Who Is Michael Ovitz?

by Michael Ovitz

  An added treat is Tamara’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Minty. She designed her own clothes at an early age, competes in national horseback-riding tournaments, and is socially graceful, with a wide circle of friends. It’s daunting to have a teenage daughter in my life again, but it’s also tremendous fun. She’s always playing me new music and introducing me to fashion trends—because of her I knew about Snapchat the instant it came out. I was touched when, for her eleventh birthday, she asked me to get her a cake with a Lichtenstein painting on it. Minty has become totally enmeshed with my family.

  Eric lives in L.A. and is married to a delightful woman named Kendall, who brings him to life and makes him happy. He’s always been his own man. After becoming an early employee of the gaming company Zynga, he used the money he made there to put himself through Northwestern Law School, and now he hopes to work for the FBI. Somehow he came out Republican, despite my best efforts, so I know he’d make a great G-man. He and Kendall are now expecting their first child.

  Kim, the artist in our family, started a fashion business in her twenties called Kimberly Ovitz. I was impressed and pleased that her first line, which featured lots of monochrome black and white, was heavily influenced by minimal artists like Ad Reinhardt, Ellsworth Kelly, and Robert Ryman. (Likewise, Eric haunts museums, and Chris is buying numerous prints for his house.) Kim also lives in L.A., and in addition to her work as a designer she consults with numerous fashion and digital companies on marketing and strategy.

  Jordan Harris, who’s still a vital part of our family fifteen years later—he was the best man at Chris’s wedding—is now at NYU’s Stern School of Business while working at Code Advisors. He has a real interest in tech.

  I also tried for years to get Chris to go into tech and to move to San Francisco. I had him meet with Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel, and they tried to talk him into moving to the city. But he stayed in Los Angeles to make his own way. And he finally did. At the Goldman Sachs Internet Conference a few years ago, I stood apart with the bank’s Gary Cohn—later to become Donald Trump’s first economic adviser—and watched Chris work the room. Gary grinned, recognizing my bursting pride. Chris may have learned the social skills from me, but he was much more candid and factual with the people he was talking to than I ever was. He wasn’t trying to sell them. Chris is now working on his third start-up, Workpop, an H.R. technology company disrupting the service economy. I never make an angel investment without running it by Chris and his wife, Ara Katz. Ara is an entrepreneur who is the cofounder of Seed, which is focused on improving consumers’ health through the microbiome, and she is a gentle, deeply grounded soul. To my surprise—I thought she was a touchy-feely hippie when I met her—she’s became the core of our family, and someone whose perspective I rely on constantly.

  Chris and Ara recently had a boy, Pax, and I FaceTime with him every day if we’re not together. He is the light of my life. Ara is the best mother I’ve ever seen—she’s totally anti-screen, except for FaceTime—and Pax reminds me of me as a little boy, the curious and emotional kid I was before Sarah got her hooks into me. As a grandfather, I plan to do everything right, to fix the numerous mistakes I made as a parent.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  GENTLEMEN

  Over the years I kept hearing that Ron was still furious at me. Someone who was on Universal’s plane with him recently told me, “He ripped you for thirty minutes. It sounded like you and he had just had a fight yesterday.” I finally had had enough. A couple of years ago, I called Ron and said, “Look, everywhere I go I keep hearing from people that you’re saying terrible things about me. I’m sure some of your complaints are completely justified, but they can’t all be, because we had twenty-five good years together. We’re getting up there in age, and I’d like not to leave the planet with this breach between us.”

  Somewhat to my surprise, he instantly said, “I’d like that, too.” We met for lunch at my Japanese place, Hamasaku. I opened it on a lark sixteen years ago in a Korean strip mall in Westwood, and it’s become quite popular. It’s so nonchic it’s chic. After shaking hands and sizing each other up, we made some small talk as we looked over the menus. It felt both uncomfortable and, strangely, warmly familiar. Over sushi we discussed how to work through our issues, or if we even could. We left a second meeting up in the air. After pondering the problem, I called Ron and said, “I think it’d be best if we had a mediator who can listen to both of us, and help us interpret each other, and referee if necessary. Why don’t you come up with some possible people, and I’ll come up with some, and we’ll find someone who works for both of us?” I was trying to be sensitive to him, for a change.

  “Why don’t you do it?” he said. “I’m sure whoever you pick will be great.” Same old Ron.

  I found a UCLA professor to mediate. Ron and I met at a coffee shop in the basement of her office, and then went up to her office for a two-hour session, our first of three. Ron started talking and didn’t stop for half an hour. He immediately acknowledged that he’d spent twenty years denigrating me to anyone who would listen. He said, “I was the guy taking care of the agency while you were running around all over the world—you had the big profile, but I was doing all the hard work. And you should have bought out Bill Haber and given me the stock. I deserved it.” I said that he wasn’t generating the income I was. He responded that without him the business would have fallen apart.

  I said, “Look, I was insensitive to you. I wasn’t going to get rid of Haber, because I was scared to rock the boat. But I should have done something—anything!”

