Who Is Michael Ovitz?

by Michael Ovitz

  At the eleventh hour I set up a secret rendezvous in Orange County so Frank and Michael could meet with Sam Williams. They wowed him. Later I prepped Michael for his first meeting with Sid Bass, the art-collecting oilman who was about to become Disney’s largest shareholder. To keep Michael from coming off as a one-dimensional entertainment guy, I briefed him on every painting in Bass’s home. Disney offered Wells the top spot as chairman and CEO, with Eisner as president. Michael told Frank he wouldn’t serve as his number two, and the jobs were flipped.

  Boy, do I wish Frank had told Michael to take a hike at that point—it would have saved me a world of hurt later. But Frank was too nice, too conflict averse. And, he told me later, he didn’t think he was as creatively qualified as Michael. If he’d taken the top job, Eisner would have walked, and then Frank would have had to go find someone else he liked who had a knack for story. It wasn’t easy to find someone who could read a script as shrewdly as a spreadsheet: there were only a handful besides Eisner, including David Geffen, Barry Diller, Terry Semel, Bob Daly, and Frank Price.

  Over the next ten years, Michael turned Disney around and made it a real power, with crucial support from Frank and from his studio head, Jeffrey Katzenberg. CAA was perfectly positioned to profit from the relationship. But we never did much business with Disney—they just wouldn’t pay market price.

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  My technique and confidence had become such that I felt that if I could get in a room with a client, any client, I could sign him or her. My record was pretty good. James L. Brooks simply refused to leave ICM, though I busted my ass trying. I had to unsign Arnold Schwarzenegger, after signing him, because Sly Stallone felt threatened and blew up at Ron (Sly was one of the few who didn’t buy our “No conflicts, no interest” theory). But Arnold came over later. And I couldn’t land Mel Gibson because he wanted to pay just 5 percent in commissions. But that was about it.

  Every actor, writer, or director believes he or she is responsible for his or her own success. All I did was sell that belief back to them. “Look, you’re going to make it with or without us,” I’d say. “But we can keep you at the top, because we see every project first, we develop for you, we represent every important studio executive—so we can match you with the perfect projects. And we take care of all your other personal needs so you can focus on your work. Going with us is just like taking out career insurance.” A lot of agents preyed on people’s anxiety and desperation, pitching themselves as a golden ticket: “You can’t make it without me!” To me, that went against the grain of human nature.

  If a potential client was reluctant, I’d say, “You should take all the time you need. No pressure.” And by “no pressure,” I meant, “No pressure until the next time I’m in touch, which may be in an hour.” I tried to avoid coming across as a nudge, while making myself ubiquitous and inexorable. The smarter clients could see what I was doing, see how it worked, but it worked nonetheless because everyone wants to be wanted. And the realization that your would-be agent has a plan to handle whatever may be coming, and that he can execute it, is reassuring. I signed Kevin Costner, in 1989, in part by convincing him that he needed to take $3 million for directing and starring in his passion project, Dances with Wolves. He wanted to take just a million, to keep the costs down so it could get made. I told him he had to trust me, and that he’d understand why later. So he took the $3 million, and when the production ran out of money, as I knew it would—first-time directors on big projects always run out of money—he was able to draw on the extra salary to finish shooting. I’d gotten him the insurance he needed to finish his dream film.

  Creating a zone of calm, in a chronically overexcited world, proved disarming. Whenever disputes arose with a studio, and I had to deal with an exec sputtering with outrage, I’d go even calmer and say, “I’m confused about something.” Or, slightly more aggressively: “Could you educate me?” They’re expecting you to ream them, and you’ve put them at ease by being neutral and mildly curious. Also, you’ve gotten them talking, and you’re learning. It preserves your options.

