A Player Changes the Game’s Rules

TORONTO —  “In 25 years, I’ve never not had to be someplace,” says Arnold Rifkin, a true Hollywood player for that quarter-century. “I’m going to start a new chapter.”

His industry colleaguesknow well what the new chapter is for Bruce Willis’ longtime agent--life after William Morris, the legendary agency Rifkin headed until August.

A New York native, the 52-year-old Rifkin learned the ropes of marketing in the garment industry--selling shoes, then furs--before he “somehow floated” into show business. He had just founded his own new agency in 1984, Triad Artists, when he signed an unknown actor who “walked in the room as if success had already happened.” Rifkin’s ability to “raise the bar” in deals for Willis raised his own stature, and when Triad was acquired in 1992 by the century-old William Morris Agency, he became president.

Rifkin gained a reputation as an unconventional leader, motivating with New Age credos such as “change channels, turn up the volume.” But William Morris languished behind ICM and Creative Artists, and this summer Rifkin’s partners recruited one of the rival honchos--ICM’s Jim Wiatt--to take over as president.

Rifkin said he could have stayed in some capacity, but choose to clear out, declaring, “My agenting career, I can safely say, retired.”

Rifkin will continue to represent some of his marquee clients, including Willis, Danny Glover and Whoopi Goldberg--but apparently as a manager. “I am going to create a holding company of some sort,” he said while accompanying Willis to the film festival here last month. “It will be entertainment-based, [with] a focus also on new media.”

In the wake of his unsettling summer, though, Rifkin was talking less about moneymaking than another goalt--of overcoming the workaholic habits of the Hollywood grind. The first thing he did after leaving William Morris was to “decompress” for 10 days at his vacation home outside Jackson Hole, Wyo.--and buy a canoe to take his 2-year-old son on the lake.

I Rifkin laments how the “24-7” workweek sometimes deprived his two older children, both girls, of their father, and vows that won’t happen with 2-year-old Elijah. “I am going to attend every function this young man is going to be at,” he says.

He notes that he just picked up a message confirming a deal to have Goldberg serve as spokeswoman for an Internet service, and how, “There’s a meeting set for next Tuesday at 5. . . . I said, ‘If you don’t mind if I’m late.’ I take [my son] to toddler school on Tuesdays, from 3 to 4:30. I said, ‘I’ll get him home by 5 and be there by 5:30. Start the meeting without me--or set it for 5:30.’ ”

One person who endorses the change of priorities is Rifkin’s top client.

“I’ve been telling him to do this for a long time,” Willis said. “Hang with your kids. Your life is just going by. And this is no rehearsal.” *