Jess (is) different….a throwback to the time of Max Perkins, when editors and agents collaborated closely with their clients to shape their manuscripts… 

Evidently, unbeknownst to us, the manuscript that Jess had pitched to (Alexander) Payne's agent months earlier had reached the summit of his reading pile….
With one phonecall I had gone from acutely suicidal to deliriously hopeful. Reflecting on the last six years, my first thoughts went to Jess Taylor… who took me on when nobody wanted anything to do with me…. Without his coming out to LA and risking his sanity, the likelihood of my manuscript wending its way to Payne would have been remote.