Hollywood's go-to lawyer - FT.com That's entertainment: having made his name in Hollywood representing clients such as Henry Winkler and Harrison Ford, Skip Brittenham has published a graphic novel It is the year 2717 and the earth is dying, ravaged by climate change, its inhabitants forced to decamp to vast colonies on orbiting space stations. A sinister company known as the Conglomerate has replaced nation-states as the planet's sole governing body and a rigid, hierarchical system keeps the ruling elite - the "Shareholders" - firmly on top at the expense of everybody else. Welcome to Anomaly, a sprawling graphic novel, app and interactive tale from Skip Brittenham, better known as Hollywood's pre-eminent lawyer and a senior partner at law firm Ziffren Brittenham. In a 35-year career he has represented some of the industry's biggest stars, including Harrison Ford, Eddie Murphy, Oprah Winfrey and Bruce Willis, while also establishing himself as a leading dealmaker, overseeing the initial public offering of DreamWorks Animation, negotiating the sale of DreamWorks to Paramount and advising on Walt Disney's 2006 purchase of animation studio Pixar. A corporate lawyer would seem an un­likely author of a graphic novel set in a dystopian future - certainly one that depicts capitalism run amok. Yet Mr Brittenham is a long-time comics fan, with a 20-year collection of Heavy Metal, the fantasy art magazine, and he wanted to craft a story that ref­lected his interest in the environment and social inequality. "Even though I'm in the 1 per cent, [inequality] is a major concern of mine," he says, as the Pacific Ocean, visible from the window of his Los Angeles office, glints in the afternoon sun. I wanted the book to have underlying moral themes. Were it not for the urging of his wife, Heather Thomas - the actress who starred alongside Lee Majors in the 1980s television series The Fall Guy - he would not have embarked on the project. "About four years ago she challenged me to do something creative," he says. She had just written her own book. She told me I should try it, so I said OK. Anomaly is the first in what could become a series of books - a second is already in development - but he has no plans to quit the day job. It took me a long time to get to this point and I'm not planning to give it up any time soon. Mr Brittenham's career could have turned out quite differently if he had not injured his left eye playing squash while studying at the US Air Force Academy. He was raised in a military household, with the Brittenham family moving from place to place to follow his father's postings as a pilot. The young Skip - his name is Harry but his childhood nickname has stuck - wanted to be a pilot too but the injury put paid to that. After leaving the academy he moved to Los Angeles, where he studied law at UCLA. Despite "never fully intending to practise law," he graduated and landed a job at an entertainment law firm. It was in the early 1970s and Hollywood was in a high-growth phase. All of the businesses were getting better. In TV, revenues were exploding, motion pictures were growing . . . it was all happening. The firm represented actors and an early client assigned to Mr Brittenham was a little-known one on a new television show. Henry Winkler played "the seventh lead" on Happy Days, a programme that would become an enormous hit - with Mr Wink­ler, as the Fonz, becoming its main star. Mr Brittenham also began representing the future Indiana Jones - before his breakthrough role in Star Wars - and started his own firm with fellow lawyer Ken Ziffren. It was the perfect time to be working with TV stars and producers. Local TV stations were springing up across the US and they all needed quality programming. "There were more and more TV stations competing for product," he says. Producers were able to syndicate their hit shows to these channels for vast sums. Mr Brittenham differentiated his business from the start by taking 5 per cent of clients" earnings as a fee instead of billing for hours. "I hated time sheets," he says. In my old office it was all about running up the time, which seemed stupid to me. We liked aligning our interests with the clients. If clients prospered, so did the firm. And the clients did prosper: he and his colleagues negotiated some of the first "back-end" deals, which guaranteed the talent a cut of the revenues earned by TV shows. "It made our clients, in some cases, hundreds of millions of dollars," he says. The firm did not limit itself to TV: it has a thriving music practice and has represented artists including Justin Timberlake and Alicia Keys, as well as the Michael Jackson estate, alongside film stars such as Matt Damon, Sandra Bullock and Steve Carell. Mr Brittenham also formed an early relationship with Pixar - he eventually became a company director - back when the studio was making TV commercials after being introduced to its then owner, Steve Jobs, by David Geffen, the music mogul. As more clients recommended his work, Ziffren Brittenham became the go-to firm for top acting, directing or producing talent. There was no grand plan for this expansion, however. "It's America," he laughs. If you do good quality work people tell people and you get clients. He wrote Anomaly in his spare time, "at night after my daughter had gone to bed." After finishing the story he approached Brian Haberlin, a comic artist whose work he admired, and the two agreed to collaborate. After three years of work it is ready for sale. Mr Brittenham is self- publishing the book in hardback and as an interactive app from Apple's app store: the app has an extensive augmented reality component and scanning pages of the physical book with an iPad makes characters spring to life on the screen. He has hired a small staff - a former head of sales at Random House is consulting on the project - and Barnes & Noble will promote it as a "featured book" over Christmas. But Mr Brittenham says he is real­istic about its chances of success. "The truth is I don't know if there is a business model because no one has done something like this before," he says, pointing to the simultan­eous release of a physical graphic novel and an app. We're inventing it on the fly. And if it fails? I will not be at all upset, because I didn't start out with this being a money­making business venture. I thought it would be a lot of fun and thought I could learn something.