  He said he was still furious and resentful about the house in Malibu, but when I started to explain, he talked over me. He wasn’t going to let me express my feelings; he was still the keeper of our collective emotions. So the first session didn’t end particularly well.

  The second one went better, with the mediator’s help. I got a chance to apologize, and Ron accepted my apology and seemed mollified. Then he owned up to all his rancor and sabotage, which was a form of apology, or at least of candor. Yet even as we worked to get our feelings out, I felt destroyed because Ron kept confirming my worst fears: every time anyone in town had struck a match of accusation against me, Ron had dumped on a truckload of gas. “No one was better equipped to put you away than me,” he said. I told him, “Ron, you were unhappy at CAA, so you kind of shoved it to me. I apologize for missing the signs that you were unhappy, but you could have just told me.” He smiled a little and said, “Yeah—but you didn’t want to hear it.”

  After the sessions, we began meeting for lunch. We even brought Tamara and Ron’s wife, Kelly, into it. Just like old times, sort of. He’d talk about his job; I’d talk about how I don’t have a job. Ron followed up, he checked in, he was courteous and thoughtful, he made me feel like I was the only thing on his mind. It was seductive, particularly as more and more time passed without strife. But a voice in my head kept saying, “You were wrong about his feelings for the last ten years at CAA—he handled you beautifully, then. So what makes you certain you’re right now?” Part of me wanted to believe in his sincerity and the promise of our old friendship, part of me was still angry, part of me felt sorry for him, part of me felt sorry for both of us. Still, we began talking two, three times a week, easing toward a renewal of our intimacy. I’d missed it so.

  In September of 2016, Ron and I were publicly interviewed together one night by Jim Miller, who’d just published an oral history of CAA. I had to walk into the Directors Guild Theater using a cane, having just had surgery to fuse my entire spine. Under my suit, I was wearing a brace that made me look like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, and I was in considerable pain. The doctors told me that 90 percent of the reason my spine was so damaged was that I’d exercised every day of my life, never giving my body a rest, and absorbed all those punishing hits and falls in martial arts. I would have laughed, hearing that, only it hurt too much.

  The two of us had agreed be
fore the event not to go negative. My goal for the evening was to defuse the feud in public, and I think Ron’s goal was to demonstrate that he was the Mr. Nice Guy of legend. But neither of us knew what might get said if we really got back into it. Just before going onstage, Ron and I went into the bathroom. As we each stood at a urinal, who should come in to piss alongside us but Jeffrey Katzenberg, who in Miller’s book had said that I “consistently dealt in ways that were destructive, deceitful, and in bad faith.” Look who’s talking, I thought. We both said “Hello,” but it was awkward. After pissing on each other for years, here we all were pissing side by side. Welcome back to Hollywood!

  Ron and I walked onstage to a warm round of applause: all six hundred seats were filled. I saw old colleagues like Rick Nicita and Sandy Climan and John Ptak and Fred Specktor and Paula Wagner, as well as a number of producers, including Larry Gordon and Joel Silver. All the industry trade papers and websites were there, too, eager to take the measure of what had become a legendary success story—and implosion.

  Jim Miller started us talking about the years at William Morris, when we signed Rob Reiner and Sally Struthers together, and Ron got a big laugh when he called the agency’s Sam Weisbord “an ugly little piece of shit guy.” When we got into the founding of CAA, Ron said, “Mike was the natural leader—there was never a question.” The conversation was affable and reflective. I recalled how he and I planned our moves together thirty times a day, and Ron won more laughs when he said, “It was a much more gentlemanly business before we started. Once Mike and I were let loose, no one was safe.” He added, confirming my core belief, “There was no one else who understood what we were doing or how we were doing it except each other.”

  When Miller inquired about the roots of our breach, Ron soft-pedaled the issue, saying that my move into corporate deal making was organic: “Our clients weren’t adversely affected by it, and more business was coming in.” But, he noted poignantly, “It was much more personal to me” because my focus on bigger game made him feel less worthy, made him feel “disenfranchised from our relationship.” I jumped in to say that I’d been blind to his feelings, and that in trying to build a wider network “I didn’t realize I was sacrificing relationships that were more important to me.”

  Ron said, “I also have some responsibility. I did not tell Mike that I was unhappy. I felt that if I had confronted Mike, he wouldn’t have handled it well, and I would have put the place on tilt.” What we were both finally realizing, onstage, was that we’d each unwittingly sacrificed our relationship in order to save CAA—whereas if we’d just focused on making sure we were both happy, CAA would have done even better. The irony was right out of O. Henry.

  We discussed the ugly breakup calmly, and at last we got to Berry Gordy’s Malibu house. I decided, weighing the crowd, Ron, and my own feelings, to finally fess up. “I was pissed off,” I said. “I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have bought the property.” I looked out at the crowd and waited a beat, using timing I’d picked up from David Letterman. “One of the reasons I made the mistake,” I added, jerking my head at Ron, “was I didn’t have him to advise me not to.” Ron grinned, and the audience broke up.

