Word: ovitz
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...above, and certainly ICM's Berg is a little disingenuous in his outrage. There is some truth to CAA's contention that if it helps keep a major studio alive, that will ultimately accrue to the benefit of everyone working in Hollywood. But when Berg went to the press, Ovitz was stung. Since both men are people of such consequence, their fearful peers are careful not to take sides, even anonymously. "It was a bold move on Mike's part," says the currently successful head of a studio, "and a logical move on Jeff's part." "This place," says Anna...
Being the ultimate agent, however, isn't enough for Ovitz; he's thinking bigger, ignoring nearly all the comfortable old show business boundaries. Lately he has extended his radius of operations, scaring the bejesus out of Madison Avenue by devising two dozen smart, sexy TV spots for Coca-Cola, and he may be looking to poach other business from the ad agencies. And still he wants more. He has turned himself into the movie industry's highest-profile investment broker in the past few years, arranging the multibillion-dollar acquisitions of Columbia Pictures by Sony and MCA/Universal by Matsushita...
...move that has whipped up an uncharacteristically public feud in Hollywood, Ovitz has gone one, possibly crucial step further: he has been retained by Credit Lyonnais, the French bank that took over MGM/United Artists in a foreclosure last year, to straighten out its bad-news, $3.4 billion movie-loan portfolio (last month the bank wrote off a third of those loans), to find new investments and, Ovitz hopes, to sell the studio. In the view of Jeff Berg, who runs rival International Creative Management, Ovitz's arrangement makes him crypto-chairman of MGM, which represents an untenable -- and perhaps illegal...
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...
What makes Mike run? For starters, he surely wants to cleanse himself of agenting's residual Sweet Smell of Success-era taint. In the old-fashioned show business pecking order, according to a veteran producer at one of the studios, agents were "one step above child molester." Ovitz and CAA have given their trade glamour and stature of a kind that was unimaginable a generation ago, but they still can't order a movie or TV show into production; they are still only middle people, not buyers. On the other hand, Ovitz has turned down the top job at Columbia...