Background
Ovitz, Michael S. was born on December 14, 1946 in Chicago, Illinois, United States.
Ovitz, Michael S. was born on December 14, 1946 in Chicago, Illinois, United States.
He was born and raised in the San Fernando Valley, whence he attended high school and U.C.L.A. He was also educated in Birmingham High School and University of California Los Angeles.
On graduating, he took a job with the William Morris Agency in Beverly Hills, and there learned the business—or more especially the art of packaging television—with special debt to the agent Howard West. He left Morris to go to law school, but that was never finished and he found himself back at the agency. He moved ahead very rapidly for simple reasons: he was smart, he worked all hours, he was determined.
In 1975 he formed a dissident group within William Morris with Ron Meyer, William Haber, Michael Rosenfeld, and Rowland Perkins. They believed Morris w'as archaic, complacent, and too set at the top. Young lions could not get ahead. Ovitz and Meyer were fired, and they set up CAA on a verv small budget. They undercut Morris on TV deals, and they found rapid success.
CAA had about one hundred agents, an annual gross of at least $100 million, a spiffv I. M. Peidesigned building at the junction of Wilshire and Santa Monica. And clients—for example, Steven Spielberg, Barbra Streisand, Madonna, Michael Jackson. Magic Johnson, Kevin Costner, Dustin Hoffman, Sean Connery, Barry Levinson, Warren Beattv. Michael Douglas, Tom Cruise, and Robin Williams.
The agency had rivals: William Morris, still, and ICM. But CAA enjoyed several years of preeminence, reliant on revenue and talent, and on Ovitz’s superb insinuation of his mysterious self in the higher politics of show business. He was feared, envied, and disapproved of in some quarters. It is said that he had inflated the salaries of top talent; that he had reduced the studios to functionaries desperate to get enough big projects; that he saw the vital alliance of independent stars and the lawyerlike protection of their interests.
All of this is true, natural, and inevitable. Ovitz is only the man who crystallized the new state of power once the studio system collapsed. Every talent became his or her own studio. But talent is generally insecure, and Ovitz saw how far agencies could shelter, promote, and boost the stars. He did his job, and it was not really his job to worry about the movies except to the extent that they affect career prospects and bargaining positions.
There is more to Ovitz. He played verv important but discreet roles in the deals wherebv Matsushita purchased MCA (for $6.6 billion) and Sony purchased Columbia ($3.4 billion). He involved CAA in consulting deals with Coca-Cola and Credit Lyonnais (the effective owner of MGM). He made the strategy that took David Letterman to CBS. These developments seem natural in a young man who may be bored just putting movies together. In other words, the logic of Ovitz’s career must cany him higher, and the higher he goes the more dangerous life gets, because then he is doing so much more than make deals. He is involved in policy, dreams, and strategies—all oi which know the way to hell.
That was 1994. A year later, of his own volition, hut with the feeling that there is no stability, Ovitz left his own agency. He wanted the top job at Universal, hut was disappointed—the first sign of enemies ready to see him humbled. Instead, Michael Eisner hired him as number two at Disney, an assignment that lasted a little over a year and ended in a severance deal of around $100 million. Thereafter, Ovitz was involved in several ventures—Livent, getting an NFL franchise to Los Angeles—without success. And so he went back to what he thought he had known, agenting, but with an industry arranged against him, and with the role ol the agent more suspect, he formed a new company, Artists Television Group. However, by the summer of 2001, he was laying off many employees with rumors of losses in the region of $70 million. Mercy came in May 2002 as his company changed hands.
Executive producer: Gangs of New York, 2002. Executive producer: Timeline, 2003.
Trustee Museum Modern Art, New York City. Board governors Cedars-Sinai Hospital, Los Angeles. Member executive advisory board Pediatric Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome Foundation.
Board director Drug Abuse Resistance Education America. National board advisors, Children's Scholarship Fund. Member Council Foreign Relations, Zeta Beta Tau.
Michael Ovitz has the style of the first, but it has not led to obscurity. He was once the best-known person in the business, simply because most people in show business would have voted for him as the most powerful person around. He makes films? No, not really. There are some movies that are famous for his role as packager and kingmaker—for example, Legal Eagles, Rain Man and Ghosthusters. But no one suggests he interfered with them, or proposed creative involvement. He made the deal: agents exist as 10 percent of the deal. And in an age of pay-or-play, it is not strictly necessary for the pictures to be made. Ovitz is a great deal-maker.
Art collector.
He married his college sweetheart in 1969. They lived in a decent house in Brentwood with two children.