Michael Ovitz
Latest News
Michael Ovitz: The Broad Contemporary Art Museum Celebrates Opening with Gala
Sept 18, 2015
Michael Ovitz attended last night's opening night of The Broad, the Eli and Edythe Broad’s contemporary art museum located Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles. “To have Frank Gehry’s Disney Hall, the Music Center, MOCA and LACMA, it’s like we’ve finally arrived,” Ovitz told THR in this article...
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Michael Ovitz: Media moguls flock Michael Kassan’s Hamptons party
August 24, 2015
Michael Ovitz and Tamara Mellon attended a party in the Hamptons Friday nigtht hosted by MediaLink chairman and CEO Michael Kassan and his wife, Ronnie, according to this report on Page Six of the New York Post....
READ MORE
Michael Ovitz: Hamasaku - Legendary Sushi Spot Continues to Evolve
August 7, 2015
Michael Ovitz's Hamasaku has long been a fixture for high-end sushi lovers on L.A.'s Westside. Dujour.com's A Legendary Sushi Spost's Big Makeover details the transition from Hamasaku's fame-inspired rolls (still available) to a more refined Japanese fare thanks to the leadership of executive sushi chef Yoya Takahashi and executive chef Wonny Lee....
READ MORE
Michael Ovitz: Unfinished Business - Carson's road to an NFL Stadium
August 4, 2015
On Aug. 11 the NFL will hold a special meeting on the Los Angeles situation, considered a "pivotal moment" in the league's more-than-20-year odyssey back to the Los Angeles-Orange County market. The owners will consider why a $1.75 billion stadium in Carson next to the 405 Freeway is the ideal place for the NFL to replant its flag in the nation's second-largest market....
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Michael Ovitz: The Armory Show Opens with Strong Sales
March 9, 2015
Michael Ovitz and Tamara Mellon were in attendance at The Armory Show's VIP preview last Wednesday along with various celebrities and collectors including Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka, Michael Stipe, Kelsey Grammar and Audrey Gruss...
READ MORE
Michael Ovitz: Paula Crown Exhibition at Marlborough Gallery
Feb 17, 2015
Michael Ovitz recently attended friend and artist Paula Crown's exhibition entitled The Sublime and the Center: Dimensions of Landscape at Marlborough Chelsea at Marlborough Gallery on 57th Street in Manhattan...
READ MORE
Michael Ovitz: Forbes Business Leaders - Gurjeet Singh, Co-Founder and CEO, Ayasdi
Jan 8, 2015
"It isn't every day that the former head of Walt Disney, Michael Ovitz, shows up at your front door, check in hand, asking to invest in your early stage start up. But, that’s exactly what happened to Gurjeet Singh in early 2012...
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Michael Ovitz: How Andreessen Horowitz Is Disrupting Silicon Valley
Sept 12, 2014
When Andreessen and Horowitz came together in 2009 to start a firm after their time together at Opsware, they focused on recreating a talent management model like the one pioneered by Michael Ovitz, the founder of Creative Artists Agency...
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Michael Ovitz: Ghostbusters Cast Looks Back
Sept 8, 2014
Esquire Magazine's recent An Oral History of Ghostbusters reunited the entire cast to reminisce about the film, including Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ivan Reitman, Sigourney Weaver and the late Harold Ramis, as well as Michael Ovitz and other industry executives who helped make the classic comedy...
READ MORE
Tamara Mellon Takes on NYC Retail
Sept 3, 2014
Michael Ovitz's girlfriend Tamara Mellon has been keeping busy since the 2013 launch of her fashion line of the same name. The former president and co-founder of Jimmy Choo, Mellon is no newcomer to the fashion world, and has made a splash with everything from her innovative legging boots to her disruptive 'buy today, wear tomorrow' approach to releasing new styles...
READ MORE
NFL Return to Los Angeles Gathering Steam
Aug 13, 2014
"It would make a beautiful stadium," Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones replied when asked about the model Hollywood mogul Michael Ovitz proposed for a re-imagined Los Angeles NFL venue. Jones and Oakland Raiders owner Mark Davis were present at Tuesday's joint football practice in Oxnard, CA along with Magic Johnson (once represented by Ovitz) and even Tommy Lasorda, sitting at a sideline-chair in a VIP area. ...
