A Critical Must-Read for All Actors and Agents

John Remington -- Top 1000 Amazon.com Reviewer

In a brave act of generosity, honesty and salty discourse, professional talent agent Tony Martinez introduces the simple, cold hard facts of THE key point in becoming a working actor: finding and working with an agent. In his helpful, thoroughly accessible and entirely entertaining AN AGENT TELLS ALL, Mr. Martinez, assumes two truths about his prospective (and specific) audience.

1) Either they are complete and utter neophytes wearing rose-colored glasses entering a noble profession with visions of red carpet glory.

OR

2) They are experienced actors who have had their souls and bums kicked by the reality that professional acting is ultimately nothing more than an industry and need to heal and adjust after a few years of making the same mistakes repeatedly.

Writing in a direct, unpretentious, jargon-free style that invokes visions of a long conversation over a lunch of cheap margaritas and oysters in the half shell, Martinez refreshingly holds nothing back as he sets out to define not only the agent's job, but the actor's job as well. Ultimately it all boils down to relationships and being completely committed to constantly evolving as both an artist and as a person.

Cutting through all the empty "positive-think" self-help posings of so many other similar authors, Martinez rightfully portrays acting as a capitalist venture based upon the laws of supply and demand. If an actor has never thought of themselves as a product, it is time they did. If they have never before considered the acting industry as a social Darwinist world - it also is time they did.

But Martinez is not here just to dash out dreams, his ultimate objective is to provide the actor advice and specific tools to increase one's chances of not only survival, but success as well. His advice is always practical (keep working, be prepared and get over yourself) and personal (he provides many fine anecdotes illustrating the "do's" and "don'ts").

His constant litany is: be smart while one keeps working and, most importantly, be a decent human being. For at the end of the day, it is the relationships one develops with themselves and the people around them that will carry one through to the end.

At a quick, easy to read 216 pages, AN AGENT TELLS ALL deserves to become a dog-eared personal reference for all who dare to enter the world's most noblest profession.

This is a must read.

Back to Reviews