). That was the secret ingredient in whatever I was able to accomplish in television. I couldn’t have done it without him.
When I told him that recently, he pretended not to agree, because he had, also, that Midwestern modesty. But he knew I was right.
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