  Another move I developed, almost unconsciously, was ground shifting. If someone on the other side of the table very confidently asserted a number that was confidential or that was plausibly in dispute—the budget of a rival studio’s competing film, for instance—I would instantly say “It’s higher” or “It’s lower,” depending on which served our interests. That assertion would throw the other guy off balance, and suggest that I knew everything, when in truth I only knew some things. At the very least, it would give me a gauge of how solid their information was, and how confident they were. If they fired right back with “No, you’re absolutely wrong,” I’d just say, “That’s not what I’m hearing from the highest levels,” or something equally ominous, then change the topic.

  I resented it when people called these techniques agent tricks. I viewed them as tactics for achieving a preconceived strategy. My whole affect was transactional: I was soft-spoken because I wanted people to have to work hard to hear me, to have to move closer. When I did explode, which was rare, it was almost always expedient. When an agent named Robb Rothman left us for Jim Berkus’s agency, which later merged into UTA, I screamed at him, “I’m going to make your life a living hell!” It was the Hail Mary after I’d done everything I could to express how much we wanted him to stay. Then, and only then, did I pick up the club and threaten to drop him into a boiling lake of fire. You want the guy to reconsider. Do I regret screaming those sorts of threats, as I did whenever an agent left us? Yes and no. Yes, because it never worked and because it reinforced my image as a vindictive bastard. No, because it’s who I had to be.

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  My recurring nightmare was a big public event where the name of a client or potential client might escape me. I took to having one or two assistants study the guilds’ mug shots and shadow me, warning me sotto voce when they spotted a relevant face. Even then I feared I’d blow it. I had a huge zone of protection around me—five assistants—and it never felt like enough.

  One assistant, such as Richard Lovett or David O’Connor, was being trained to become an agent; two handled incoming and outgoing calls; one was in charge of my schedule; and one just gave gifts. We instituted CAA’s famous gifts office in the late seventies on the uncontroversial theory that people love free stuff. I had learned about gifting from my father, with his bottles of Seagram’s. So one of my assistants kept track of all our clients’ hobbies and charities. When an agent found out some new bit of relevant data—Tom Hanks is taking scuba lessons, or the like—it got passed to the gifts assistant via a buck slip, or interoffice memo. The next time the client had a birthday or a book coming out or a movie shooting, he’d get an outdoor watch or a nice piece of luggage or, say for Paul Newman and Tom Cruise on The Color of Money, an ornate pool cue. When Ron told me Sylvester Stallone admired my old Ferrari, I gave Sly the title. When Laverne & Shirley became a hit and I kept redoing Penny Marshall’s deal, I told Paramount’s Gary Nardino, “By the way, add a washer and dryer as a gift. From you to Penny.”

  We pioneered the start-date gift—the $500 “survival kit” food basket that would arrive in an actor’s dressing room, on some remote set in Malta or New Zealand, the first day of shooting. We gave them to nonclients, too, working the theory that a nonclient is just a future client who hasn’t realized it yet. A typical memo from my right arm, Susan Miller, covering a three-week period of birthday presents, noted that I had given (among many other gifts) “Dustin an E-Tak, Armyan Bernstein a CITY OF NETS book, Walter Yetnikoff AKG headphones, Robert De Niro a FUTURISMO book, large MATISSE book, and several CDS”—his father was a painter—“Robert Redford a Malcolm Morley print, Terry and Jane Semel some Abrams art books, Sean Connery AKG headphones, Michael Jackson a personalized robe & Hollywood Musicals book.”

