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" &amp;quot;Hey, man, you read the latest draft of Curve? It&amp;#039;s awesome.&amp;quot; We&amp;#039;re thirty minutes from the world premiere of Talladega Nights, but in the packed lobby of Grauman&amp;#039;s Chinese Theatre, it&amp;#039;s already show time for manager-producers Chris Bender and J. C. Spink. Bender, in jeans and an untucked white button-down, has slid past a flock of suited agents and executives to begin chatting up Neal Moritz, a friend and producer whose money and clout he&amp;#039;s counting on for Curve. Inches away, Bender&amp;#039;s former intern and current partner, Spink, a tad sweaty from the red-carpet lights outside, spots actor Will Arnett. &amp;quot;Dude, what is up? How you been?&amp;quot; Bender and Spink have been courting Arnett for a comedy about rival Las Vegas magicians since they met him on the set of last year&amp;#039;s Monster-in-Law. The rakish and absurdly tan Arnett turns from a conversation with one of the suits and gives Bender an enthusiastic man hug. He&amp;#039;s genuinely excited to see these guys.  If relationships are the currency of Hollywood, Bender, thirty-five, and Spink, thirty-four, have spent the last ten years quietly building their bank one man hug at a time. Since developing American Pie and launching their company, Benderspink, in 1998 out of the Hollywood house they shared, the two Bucknell grads have parlayed their friendships among the industry&amp;#039;s underclass into one of the more prolific independent management and production houses. Last year, Benderspink developed and sold sixteen scripts and had five movies released, including the Oscar-nominated A History of Violence and more-commercial fare like Red Eye and Just Friends. This year they&amp;#039;ve set up even more projects, although it&amp;#039;s never certain which of the movies they sell will actually get made. Hence, the constant hustling: &amp;quot;Yo, man, how&amp;#039;s Adam doing?&amp;quot; Spink&amp;#039;s got a bead on Adam Venit, Adam Sandler&amp;#039;s agent, who Spink knows because Ashton Kutcher, another Venit client, starred in Benderspink&amp;#039;s The Butterfly Effect. A third Venit client, Sacha Baron Cohen, appears in Talladega Nights, and the guys want him for another project they&amp;#039;re developing for New Line. Twenty seconds into their conversation, Spink has Venit laughing hard; he barely mentions Cohen.  Benderspink&amp;#039;s division of labor caters to each of the guys&amp;#039; strengths. Spink, a quick-witted, hard-boozing loose cannon reminiscent of Chris Farley who last year got into a fistfight at an industry beer-pong tournament, employs his funniest-guy-in-the-room personality to pitch projects to talent and studios. He also oversees the management side of the business for clients that include writers and directors, as well as actors like Maggie Gyllenhaal and Emmy Rossum. Bender, the more laid-back problem solver, handles on-set production duties and manages their first-look deal with New Line. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re their bitches,&amp;quot; Bender says of the studio that supports Benderspink&amp;#039;s $2 million in annual overhead and enables the twenty-two-employee out?t to operate in sharp contrast to the militaristic talent-agency world. Bender recently married and has a young daughter, but Spink still lives with a college-buddy roommate in a small apartment with no air conditioner, and he only recently traded up to a Range Rover from the beat-up 1997 Jeep Wrangler he tooled around in since he came to town. &amp;quot;At some point, I&amp;#039;ve got to become an adult. I&amp;#039;m not there yet,&amp;quot; he says.  Indeed, in an industry in which M.B.A.&amp;#039;s fetch coffee and pick up dry cleaning, Benderspink&amp;#039;s network-to-the-top success is simultaneously inspirational and a bit depressing. The duo got in early on the recent trend of management companies that take charge of the development work agents used to do--and thus attach themselves to produce their clients&amp;#039; projects. Among rival managers, the two are sometimes criticized for neglecting clients to focus on their own production careers. And detractors argue they&amp;#039;ve yet to prove their worth as producers. &amp;quot;Listen,&amp;quot; says Spink, &amp;quot;Chris is thirty-five and has his name on sixteen movies. I don&amp;#039;t know anyone else who&amp;#039;s got that.&amp;quot;  Spink is now joking with his friend Matt Tolmach, president of production for Columbia Pictures, the studio behind Talladega: &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;d this thing cost, $240 million?&amp;quot; Tolmach chuckles knowingly, but he&amp;#039;s not taking the bait. No matter; Spink has already moved on, giving shit to a group of agents. Bender has disappeared, off to catch up with power-manager-producer Jimmy Miller in preparation for a Friday meeting with one of Miller&amp;#039;s clients. A half hour past the movie&amp;#039;s scheduled start time, the guys finally take their seats . . . until one of CAA president Richard Lovett&amp;#039;s factotums approaches from the aisle. &amp;quot;Oh, shit,&amp;quot; Bender mutters, only half laughing. It seems Bender and Spink are sitting in Lovett&amp;#039;s reserved seats, a premiere faux pas. The minion asks that they move. Squeezing down the aisle as the lights dim, it&amp;#039;s clear that as good as things are going, Bender and Spink know there are still bigger dicks out there--for now. Spink looks back toward Lovett and, safely out of earshot, wonders, &amp;quot;Does that count as that meeting I&amp;#039;ve been trying to get with him?&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a333/esq1006esq100-184r-1/>