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Michael Ovitz Residence Featured in W Magazine
June 23, 2014
W Magazine selected the 'coolest venues in town' for its latest art-themed fashion shoot, including a rare look at Michael Ovitz's Beverly Hills residence. The shoot allowed a glimpse of a few of the extraordinary works of art at the home - itself an artistic expression.'....
READ MORE
Biography
Michael Ovitz has been involved in a wide variety of activities over the last 40 years in the worlds of entertainment, investment, advertising, finance, business and philanthropy. He began his entertainment career prior to graduating from UCLA, as a tour guide at Universal Studios. He later started in the mailroom of the William Morris Agency, soon became a highly successful TV agent there before leaving with four colleagues to found CAA.
Ovitz co-founded Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in 1974 and served as its Chairman until 1995. Over that 20-year period, he grew the agency from a start-up organization to the world's leading talent agency, representing more than 1,000 of the most notable actors, directors, musicians, screenwriters and other personalities in the entertainment industry. While at CAA, Mr. Ovitz was known for assembling "package deals", wherein CAA would utilize its talent base to provide directors, actors and screenwriters to a studio, thus shifting the negotiating leverage from the studios to the talent.
Ovitz expanded the purview of the agency by moving into such activities as corporate consulting, investment banking and advertising. He helped negotiate such transactions as Matsushita's acquisition of MCA/Universal, the financial rescue of MGM/United Artists, and Sony's acquisition of Columbia Pictures. He shook up the advertising industry by winning Coca-Cola's global advertising account in 1991. Mr. Ovitz also served as President of the Walt Disney Company, from October 1995 to January 1997.
In January of 1999, he launched a related family of talent management, motion picture and television production companies. Since selling those companies in 2002, he has remained involved in a limited number of film and videogame projects, while devoting the bulk of his time to investing in startup technology and media companies, real estate and other ventures.
In 2010 Ovitz co-founded venture capital fund Broad Beach Ventures, which includes a portfolio of over thirty companies, including Medium, Palantir, Klout, Priceonomics, GoodRx, and others. Broad Beach Ventures consults with venture capital firms, private equity firms and hedge funds, including Andreessen Horowitz, Formation 8, Founders Fund and others.
Ovitz has also served as a member of the Board of Directors for J. Crew Group Inc., Gulfstream Aviation and Opsware. He served as Chairman of the Executive Board of the UCLA Hospital and Medical Center and headed up the Capital Campaign to raise money for their new hospital, designed by I.M. Pei. He also served on the Executive Advisory Board of the Pediatric AIDS Foundation, the Board of Directors of D.A.R.E. America, and the National Board of Advisors for the Children's Scholarship Fund. He is currently involved in numerous cultural and charitable activities. He currently sits on the Board of Directors of the Museum of Modern Art, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is on the Board of Advisors of Andreessen Horowitz.
Video
When Marc Met Mike - Marc Andreessen Interviews Michael Ovitz
Article Archive
Michael Ovitz
The New New Andreessen
Bloomberg Businessweek
As Silicon Valley events go, it was an irresistible draw: Marc Andreessen, Web wunderkind turned venture capitalist, interviewing Michael Ovitz, former superagent and co-founder of the Creative Artists Agency.
The conversation between the pair of icons, staged last month in a packed conference room in the offices of Andreessen Horowitz—Silicon Valley's newest, hottest venture capital firm—turned out to be a lovefest. Ovitz, the most powerful man in Hollywood before his career imploded in the mid-1990s after a disastrous stint at Disney (DIS), called his friendship with Andreessen "one of the single most important relationships in my life." Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, the Web browser company whose 1995 initial public offering kicked off the Internet era, said he modeled his VC firm on CAA. "A lot of what we're trying to do with Andreessen Horowitz is based on what Michael was doing at CAA and his theories about how to build a high-quality service firm," Andreessen said.
