William Morris Agency, every mention

CAA (with Michael Ovitz) · Acquired Dec 21, 2021 · 11 mentions

• ▶ 54:27 Michael Ovitz A group of us, there were probably 15 young agents at William Morris, maybe 20.
• ▶ 55:05 Michael Ovitz And crazy as it sounds, CAA was born out of a bad staff meeting at William Morris.
• ▶ 56:05 Michael Ovitz This is William Morris.
• ▶ 56:13 Michael Ovitz The older guys went ballistic, and you then saw a division at William Morris that never healed, and then they made a cardinal tactical error.
• ▶ 59:33 David Rosenthal I'm imagining most of the old people at, at WMA and, and then also in, you know, the studio business just weren't tuned into this new world, right?
• ▶ 59:46 Michael Ovitz William Morris was the top television packaging agency, and we all knew how to package television, but it's very different than packaging movies, because in television, the producer is a key element, and in movies, it's the director.
• ▶ 1:00:14 Michael Ovitz But the thing about William Morris is they bifurcated TV and movies at a time when they were starting to come together.
• ▶ 1:00:31 Michael Ovitz And William Morris wanted to keep them separate, and we were asking the head of William Morris Picture Department and Television Department to run joint meetings, because people could work in both areas, and they refused to do it.
• ▶ 1:01:34 Michael Ovitz And the rest of the guys would stay in television, but that Mike Rosenfeld, who was in the movie division at William Morris, with me would start a movie division at CAA.
• ▶ 1:08:14 Michael Ovitz What we resented at William Morris is that one agent coveted one client, and you couldn't go anywhere with that, because human nature is such that eventually there's a relationship problem.
• ▶ 1:10:20 David Rosenthal Was there an element, I, I know this was the case at WMA, but maybe at all the agencies of a holdover from old Hollywood where, where New York owned these, like who owned these, uh, your competitors, uh, like, um, like, like you said, you…