Word: ovitz
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...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...
Among those whom Ovitz's arrangement with Credit Lyonnais took by surprise was Alan Ladd Jr., the chairman of the bank's MGM studio. "By the time the bank told me about the deal," Ladd says, "it was a fait accompli." He seems tentative about the whole thing. "I don't think MGM is for sale at this time." However, CAA sources confirm that Ovitz is indeed out to find a buyer...
...Dufour, a director of the Credit Lyonnais, dismisses the fears of Ovitz's critics who fret about conflicts of interest. Ovitz will meet with the bankers often, maybe monthly, but Dufour says Ovitz will wield no operational power over the studio. "Absolutely not. False -- completely wrong," he says. "MGM has its own management. MGM makes its own decisions. We do not tell it what to do; nor will anyone else." His presence, however, will inevitably be felt by studio executives and by moviemakers cutting MGM deals...
...Ovitz calls the consulting arrangement "a minuscule part of my business." A close financier friend says it's "light stuff for Michael. He should be able to dash off this kind of advice on the car phone while he's taking his son to the ball game." Perhaps, but a fee of, say, $30 million would in fact represent a very significant fraction of CAA's annual revenues...