Michael Ovitz details how Creative Artists Agency leveraged full movie packages to dictate terms to major Hollywood studios.
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 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.”