She started out as an English major working on Wall Street, but today Jennifer Levine is President of Production and Head of Literary Management at Untitled Entertainment, and a lot has happened along the way. Untitled Entertainment is both a management and production company. Representing writers, directors and actors, Levine's emphasis is on management, but she also produces films and is an advocate for independent artists. She loves to talk about her clients and their accomplishments and was especially pleased to report a great year with many of them.

At last year's San Sebastian Film Festival, client Tom DiCillo's upcoming and sixth film "Delirious" took home Best Director, Best Screenplay, and SIGNIS awards. Having garnered other accolades in the past, DiCillo is probably best known for "Living in Oblivion."

Another client, Ari Sandel was co-writer and director of the 2007 Academy Award-winning live action short film, "West Bank Story." Sandel also recently directed "The Wild West Comedy Show" with Vince Vaughn, which is being released by New Line Cinema.

Out of last year's Los Angeles Film Festival, Levine signed Mike Akel (director/writer/producer) and Chris Mass (writer/producer/actor) who made an independent film called "Chalk," similar in tone to "The Office" and set in high school. They are now developing "Chalk" as a TV series for Fox and are working on a feature mock documentary at Universal, which Garry Marshall and Mary Parent are producing.

Director Jeremy Podeswa's "Fugitive Pieces" is opening at the Toronto Film Festival this year. Levine describes her client's film as "an incredibly beautiful drama and very powerful." Accomplished in television and film, Podeswa has directed three features and numerous high quality television programs including "Six Feet Under," "Rome" and "Tudors."

Ernest Dickerson was cinematographer for many of Spike Lee's films as well as other features and television programs. As a director, he has countless feature credits under his belt including "Never Die Alone," and great television projects such as "The Wire," "CSI," "Weeds" and "ER."

Screenwriter Susan Walter recently sold her first screenplay "The Seven Year Switch" to Sony. Julia Roberts is attached. Walter also has another upcoming feature with Gweneth Paltrow attached.

In this interview, Levine discusses her career from Wall Street to Hollywood, shares background about the evolution of the soon-to-be-released "Delirious," and reveals what she looks for in a client.

Q: Would you discuss your background and how you got to where you are now at Untitled Entertainment?

A: I was an English major as an undergraduate. My first career was actually on Wall Street. A few years on Wall Street was enough for me to say, "Thanks, but no thanks." I ended up moving to Europe and living in Italy for a number of years, which is where I fell into the movie business on the acquisitions end. I stumbled into an opportunity and I would come back to Los Angeles as a buyer at the American Film Market, buying mostly "B" movies and TV movies, but it was a great introduction into the business--sort of the tail that wags the dog of international sales and distribution. After a few years of that, I decided I wanted to work on the creative side of filmmaking. I had grown up in L.A., but had absolutely no connections to the film business in my family, so nepotism wasn't going to be my way in. Leaving Italy to work in a mail room just didn't seem like a reasonable decision.

I decided on film school and I moved back and went into the Peter Stark producing program at USC. They have a two year Master's course there. And I started working simultaneously, first as an intern and then I got hired. I worked for Arnold Kopelson's company when he was making movies like "Se7en," "Outbreak," and "Eraser." Then, I got hired away when one of his senior execs went over to Twentieth Century Fox Films and brought me over. I worked in development for him for over three years in the main feature division at Fox. I was there when they did movies like "Titanic" and "Independence Day." That was a very valuable experience--spending three years inside of a studio, on the low rungs of studio development working with writers really closely. A few years of that was enough for me to decide I didn't want to be a studio executive for the rest of my career as much as I had great opportunities and experiences there. I wanted something more entrepreneurial.

I had found a couple of screenplays while I was working at Fox that I wanted to option and I decided to try to go out and be a producer, which was the path that a number of friends from film school were taking. I also made a decision that I didn't want to call myself a producer until I had physical production experience on somebody else's movie before I tried to make my own films. An opportunity landed in my lap to go and work for a producer who had been an advisor while I had been at USC. He'd gotten a green light on a movie for Disney and he called me while I was still at Fox and asked me if I knew anyone from my USC classmates that wanted to work in a movie and I said, "Yes, me."

I quit my job at Fox and I spent a year as a producer's assistant so I could get on a set on a movie for Disney. I picked it not for its script, but because it came along at the right time. It was "My Favorite Martian," the movie. I spent a year of my life on pre-production, production, post-production. I went on location and got to see a mid-size Hollywood movie come together from beginning to end, which was really valuable experience.

Being part of a crew and everything I've done so far has gone into what I'm doing today, which is the surprising end of the journey. When the movie was wrapping up, I was planning on working out of my living room as an independent producer like so many people I know and for as long as I could hold out without a paycheck. I had set up the first of the two scripts that I had optioned at HBO. An old friend from undergraduate school that had set up a PR company in New York said he was going to be moving from publicity into personal management. His name is Jason Weinberg. Jason was starting this management company. He was based in New York, but he told me he was going to have some kind of office in L.A., even if it was a living room floor. I was already planning to do that anyway, but I thought it would be more fun to work with an old friend than by myself. I was not thinking of management. I just figured he would be managing actors, I would be producing projects, and we could share some space. That was about ten years ago. And we started getting referred writers and directors pretty much from the get-go. I always credit Jason; he said to me, "I have no idea how to manage a writer or a director, but I'll bet you could do that."

