MCA

"In the early eighties, I’d begun collecting relationships. For instance, I reached out to Felix Rohatyn, the Lazard Frères banker who had almost single-handedly rescued New York City from bankruptcy in the seventies, and who was on the board of MCA and had Lew Wasserman’s ear. I called and asked to see him, saying, “I need no more than ten minutes of your time.” On my next trip to New York, I went to his office, shook hands, and placed my watch on his desk. Then I said, “I’d love to talk to you about how you saved New York, and also how you advise Lew—to learn from the Dean. And I’d love to be helpful to you in L.A. in any way I can.” All to get him talking and to show that I knew what he’d done and that I admired it and wanted to learn from it. After ten minutes, I said, “Thanks so much,” and stood to pick up my watch. Felix—and everyone else I used this stratagem on—asked me to sit back down. In this way I got to know Herb Allen, the head of Allen & Co., and Bob Greenhill at Morgan Stanley, and I’d always drop in on them when I was in New York—as well as on Mort Janklow and fifteen other book agents, a number of figures in the art world, and our clients Meryl Streep, Mike Nichols, Al Pacino, Sidney Lumet, Bob De Niro, and Marty Scorsese. The relationships outside entertainment would prove useful to CAA in the plans I was beginning to develop. They’d be our bridges to a wider world."

"After moving to Los Angeles from Chicago in the late 1930s, Lew built the town’s paramount talent agency. His rules were simple: tend to the client, dress appropriately, divulge no information about MCA, do your homework, never leave the office without returning every phone call. He insisted on dark suits, white shirts, and a dark blue or dark gray tie, and he’d sweep papers left on people’s desks into the wastebasket at the end of the day. His credo was “Messy desk, messy mind.” On the one occasion I saw Lew’s office as a tour guide, his desktop held only a phone, a clock, and a handsome desk set. Not one scrap of paper that could yield a secret."

"Hesitatingly, but enough to stop everyone from getting up to leave, I started to speak. “First of all, MCA makes cookie-cutter films on a vast assembly line with efficient-but-boring in-house producers. Second, they’d control it totally, and we’d never get out from under the Octopus”—that’s how the all-powerful MCA/Universal was known—“and this is our one chance to be in control and not give everything over to the Hollywood factory. The only way to be successful with such an unproven project is to treat each movie as a stand-alone project, based solely on the material, and be open to every talented person who has a good idea. That isn’t the MCA way.”"

"Stung, I nevertheless wouldn’t let it go: “And, as is usual for them, the price is way inflated. I know I could do it for far less. I could keep us independent of the MCA Octopus that’s been able to take over most television production and keep the networks basically out of producing shows.” That was a reference to Wasserman’s political strength in having gotten the FCC to bar the networks from owning most of their own production."

"The one person I never got my way with was the über-powerful chairman of MCA, the wildly feared then “king” of Hollywood, Lew Wasserman. I’d known him since I was eleven years old as the father of my schoolmate Lynne. He’d intimidated me then and forever since. The only time I ever tried to negotiate with him, he wouldn’t give an inch, not even a fraction of an inch."