Who Is Michael Ovitz?

by Michael Ovitz

  In the Brooklyn accent she never lost, she said, “Why can’t you get me what Redford gets?” Always strangely competitive with Bob, Barbra launched into a lecture about sexism in Hollywood and how women were overlooked and underpaid. She was right, of course. Despite inroads by players such as Sherry Lansing and Dawn Steel, it remained an uphill fight. But she was going on and on and on. Maybe it was the pressure of the corporate work, or too little sleep. Maybe I had taken one too many such calls in twenty-seven years of massaging celebrity egos. But I blurted out something an agent should never say to a superstar. “Barbra,” I said, “you know my fifteen-year-old son? All he and his friends think about is girls, but you’re no longer on their list.”

  Barbra laughed—but I wasn’t sure what kind of laugh it was. Amused, or outraged? Horrified, I started laughing myself, pretending it was all a joke. Then I changed the topic to a minor deal point and wound the call up as fast as I could. As I laid the phone down, wincing, I saw my assistant staring at me. “You’re gone, aren’t you?” she said.

  Yes, I was gone.

  I gave Ron the blow by blow and told him how upset I was. “You’ve got to get out of the agency business,” he said, empathetic as always.

  Yet Ron couldn’t admit that his job was eating him up, too. One Saturday he took a call from his most challenging client, Sylvester Stallone. No matter how methodically Ron explained why he should do a certain movie, Sly would lose interest and hit some erase-the-last-hour button and make him start over. Ron was extraordinary in these situations. He showed not one iota of impatience, not with Sly on the line or to me afterward. But this particular call was over the top even for Stallone, ten numbingly repetitive hours. I am not exaggerating. I think Sly broke Ron for good that day.

  Like me, Ron yearned for the status and ease of the buy side. He’d recently caught a ride to New York on a company jet with Terry Semel, the co-CEO at Warner. With a stack of scripts to read in between business calls, Ron worked five hours straight. Terry, meanwhile, had a little something to eat. He picked up a screenplay, leafed through it for an hour, laid it down, and had a glass of wine. He read a few more pages. Then he took a nap.

  “He’s a buyer,” Ron told me afterward, wistfully. “He does whatever he wants. Everyone calls him, and he doesn’t have to call anybody back.” That sounded pretty good.

  * * *

  —

  I never stopped loving artists and the creative process. I never lost my fascination for the magic of making something from nothing. But agenting was a young person’s game, and you could run just so long and so far. At forty-eight, having run since my first day at William Morris, I was tired.

  I was tired of getting up at 6:00 a.m. and squeezing in a workout while on the phone with Europe.

  I was tired of rolling through three hundred calls a day, talking till my throat was raw.

  I was tired of having lunches and dinners scheduled three months out.

  I was tired of flying six hundred hours a year, the equivalent of one workweek a month.

  I was tired of owning six tuxedoes for the thirty obligatory events between November 1 and Christmas.

  I was tired of returning calls till 7:00 p.m., going to dinner till 10:00, coming home to a mountain of pink message slips, calling Japan till midnight—and starting all over again six hours later.

  I was tired of submerging myself—drowning myself—in the lives of my clients and their families and significant others. Our clients’ worries about the size of their trailers and how big their billing would be had come to seem increasingly petty. The truth is I’d always disliked having to see to people’s creature comforts, making sure our actors and directors had fresh guava and the perfect nanny. You’re an adult; run your own life!

  If anything, the M&A work had made me more restless. With a few multibillion-dollar deals under my belt, even a fifty-million-dollar film package began looking small. But I couldn’t have one without the other. Our core business was the platform that sustained everything else.

  Meanwhile, though, the skies were darkening over our core business. Reality television, which William Morris dominated, was crowding out our scripted programs. Fewer movies were produced each year, reducing demand for our clients. Prices had slumped for midtier actors and directors, a warning sign for our A-list. It won’t be long, I thought, before the studios begin to squeeze our gross percentages—or to reject our packages altogether. In ten years, did I want to be like an overworked mechanic trying to keep an old car on the road? (While CAA remains a force in entertainment, almost everything that I feared has come to pass. Growth in television is confined to cable—where talent makes much less than it does at the networks—and in the movie business there are very few gross-percentage players left.)

