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It is common to pay people for attempts rather than for successes, as the former is more under their control. I can't see why it is wrong to pay an agent money to promote your book, even if the agent might not get you a book deal. I don't think you can claim book agents and Harvey Weinstein are wrong for the same reason. The same applies to most agents, sports included.
The requirement is that the actress must be able to plausibly fake being interested in having sex with Weinstein et al. That requires real talent and is an actual test of acting. Allegedly, most Hollywood actresses meet this bar.
Do you know this? My sources claim that people are very explicit about expectations. Actresses have agents who set these meetings up, and they explain in great detail, what is expected. For every John, there is a pimp.
Luckily all this will be made moot by AI. No-one, and I mean no-one, is going to ask the AI developer for sex, (except the sexbot that AI developer him(or her)self made).
Even if this is a real requirement, the producer should hire a professional from the pornographic industry to test the actress out on, at most he should get to watch the act (to judge the merits etc.), not participate in it.
Why is Weinstein not a professional at this? Allegedly he has been doing it for years. He is like the Robert Parker of actresses. Parker's big advantage in wine tasting was that he had tasted all these allegedly fabulous vintages that are no longer available. Who but Weinstein could compare the charms of actresses across the decades.
Because he should only care about how good the scene looks on film, not how good it feels. You don't need to actually have the sex to decide on the merits of what is captured on screen and how it will be seen by viewers (who themselves also won't be having the sex being shown). In fact it is better to not be the person actually having the sex as then you can look at the scene from different perspectives and distances (which you'll have on the final film) that you can't if you're having sex.
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After about 2 years of lurking (ever since the end of Slate Star Codex), I dont know why this is the factually inaccurate thing that got me to finally register and post, but real book agents do not charge you money to promote your book. Anyone claiming to be an agent who asks for money in order to have your book promoted is scamming you (and yes, there are scams where people do this edit: to clarify, they take the money but don't actually promote your book). Real agents only take on books that theyre fairly certain they can sell and make money from their commission.
I would like to think this was true, and I am sure that reputable agents do not charge money, but I imagine there are a lot of disreputable agents out there.
In a similar vein, never give equity (or god forbid, cash) to someone who claims they will help you fundraise.
They exist, but it's very well known in the publishing business that money flows to the author, not from the author. Any but the most naive or desperate of authors knows this, and an agent charging money is quickly known in the industry. It's true that with the advent of self-publishing and Kindle Direct there are a lot of new business models, most of which range from predatory to outright fraudulent, so you will find, for example, "hybrid" publishers that claim to be selective but act a sort of half-vanity press, half publicity agency.
But the established industry practice is that agents get a cut when they sell your book, and nothing before then. Any agent deviating from this is pretty much by definition not a reputable agent.
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Not really, no. Unless, again, you're talking about scammers. Anyone looking to publish is warned about agents asking for money to represent you, and publishers would be unlikely to work with such people. If by "disreputable agent", you're talking about someone who takes your money with zero chance of it leading to actual publication, then we're just splitting hairs over our definitions of scammer.
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