Word: caa
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...studio chief? Hollywood is a small, familial place. Everyone does business with everybody else. The same complications occur in investment banking. But just as they build a Chinese wall to separate the parts of their companies that have competing or conflicting interests, we have built a Chinese wall at CAA. It's all about ethics and how you do business...
...corner office on the top floor is the soft-spoken 46-year-old from whom the swirl of glamour and adrenaline and influence derives. Michael Ovitz, CAA's co-founder and chairman, does not on first glimpse look like the most powerful man in show business. His scratchy voice and gap-toothed grin are real, even warm. This is the guy who sends streams of cold sweat down elegantly coiffed necks? This guy with the rosy complexion and slight stoop, who gives the impression that he has all the time in the world to hear about your weekend? Who keeps...
...Michael Keaton, Bill Murray, Al Pacino, Barbra Streisand and Robin Williams. They also represent most of the top directors, including Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and John Hughes. And most of the top screenwriters. The only weak spot, according to one of those reticent studio chiefs, is in music; there, CAA's client roster is peopled by such nobodies as Eric Clapton, Michael Jackson and Madonna. If you are a movie executive or a producer and you want to get a film made, it's possible to proceed without Ovitz's complicity -- but not advisable...
...Management, Ovitz's arrangement makes him crypto-chairman of MGM, which represents an untenable -- and perhaps illegal -- conflict of interest. "I want to solve it politically within the industry," Berg said last week, backpedaling from his initial talk of legal action. But he intends to keep the pressure on CAA and Ovitz. "He didn't think I'd call him on it," says the ordinarily very cool and calm Berg...
...Will CAA clients get special treatment from MGM, as Berg suggests? Or will the opposite happen, with MGM getting sweetheart deals for the actors and directors and writers whom Ovitz's agency represents? And when the bank finally gets around to selling MGM, will Ovitz's insider knowledge give him an unfair edge in making or avoiding deals for his clients with the studio...