Word: ovitz
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...simplest reason for all the extracurricular work may be the strongest: Hollywood remains in a deep recession, and the agency will earn more from one Matsushita-MCA deal than a whole lifetime of 10% fees from Kevin Costner. If Ovitz is able to unload MGM at a decent price, according to a knowledgeable source, Credit Lyonnais will probably pay him north of $30 million. Plus, as long as he has his main talent-peddling business going strong, Ovitz can very profitably cherry-pick in the secondary realms. He can create an ad campaign here and arrange a corporate acquisition there...
...fact, Ovitz is as close to a visionary as Hollywood gets. And in great measure he is powerful because he is so good at what he does. "Studios like him," says one studio lieutenant, unnecessarily withholding his identity, "because he is honest, straightforward and reliable." CAA is a disciplined, very closely managed organization -- some would say oppressively so. CAA agents must collaborate on projects and share information for the good of the clients and the agency; at ICM it tends to be every agent for himself. Ovitz is a devotee of the ancient Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu, whose...
...fear of Ovitz and CAA in Hollywood is intense and practically universal, though perhaps not wholly warranted. The hot screenwriter Joe Eszterhas says Ovitz threatened to ruin him when he switched to ICM 3 1/2 years ago, but his writing fees have kept climbing. CAA client Michael Douglas appeared in his Basic Instinct, and CAA tried to get its clients cast in Eszterhas' forthcoming Sliver. In late 1991 Wall Street Journal reporter Richard Turner co-wrote a devastating article about Ovitz's overenthusiastic involvement in a penny-ante company pushing QSound, an unsuccessful audio technology. Ovitz apparently sputtered...
...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...
...Ovitz and his agency increasingly forge alliances that cross conventional boundaries, the 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...