Who Is Michael Ovitz?

by Michael Ovitz

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  And then, in 1979, ahead of schedule, we got a star.

  Having grown to fifteen agents, we needed more space. When a failed hedge fund decamped from a suite of furnished offices in Century City, I wangled a below-market sublease. In our new lobby one morning, I glanced at the tenant list and spotted an eye-catching name on the eighteenth floor. Gary Hendler was a tax lawyer who’d started a high-end firm with Art Armstrong, a top business attorney. Along with Barry Hirsch, Jake Bloom, and Tom Pollock, Gary was one of the premier entertainment lawyers, the people who structured and vetted artists’ contracts. Gary’s client list included Robert Redford, Sean Connery, Sydney Pollack, and Barbra Streisand, among others.

  After I pestered his receptionist, Gary agreed to meet me for dinner at Scandia, the top restaurant of its day. I’d befriended the maître d’, a gregarious little guy named Giuseppe Bellisario, and ate there four times a week. (CAA later financed Giuseppe when he opened Giuseppe’s in West Hollywood.) By the time I intercepted the check, Gary and I had established a rapport. He understood my ambitions, and I knew all about his passions. The next day I sent him a barrel of Hershey’s chocolate Kisses; the day after that, a good bottle of wine; the day after that, a first-edition volume on the law. We met several times for lunch, until one morning he called and said, “I’d like you to meet with Sean Connery.” It wasn’t so much that I’d bowled over Gary with my qualities as that there was little downside for him to making the introduction: Sean’s career was in a deep, dark hole.

  Sean was in London, and a lot rode on our first phone call. I wouldn’t get a mulligan. Like most men my age, I had grown up idolizing Sean Connery and the relaxed violence of his take on James Bond. But it would be a mistake to gush. I had to diplomatically tell him he was screwing up. A dock worker before he got into acting, Sean couldn’t stand being idle and worked nonstop. Usually I liked that quality in a client, but Sean said yes to everything, and the script or the director or the costars were routinely beneath him—often all three. It had happened with The Next Man, his most recent flop, and it was about to happen again with Meteor and Cuba.

  When Sean came on the line, I told him, “If you’re going to build your brand, you can’t take roles at random. You need to choose better projects.” I told him he needed to have exposure to a range of possible scripts and to have them developed into packages with him as the star. I also said he needed to work with better directors and that we’d get him those introductions and those jobs. This became the pattern for how I’d sign a star: start by politely criticizing his choices; tell him he needed to see and choose better material and better directors; promise him both. I made no promises that he’d work with specific talent, because the easiest way to lose a client is to make a promise you can’t fulfill; the client always remembers. Sean didn’t ask which of our directors and actors I thought he should be paired with, which was fortunate, because we didn’t represent anyone of his stature. If he had asked, I’d have said what I often said in those days: “The creative talent that’s right for you.”

  Sean was quiet at first, but he gradually warmed to my candor about his decision-making process. The following week we bought a full-page ad in the trades, all in bright red: “Creative Artists Agency, Inc. is proud to announce the exclusive worldwide representation of Sean Connery.” I tore it out and mailed it to Lee Rosenberg, the agent who’d scoffed at the idea we’d ever sign a movie star. (Lee later became my neighbor, and we got along well, but for years I sent him an ad each time we signed a star. The one I sent for Robert Redford was particularly satisfying.) I flew to England a few weeks later to visit Sean on the set of The Great Train Robbery and to cement our partnership face-to-face. But I never asked him to sign a letter of engagement. I thought written agreements were not just overrated—because clients could void them if they went ninety days without work—but downright counterproductive. With no papers to renew, our clients had no anniversary to jog them into thinking about leaving us.