  It was time for a change.

  * * *

  —

  On April 11, 1995, two days after Seagram and Matsushita closed, the New York Times ran a story headlined NEW THRILLER: WILL OVITZ GO TO MCA? Five years earlier, when the rumor mill had me replacing Lew Wasserman, I wasn’t ready to leave CAA. This time the buzz was real. Edgar’s first pick was Barry Diller, who turned him down; I was his second choice. He made his mind up at the NBA All-Star weekend in Phoenix, where he and I and our eldest sons spent time together. The Bronfmans were all about family, and Edgar liked the way Chris and I got along. He told me, “That’s when I knew you were the right person.”

  For a long time I had wondered what it might be like to lead a studio. Time Warner and MCA topped my list. Michael Eisner had repeatedly asked me to join him at Disney, but I kept saying no. I had held out for one of my dream jobs, and now I had been rewarded. I was confident I could handle it. I could read a screenplay as well as any executive out there and break down a balance sheet better than most. And I still had the growth plan I’d suggested to Matsushita five years earlier. I wanted to turn back the clock to the golden era of MGM—to, in effect, make MCA into CAA plus a massive production department.

  Once Universal had a critical mass of CAA clients under contract, it could expand in every sector. We’d produce more movies and TV shows (especially sitcoms, which paid better in syndication than dramas), more books and music albums. The same talent would help give us a digital presence in mobile telephony and video games. Soon everyone would be carrying a cell phone, and those phones would be receptacles for data-rich content. With Ron replacing Sid Sheinberg and Bill Haber running Universal Television, I had no doubt we could flourish. Edgar was a hands-off chief executive. I was wary of Edgar senior and Charles Bronfman, but I thought I’d be able to get things done.

  I was about to become a very wealthy man. When I was younger, cash was my ticket out. I’d made lots of it since. But I yearned to accumulate money—to build equity—which felt different from merely making it. Once an agent stopped working, there was no accrued equity to fall back on. I watched the runaway growth at Microsoft, where Bill Gates had built one of the world’s largest companies. Fortunes were beginning to be made off the internet. Executives I considered as my peers—Michael Eisner, Barry Diller—were raking in hundreds of millions in stock options. My appetite for corporate buccaneering grew as I worked with Herb Allen and mingled with Fortune 50 CEOs in Sun Valley. It grew further whenever I lost an auction to an art collector with deeper resources. I wanted to play in that league, too.

  And in truth I had always been faintly embarrassed to be an agent. As much as CAA had professionalized our field, it would never be a noble calling. I wanted to be one of the six people who could say yes to a movie without scrounging to assemble all the elements ahead of time. My master plan was to put in five years at a public company, then move on to a third act in public service and charity work. I dreamed of using my negotiating skills for the government—helping hammer out nuclear treaties, for instance—or of running the International Red Cross. I was tired of helping people who could help themselves, but who prefer
red to pay me to do things for them. I wanted to start helping people who couldn’t help themselves, who actually needed the help. I wanted to give back on a large scale, but I felt I needed the credential of a public company job first. I was still looking for respect and validation.

  * * *

  —

  Using Ron as my agent, I asked Edgar for 10 percent of MCA and agreed to take 5 percent. I was attacked later for being greedy, but it struck me as a reasonable ask, given the circumstances. Many large companies set aside up to 10 percent of their stock for employee options, and the math that worked for me to run this large corporation was simple. I was walking away from CAA, worth at least $350 million at the time. Five percent of a $6.6 billion company came to $330 million in equity, enough to recoup the cost of leaving CAA, cover Ron and Bill and their equity in the agency, and pay for the other senior agents I wanted to bring along. I’d be taking a sharp pay cut, but it was all about the equity. I thought we could grow MCA to a dramatic multiple of that $6.6 billion.

