[cs137]

I don't think that's the issue with agents and producers. It's more complicated than that.

It's probably different in Hollywood in publishing, but the reasons agents are such a weak link in traditional publishing (to the point of nearly ruining the industry) are: (1) inaccessibility (you can't actually query agents who have any pull; you have to know someone even to get read), and (2) locus of power. To be more specific on the latter, the agent knows that connections inside the industry are her power base, whereas authors are basically interchangeable--from a humanistic standpoint, I don't agree; but commercially speaking, it's the case--so she has every incentive to put the publisher's interests ahead of those of her authors, even though her job is the opposite.

Hollywood is probably a bit different because movie stars have a lot more leverage than midlist authors. So, it may be that there's the opposite problem. Literary agents often push authors to lower their expectations and take crappy deals; a Hollywood agent's probably more inclined to push the client toward aggressive decisions while the iron is hot, so to speak.