INDUSTRY 101 EVENT SERIES
Managers 101: All About The Writer & Manager Relationship
Wednesday, July 17, 2024 | 5-6:30 PM PT | Online
You’ve got your script in one hand and all its accolades in the other. Now is the time, you tell yourself, to find a rep. Agents often say, “you don’t find us, we find you.” But that’s not the case with managers. You can go find them.
But how do you do this? Do query letters work? What does “we do not accept unsolicited material” really mean? What do managers really do? Are there different types of managers? How do they interact with other kinds of reps like agents, lawyers, and publicists? What’s it mean when a manager is also a producer? When I’m in a meeting and they offer me a water bottle, do I take it?
This panel will answer all of these questions and more (but we suggest you always take the water bottle).
PANELISTS
Quincie Li
Quincie Li is a literary manager at Kaplan/Perrone Entertainment, where she represents writers and directors in film and television. Her clients work across all genres at all of the major studios including Netflix, Apple, HBO, Showtime, Amazon, Lionsgate, Sony, Paramount, Fox, CBS, and NBC. She began her career as an assistant in the television literary department at ICM Partners and worked at Thruline Entertainment before joining Kaplan/Perrone. Quincie grew up in Orange County, California, and graduated from Vanderbilt University.
Daniel Vang
Daniel Vang was born in a refugee camp in Thailand. As the oldest of five boys, Daniel found his calling in entertainment when his younger brothers would all ask him to pick out the weekend rentals from Blockbuster. He grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina and graduated with a BFA from Savannah College of Art and Design in Film and TV. Daniel got his start as an assistant at William Morris Agency. He is currently a literary manager at 3 Arts and represents writers and directors who have created TV shows and studio movies. In his spare time, Daniel has a dracaena houseplant that he waters twice a month.
John Zaozirny
John Zaozirny oversees the feature film production slate for Bellevue and the Literary Management Team.
His clients’ writing and directing credits include Cobweb, Infinite, Parallel, Eli, Bad Match, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022), Heavy Trip, Office Uprising, Jolt, and Splinter amongst others. His clients have written feature scripts that are set up at Warner Bros, Paramount, Fox, Lionsgate, New Line, Focus Features, Fox 2000, Sony, Universal, amongst others. As well, his clients have had 33 scripts on the last nine Black Lists, the annual list of the best unproduced feature scripts, including Blonde Ambition, the number one script on the 2016 Black List, Headhunter, the number one script on the 2020 Black List, and Cauliflower, the number one script on the 2021 Black List.
His clients have written on TV shows such as FBI International, Bosch: Legacy, Mr Robot, Kiff, Shantaram, Training Day, Tiny Pretty Things, Hawaii Five-O, The Man in the High Castle, and Hand Of God, amongst others. He also reps the writer of the Eisner-nominated comic book Little Bird.
As a producer, John’s feature film projects include Cristo (set up at Warner Bros, Black List 2010), Warden (set up at New Line), Capsule (set up at Fox, Black List 2013), Blonde Ambition (set up at Universal, Black List 2016), and Lionhunters (set up at Warner Bros, Black List 2017.) He was an executive producer on the feature films Always Watching and Parallel and produced Eli, which was released by Netflix in 2019. He most recently produced Paramount’s Infinite, which was directed by Antoine Fuqua and starred Mark Wahlberg, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Dylan O’Brien, was released on Paramount Plus in 2021.
Raised in Vancouver, Canada, John is a graduate of the Tisch Film and Television program at New York University.
MODERATOR
Ada Tseng
Ada Tseng is a journalist who was an assistant editor on the Utility Journalism and Features teams at the Los Angeles Times. She worked on projects that helped people solve problems, answer questions and make big decisions about life in and around Los Angeles -- including the Hollywood Careers series, which gives practical advice to those trying to break into the entertainment industry. She was also a co-founder of the Los Angeles Times AAPI Caucus, and she co-hosts the Asian American pop culture history podcast “Saturday School.”