  By late May of 1995, Edgar and I had an understanding in principle. As he flew to Montreal to report to the Seagram board, I tried to tamp down the growing angst at CAA. On June 1, I gathered the staff to confirm I’d been approached but that nothing was decided.

  I wasn’t lying; I was teetering like mad. As Edgar’s discussions with his father and uncle dragged on, I began to worry that he wasn’t as in charge as he’d led me to believe, and that I’d have to answer to three bosses, not one. Worse, to three bosses who were related and who would naturally side with each other against me. I asked for more money—requesting that they pay my taxes, among other deal points—but it was basically a stall. I began to realize that I was having trouble sleeping because it wasn’t so easy to just pick up and leave. CAA was not something outside me. It was me.

  Ron pleaded with me to carry the negotiations through, for both of our sakes. “It’s time to try something new,” he said. “You need a bigger playpen and you’ve trained your whole life for this. Besides, how bad can we do compared with Lew and Sid?”

  I met with Edgar in Los Angeles to close. Hours later, Edgar asked to see me again. “We’re going to have to renegotiate,” he said. “They won’t accept the terms.” They, of course, were his father and uncle.

  I actually felt relieved. “That means you’re not in control,” I said.

  “Michael,” he said, “Seagram is a large public company. My father and his brother are major shareholders. This is how public companies work. I could push our thing through, but in the long run it wouldn’t be healthy for either of us.”

  I needed at least three years to turn Universal around, and the job made no sense if all three Bronfmans weren’t fully behind me—if I might not be afforded the time to break the company apart in order to remake it. I broke the news to Ron, who calmly said that he understood.

  When I called Edgar to pull the plug, it was a short conversation. I hung up and felt another wave of relief.

  I might have been sick of client service, but I still loved my company. I loved the people I worked with and the building we worked in. I was swamped by a tidal wave of love for CAA.

  I convened the entire staff in our theater and announced that none of us were leaving. I could feel relief surge through the room, and the whole company rose into a standing ovation. As people hugged one another, I watched the Young Turks—Lovett, Huvane, and Lourd—who were standing together in the front row. They kept their arms folded, resentfully, and I suddenly felt real alarm. I recognized the mulish look on their faces; it was just the way the five of us had felt at William Morris twenty years earlier: restless, underappreciated, ready to make a move. The difference was that they had great clients—whom Ron and I had given them—considerable authority, and financial security.

  Yet I believed I could patch things up with the Young Turks, if only to buy time for an orderly succession while I scouted our next play. I liked the possibility of Time Warner, where Gerald Levin looked shaky. Ron and I could work miracles there.

  We could do anything as long as we hung together.

  * * *

  —

  Ron asked to take one more stab for me at MCA. Halfheartedly, I told him to go ahead. I figured he could ascertain whether there remained any chance to make a deal where we could run the company without interference.

  Early in July, Ron called from New York one afternoon. “Guess what?” he said. “I’ve met with Edgar and there’s been a change in plans. He wants me to run MCA and I think I’m going to do it.”

  I felt completely numb; frozen with disbelief. The job on the table, chief operating officer, was what I’d negotiated for Ron in my last go-round with Edgar, with one big difference: I was out of the picture. (Edgar would bring in Frank Biondi as the CEO Ron reported to.) After a long silence, when I felt that I could speak without my voice breaking, I told Ron how much I needed him, what it meant to have him at my side. I’m great at pitching even when I’m not sincere, and I was a thousand percent sincere, so it was my greatest pitch ever. I was sure he’d be won over.

  What came back, in a burst of rage, were all of Ron’s pent-up grievances. How I had undernegotiated for him with Edgar and overnegotiated for Bill Haber because I’d valued them equally in my ask. How I had made a big mistake by walking away from MCA, and how it had always been all about me, never about him. How it was time to strike out on his own, to be recognized as something more than my consigliere.

