Variety's Business Managers Elite Returns Nov. 11; Kabul Doc Directors on Anne Frank

Variety publishes its annual Business Managers Elite feature section in print and online on Nov. 11, and this year's top honoree is Citrin Cooperman veteran Arnie Herrmann. The announcement anchors the latest episode of the "Strictly Business" podcast, hosted by Variety's Cynthia Littleton, which examines what business managers actually do for clients in media and entertainment.

Littleton frames the profession in concrete terms. "Business managers are the Swiss army knives of personal representatives," she observes. The work goes far beyond paying bills. "Compensation can be lumpy. In some cases, the client gets paid with big upfront fees. In others, royalty and residual payments trickle down for years, if not decades," she says. Business managers also have to coordinate with everyone in a client's orbit — "From investors and family offices to tax advisers, lawyers, agents, managers, doctors and coaches."

What does a top business manager actually handle?

Herrmann's profile, set to publish Nov. 11, highlights real estate as a flashpoint. He says real estate is one of the most emotional decisions people make, and he sometimes has to guide clients through the fact that they are overpaying for a property. Sometimes clients accept the overpayment anyway, and Herrmann's job is to make sure they have all the facts. Business managers are also frequently pressed into service as consiglieres on major transactions, according to the podcast.

The section spotlights financial and accounting professionals who track both entertainment-industry trends and broader macroeconomic issues.

What happened at Doc Dreams?

The episode also carries highlights from Variety's "Doc Dreams" event, held Nov. 9 in New York. The gathering featured conversations with leading documentarians, including Alex Gibney, the director and producer behind "Musk," the controversial deep dive on Elon Musk.

One of the most powerful discussions, per the podcast, came from Shakiba Adil and Elina Hirvonen, co-directors of "The Secret Reading Club of Kabul." The two explained how the writings of Anne Frank, written more than 80 years earlier, inspired both them and their documentary subjects to chronicle life under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

Adil traced the connection to a personal gift. "I had moved to Finland some years back, and a Finnish friend gave me 'The Diary of Anne Frank,'" she says.

She described her years under Taliban rule in the 1990s. "When I was in Afghanistan, when the Taliban took over, I was told that I cannot go to school. And I always wondered if the world know what happened to us. Does anybody know what is going on in Afghanistan? Has everybody forgotten us? I always missed my school friends and I wondered what happened," Adil says.

Reading Frank's diary changed her sense of isolation. "I felt like, oh my God, there has been someone else also experiencing the same thing like as me. Because I thought that nobody understood us, the young women in Afghanistan. But then I read Anne Frank's diary, and I realized that in the other side of the world, a young girl has experienced exactly similar thing, which is like everything is taken away and how your world becomes smaller and smaller," she says.

The pairing is deliberate programming: one episode, two portraits of how people in the arts manage money on one end and memory on the other. The Business Managers Elite section lands Nov. 11 for readers who want the full profiles.