Michael Ovitz

"At CAA we kept a “dashboard” of every project under way in film, TV, music, and books. A copy was placed in each agent’s black binder, together with the latest box-office data, TV ratings, bestseller lists, and other pertinent data that might give us an edge at our 8:30 a.m. staff meetings (which were themselves scheduled to give us an edge—we started sixty to ninety minutes ahead of our competitors). Our rule at staff meetings was “No idea is too stupid.” I consulted the dashboard several times a day, looking for opportunities for clients, potential film packages, or new business, the crazier-sounding the better."

"Because it’s human nature to resist being sold, I avoided cold-calling prospective clients. Better for them to come to me; better to be wooed than to pitch. I dispatched Jay Moloney on a recon mission to Peter Lassally, Late Night’s executive producer. Jay listened carefully to Peter’s woes, then offered his opinion: “Dave is naked against all the forces lined up behind Jay. He needs help.”"

"One day I ran into Michael Eisner on the set of one of our game show pilots. He headed up daytime at ABC. I asked him how he liked the show, and he noncommittally said, “Well, my wife liked it.” So I sent roses to Jane Eisner, with a card. Michael called me and said, “Do not agent my wife!” He was kind of angry about it—but that sort of stunt got my name out there, and Eisner and I soon became friends."

"one of David Mamet’s characters says in his play Speed-the-Plow, “Two things I’ve learned, twenty-five years in the entertainment industry. . . . The first one is: there is no net.” (A beat later, he adds, “And I forget the second one.”)"

"The next morning I went to Hirata’s hotel for the magic number. If the offer was in the fifties, I feared Lew would walk. After our good mornings, Hirata made a brief, expressionless statement. I swiveled to the translator. “We will make an offer,” he said, “of sixty dollars a share.” I pushed for more: “This will close much faster if we go in at sixty-five dollars and hold our ground.” Early on, I’d warned Hirata that in dealmaking I represented both sides—which is how deals get done—and that I’d squeeze him if necessary. I was squeezing now. Hirata shook his head. “We would like to offer sixty dollars,” the translator said. I pushed no further. Every offer had some give to it, and any deal could close if the bid-ask spread was within 10 percent. Lew would be hard-pressed to reject sixty-six dollars a share, nearly double the stock’s price before the Journal leak. Throw in five dollars for WOR, and we were close to the floor Herb and I had submitted two months earlier. A sixty-dollar bid was a savvy calibration, the lowest figure that would safely keep things moving."

"Anyone who scanned me would see a thoughtful dresser in a blue suit, with a white or blue shirt and black shoes—never brown—accessorized only by a leather-strapped watch. I wore no jewelry, not even a wedding band. I sat up straight, I was sympathetic, and I focused intensely on you, always turning the conversation away from myself. As I discovered by seeing my persona reflected in the eager eyes of my clients, that focus drew them in. And the contrast between the relaxed demeanor and the humming engine underneath, which people felt subconsciously, was comforting if you were on my side of the table, and curiously alarming if you were across from me. It suggested untapped power."

"CAA came to subscribe to nemawashi, the Japanese style of bottom-up consensus. We didn’t hire anyone from outside until they’d met with and been approved by the whole department. The process made onboarding smooth, easing new talent into the company. (It helped that we promoted two people for each one we imported.) No one questioned our calls because they’d already signed off on them."

"I was a great guide because I believed in the product. By eighteen, I’d absorbed a basic rule for success: love what you do. (Too many people fight their job, a battle they cannot win.)"

"Michael wrote: If you want to be happy, forget yourself. Forget all of it—how you look, how you feel, how your career is going. Just drop the whole subject of you. . . . People dedicated to something other than themselves—helping family and friends, or a political cause, or others less fortunate than they—are the happiest people in the world."

"Paul understood the trap of stardom. He told me, “You know, I’ve been a movie star for a long time. And no matter how hard I try to tell myself I’m just a normal person, I keep hearing how wonderful I am. It gets to the point that you start to think you’re something you aren’t.”"

"As Bill was assessing me, I was assessing him, and realizing that his fans had misread him. He didn’t want to be a comedian; he wanted to be a great actor. Left to his own devices, he might have stuck to character roles in small quirky films. He was a free spirit who tried to make daily life into a movie scene, with the crucial difference that there was no script, so anything could happen. That afternoon he ordered a cup of coffee at a diner and said, “Good party,” totally deadpan, and the server cracked up. Even crossing the street became an exercise in improv theater."

