SUMMON MY AGENT!

Roesler has already managed - in the four months they've been working together - to secure him a top advertising gig that went out during this year's Super Bowl to an estimated 120 million viewers. "I've really learned just how big he is, that's for sure," enthuses Roesler. He's talking about Albert Einstein.
Roesler, you see, is a celebrity agent with a difference - the 68-year-old works predominantly with famous people who are no longer alive. Also on his books are Neil Armstrong, Aaliyah, Rosa Parks, Burt Reynolds, Bette Davis, Sugar Ray Robinson, Ingrid Bergman, Alan Turing and hundreds more dead celebrities - or "delebrities" as they're sometimes called. It's a roster that has made him one of the world's most successful agents to the afterlife, and an expert in a field that is growing all the time. Because, according to Forbes, being dead doesn't necessarily mean being unprofitable. Their stats show Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley both raking in more than $100m each year, with other big hitters including Dr Seuss ($40m), Prince ($30m), Arnold Palmer and Marilyn Monroe (both $10m).
In the four decades since he started as a delebrity agent, Roesler says his company, CMG Worldwide, has represented 3,000 deceased entertainment, sports, music and historical personalities. And the opportunities to earn a crust from beyond the grave have never been better, with holographic and AI technology resurrecting dead stars' voices and likenesses so that they can get back on the live circuit (most recently George Michael was reported to be returning to the stage as a hologram). Roesler takes out his phone and shows me a project that he recently put together with the Calm meditation app - it's a bedtime story, narrated by the US actor James Stewart, who died in 1997: "Well, hello," it begins.
Esta historia es de la edición March 29, 2024 de The Guardian Weekly.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,500 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición March 29, 2024 de The Guardian Weekly.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,500 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
Alison's world The graphic novelist faces up to midlife in this playfully fictionalised memoir
Alison Bechdel emerged in the 1980s with Dykes to Watch Out For, a groundbreaking weekly strip that featured a group of mostly lesbian friends. Since then, her acclaimed graphic novels have focused mainly on herself and her family.
I need to drop everything and get on with doing nothing, quickly
I am sitting in my office shed, marvelling that an email from a car hire company I last used six years ago feels entitled to employ the subject line DROP EVERYTHING.

Fire starter Springsteen's anti-Trump broadside divides fans
As the lead singer of a Bruce Springsteen cover band, Brad Hobicorn had been looking forward to performing at Riv's Toms River Hub in New Jersey last Friday.
A new Syria: sanctions relief gives the shattered country a chance to rebuild
The startled joy that greeted Bashar al-Assad's fall six months ago was shadowed by the fear of what might follow.
I wanted us to finish our journey on a high'
Saint Etienne are calling it a day after 35 years. They discuss their final album, turning down Cher's Believe and a career defined by friendship and invention

The museum of absolutely everything
Poison darts, a dome from Spain, priceless spoons and Frank Lloyd Wright furniture... our architecture critic is wowed by the V&A's new east London outpost for 250,000 of its mind-boggling artefacts

Over a barrel Shortage of sugar shakes Cuba's rum industry
It is a crisis that would have sent a shiver down Ernest Hemingway’s drinking arm. Cuba’s communist government is struggling to process enough sugar to make the rum for his beloved mojitos and daiquiris.

Whiz up or wing it? Dips worth doing yourself and the ones to buy
Is it always better to make your own dips, or can I just buy them?

How a tiny village was engulfed by a mountain
It took a couple of minutes for 9m tonnes of rock to obliterate Blatten-but as glaciers melt, such disasters are more likely
Time warp Romance is beautifully drawn in a tale of two couples whose lives overlap, a century apart
Time is layered in Northern Irish writer David Park's latest novel.