  Except for start-date gifts, my rule was that important gifts sh
ouldn’t be disposable: no champagne, no muffin baskets. Instead, rare first editions from Heritage books, ancient Greek coins, paintings and prints, even the occasional car—sturdy, thoughtful presents that would last. If a client was paying us $500,000 a year in commissions, and we spent $5,000 on a gift for him or her, it didn’t hurt us much and it made the client feel fabulous. Our gifts office spent more than $500,000 a year, and generated a ton of good will (though we did send one writer for The Simpsons the same Weber grill on three separate occasions). Every Christmas we gave Tiffany key rings or the like to the secretaries of our favorite executives, and we messengered over $500 to $1,000 to our favorite restaurant owners and maître d’s, those who’d made us seem more important at the beginning than we actually were—Ronnie, Tommy, Julius, and Pearl at Chasen’s; François and Anna at Harry’s Bar; Tom at Yamamoto’s; MaryLou and Monte at Scandia; Peter and Pam at Morton’s; Nobu at Matsuhisa; Giorgio and Elena at Giorgio’s; Jimmy and David at Jimmy’s; Gigi at the Palm; and on and on.

  I had two assistants handling calls because the calls never ceased. I’d look at the phone logs every morning and afternoon and put dots next to each message in red ink. Five dots meant “call back right now”; four dots was “call within thirty minutes”; three was “call before next meal”; two was “call by end of day”; and one dot signaled “call before end of week.” Even the most important clients wouldn’t necessarily get a return call right away. When I signed Marty Scorsese, I told him, “I’m not going to spend an hour on the phone with you a day—then I can’t be doing everything else I need to do to find out what’s going on, and I’m worthless to you.” So when Marty called me, if it wasn’t a crisis, one of my assistants would say, “He’s tied up, but he’ll be back to you by the end of the day.” Then Jay Moloney would call back for me, talk to Marty for an hour, and write up a buck slip explaining why Marty had called. The buck slips themselves would be ranked in order of importance—the rule was that if a buck slip contained a question, it had to be replied to by the end of the day—and I’d call whoever needed my attention most.

  If we were trying to transition a client whom I’d signed to the agent who’d be handling him day to day, I’d keep having that younger guy call back for me, and usually by the time I got back to Al Pacino, say, he was fine with having his daily business handled by Rick Nicita. All the senior people passed down their top artists as soon as younger agents could handle them, by slow-rolling the return calls. Manipulative, yes, but the pass-down process took pressure off signers like Ron and Bill, allowed younger agents to get in the game, and spurred CAA’s continuing growth. Warren Beatty once told me, “It’s smart of you guys to give so much work and support to the young guys—it makes you look that much more important.” He was right: it was self-serving for the agency’s leaders, but also agency serving. Those impulses felt synonymous, at least at that point.

  Still, though, every time I went to New York I’d have to sit down with Al and catch up. My goal was to design myself out of a job and have no clients at all, but about thirty-five clients would talk only to me about the important stuff, including Kubrick, Levinson, Hoffman, Newman, Redford, and all the SNL people. Hundreds of others thought of me as their agent even if I really wasn’t. So I was working harder than ever. Agencies are built on the lie that your agent will give you his total attention—but there simply isn’t anywhere near enough time in the day for that.

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  Back to the Future, the breakout 1985 film for director Robert Zemeckis, was developed at Columbia. After Frank Price (in a rare misstep) put the script in turnaround, Universal picked it up and the film grossed $350 million worldwide. The franchise was so hot that Lew Wasserman and Sid Sheinberg decided to make Back to the Future II and III back to back on one long shoot.

  The problem was Bob’s back end, which fell short of our standard. He felt reluctant to ask for more because he was close to the producer, Steven Spielberg. Our Jack Rapke pushed on Bob’s behalf but the studio refused to bend. Three days before principal photography, with the director still unsigned, Jack called Universal and said Bob wasn’t comfortable starting work the next Monday.

  Sid was on the line to Jack and me five minutes later: “You can’t do this! You’re putting the studio at risk for hundreds of millions of dollars! We’ll sue!” A lawyer by training, Sid viewed litigation as a profit center. He was my next-door neighbor in Malibu, and he later sued me when the ocean overran my sandbags and came onto his property. (It was dismissed.) He sued Sony (and lost) for abetting piracy with their Betamax technology. He almost seemed to prefer depositions to scripts.

  “Lew is here,” Sid said. “I’m gonna put you guys on the speakerphone.”