That was the very beginning. Untitled had about three or four people. Now, ten years later, it has almost fifty people. It's been a pretty amazing journey. My background was not in representation. I had not been trained in an agency or at a management company to be a manager, so the only definition I used was the one that I created. It makes me enjoy the job. What I love about it is that I've been able to pull in knowledge and experience from all the jobs I've ever had and I keep learning new things and that's part of the fun of it. Everything from the development background to the sales and acquisitions, production, working with writers--even my Wall Street background--all of that gets pulled into what I am doing today, which is predominantly working with writers and directors. I work with some actors as well, but my main business is writers and directors.

Q: Can you talk about the genesis of a project you put together?

A: I have a movie that I am the executive producer on that is opening in two weeks. It was many years of work and a passion project. I represent a number of wonderful independent filmmakers. I tend to be very drawn to very auteur voices that are distinctive. I have worked in the studio system, and certainly most of my writers work in and out of the studio system, but on the filmmaker side, a lot of them are more driven by the independent filmmaking. Independent is such a broad term at this point. That term can mean a half-million-dollar movie, or a fifty-million-dollar movie that's not in the studio system.

This is a film from a filmmaker named Tom DiCillo, who is a well-known New York indie guy. This is his sixth film. A lot of people know him for "Living in Oblivion."

Q: I love that movie.

A: It's a great film. He's got a very wry eye. He's very observant. He tackles his subject with dark humor, which I find very intelligent and very funny. His latest film, called "Delirious," is something that he wrote. We were working on another film before nine-eleven, which had a slightly tricky subject matter and when that happened, we had to put it on the shelf. It was a dark comedy about a small-time militia group and no one really wanted to laugh about that subject.

He put that down and went off and wrote this script and worked on it for a while and as I do with all my writers and directors, I gave feedback on every draft. When the script was ready, we went on a journey to try to get the film put together. Tom had written it for his friend Steve Buscemi, who was the muse for the lead role of Les, who is part of the paparazzi. It took a while for Steve to sign on and say "yes," and then we started adding other actors and looking for financing and brought in a day-to-day producer, Robert Silerno, who produced "21 Grams" and "All the Pretty Horses." It was journey of building it. We had our financing once and our financing fell apart. We had great actors, but no big stars, then we got one, then that star got so big that we lost her right before we were ready to go. As happens with independent filmmaking, it takes a while. This one took five or six years to get out of the gate. It's with great pride that I say that it finally did. It premiered last year at the San Sebastian Film Festival where it had its world premiere, and won best director and best screenplay. It's been a great year on the festival circuit. "Delirious" was at Sundance this year where it was a real favorite. It won best director at the Aspen Comedy Fest this year. It's been in a lot of international festivals. I just came back two weeks ago from France for the French premiere. The distributor in France fell in love with it and is doing a really wide release of it, so that's terrific. Now it's having its U.S. release.

Q: Congratulations!

A: Thank you. The company that ultimately financed it, Peace Arch Entertainment Group, a newer financier from Canada--they are the company that financed the film--they are just now launching a distribution arm and we're their first film. So, Peace Arch is releasing it, and it's coming out in at least ten cities. It opens at the Angelika in New York on Aug. 15 and at the Sunset 5 in Los Angeles on Aug. 17. And then we'll start rolling it out to other cities around the country. It was a very long journey and it's a film that I'm really proud of.

Q: What's it about?

A: It's a dark comedy about paparazzi and celebrity. But it's also a fable. It takes a very satirical look at our culture today and the fascination with celebrity. It also is a love story; it has a love triangle between the star Steve Buscemi, Michael Pitt and Alison Lohman.

Q: What do you find to be the most challenging aspect of making independent films?

A: Making an independent film is hard, but I would have to say the distribution part of it is probably the trickiest. Working with a lot of independent filmmakers, I get involved with all parts of the journeys of their films, even as their manager. I'm occasionally a producer on the project, but I'm always the manager. Often, the most complicated and heartbreaking part is finding some way to get the film seen.

Q: After they've gone through the whole thing of getting it made.

A: There was a great article by Kenneth Turan in the L.A. Times a couple days ago about the film "Once," and how it almost didn't get a distributor, and it's been this little darling all summer. ["Thinking Twice About 'Once'." L.A. Times, July 29, 2007.] He talked about the state of independent film distribution and how difficult it is. It's too difficult. It shouldn't be this difficult. Great films are sitting on shelves, or going straight to DVD. The multiplexes are full of the sequels and the "three-quels," as I call them. They have a place and they drive the economic engine of Hollywood, but there are enough screens to put in some other things.

Q: What about the Internet?

