Hi and welcome to the Team Deacons podcast. This podcast is a dialogue between Roger and James Deacons, often joined in the conversation by a guest.

It's very informal and we never know where it will go.

We're connecting through Zoom, so bear that in mind when you hear the audio.

If you'd like to submit a question or topic, please do so by emailing pod, p-o-d at Roger deacons.com.

We've got an interesting subject today and a great guest to lead us through it.

We'll examine the agent and their role today and with us as the head of production at

UTA and our agent, Pete Franciosa. Thank you Pete for coming on.

Good morning, Roger and James.

First of all, thank you for having me.

Second, all, it's lovely to see both of you via the internet.

That's what it is these days.

The first question we want to ask you is, how did you get to where you are?

As a kid, did you want to be an agent?

I'm going to go with the long story, so I'm apologizing in advance to you and all your

listeners. So when I was a kid at 11 years old, my father accepted a job in Italy where he was going to be a lawyer on a very large trial, a very long trial.

In Italy, especially during the 80s when I was a child, you were not innocent until proven guilty you were guilty

literally until proven innocent so they would put you in a jail and you would sit

there during this long trial and just wait to see if they were going to let you go free.

So we went up moving to Italy for four and a half years. My father worked five days a week in

Sicily. My mother, my sister, and I lived in Rome, the most Western city and it was where the

international schools were at the time there were really three international schools

American overseas which is where I went there was Notre Dame an all-boys school,

...