The pantheon of elite venture capitalists, as seen from Silicon Valley, is as indelible as the faces on Mount Rushmore. There's John Doerr, who invested in Intuit (INTU) and Amazon.com (AMZN); Mike Moritz, backer of Google (GOOG) and Yahoo! (YHOO); and Vinod Khosla, the Sun Microsystems co-founder who helped propel Silicon Valley's cleantech wave, among others. Every so often an upstart tries to carve his own visage into the granite. At 39, Marc Andreessen, who first made the cover of Time magazine almost 15 years ago, thinks now is his moment to grab a chisel. With his longtime business partner, Ben Horowitz, 44, Andreessen raised $300 million last year amid the miasma of the recession and made big, loud bets on such companies as Foursquare, which lets people broadcast their arrival at shops, bars, and restaurants, and Skype, the Internet calling service. Skype, which could go public as early as next year, received $50 million from the pair, who were part of the syndicate of investors who spun it out of eBay (EBAY).
While many other VC firms are still reeling from a decade of weak returns and an influx of competing capital from Russia and China, Andreessen Horowitz is doubling down. On Nov. 3 the firm announced that it has raised a second $650 million fund. (Bloomberg LP, which owns Bloomberg Businessweek, is an investor in Andreessen Horowitz.) The firm also claims a new, Ovitz-inspired approach to venture capital. Andreessen wants to create a full-service VC firm that helps with all the needs of startups, from recruiting to public relations, just as CAA catered to every aspect of career development—and every personal demand—of film stars and directors.
..."Marc is a guy who believes the past is prologue," says Ovitz, who is on the advisory board of Andreessen Horowitz and also invests in it. "You are dealing with a guy who created the future with Netscape who is basically looking backward for cues on how people behaved, their thought process and creative patterns."
As the partners point out, CAA under Ovitz controlled most of the major writers, directors, and actors in Hollywood. Andreessen contends this type of dominance would be impossible to achieve in Silicon Valley. Anyway, he doesn't really want all the deals—just the best ones. "When it comes right down to it, there are 15 tech companies a year you actually want to back," he says. "Our fundamental goal is to be a major investor in as many of those 15 as we possibly can, and we are set up to do that."
Ovitz says he talks to Andreessen often about the challenges of time management. "Most of the conversations are probably irrelevant because I have never met a human being with such a fertile mind, photographic memory, and retention ability," he says. Ovitz, though, has other insights that may be more helpful. At the end of his public conversation with Andreessen, the ex-mogul said he regretted scorched-earth tactics such as poaching every last movie-director client from the rival William Morris Agency. "We were too competitive," he said. "If I had to do it again, I'd ratchet back."
Michael Ovitz
A Tough, Innovative Superagent Emerges as King of the Hollywood Deal
People Magazine
In the new buttoned-down Hollywood, power and access are more important than prestige and pay-and yet there is a single man who has cornered all four. He is neither director nor star but a dealmeister extraordinaire, a Lubitsch not of film but of finances, who in November brokered the sale of Universal Studios' brand equity along with the King Kong ride, Bruce the shark, publishing's Putnam Berkley Group and MCA's mat-black skyscraper to the Japanese electronics giant Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. for $6.9 billion.
Michael Ovitz added the top line to his credit crawl by providing a service usually performed by Wall Street investment houses. His take on the MCA deal: a reported $40 million. Last year, Ovitz did a push-up to this task by marrying Sony to Columbia Pictures Entertainment. "Hollywood is about relationships," a well-connected TV producer once said, "and everybody today wants an even warmer relationship with Mike."
So as Hollywood slides across the Pacific Rim to Japan, the man greasing the wheel is Ovitz, the 44-year-old superagent who. as chairman of Creative Artists Agency, has assembled an unparalleled stable of actors, directors and screenwriters. Among them: Madonna, Kevin Costner, Barbra Streisand, Steven Spielberg, Sylvester Stallone, Cher and Ovitz's former aikido instructor, Steven Seagal.
Much of Ovitz's most-powerful-man rep still comes from "packaging" clients-actors, directors and writers-to make films like GoodFellas (Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, director Martin Scorsese and writer Nicholas Pileggi). And he pulls all these strings with consummate skill. Says Disney Chairman Michael Eisner: "He's among the most tenacious people one would ever meet."
