Word: ovitz
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...corner office on the top floor is the soft-spoken 46-year-old from whom the swirl of glamour and adrenaline and influence derives. Michael Ovitz, CAA's co-founder and chairman, does not on first glimpse look like the most powerful man in show business. His scratchy voice and gap-toothed grin are real, even warm. This is the guy who sends streams of cold sweat down elegantly coiffed necks? This guy with the rosy complexion and slight stoop, who gives the impression that he has all the time in the world to hear about your weekend? Who keeps...
...business acumen and showman's instincts. "He is the least cynical man I know," says Peter Chernin, now head of Fox's film division. "He has antennae for the kind of cynicism that says, 'We don't like this, but the idiots out there will.' " Says Michael Ovitz, head of the Creative Artists Agency: "In this business there are good analytical, practical and creative minds, but very few who combine all three. Barry can read a balance sheet, read a script, and forward-think...
...accustomed to complicated arrangements. Controlling hundreds of leading actors, directors and producers, the agency's chief, Michael Ovitz, has reinvented the meaning of the deal in Hollywood, often representing nearly every major player in top films and selling them as a package. But Ovitz has long yearned to have his firm branch out from being merely talent agents. He got close to Coke executives when he helped arrange Sony's friendly purchase of Columbia Pictures from Coca-Cola...
...able to offer Coke the services of top filmmakers as collaborators on its ads. Film directors Rob Reiner (When Harry Met Sally, A Few Good Men) and Richard Donner (Superman, Lethal Weapon), for example, were among those producing the new Coke commercials. "What we do every day," explains Ovitz, "is listen to ideas, encourage them, nurture them. This is no different. Instead of creating a story that is TV or feature-film length, we shifted to stories that are 30 seconds or 60 seconds long." As for what Coca- Cola paid CAA for its work, no one is saying. Jokes...
Celebrity has its muscle in America, but politics has the power. Eddie Murphy can't drop a bomb, he can only make one. Steven Spielberg can beam E.T. home, but he can't run NASA. Superagent Mike Ovitz can't appoint a Supreme Court Justice (at least, we don't think he can). So the artists, most of them liberal Democrats, came to celebrate the politics of inclusion: after 12 years, or maybe 30, they were back on a party line to Washington clout...