A: As much as I'm worried about Internet distribution and writers and directors not getting paid for their work because it gets out there and gets stolen, on the other hand, if it can somehow be figured out, it will provide an alternative distribution method for artists to get their work directly to potential audiences, if we can figure out how to monetize it. A lot of artists really want it on a big screen, but it is a way to get the work out there. The music industry is figuring it out, so I think the film industry can do it too.

Q: How does a writer know he/she is ready for representation? What should a writer have achieved before seeking a representative?

A: That's a good, but tough question. I think part of what enables an artist, what a writer needs, is a certain amount of confidence. They have to be able to feel good about even their first script. Typically, that first script is not a script that is going to get you representation, but you have to try the medium a few times before you have that confidence. At the same time, I get query letters constantly, which I'm usually not able to respond to because my plate is pretty full at this point. But after ten years, I still occasionally take on the new client.

In terms of writers judging for themselves, that's hard to say. I think the thing that they should show to the world is the thing that reflects who they are as an artist and as a person; not the thing that they think is most commercial, but the thing that is their voice. That's the thing that I respond to most--great writing. I've signed a number of writers off of very uncommercial scripts--in the sense that they're not big Hollywood movies, but they had such strong voices, you could feel the passion in the person and the uniqueness of the voice coming through on the page. That always gets me excited. If it happens to also be a commercially saleable script, that's fabulous because there's a potential for a real payday at the end, but the longer journey is fine for me too. I signed a writer off a very difficult script, but the writing was so strong, his characters were so unique, his dialogue was as fresh as could be; I knew I could send it to people in the Hollywood system and they wouldn't buy the script, but they would respond to the voice, and they did. He got hired by many studios off of this very non-studio piece of writing because the freshness of the dialogue was so strong.

Other writers--I think their strength is going in the room and pitching a story. They're incredible storytellers. They're great on the page too. They have to be great on the page. Not every writer has a strength in the room. It's something that I try to work with them on, because I think it's really important. Being able to walk into the room and sell is a really valuable skill. The writers that go farthest have it both on the page and in the room. They can do both.

Q: Can you discuss working with clients to develop their careers?

A: A fun part of my job is I get to pick who I work with, meaning I get to pick from the people I am fortunate enough to meet with. I work with clients that are in various stages in their careers. I work with people that have been doing this a lot longer than I have, 20 or 25 years, and I have clients who--I am their very first representative and they're very early in their careers. Each situation is different, but there is joy in both ends of the spectrum. To help launch a new writer or filmmaker is really very rewarding. To help revive someone whose career has had some ups and downs and is looking for new ways to channel their creativity is also incredibly rewarding. I love working with people who are the "old pros" because there is a certain steadiness to the way they take the bumps in the road of the movie industry, whereas new writers tend to get emotional about when a script doesn't sell or they don't get a job.

In terms of how I work with them as a manager--I'm not interested in being an agent. I feel that there should be differences in the roles of the manager and agent. I work with a number of wonderful agents. Lisa Callamaro is one of them. I do feel like the role of the manager should feel different to the client. (Lisa Callamaro is a little unusual because she is a hands-on type of agent.) For the most part, I work with a much smaller group of clients than a typical agent. The level that I go into with them on their work should be much different. I will go through ten drafts of a script if I need to, giving notes each time, on the weekend, at night, until the script is ready. Sometimes the agents don't see it until draft ten. Sometimes they'll have seen one or two drafts along the way and given some feedback. All the agents care that the material they're taking out be strong and viable, but usually, they are very happy for me and the client to actually get through the minutia of locking a script down. Then, it'll go out in the world and someone else will have notes, but hopefully they're paying for the privilege because they've optioned or purchased the material.

I work very, very closely with writers. There's a lot of trust building. Hopefully, people I work with feel they can trust that my feedback [is good]. They may not agree with it and they don't have to execute what I am suggesting, but at least they'll hear me out and they know I'm coming to them from a place of wanting them to be the best version of themselves; but also that we can find a home for in the marketplace.

I tend to talk to my clients a lot. We're very much in communication, whether it's on the phone or via e-mail, all day long. And, it can be an intense relationship. That's fun too, getting to know the ins and outs of an artist, hopefully helping to mine the best of them.

Every client is different. Some writers want me to see their script every ten pages. Others don't want me to see it until they have as perfect as they can get it. They've already done a few drafts without sharing it with anybody. Everyone is different. I work with them [in the way that] it makes sense to them. I see things in a truly rough form and I see things that are very polished, where I feel like I don't have to do that much to get it ready to go out.

Every writer and director has a list of things that I am really proud of. It's an incredible thing to be a part of. Some journeys take longer than others. You gamble when you go down a path with someone. When I take on a new client, I tell them I treat it like a marriage, where we're hopefully going into this for life; that we're committing to each other and there will be some trials; we won't always agree; and hopefully, we'll have a lot of fun along the way.

To learn more about Lisa Callamaro, the agent referenced by Levine in this article, see our recent interview "Literary and Talent Agent Lisa Callamaro: It's a Partnership" (http://www.moviebytes.com/wbw/HollywoodIQ.cfm?ColumnID=2881).