The spotlight rarely shines on the publicity-shy agent, who started out as a mail boy in the William Morris Agency. Devoted to Judy, his wife of 21 years, and their three children, Ovitz spends much of his time at their art-filled Brentwood home. Some think he may take over a studio. But why bother? He is already the shogun of Hollywood.
Michael Ovitz
By: Liz ZackOctober 31, 1999
Fast Company
Hollywood talent agencies never functioned the same after Ovitz sunk in his teeth. Now crunching the industry for the second time, the titan of talent intends to surpass his own reputation.
Back when Michael Ovitz ran the Creative Artist's Agency, hailed as the most powerful talent agency in the world, he would hand out copies of Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" to his staff. In 1995, Ovitz parted amiably with the company he had founded two decades earlier and the industry he had revitalized, and ascended the throne of the Disney empire as president. It was a career move he hoped would catapult him to the top of an even older and larger entertainment kingdom than the one he built himself. But instead, 14 months after unsuccessfully casting himself as Disney's president, Ovitz clashed irrevocably with Chairman of the Walt Disney Company Michael Eisner, collected an estimated $128 million in compensation, and boomeranged back to Hollywood. Last winter he formed AMG, the Artists Management Group, and is now testing his ex-employees on their knowledge of Chinese philosophy.
Same job different company: Sometimes it's best to Boomerang back an alternate route
Ovitz could have waltzed back into CAA like nothing happened, but he really had nothing to gain from returning to his old stomping ground. He left as founding father and king of the hill. By returning after his failed stint at Disney, he might have marred his reputation as a brilliant and brutal businessman. For Ovitz and for a war-gamed Hollywood, a return to CAA would not be a return to grandeur; instead, it would appear a whimpering retreat.
Ever the forward thinker, Ovitz chose the braver route. He realized that he should return to the business he knew best, but he conceded that he had learned all he could from his 20-year career at the I.M. Pei building on Wilshire Boulevard. Ovitz decided to move on to a new big, and perhaps even better, project.
During his tenure at CAA, Ovitz had reinvented the talent agent world by charging the lowest commission in the industry and beating out all the competition. He had shaken up the studios by demanding previously unheard of salaries for his actors. When word got around about the new game in town, everyone followed suit, and Ovitz succeeded in effectively changing the center of power in Hollywood from studios to agents.
After bidding farewell to Mickey and Friends, Ovitz was ready to move back to the industry he had helped to create, and subsequently formed a monolith one-stop talent management shop: AMG. Whereas CAA agents are legally prohibited from producing projects with their clients, AMG talent "managers" are largely unregulated and have a much more flexible role. They can be financial partners with their clients and usually earn hefty commissions for providing more one-on-one hand-holding services. In his comeback company, Ovitz aims to create a powerhouse that not only manages the careers of stars but also produces and distributes movies -- he reportedly wants all agents and managers to work for him.
If you can't join 'em, fight 'em
Ovitz has the distinct advantage of having done right by his clients, and he therefore has talent that trusts him. This trust has enabled him to go head-to-head with his old company -- and emerge victorious. Already many big CAA names have crossed the line in the sand to join AMG. Claire Danes, Laren Holly, Minnie Driver, Marisa Tomei, Mimi Rogers, Syndney Pollack, Martin Scorsese, and Robin Williams all have been plucked from the CAA waters.
Ovitz is now poised to hoist his newest big project even higher than CAA. The opportunity requires a huge amount of industry expertise, a fantastic reputation, and some hefty nerve. But if the past is any predictor of the future, Hollywood had better take shelter: Ovitz is back in town.
Pocketful Of Stars: Michael Ovitz
By Janice Castro;Elaine Dutka/Los Angeles and Janice C. Simpson/New York
Monday, Feb. 13, 1989
Time Magazine
In Hollywood, they say, any bureaucrat can give the thumbs-down to a film proposal, but the ones with real clout are those who can flash a thumbs-up and make it happen. That power used to be the exclusive preserve of the studio moguls. Not anymore. While studios still control the financing, today the man with the golden thumb is Michael Ovitz, an agent and martial-arts buff who works in quiet but irresistible ways. Nearly everyone in show business agrees that Ovitz, 42, president of Creative Artists Agency, is probably the most powerful figure in Hollywood. Some think he may be a bit too powerful.
