Volume 31, Number 2, 99-127, DOI: 10.1007/s11133-007-9083-8

Reputation Work in Selling Film and Television: Life in the Hollywood Talent Industry

Stephen Zafirau

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Abstract

Reputation is an important feature in the interactional contexts of work in “culture industries” such as film and television production. But few accounts have examined how reputations are produced in the everyday worlds in which cultural producers live and work. This paper introduces the concept of “reputation work” to describe the front stage and back stage interactional processes through which cultural producers continuously strive to produce their reputations. Drawing on participant observation data gathered at a Hollywood talent management company and a business school course on the talent industry, this paper shows how Hollywood agents and managers perform four types of reputation work. These include how Hollywood talent representatives work to adhere to institutionalized conventions for reputable physical settings, group contexts, giftgiving practices, and selfhoods. Such reputation work performances are done for the sake of “impression management,” but show how this strategic interaction is governed by industry-wide institutions that govern legitimacy.

Keywords  Cultural production - Hollywood - Talent agents - Reputation work - Institutionalism

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