  I tried to sell him for two hours, as the knot in my stomach swelled into my throat. Finally, my voice faltered and I gave way. His mind was made up. I felt absolutely crushed. Ron was leaving, and taking the best, most human part of me with him. It felt like I was getting divorced.

  * * *

  —

  After I hung up, I tried to add up the mistakes I’d made with Ron over the years. One problem was money, our way of keeping score. Both Ron and Bill banked big slices of my corporate deals even though they’d had next to nothing to do with them. But knowing Ron’s feelings, I should have done more. I could have bought Bill out and passed Ron his equity. Or kept Bill and split everything in thirds. It might not have been fair, but it would have been worth it. Money was important to me, but not as important as Ron’s friendship.

  My second error was even dumber, because it wouldn’t have cost a dime to fix. From the start, CAA was antihierarchical. We dispensed with the usual title pyramid and rotated the heads of our departments; I introduced everyone as my partner. For years my business card had just my name, no title. But once I started meeting with Fortune 50 CEOs, I needed formal standing, so in 1990, I became CAA’s chief executive officer. Ron was named president.

  I should have made Ron the CEO and called myself the chairman. Because he’d never brought the matter up, it never occurred to me what that kind of recognition might have meant to him. When I looked at my partner, I still saw the brash young man with the cojones to flirt with Geneviève Bujold. I saw the guy who hung out with the biggest stars in the world like he’d grown up with them. I had forgotten that Ron was a high school dropout who craved approval just as much as I did—maybe even more.

  The biggest problem was that our friendship never quite recovered after I put him in handcuffs for his poker debts. I had instinctively moved to protect our company, rather than to protect Ron from himself. I don’t think I was wrong to do that. I do think I was wrong to behave, afterward, as if the crisis had never happened. It made it less scary for me. I should have taken Ron aside to talk to him about how he was doing, reestablished that unshakable bond, made it clear that I was with him through thick and thin. But men like me weren’t too good about opening up, about acknowledging our fears. And so his resentment festered.

  I didn’t want to be who I’d become, and Ron didn’t, either. But we were who we were. To this day Ron tells people, “I’m the best number two in the world.” And I have to hand it to him—
he’s lasted as Universal’s number two for more than twenty years, through four different owners. I couldn’t have done that.

  As I was about to learn in the most painful way possible, I suck at being number two.

  * * *

  —

  Bill Haber wanted to try to sustain the old magic, but I couldn’t stay at CAA without Ron. (Bill would leave a few months later, as he’d long threatened, to work with the Save the Children Foundation.) I was upset because I’d had no idea Ron was so upset. I was upset by the prospect of working without him. And I was upset that I’d have to work with the Young Turks, who now evidently hated me, without him.

  When I went to Herb Allen’s conference in Sun Valley a few days after Ron told me he was leaving, I saw Ron and Edgar together, laughing, and I felt nauseated. At the first session, a friend named Peter Barton came up, noticed how out of sorts I was, and said, “Good move—you lost your partner.” Before I could ask if he was being sarcastic or sympathetic, he walked away. I had no idea what he meant; all I knew is that I felt like a little boy lost in a department store. I left the conference two days early. It would have been wise to talk to a psychotherapist, but I wasn’t eager to make myself that vulnerable. I had the idea that real men toughed it out.

  I dragged myself back to work and went through the motions. One day Jay Moloney stormed into my office and shouted, “I want to see the books!” He actually pounded my desk. “I want to see the books right now!” No one but the owners of the agency saw our finances; it had long been part of the company culture that you didn’t discuss your compensation with anyone but Ron, Bill, and me.

  I stood. I knew the other Young Turks had put him up to it because none of them had the balls that Jay had. And I knew that Jay loved me, but that having seen my methods—and my workouts—he also feared me. The distance that fact created between us had always made me wistful, but now I used it. “You’ve got two seconds to leave through the door,” I said. “Or you’re leaving headfirst through the window.”