Michael who? Most people outside Hollywood would not recognize his name, but that's the way he likes it. The Ovitz team's credo: Don't talk about us, talk about our clients. The 675 names on the agency's roster include actors ranging from Paul Newman to Bette Midler, directors from Ron Howard to Martin Scorsese and musicians from Michael Jackson to Madonna. While CAA's chief rivals -- International Creative Management and William Morris -- may boast longer lists of stars, the 14-year-old CAA has snatched most of the brightest lights in the business. Says longtime agent Irving ("Swifty") Lazar, 81: "There hasn't been a phenomenon such as CAA since 1947, when Lew Wasserman and MCA dominated Hollywood. Comparing CAA to its strongest competition is like comparing Tiffany's to the A&P."
Contrary to the unbuttoned, indulgent style at many agencies, CAA operates with the crisp, well-coordinated teamwork of a Japanese high-tech firm. What adds to the agency's mystique is that Ovitz is extremely press shy. In the first extended interview he has ever given, he described his agency's unusual philosophy to TIME correspondent Elaine Dutka: "Some companies believe that internal competition helps the bottom line, but I'm not of that school. We try to take the paternal approach of the Japanese, who take care of their own, and temper that with Western creativity and ingenuity."
Ovitz, who shares power with CAA co-founders Ron Meyer, 44, and Bill Haber, 46, has shown an uncanny touch for putting stories and stars together. The agency had a hand in assembling the elements of four current box-office hits: Rain Man, Mississippi Burning, Twins and Scrooged. Among its TV successes are Golden Girls and Beauty and the Beast. Says Barry Diller, chief executive of Fox Inc.: "CAA represents a lot of good people, and is very aggressive in how they link them to each other. It's all about selling, and they're very good at it."
Hollywood's superagents have risen in power partly because takeovers and mergers have undermined the traditional influence of the major studios. Today very few actors and directors sign exclusive contracts with studios. Result: agents, who collect 10% of every dollar their clients earn, have become far more influential as matchmakers. Instead of merely peddling artists, they now help create custom-made projects for their stars.
Clients appreciate the fact that Ovitz not only pampers them but also teaches them to become more self-sufficient. Says actress Sally Field, a CAA client: "We used to be totally helpless, talking about what lessons to take or how thin we'd got our thighs while we waited for the phone to ring. Michael encouraged me to pick up the phone and develop my own projects. He told me, 'Be your own studio.' "
Since stories are the indispensable raw material of show business, CAA has built a development department that generates ideas for its clients. Ovitz has cultivated close ties with Manhattan gliterary agent Morton Janklow, who represents such best-selling authors s Judith Krantz, Danielle Steel and Jackie Collins. That collaboration has produced some 100 hours of network mini-series. Now Ovitz hopes to work an even richer literary vein. In December Janklow announced a surprise merger with longtime ICM literary agent Lynn Nesbit, whose clients include Tom Wolfe, Ann Beattie and Michael Crichton. According to sources close to the negotiations, the publishing coup was arranged by the invisible hand of Michael Ovitz.
The boyish 5-ft. 9-in. dynamo with the gap-toothed grin was reared in a $9,000 tract house in the San Fernando Valley. He originally wanted to become a doctor, but show business kept catching his eye. Sally Field, a classmate at Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, remembers him standing quietly in the back of the room, watching her drama-class rehearsals.
While a premed student at UCLA, Ovitz worked part time at Universal Studios. After graduating in 1968, he landed a job in the mail room at the William Morris agency. Within a year, he was promoted to agent. Six years later, he and four other young colleagues quit to form CAA with only a $21,000 bank loan. Says Ovitz: "Of course I was scared. I was barely 27 at the time. We didn't take a paycheck for almost two years. Our wives took turns serving as secretaries. In the early years, I couldn't get a good table at a restaurant. I felt like an extra on a set."
