Word: caa
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...problem with CAA is not the tough talk, but the incestuous, ever widening network of pushme-pullyu relationships that are the basis of Ovitz's remarkable success. Feature film "packaging," in which a talent agency assembles the cast, director and writer for a movie from among its clients, is practically an Ovitz invention -- and, again, inherently corrosive of an agent's devotion to a client. If you're a CAA director client and the agency pressures you to cast an inappropriate CAA actor client in your movie, are your interests being ideally served...
...sense of a quasi-monopolistic old-boy lock on the industry becomes greater. Ovitz worked for Matsushita in its acquisition of MCA, and he also negotiated pay packages with the Japanese on behalf of the MCA executives -- with whom he now regularly strikes deals for his filmmaker clients. CAA represented Stanley Jaffe and Sherry Lansing when they worked together until a few years ago as independent producers; now they run Paramount, against whom CAA continually negotiates deals. CAA is also a regular bargainer with 20th Century Fox, which Joe Roth ran until late last year, when Ovitz helped him negotiate...
...surprise was Alan Ladd Jr., the chairman of the bank's MGM studio. "By the time the bank told me about the deal," Ladd says, "it was a fait accompli." He seems tentative about the whole thing. "I don't think MGM is for sale at this time." However, CAA sources confirm that Ovitz is indeed out to find a buyer...
...says it's "light stuff for Michael. He should be able to dash off this kind of advice on the car phone while he's taking his son to the ball game." Perhaps, but a fee of, say, $30 million would in fact represent a very significant fraction of CAA's annual revenues...
...CAA's rivals, particularly the folks at ICM, are doing their best to stoke these fears. Says Bill Block, a cocksure young agent at ICM: "This deal? It's like the Oliver North thing -- the full implications weren't brought out." Certainly, sour grapes and not simply righteous indignation plays some role: two years ago, ICM hired one of the Credit Lyonnais officials who was in charge of many of the bank's movie-industry loans during the go-go '80s, and it also happens to be making forays of its own in the ad game...