  We began by finding Sean a pair of prudently budgeted, low-risk science-fiction films. Then came something trickier, a remake of Thunderball, the vintage Bond film. Sean hadn’t played Bond since Diamonds Are Forever, more than ten years earlier, when he’d sworn off the franchise to avoid getting typecast. I felt he simply was James Bond, and that if audiences and producers were reminded of that, other opportunities would follow. One night, I worked the conversation around to Roger Moore and his shortcomings as Bond. Sean remained the definitive 007, I said—and he could not dispute me. I made sure Micheline Roquebrune, a French-born artist who was Sean’s wife, supported the move, and I had Gary Hendler support the idea, too (I cleared everything client-related with Gary, behaving almost as if I were his assistant). I wore down Sean’s defenses until he agreed to sip the shaken-not-stirred martini one last time. The movie’s title, Never Say Never Again, came from Micheline, who recalled him telling the press that he’d “never again” play James Bond.

  Unfortunately, the shoot in the Bahamas was strained. Sean disliked the producer, and he wasn’t wild about the script or the director, Irvin Kershner. Also, it had taken so long to put the film together, four years, that Sean was now fifty-two, and visibly creaky in some of his action scenes. John Calley scanned the dailies in vain for the debonair Connery he’d thought he was buying. Fortunately, Sean’s fans were so hungry for the real Bond that Never Say Never Again was bulletproof—and even if it stunk, I’d put together enough subsequent movies for Sean, based on his growing momentum, that he was safe. The film picked up good reviews and performed decently well at the box office. I even think Sean was glad he’d done it. He was back from the brink.

  Our next deal was strictly mercenary. Sean loved to make money. I told him we could take films for the payday, if it was big enough—but only if we had quality projects slotted in between. Golan-Globus, the Israeli-producer cousins who had a brief but colorful run of B-movie action pictures, wanted Sean to play the Green Knight in a period piece called Sword of the Valiant. For six days of work that would amount to twelve minutes on-screen, I set Sean’s price at $1 million, plus a penalty of $250,000 per day if he was kept past the first week. No actor had earned so much for so little. (Better yet, because the shoot was in France, Sean wouldn’t pay any taxes.) The producers balked, then, hours later, caved. They needed the Connery brand to sell the film.

  Going into Sword of the Valiant, I told Sean, “Just show up and take the money. Don’t try to be the producer and the cinematographer and the makeup guy. Have some fun for a change.” Two days into the shoot, I visited him in Avignon. We went to dinner and I said, “So how does it feel to be doing nothing?” Sean spared no detail on what needed to be fixed. As my jet lag caught up to me, I began nodding off. “You young guys have no stamina,” Sean said, reprovingly. He himself was tireless. He’d disembark in Los Angeles after a nine-hour time change and scoot off to play a couple of sets of tennis.

  He remained extremely attractive; at restaurants, even with his hairpiece at home, women of all ages still gave him the “take me now” look. In 1989, when Sean was fifty-nine, People magazine would declare him the sexiest man alive. But he had entered the phase where leading men needed to downshift to more mature roles. I knew he’d fight me on that. My lever was The Untouchables, a Brian De Palma film starring Kevin Costner as Eliot Ness. It had an exceptional part for Sean: an Irish cop who was Ness’s stern but avuncular mentor. Sean could steal every scene.

  “You’re the eminence grise in this movie,” I said.

  “But I’m not the lead,” Sean said. “And I die midway through”—his character got gunned down by Al Capone’s mob.

  “That’s the key scene. You give Costner the strength to go on against Capone.”

  “But I’m still dead!” He just did not want to play the older mentor.

  After weeks of this, I appealed to Micheline. At first she took Sean’s side. But when
I explained why the job would position Sean for the next decade, she gently brought her husband around. I called Sean again and said, “Sean, you have to play this role. And with no hairpiece. It’s time.” You have to risk alienating your clients. When you tell someone the truth, all they can do is get upset—they can’t call you an idiot. Sean finally gave in.

  We were good until the first day of shooting, when the predictable complaints began. His character, Jim Malone, was made up to be in his sixties, and Sean loathed his shapeless period suit and tweed cap. But he liked Costner and De Palma, and he gradually, grudgingly came to embrace the role. And he did steal every scene.