The days of making do are long gone. In the fall CAA will move into a new 65,000-sq.-ft. headquarters building in Beverly Hills designed by architect I.M. Pei. Ovitz, who lives in tony Brentwood with his wife Judy and their three children, often attends Los Angeles Lakers games, where he can keep an eye on one of his newest clients, star guard Magic Johnson. Every morning at dawn, he practices aikido, a Japanese form of self-defense that turns the attacker's momentum against him. Says he: "We're painted as aggressive, which is true to a point, but everything is balanced."
Ovitz, who reputedly earns more than $3 million a year, rewards his 65 gung- ho agents with outsize salaries and a share of the agency profits. In exchange, he demands loyalty and discipline. CAA even has an unspoken dress code. Says Ovitz: "When we hire agents, we spend most of the time examining how they'd fit in. We agonize over our personnel."
Critics say the agency's clout has become excessive. Says a top studio executive: "CAA packages are a prefab, take-it-or-leave-it way of making movies. Some pictures get made that maybe shouldn't be made." Ovitz has had his share of feuds, most notably with David Puttnam, who lost his job as chairman of Columbia Pictures last year after alienating much of the Hollywood establishment. Insiders say the abrasive Puttnam's most expensive gaffe may have been his brusque treatment of Ovitz and CAA client Bill Murray. Recalling a spat with Ovitz, agent Bernie Brillstein explains, "I didn't pander ((to Ovitz)), which was probably the source of our fallout."
In his own defense, Ovitz insists that his private feelings do not interfere with business. Says he: "We may be in a personal dispute with someone, but if they have a project that's right for one of our clients, it will be analyzed on the merits. Anyone who says any different is kidding himself."
Some of his colleagues think Ovitz may be getting restless. Says a friend: "CAA is just a bridge he is building so that he can take over Columbia Pictures, MGM/UA or MCA. Michael would like to end up as the Lew Wasserman of his day." History records that Wasserman, who has headed MCA since its 1940s heyday, was known around Hollywood first as "the Octopus" and later as "the Statesman." Most film aficionados would say Ovitz has already earned the first title and is working on the second.
Michael Ovitz, Top 100 People of the Advertising Century, Ad Age
Creative Artists Agency, Hollywood, CA
List No. 87 of 100
Ad Age
One of the most powerful dealmakers in Hollywood with his innovative talent "packaging" company, Ovitz personally changed film industry dynamics in 1990 by brokering huge studio mergers for Japan's Matsushita and Sony. Then, in September 1991, he rocked the advertising world by signing Coca-Cola, ostensibly for marketing and media aid. That partnership set off bicoastal shockwaves and embarrassed longtime Coca-Cola agency McCann-Erickson, especially after the soft-drink giant began airing CAA's commercials featuring high-tech, animated polar bears and a catchy "Always" jingle. Such a la carte options still affect agency-client relationships.
© 2015. All rights reserved.
Latest News
Michael Ovitz: The Broad Contemporary Art Museum Celebrates Opening with Gala
Sept 18, 2015
Michael Ovitz attended last night's opening night of The Broad, the Eli and Edythe Broad’s contemporary art museum located Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles. “To have Frank Gehry’s Disney Hall, the Music Center, MOCA and LACMA, it’s like we’ve finally arrived,” Ovitz told THR in this article...
READ MORE
Michael Ovitz: Media moguls flock Michael Kassan’s Hamptons party
August 24, 2015
Michael Ovitz and Tamara Mellon attended a party in the Hamptons Friday nigtht hosted by MediaLink chairman and CEO Michael Kassan and his wife, Ronnie, according to this report on Page Six of the New York Post....
READ MORE
Michael Ovitz: Hamasaku - Legendary Sushi Spot Continues to Evolve
August 7, 2015
Michael Ovitz's Hamasaku has long been a fixture for high-end sushi lovers on L.A.'s Westside. Dujour.com's A Legendary Sushi Spost's Big Makeover details the transition from Hamasaku's fame-inspired rolls (still available) to a more refined Japanese fare thanks to the leadership of executive sushi chef Yoya Takahashi and executive chef Wonny Lee....
