Insight
Michael Ovitz preferred negotiating with conflicted people to ensure deals closed
“You know, I've always felt, and I still do, I'm really interested in dealing with conflicted people because if you have a conflict, in essence, you want it to work out on both sides. So a lot of times I'll go to someone with a heavy conflict to this day to wor…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ovitz: Michael Eisner undercut me at every opportunity at Disney
“When I got to Disney, it was very clear there was a head-to-head conflict, and Michael undercut me every chance he could, and after a couple years, I just didn't want to deal with it anymore”
Disclosure
CAA never pitched unpackaged ideas or individual clients to movie studios
“And we would never sell any idea or client unpackaged or naked to a studio ever, ever. So anything we did was pre-packaged where we controlled all the elements and our clients controlled their own destiny.”
Assertion Contradicted
CAA packaged 350 films and treated traditional studios strictly as distributors
“Or any of the 350 films that we packaged, Tootsie, Rain Man, go down a forever list, you had a choice. You'd, you'd buy the package, or we'd sell it to somebody else, because we viewed the studios as distribution entities.”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Matsushita gave Michael Ovitz $120 million to distribute among deal consultants
“They gave me a hundred and twenty million dollars to pass out to all of the consultants. And I passed out money to everybody generously, because we had Washington lobbyists, we had PR people.”
Insight
Ovitz: Tech investing is the same packaging playbook as Hollywood agency representation
“All of the training I had as an agent has led me to a career in the digital world that's fantastic because what am I doing? I'm packaging. I'm putting young founders together with money and distribution, and nothing different than I did for 35 years. It's all …”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
CAA represented roughly 45 of the top 50 highest-grossing directors in 1990
“And frankly, as CAA gained momentum in the eighties and early nineties, they didn't have a lot of choice because of the 50 top grossing directors in the, for example, in 90, CAA represented like 45 of them. So it was impossible. You couldn't say no.”
Assertion Partly supported
Coca-Cola approved all 35 commercials CAA presented in their agency shootout
“We got awarded the account And of the 35 commercials we presented, they approved every single one.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
CAA ran the Coca-Cola advertising account with six people versus McCann's 300
“So we had McCann Erickson had 300 human beings working on the Coke account. We had six.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
CAA lost fewer than six clients over a 25-year period
“As a matter of fact, in a 25 year period, I think we lost under six, five or six clients.”
Assertion Supported
Ovitz: CAA was first to represent Hoffman, Pacino, and De Niro simultaneously
“So, you know, I, we signed Hoffman, Pacino, and De Niro, which had never been done in history.”
Assertion Supported
Sony co-founder Akio Morita wanted a studio because Betamax lost to VHS
“Mr. Morita came to see me and wanted to buy, get into owning content because he was upset that Betamax, which was a superior technology to VHS, was losing to VHS. So he wanted to own a studio”
Assertion Supported
Ovitz: Seagram offered Warner Bros $6B cash standstill after buying 14%
“We had quietly accumulated 14% of the stock through Allen and Company for the Bronfman family. And I met with Steve Ross three weeks before he passed away. He was one of the greatest guys in history of the business. And he gave me three hours of his time where…”
What-if
Michael Ovitz proposed that Disney acquire Yahoo and CBS Records
“When I went to Disney, I put together seven initiatives. That I wrote about in the book that would have made Disney a fortune, starting with buying Yahoo, buying CBS records for two billion dollars, which is worth 10 times, 20 times that right now.”
Disclosure
CAA took a 5 percent overall cut on the Jurassic Park package
“Well, the creative people at 50, which means we had five.”
What-if
Ovitz: Jurassic Park could not be made under old studio system
“If this was done under the old studio system, all of them would have been under contract to a different studio, and the odds of loaning them out were nil, and then the odds of getting this made outside the system would have been almost impossible.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lew Wasserman changed Hollywood by inventing backend profit participation deals
“Prior to that, artists were paid what's called flats, which is a flat fee, and they didn't get a basic participation. And I think that what he did is he changed the entire fabric of the business.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ovitz: CAA launched on $100K debt, repaid it in six months, and stayed debt-free
“And we started our business on a 100,000 dollars, and we never went into debt beyond that, paid that debt off in six months, and never carried 10 cents a debt, ever.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ovitz: CAA Doubled Director Mike Nichols's Fee From $2.5M to $5M
“I remember when we signed Mike Nichols, may he rest in peace, a great director. I'll never forget a call he made to me. He was getting two and a half million to direct. And when he became a client of ours, and he, we went to make a deal for him, I called him u…”
Insight
Ovitz: Magazine editors were six months ahead of culture due to lead times
“My thesis was that art directors of magazines and editors were always six months ahead of, They had to be, because it took three months to get a magazine out, and a month to let it sit on a newsstand. So they had to think six months in advance.”
Assertion Supported
Ovitz: CAA was sparked by a William Morris staff meeting signing Ann Miller
“Crazy as it sounds, CAA was born out of a bad staff meeting at William Morris. Where the guy I worked for, who was head of the television department, his name was Sam Weisbord, announced with great pride and passion that he had signed Ann Miller, which will me…”
Insight
Ovitz: TV packaging centers on producers while movie packaging centers on directors
“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.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ovitz: CAA agents handled 200 to 250 phone calls daily
“So an average agent at our place would run 200 to 250 phone calls a day.”
Michael Ovitz