  The Untouchables earned Sean his only Oscar and it set up a distinguished late-career run: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Hunt for Red October, The Russia House, The Rock. He didn’t want to play an even-older Russian in The Hunt for Red October, but I firmly said, “Sean, you’re going to look great in a blue uniform.” He wasn’t the type to gush, but never was a client more faithful and appreciative. He became my friend and adviser, an honorary member of the Ovitz clan. He vented when something went terribly wrong—like the time I packaged him with Sidney Lumet and Dustin Hoffman in Family Business, one of the best-sounding, worst-executed movie ideas ever. But it was like fighting with family; Sean never threatened to leave us.

  On his sixtieth birthday, in 1990, Micheline and I threw him a surprise party at Wolfgang Puck’s brewery restaurant in West Los Angeles. The two hundred guests were all people he had worked with or was close to or greatly respected, including Clint Eastwood, Michael Caine, Michelle Pfeiffer, Harrison Ford, and Steven Spielberg. As we walked Sean in, I could see that he was moved, and that moved me. When he stood on a riser to speak, he cried and couldn’t say a word.

  CHAPTER SIX

  CAR PHONES

  If a lawyer did a favor for us, we’d try to do a bigger one for them. In a business of favors, the chits added up.

  Not long after Gary Hendler introduced me to Sean Connery, I found a way to repay him. I knew that Gary was badly overworked and that Barry Hirsch was restless at his firm. They embodied two of the city’s top three entertainment-law firms. So why not package Hendler and Hirsch? I took Gary to dinner and sang Barry’s praises. On my way home, I called Barry from my car and asked him to breakfast the next morning in Santa Monica. I pitched him on Gary, and the two of them met the following day. Less than a week later, Barry and Gary formed Armstrong, Hendler & Hirsch, a hub of motion picture talent. CAA would represent fifty of their clients within a year.

  Then Sylvester Stallone told Ron Meyer he planned to fire his lawyer, Jake Bloom—who had brought Sly to us in the first place. Ron had a tough conversation with his star, and Sly agreed to sit tight. That meant something around town. It showed the lawyers that we valued them, and that they were better off on our side.

  Bert Fields was my channel to Dustin Hoffman. Bert was a litigator nonpareil—whenever there was a big Hollywood lawsuit, both sides would race to engage him. I met Bert when we were starting CAA, and after our first lunch, I sent him a check for five dollars to retain his services, a mostly jocular way to give him a conflict to think about if anyone asked him to sue us. Dustin, having broken out in The Graduate in 1967, had lost his way, as well as his first marriage, to the intoxications of celebrity. Then an old family friend, a businesswoman named Lisa Gotsegen, came into his life. Lisa kept Dustin on the straight and narrow and made sure he read the scripts he got sent. They were engaged to be married in 1979 when Judy and I met them for dinner at Chasen’s, the West Hollywood institution where Frank Sinatra and Gregory Peck kept red-leather booths on reserve.

  Dustin had just shot Kramer vs. Kramer, which would win him his first Oscar, but prior to that he’d had a string of bombs, and his career was in a precarious place. He was extremely picky about roles, the opposite of Sean Connery, but my pitch was much the same. “We’ll make sure you see everything,” I said. I tried to turn a weakness (my inexperience and dearth of film clients) into a strength (he’d have my complete attention). I could tell I was scoring points with Lisa—she’d grown up near me in the Valley, and I felt instantly comfortable with her—but Dustin was harder to read. On impulse, I said, “Try us out and I won’t charge you anything until you think I’ve earned it.” It was the only time I ever offered to take less than 10 percent, much less work for free. If word of the arrangement got out, the haggling with other clients would never end. But we desperately needed a top-ten film star like Dustin Hoffman. I deluged him with material, and signed him six months later.

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  While Sean and Dustin were coups for CAA, we still needed directors. I’d long loitered near one of the best: Sydney Pollack. During my time at William Morris, Sydney was making standout pictures like They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? and Jeremiah Johnson. I’d stumbled across him on the streets of New York in 1972, while he was filming The Way We Were, and watched behind the rope with the other passers-by. Sydney handled Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand so lightly that they didn’t even notice the bridle. The famously skittish Streisand seemed to trust him completely. As I watched them, a vision of the future came over me: I’m going to have all of these people someday, in an agency that will represent the whole food chain and flip the power from the studios to the artists. Even then I had the odd feeling that Sydney would be my master key.

