of Jack’s favorite topics. I told our staff we should know about every news story days or weeks before it was in Variety. The trick was to find the hidden mother lodes of information, and to do that we had to exploit a niche the rest had overlooked. Ron and Bill and I began by handling studio executives’ own employment contracts, as we’d long done for TV execs. We took no fees for this; we were after something more valuable—an inside track. The vice presidents we handled would give us tips and take a second look at our clients. Then we shared those tips with the most powerful people in town.
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