Word: ovitz
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...movie (Above the Law), Spy as the hipper-than-thou champion of attitude journalism. Both like to make fun of short people. Both offered sleek twists on tired genres: Seagal the martial-arts movie, Spy the glossy gossip rag. Both are deeply indebted to Creative Artists Agency boss Michael Ovitz, who is Seagal's movie mentor and Spy's eternal obsession. And both have sturdy Time Warner credentials: Seagal as one of Warner Bros.' most reliable moneymakers (Hard to Kill, Under Siege) and Spy as a publication founded by former TIME writers Kurt Andersen (now back at TIME as editor...
...Steven won't talk, on or off the record," says a Seagal spokesman. Neither will Ovitz. And Warner Bros. publicity chief Robert Friedman will say only that Seagal is "an extremely cooperative filmmaker and actor who's a pleasure to do business with." But on April 16, when Connolly was still compiling his article, the star filed a slander suit against the writer and Robert Strickland, a former Seagal friend and Connolly's main source. According to Seagal's attorney, Martin Singer, Strickland had been harassing and defaming the actor. Singer contends that Connolly, in his interviewing...
...Election Day, Riordan, wearing a yellow jersey and crash helmet, rested on his racing bike in a eucalyptus-shaded lane near his Spanish-stucco mansion. He lives alone because his three daughters are grown and he is separated from his second wife. ("Did you see Michael Ovitz go by before?" he asked proudly. "He lives around the corner. So does Meryl Streep, and Michelle Pfeiffer.") Riordan said he intends to form an administration not of "technocrats," a breed he abhors, but of "doers and implementers." However, he said, "I am not such an amateur that I'm going to ignore...
...Although Ovitz denied making such statements, correspondence between the two men detailing their respective versions of the episode was faxed all over Hollywood, boosting Eszterhas to the almost mythic stature he relishes to this day. "Every time I'm in a limo and it passes the CAA building," says Eszterhas, "there is this right hand that sneaks out of the back window with this middle finger uplifted. I've done that religiously, and I get a great kick...
Within months of the Ovitz imbroglio, Eszterhas made headlines again when Basic Instinct drew protests from gay and lesbian groups for its depiction of a bisexual, icepick-wielding wild woman. The movie nevertheless grossed more than $350 million worldwide, and since then Eszterhas has sold various ideas that could end up making him more than $10 million over the next two years, among them a $3.4 million script about mobster John Gotti. In addition, he has written a TV commercial for Chanel No. 5 that was directed by Roman Polanski, and he is mulling over a possible move into theater...