"This became the pattern for how I’d sign a star: start by politely criticizing his choices; tell him he needed to see and choose better material and better directors; promise him both. I made no promises that he’d work with specific talent, because the easiest way to lose a client is to make a promise you can’t fulfill; the client always remembers. Sean didn’t ask which of our directors and actors I thought he should be paired with, which was fortunate, because we didn’t represent anyone of his stature. If he had asked, I’d have said what I often said in those days: “The creative talent that’s right for you.”"

"I flew to England a few weeks later to visit Sean on the set of The Great Train Robbery and to cement our partnership face-to-face. But I never asked him to sign a letter of engagement. I thought written agreements were not just overrated—because clients could void them if they went ninety days without work—but downright counterproductive. With no papers to renew, our clients had no anniversary to jog them into thinking about leaving us."

"I was obsessed with the Spartan phalanx, the idea that you were only as strong as the colleague on your left. We’d go to meetings as a group, we’d go to screenings as a group, walking down the aisles together half an hour early, ten or fifteen strong, a show of power. I drove our people hard to sign at least two clients a week, and after we got up and running, our signing machinery was a thing of beauty. Let’s say you were a promising screenwriter and I met you at a dinner at Morton’s. I’d call you the next day for a quick chat—not about wanting to represent you, but about the virtues of your work (which three of our literary agents would have briefed me on). I’d casually toss in the names of a few well-known actors and directors who’d be a perfect fit with your sensibility. Ninety-nine percent of the time, you’d want to talk some more, and I’d suggest lunch or a drink. There we’d talk further about your work and your hopes and dreams. The killer move, as you got up from the table or were handing your parking ticket to the valet, was to say, “Why don’t you come in and meet our crew?” A few days later, when you drove in, one of our parking concierges (who’d been given a photo of you) would open your car door, greet you with a big smile, and say, “Mr./Ms. X, great to see you. Really hope you join the family!” or “Hope you have a great meeting!” (They switched up the patter to keep from going stale.) An assistant would escort you to the conference room, where five to ten poised, well-dressed agents would be waiting. They’d already have had a premeeting to script the ideas we’d be presenting, and now, for an hour, they’d pepper you with notions for developing your books and screenplays and shower you with the names of our clients who were eager to be in your films. At the end, we’d finally say, “We want to represent you.” It was hard to resist. If you raised a serious issue—“I’d love to, guys, but I just signed with ICM for two years”—we’d always say, “Not a problem, we’ll deal with it.” We’d let ICM commission you for those two years as we packaged your work with our other clients, playing the long game."

"CAA had no formal business hours. If the partners’ cars were in the garage at 8:00 in the morning, so were everybody else’s. When I made my evening rounds at 7:00, 80 percent of our people were at their desks. The work was the thing. We even had a no-fly-by-day rule: if you flew to New York, you took the red-eye so you didn’t waste a workday in the air. Ron and I would park our cars in the number one and number two spots and leave them there when we walked to business dinners, before coming back to retrieve them. We worked insanely hard, but we fostered the illusion of working impossibly hard. I believed momentum was everything—once a company relaxed, it was done for."

"The Color of Money,"

"Bullied as a child, I spent my life bullying back. My clients sometimes viewed me as a superhero, and I did try to play that role—swooping in to help anyone who was down or ill or just in need of advice, fighting for the underdogs. I thought I was one of the good guys. Yet I was increasingly visited by the doubt that troubles every superhero: Had I become a vigilante? Plenty of people saw me as just that—a hired gun who took the law into his own hands. But that verdict misses all the loyalty and the love. Bob De Niro summed me up pretty well. Someone once asked him, “Why don’t you leave Ovitz? He’s such a tough asshole.” De Niro said, “Yeah, but he’s my tough asshole.”"

"Though we sat on opposite sides of the table, Herb and his associates mentored me throughout. Enrique Senior walked me through the art of valuation, Paul Gould was my deal-point tutor, and Herb himself schooled me on how to keep the process moving. He could herd the most difficult people without cracking his whip or indulging his own ego. And because I had the highest regard for Herb’s probity, I never worried that he would try to put anything over on us."

"At his memorial service, I called him “a passing comet” who “lit up our lives.” But it was Bill Murray, as usual, who nailed it. Looking out at the mourners, all of nineties’ Hollywood, Bill said, “There are so many people sitting here today who I would so much rather be eulogizing.”"