Hacker Cinema
Jerry Maguire
1996 · Film · 139 min
Directed by Cameron Crowe
Jerry Maguire used to be a typical sports agent: willing to do just about anything he could to get the biggest possible contracts for his clients, plus a nice commission for himself. Then, one day, he suddenly has second thoughts about what he's really doing. When he voices these doubts, he ends up losing his job and all of his clients, save Rod Tidwell, an egomaniacal football player.
2 positive7 neutralfrom 9 commenters
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9 comments on Hacker News
Jerry Maguire. Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy and sequel (Smiley's People). an obscure film called Cabin of Errors.
What is sad, is what has happened to the industry, over time.
When I was younger, recruiters would woo you, and would act as your advocate. They would sing your praises (sometimes, with a bit of “embellishment”) to the prospective employer.
They also made quite a bit of money.
I suspect that outfits like monster.com devastated the “concierge” type of recruiter.
Also, there were contractor specialists. They acted almost exactly like talent agents, getting a commission, whenever they successfully found a contract for their clients. I dealt with a number of them (as an employer) over the years.
I think the “agents” are a thing of the past. Not exactly sure what killed them.
These days, everybody, in every profession, is obsessed with scale. Lots of small numbers, as opposed to a few big ones.
I assume that “self-service” sites have accelerated that transition.
If anyone ever saw the movie Jerry Maguire, it sort of laments the same kind of metamorphosis, in the sports agent field.
I have been rather shocked at the uncouth behavior that has been directed my way, by recruiters. I’ve been told that it’s because I’m older. They haven’t done or said anything to dissuade me from that point of view.
Dealing with today’s recruiters was one of a number of reasons that I threw in the towel on looking for work, and just accepted that I’m in early retirement.
In any case, I am sad to see the change, but folks seem OK with the state of the industry, so I guess that it’s really just sour grapes, on my part.
Since this appeared in a work of fiction, there are two ways of thinking about the author. The first is the fictional character "Jerry Maguire" who, as a character, was going through such a crisis in the movie.
The actual author though was Cameron Crowe, who was writing a screenplay.
FWIW the character was fired after sending this memo to the rest of the office, and lost all but one of his clients.
> My wife and I identify thrift stores, in part, by the number of copies of "Iacocca" (his autobiography) that are on the shelf.
Another thrift store metric is the number of copies of "Jerry Maguire" VHS tapes. A video performance group called Everything Is Terrible has collected over 15,000 Jerry Maguire tapes. They've hosted pop-up video stores that only rent Jerry Maguire. Their new project is raising $500,000 to build a Jerry Maguire pyramid in the desert.
http://www.jerrymaguirepyramid.com/
> (I tried reading "Future Shock", our other perennial thrift store classic, and couldn't make it thru.)
Orson Welles narrated a 40-minute 1972 film version of Future Shock. It's available on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkUwXenBokU
Law firms are typically structured as partnerships. I'm not sure if that's because there's another restriction against operating a law firm as a non-partnership or what.
If a lawyer was part of a company that wasn't a law firm, that would be fine. Actually, this happens pretty frequently--many sports agents happen to be lawyers, because sports agents are responsible for contract negotiations and legal skills are valuable in that situation--though they do not necessarily represent their clients as lawyers and hence the sports agencies they own and operate aren't treated as law firms.
For example, Drew Rosenhaus is a lawyer and a prominent sports agent, and his firm is neither a partnership nor a law firm. Rosenhaus is famous for a number of things, such as being the real-life inspiration for the title character in the film Jerry Maguire and holding a press conference with his famously difficult client Terrell Owens during one of the many controversial incidents he got himself into and responding to every question from the reporters with the phrase, "next question". He was also the agent of Chad Johnson, who famously legally changed his name to Chad Ochocinco for four years to get around league rules preventing him from putting that inaccurate Spanish translation of his jersey number on his jersey in place of his surname.
>Wikipedia claims that itis the best-selling, non-Walt Disney VHS film ever. But according to a 1998 press release from Blockbuster, the film “Titanic” broke records in video home sales, surpassing several Disney filns as well as “Jerry Maguire.”
Why print a wikipedia claim you know is incorrect? Also, two errors in one paragraph (itis, films)
> “I don’t know anyone who could tell you the plot of that movie,” he said. “The average person just says, ‘Show me the money,’ ‘You had me at hello,’ ‘The human head weighs eight pounds.’”
Sports agent Jerry Maguire has a professional epiphany that gets him fired. He enters serious personal relationships with his last client and one employee who left with him, and together they all achieve athletic success and personal happiness.
There are some genuinely valid points sprinkled throughout the article. I'll admit the intensity of the writing style is a bit of a put off. But - after getting a bit deeper into the content, I can sense the emotional aspects have built up for some time. When opening up like this, akin to the Jerry Maguire film portrayal, I feel the author deserves some room to work through these things.
The more I read through it, the more I could relate from an 'indie musician' standpoint with all the services, experts, and opportunities to "grow" in the business. This passage particularly struck a nerve:
>There is an entire industry waiting to take advantage of your insecurities when you want to be a better blogger, and in reality all they are doing is shoving tips down your throat about how to make their jobs easier, how to put more money in their pockets by building an army of cookie-cutter bloggers who will keep paying for conference tickets and ‘exclusive’ insider info.
There's so many different avenues to play on musician's insecurities as well - from "Pay to Play" live show things, to forking over $$$ for a "Premium" account on something like ReverbNation, paying for listens/follows/whatever to look more appealing, or participating along with hundreds of others making remixes for other artists on something like Blend.io where all that work is being given over for FREE in the distant, remote chance to be the winner and get exposure or $XXX in a software prize.
In some ways, the article is great at pointing out "If you want to make money, get a real job!" because that applies to a lot of 'cottage industry' or hobby type pursuits. That's just being pragmatic. But, as noted, there's a whole circular industry in the Mommy Blogging realm that is tempting, corrupting, and at the end of it all, pretty much a sham.
Quite a brave piece of writing for a lot of reasons, and I hope the message resonates with a lot of people who could use a dose of "marketing gut check" when it comes to the Mommy market. It's a big industry, sure. Does it need to be playing dirty with these kinds of tactics? I don't really think so, but in some circles, that's just how business gets done, you know, that whole "payola" thing, which I don't think ever really went away - it just evolved with the times.
Check out these threads:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=450702, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4060887
Also my personal list of favorites that entrepreneurs should watch (although not necessarily about technology):
Glengarry Glen Ross - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104348/
Moneyball - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1210166/
The Pursuit of Happyness - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454921/
Jerry Maguire - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116695/
Catch Me If You Can - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0264464/