  Afterward, I basked in the kind words and notes of appreciation from old friends and colleagues. The lore had long been that I screwed Ron over and got my just deserts, but that evening seemed to shift the communal story line some and make people realize that it had been a folie à deux. Nearly everyone was astonished to see a vulnerable, ruminative Michael Ovitz, the me I’d always kept hidden. At CAA, I wouldn’t have known how to show that side of myself—or wanted to.

  That same reconciling impulse made me reach out to David Geffen. We met at Marea in New York, shook hands, and had a civil lunch. He told me, “My biggest problem with you was that I tried to be your friend, but you wouldn’t be friends with me!” The old me would have argued, would have objected that that wasn’t the whole story. But I just said, “You’re right.” I was there to make peace, and David said he wanted the same. We were two guys in our seventies, looking to fix what we’d broken. Ronnie later told me that David didn’t have anything bad to say about me afterward. That made me smile a little: the win, nowadays, is breaking even. But I’ll take it.

  * * *

  —

  A few months back I visited the old CAA building, which I still own. After Ron and Bill left the agency, I bought them out of the building; they were afraid that no one would want to occupy it if CAA left. Operating out of fear is bad business. Three months after the agency’s departure, Sony leased the building from me for twenty years.

  But now the building was empty again, needing a new tenant, so I took a tour. Sony had divided my not-huge office into two small offices; well, fair enough. The atrium was still airy and inspiring, yet it had no one to catalyze anymore, no one to inspire. The building felt drained, empty not just of the old bustle but of the magic, the power. It felt small. It felt like your childhood house does, when you go back as an adult. When we first inhabited the building, the whole mighty team of us, we were giants. We could walk outside and reach downtown, the Pacific, or Tokyo in a single bound. I was hit by the magnitude of what I’d done in that building, and it seemed kind of amazing: this kid from the Valley, with no stature, no tenure, no network to rely on, reshaping the entertainment business.

  Bullied as a child, I spent my life bullying back. My clients sometimes viewed me as a superhero, and I did try to play that role—swooping in to help anyone who was down or ill or just in need of advice, fighting for the underdogs. I thought I was one of the good guys. Yet I was increasingly visited by the doubt that troubles every superhero: Had I become a vigilante? Plenty of people saw me as just that—a hired gun who took the law into his own hands. But that verdict misses all the loyalty and the love. Bob De Niro summed me up pretty well. Someone once asked him, “Why don’t you leave Ovitz? He’s such a tough asshole.” De Niro said, “Yeah, but he’s my tough asshole.”

  In my empty fortress, I realized that I wasn’t out of the Valley yet. I’m free of it in my daily life, and in my bank account, but I’ll never be free of it in my brain. You carry your origins with you. Still, those origins drove me here, and built this place, and attracted so many bright, funny, creative colleagues. In the silence, I discovered that the only thing I really miss about the agency business was the camaraderie: my comrades and friends and the passionate way we spent our lives together.

  I miss the people.

  Me at age three, already on the phone.

  UNLESS NOTED OTHERWISE, ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF AUTHOR

  Cub Scout pack 131 on the set of RKO Studios (I’m second from right).

  Judy and me and our dog Sunny in front of our house in the Valley the year we started CAA.

  The CAA partners with our mentor Phil Weltman at Scandia restaurant.

  LEFT TO RIGHT: Mike Rosenfeld, Ron Meyer, Bill Haber, Phil Weltman, me, Rowland Perkins, Marty Baum.

  One of our weekly red ads that rocked the business.

  The team in David Letterman’s new office at CBS after we closed his deal.

  LEFT TO RIGHT: me, Robert Morton, Peter Lassally, Jay Maloney, David Letterman.

  With Tom Cruise and his first wife, Mimi Rogers, at the opening of The Color of Money.

  With Candy and Aaron Spelling at a dinner honoring Tony Thomompoulos, who put us together.

  Judy, Eric, Chris, Kim, and me with a typical CAA Aspen lunch crowd, including Dustin and Lisa Hoffman, Michael and Jane Eisner, Barry and Diana Levinson, Sean and Micheline Connery, Mark and Linda Ovitz, Ivan and Genevieve Reitman, Chevy and Jayni Chase, Michael and Shakira Caine, Sidney and Joanna Poitier, Sly and Jennifer Stallone, and Ron and Kelly Meyer.

  The Hoffman and Ovitz families at our house in Aspen.

  Movie talk over lunch in Aspen.

  LEFT TO RIGHT: I
van Reitman, Steven Spielberg, Michael Eisner, Sylvester Stallone, Mark Ovitz.

  Ron Meyer and me on the set of Baywatch (or, more likely, Hotel Du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes).

  Me and my neighbor Dustin Hoffman at Broad Beach, Malibu.

  Me trying to convince Danny DeVito of something very important that I no longer remember.

  Me trying to convince Bill Murray of something very important that I no longer remember at the Ghostbusters premiere.

  Judy, Chris, Kim, and me with Earvin “Magic” Johnson at the All-Star Game.

  CREDIT: MAGIC JOHNSON ENTERPRISES

  Chris and Eric playing video games with Tom Cruise on the set of Far and Away.

  With Nick Nolte and Barbra Streisand on the set of A Prince of Tides.