Talent agent draws on Latin America

by Douglas Hanks

McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)

17 January 2008

MIAMI - Raul Mateu sits in the center of South Florida’s corner of the entertainment industry.

As the senior executive at the William Morris Agency’s South Beach office, he mines Latin America for talent. His big coup: selling ABC on adapting a Colombian telenovela for an American audience. The network bit, and now “Ugly Betty” is a critical darling and audience favorite.

Mateu also represents Jennifer Lopez, Telemundo sportscaster Andres Cantor and Univision television personality Giselle Blondet. And this week he welcomed back his three-year-old baby: the South Beach Comedy Festival, which Mateu and partners founded in 2006.

He launched the event as a warm-weather alternative to a comedy festival in Aspen that was then a must-attend for entertainment executives. Why not South Beach?

So far, so good. The festival turns a modest profit, Mateu said, thanks in part to public subsidies and Comedy Central as a sponsor. The four-day festival that began Wednesday this year features some of the biggest names in stand-up, including Kathy Griffin, Katt Williams and Dave Attell.

Mateu invited us for a chat in his corner office, which features many snapshots of him with family and friends but almost no grinning candids with stars - an unusual absence in an industry where Glory Walls are de rigueur.

Mateu talked at length about the ramifications of “Ugly Betty’s” American success, Miami’s current star status, and the lucrative juncture in the entertainment industry between the English and Spanish languages.

Do you see a lot more potential for crossover from Spanish to English?
From a content point of view, we’re selling a lot of formats from Latin America. Right now we have formats in development at CBS (and) NBC (and) Fox. We take a show that existed in one form or another - whether they’re dramas or novelas or comedies or whatever they are. And we take the intellectual property or the rights in that show, and we then put them together with American-based producers and writers ... The receptivity to those ideas is great these days. I think “Ugly Betty” has proven that great ideas can come from Colombia or Venezuela or wherever it may be.

What else is in Latin America that just isn’t on the air in the United States?
There’s a lot. Latin America has a great mix of drama and humor. And also absurdity - things you don’t ever think could happen. And they do them ...

We have a series right now from Chile called “Pecadores” or “Sinners,” which we are developing at Fox. It’s a comedy about two con artists who go into little towns pretending to be clergy people. It’s not something you’ve ever seen on American TV. They came up with it, the writers in Chile, and it’s a great concept and it’s a great idea. Hopefully it will go forward. (Mateu said progress on the shows were stalled because of the ongoing writers strike.)

There are things like that out there that when the networks hear it, they say “Hey I haven’t heard that before.”

And that’s what everyone is looking for.

We haven’t seen the telenovela concept (a daily soap opera that concludes at the end of a single season) translate yet in the U.S. marketplace. Why isn’t that working?
They’ve tried it. They tried to launch a whole network on it. Part of it is I don’t think they’re doing it right. It was being done by a bunch of American producers who weren’t doing the genre very well ...

A true telenovela needs to run Monday through Friday. I think in today’s day and age, where more and more people are watching less TV, to get people to really tune in to an American language show Monday through Friday is very difficult ...

I think daytime could work very well. I think there’s networks such as Lifetime where novelas could probably really work well. If I was running a network, I would try it. But I would try to do it the right way ...

A novela format is working extremely well in Israel and Russia and in India.

Describe Miami’s role in the entertainment world.
Miami’s probably the third market in the country for entertainment. It’s probably L.A., New York and, I think, Miami. The bottom line is most decisions are made in L.A. and, secondarily to that, New York.

As long as the decision makers reside in both those locations, Miami ends up being a destination. This is a great destination for entertainers to come and play ... It’s probably one of the top places in the world for the entertainment industry to come and gather ...

But very little business gets done. Which is one of the main reasons we wanted to do the comedy festival. We felt we needed to create an event that brought the industry not only to play, but to hopefully do business here ...

We’re going to have vice presidents of comedy development from the networks here this week. They could come here, go see one of our comedians, fall in love with that comedian and say, “Hey, let’s go do a deal, let’s develop a sitcom.” That is good for us, and I think that’s good for Miami.

You don’t see Miami’s appeal with the stars fading?
It’s all cyclical. At some point this won’t be the hip place. They’ll be going somewhere else at some point.

I do think Miami and Miami Beach now have enough of an infrastructure from a hotel point of view, from a restaurant point of view, from an entertainment point of view, that if there is a dip, the dip won’t be that bad.

I think it will continue to be a great place to be. As long as there is winter in New York, this is going to be a place where people will want to come.