I went to the LA Times Festival of Books and, as always, sat in on a number of panel discussions: 8 to be exact. One of those 8 was listening to Michael Ovitz. Here's a short bio via the LA Times website: Ovitz co-founded Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in 1975 and served as its chairman until 1995. He later served as President of the Walt Disney Company from 1995 to 1997. Ovitz served as talent agent to Hollywood actors Tom Cruise, Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Costner, John Belushi, Michael Douglas, Bill Murray, Sylvester Stallone, and many others along with directors Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and more.
Here are my notes from the conversation, hopefully there aren't too many errors.
He joined William Morris just after graduating from UCLA. He had worked at Fox full time while going to UCLA. At William Morris, he worked with Ron Meyer. They were thinking about leaving with another group of individuals to start their own agency. The leaders of that group all got fired. When he got called in to talk with the boss, the boss was so vile that he decided to leave, as well. He left, because he felt he had no choice.
When he left, he didn't have anything to fall back on. Others who formed CAA had savings, but he was in a sink or swim situation. There was an over-reaction to their leaving. One of the largest entertainment law firms filed a lawsuit against them. This ended up giving them some legitimacy.
At the time, they had borrowed $100,000 and had used $75,000 to get things set-up. They had to compete with both the super size agencies and a number of mom and pops. They decided to work as a team. They were all responsible for their clients. They knew that this only worked in theory and if they got too big it would no longer work. But they still considered this their CAA culture. If someone asked one of the team a question, that person was to follow-up by the end of the day even if they didn't have the answer.
They attempted to do something different every week. Entertainment was controlled by 25 companies. They needed to develop a relationship with at least one or two players so that their clients could get into the door.
Ovitz pursued one of the top book agents, Mort Janklow. Mort was an agent for top pop book authors. Ovitz was able to meet with Mort, partially driven by the fact that he gave a gift to Mort's assistant. He told Mort that CAA would get a fee via putting together a package and Mort would get to keep 100% of the commission. Mort gave CAA a book called Chiefs. This book had already been turned down by everyone. They came up with a new idea and then started to put together the package. They got a producer and director together. Then they were able to get Charlton Heston to be the lead. They took something and built around it. They then went to NBC. At the end, they went to Mort and got something from him in return for them getting NBC to distribute Chiefs.
CAA was the first to represent competing actors such as Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. That's how they were about to put together the movies Heat and Wag the Dog.
His best friend was Michael Creighton, whom he talked to on a daily basis until Creighton died. One day, CAA was short on deals. Someone mentioned that ER was in the vault. Creighton had worked on the script to be made into a movie. It was suggested that it could be turned into a gritty/real TV series. The package deal was WB - Creighton - Steven Spielberg. They got NBC to buy a pilot. NBC hated the pilot, thought no one would watch it. It become a huge hit. Sometimes no one knows, but creative people. Sometimes they're wrong, but when they're right they're really right.
He sold Universal to Japan, Matsushita. He spent 18 months going to Japan to meet with Matsushita. He ended up doing both sides of the deal. When the deal was done, he started to discuss what the next deal should be versus celebrating the current deal. He wanted to chase the next opening. One reason for this was that the only assets that CAA had were its clients. And his clients were not under contract.
As an afterthought, maybe at some point he should have cut back on being so hard driving.
CAA wanted their executives/clients to have as much time to work as possible. They hired a person who took care of car leases, home loans. They donated to private schools so that they could get the kids of their executives and clients into those schools. They built a nursery in their offices. If CAA was a service, how do you not provide services?
His team was 60% women. They were just better than the men.
Being the most powerful man in Hollywood was as much about control as talent. CAA wanted to control 100% of the talent so that they could put together better deals against the distribution entities. For example, he was able to package together Schindler's List and Jurassic Park for Steven Spielberg. Schindler's List would not have been done without that package deal.
In the end, being named the most powerful man in Hollywood was a hindrance as people came to expect too much.
Going to Disney was a mistake.
No comments:
Post a Comment