  Realizing that vision took years. When I heard about The Yakuza, a film about the Japanese crime syndicate that Sydney would release in 1975, I cold-called him and offered to connect him to Ed Parker, a local martial artist who could choreograph the movie. Ed didn’t get the job, but I kept in touch and stopped by Sydney’s office every so often. I stayed after him when we started CAA, escalating my soft pressure a notch in 1977, after Sydney invited me to the premiere for Bobby Deerfield. Al Pacino was outstanding as the hard-hearted race-car driver, but the movie never really jelled. Because Sydney had yet to make a blockbuster, he was ripe to be lured.

  Sydney’s longtime agent was Evarts Ziegler, a cultured, white-haired Princeton man—a literary agent out of central casting. Zig went his own way, living in far-off Pasadena even as his firm, Ziegler, Diskant & Roth, represented A-list writers like William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) and Willard and Gloria Huyck (Star Wars). He also had top-tier directors like Dick Donner (Superman) and Jim Bridges (Urban Cowboy). I wanted them all, but how to lure them away?

  The unexpected answer came through my car telephone, a novelty at the time. The radio-based phone, slightly larger than a shoebox, had eleven channels: you kept pushing buttons until you found a dial tone. Busy channels were like party lines—any subscriber could listen in. On my way to the office one morning, I heard a voice that sounded like Evarts Ziegler’s. I pulled off the road to take notes, because Zig was discussing his star-studded list with his assistant. I clocked in at the same time the next morning, and there was Zig again, doing business while commuting. He sounded old and forlorn. Zig was past sixty, and at a time when we were swarming potential clients, he had just one assistant and a junior partner named Steve Roth. I decided to try to buy him out. To make him more receptive—to soften him up—I escalated my campaign to sign Sydney Pollack.

  “I’ll kill for you,” I told Sydney. All I had to sell was my passion and energy and the fact that I was thirty years younger than Evarts Ziegler. As Sydney wavered, we got screenplay after screenplay into his hands before Zig did. I pestered Mort Janklow for drafts of upcoming books and sent out summaries by the dozen. Each day I spent up to two hours on Sydney, far more than anyone would spend for his biggest signed client. Sydney was Hamlet reincarnated—he never made a fast decision. But in 1981, with our courtship in its second year, he signed with me at last.

  Having dealt Zig a body blow, we offered him $750,000 for his agency, plus a lifetime royalty on his clients’ work. He’d keep a piece of his business in perpetuity, even if he never came t
o the office. After we’d negotiated for six months, Zig passed. Either he doubted our staying power or he couldn’t stomach surrendering to some whippersnappers. But during our discussions we’d discovered that Steve Roth serviced the cream of their younger clientele and that Steve was eager to leave. We promptly cut a deal for him to come to CAA. That got us most of what we wanted, including Dick Donner, Jim Bridges, and the Huycks, at the price of Steve’s compensation—$250,000 a year and the potential to become a partner.

  We had to build a critical mass of clients so we could reverse the power curve from the buyers (the studios) to the sellers (us), and anyone in our way was going to get rolled over. With his core business gone, Zig sold what remained to ICM in 1983, and he was done. The truth is that I didn’t give a thought to Zig after he turned us down. You never heard that someone was unhappy afterward—they just lost. Ron sometimes had to remind me not to roll over everyone; Jack Nicholson was with a one-man outfit, Sandy Bresler, so we wouldn’t go after Jack. “There are two hundred of these smaller agencies,” Ron would say, “and you can’t put ’em all out of business.” That made sense to me, even then.

  But flattening Evarts Ziegler was the beginning of my Shermanesque March to the Sea.

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  Steve Roth, our new hire, had grown up in Beverly Hills and knew how to handle himself around celebrities. He was glib and well dressed and unflappable. We offered him a full partnership after a make-good period. He started out guns blazing, but soon he was skipping the Saturday meetings. Then he started coming in late on weekdays. Steve was hanging out with producers like Frank Yablans and Robert Evans, people who blew off phone calls as a prerogative of power, and he started behaving like them.