Word: ovitz
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...groups will prod show people toward making environmental awareness as crucial a part of their scripts and songs as boy meets girl. The Environmental Media Association, a clearinghouse for save-the-earth societies, is fronted by such heavyweights as Disney Chairman Michael Eisner, Creative Artists Agency President Michael Ovitz, MCA President Sid Sheinberg, and Lear, who with his wife Lyn was a group founder. At the letter-stuffing level, the Earth Communications Office is targeting the few thousand actors, writers, producers and directors whose work reaches billions of people. In seminars and trips, ECO will educate creative folk on earth...
...heart of this conspiracy drama is the specter of the powerful Creative Artists Agency, headed by superagent Michael Ovitz. Ovitz was Belushi's agent, and his company's star-packed client list includes several of the comedian's friends who were angered by Woodward's book, among them fellow Saturday Night Live star Dan Aykroyd, SNL producer Lorne Michaels and brother Jim Belushi. Reluctance to alienate Ovitz and his clients, claim the film's producers, is what frightened most of Hollywood away. "In this town," says co-producer Edward Feldman (Save the Tiger, Witness), "the word was put out that...
While admitting that he had reservations about the film "to the extent that it would be exploitative," Ovitz denies that he led a campaign to suppress it. "This movie will rise or fall on its own merits," he says. "There is nothing anyone can do to stop it." Bolstering his argument is the fact that the film, for all its troubles, has found a distributor: Atlantic Entertainment Group, an independent company that has handled such films as Teen Wolf and Wish You Were Here. Some contend that Wired's producers are simply trying to generate controversy over a bad film...
...Meeker, eventually bought the rights for a relatively modest $300,000. They started feeling pressure almost immediately. Attorneys representing several Creative Artists clients and other Belushi colleagues, like director John Landis (The Blues Brothers), wrote letters warning that portraying them in the film would be an invasion of privacy. Ovitz himself phoned, says Feldman, and "told me it wasn't a good idea to make this picture." (Ovitz says he was simply giving Feldman "friendly advice" that "a lot of people we deal with -- clients and nonclients -- really didn't want to see John's memory exploited.") In the summer...
BUSINESS: Michael Ovitz has a pocketful of stars...