Word: ovitz
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
What does $250 million buy these days? Lots of things, but not Michael Ovitz. That wad was not enough for Seagram's CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. to lure Ovitz from Creative Artists Agency, the talent shop he built into Hollywood's prime power brokerage, to become chairman of MCA, the show-biz conglomerate (movies, music, TV shows, theme parks) that Seagram's purchased last week. Thus ended the hottest nonevent since Comet Kohoutek. Except that this one had bigger stars ready to collide. And the meteor showers may be felt for years...
...wasn't about money," everybody said, after Ovitz told his team at last Monday's regular meeting that he and two other CAA officers were staying put. No, of course not. Money has mainly a symbolic value in the entertainment business. It tells the top players how much they are wanted or not wanted. You want Sylvester Stallone for a picture, so you pay him $20 million. You want to get rid of Robert Morgado, the recently deposed head of Warner Music, so you contemplate a buyout package that's been estimated at upwards of $30 million...
Since the bust-up of the MCA deal is a Hollywood story, it must also be about relationships. It was about Ovitz's friendship with Bronfman, which was tested by Ovitz's demands for more money and power. It was about the family atmosphere, nurturing and disciplined, in which the lords of CAA raise their younger employees. It was also about the agency's awesome client roster: the Costners and Cruises, Redfords and Streisands, Keanus and Winonas, Spielbergs and Zemeckises. These are people who don't like to feel deserted by their 10-percenters...
...would have bought Virgin Records, he would have bought nbc," says Irving Azoff, MCA's former music boss. "He was really frustrated that the Japanese wouldn't let him do any of that." The brokered marriage was soon looking as vulnerable as Lyle Lovett's to Julia Roberts. And Ovitz, the canny matchmaker, was apparently unwilling or unable to save...
...rash of rumors now suggests that Bronfman, if he buys MCA, would ask one of his friends, Ovitz or at-large media mogul Barry Diller, to run it. But either of them would surely insist on substantial equity, and last week both were denying any interest in the job. It is more logical that Bronfman would urge Sheinberg to stay on-not least because that would assure MCA of a Spielberg-DreamWorks connection-but that Edgar Jr. would run the show...