  Though we’d all heard tales of Lew’s operatic invective, he and I had yet to face off. On speaker, Lew delivered the most articulate tirade imaginable. He was very loud but very calm. He laid down his argument like a stonemason, chiseling each point into place. How dare I do this, he said. Zemeckis should be working and I should not be stopping him. The studio made a good-faith commitment to finance the movie, and we were putting them in an impossible position. Agents were undermining the business, wrecking deals we were supposed to facilitate. He paused for breath and I began to reply, but then he started all over again. From time to time Sid chimed in to say, “Mr. Zemeckis can’t do this!” He mispronounced Ze-meck-is as Ze-meck-ees, and it took all the self-control Jack and I had not to laugh.

  When Lew finally wound down, I said, “Lew, are you done?”

  “I’m done.” I had no idea if he knew that I’d modeled myself on him, but he’d done his act, and now I was going to do mine.

  “Lew,” I said, speaking as calmly as he had, but much more softly, “I take all your points. But Bob needs to get paid on the back end. If you can do it, we’ll be delighted. If you can’t, we’ll be forced to keep postponing the start date. You know how much he wants to make these movies, but we can’t let him walk on set without a fair deal.”

  Sid cried, “Mr. Zemeckees owes us this, Mr. Zemeckees owes us—”

  “Sid,” I interrupted, “I think we’ve said all there is to say. We’re around all weekend; you know how to reach us. We’re planning on Bob showing up on Monday, because we’re assuming you guys will do the right thing and come back with a fair offer.”

  I hung up and called Steven Spielberg before Sid could wedge him: “Let this be their problem, not yours.”

  By evening Universal had made an offer consonant with what our other top directors were getting, between 5 and 10 percent of the adjusted gross (gross box-office receipts less the studio’s standard deductions). Bob went to work on Monday, and Back to the Future II and III brought in a combined $575 million. Everybody made out very well. But from then on Lew had it in for me. A generation after he disrupted Hollywood with Winchester 73, CAA was changing the game again. The pendulum was swinging back to the talent and their agents, and there was nothing he could do about it. We were using his playbook against him, but he appreciated neither the homage nor the irony.

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  Under the studio system, back in the day, the studios didn’t just put talent on their payrolls. They saw to the daily care and feeding of their directors and actors and writers, providing name changes and fictitious backstories, such as the one that turned Theodosia Goodman, a tailor’s daughter from Cincinnati, into the siren Theda Bara, born to a French artist and an Arab princess and “weaned on serpent’s blood.” The studios gave their stars legal help and media training and emergency babysitting and drugs to make them lose weight and be happy, or at least glassily functional. The studios covered up numerous affairs, provided illegal abortions, and even destroyed evidence at the scene of a murder or two, all so their clients could maintain their spotless reputations and keep working.

  By the late seventies, studio contracts, and the studio system, had been a thing of the p
ast for nearly a generation. And actors and directors had paid the price: public meltdowns, stalled careers, needless scandals, bankruptcies. We stepped into the breach by providing full-service management. Our rote functions, called on every half hour, were getting clients a copy of a film, theater tickets, or reservations at a hot restaurant. The next level of ask, which often rose to my desk, was someone who needed to get their children into a school, or needed an appointment with the best knee guy or a high-powered divorce lawyer. The highest level ask, which occurred strangely often, was for an audience with the pope. We couldn’t swing that—wrong religion—but we always said we’d look into it.

  If someone needed a personal trainer or a dog groomer or an impossible dinner reservation, our assistants were on the phone until it got done. Multiply that process by a thousand, and you get a reputation for taking care of everything. We gave the wedding party for Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, and counseled each of them during their divorce, and both stayed with the agency. We gave advice to both Rob Reiner and Penny Marshall during their divorce, and both stayed with the agency. We got Bette Midler’s kid into a private school with four weeks’ notice, and she stayed with the agency through enormous career ups and downs.