READ MORE
Michael Ovitz: Unfinished Business - Carson's road to an NFL Stadium
August 4, 2015
On Aug. 11 the NFL will hold a special meeting on the Los Angeles situation, considered a "pivotal moment" in the league's more-than-20-year odyssey back to the Los Angeles-Orange County market. The owners will consider why a $1.75 billion stadium in Carson next to the 405 Freeway is the ideal place for the NFL to replant its flag in the nation's second-largest market....
READ MORE
Michael Ovitz: The Armory Show Opens with Strong Sales
March 9, 2015
Michael Ovitz and Tamara Mellon were in attendance at The Armory Show's VIP preview last Wednesday along with various celebrities and collectors including Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka, Michael Stipe, Kelsey Grammar and Audrey Gruss...
READ MORE
Michael Ovitz: Paula Crown Exhibition at Marlborough Gallery
Feb 17, 2015
Michael Ovitz recently attended friend and artist Paula Crown's exhibition entitled The Sublime and the Center: Dimensions of Landscape at Marlborough Chelsea at Marlborough Gallery on 57th Street in Manhattan...
READ MORE
Michael Ovitz: Forbes Business Leaders - Gurjeet Singh, Co-Founder and CEO, Ayasdi
Jan 8, 2015
"It isn't every day that the former head of Walt Disney, Michael Ovitz, shows up at your front door, check in hand, asking to invest in your early stage start up. But, that’s exactly what happened to Gurjeet Singh in early 2012...
READ MORE
Michael Ovitz: How Andreessen Horowitz Is Disrupting Silicon Valley
Sept 12, 2014
When Andreessen and Horowitz came together in 2009 to start a firm after their time together at Opsware, they focused on recreating a talent management model like the one pioneered by Michael Ovitz, the founder of Creative Artists Agency...
READ MORE
Michael Ovitz: Ghostbusters Cast Looks Back
Sept 8, 2014
Esquire Magazine's recent An Oral History of Ghostbusters reunited the entire cast to reminisce about the film, including Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ivan Reitman, Sigourney Weaver and the late Harold Ramis, as well as Michael Ovitz and other industry executives who helped make the classic comedy...
READ MORE
Tamara Mellon Takes on NYC Retail
Sept 3, 2014
Michael Ovitz's girlfriend Tamara Mellon has been keeping busy since the 2013 launch of her fashion line of the same name. The former president and co-founder of Jimmy Choo, Mellon is no newcomer to the fashion world, and has made a splash with everything from her innovative legging boots to her disruptive 'buy today, wear tomorrow' approach to releasing new styles...
READ MORE
NFL Return to Los Angeles Gathering Steam
Aug 13, 2014
"It would make a beautiful stadium," Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones replied when asked about the model Hollywood mogul Michael Ovitz proposed for a re-imagined Los Angeles NFL venue. Jones and Oakland Raiders owner Mark Davis were present at Tuesday's joint football practice in Oxnard, CA along with Magic Johnson (once represented by Ovitz) and even Tommy Lasorda, sitting at a sideline-chair in a VIP area. ...
READ MORE
Michael Ovitz Residence Featured in W Magazine
June 23, 2014
W Magazine selected the 'coolest venues in town' for its latest art-themed fashion shoot, including a rare look at Michael Ovitz's Beverly Hills residence. The shoot allowed a glimpse of a few of the extraordinary works of art at the home - itself an artistic expression.'....
READ MORE
Biography
Michael Ovitz has been involved in a wide variety of activities over the last 40 years in the worlds of entertainment, investment, advertising, finance, business and philanthropy. He began his entertainment career prior to graduating from UCLA, as a tour guide at Universal Studios. He later started in the mailroom of the William Morris Agency, soon became a highly successful TV agent there before leaving with four colleagues to found CAA.
Ovitz co-founded Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in 1974 and served as its Chairman until 1995. Over that 20-year period, he grew the agency from a start-up organization to the world's leading talent agency, representing more than 1,000 of the most notable actors, directors, musicians, screenwriters and other personalities in the entertainment industry. While at CAA, Mr. Ovitz was known for assembling "package deals", wherein CAA would utilize its talent base to provide directors, actors and screenwriters to a studio, thus shifting the negotiating leverage from the studios to the talent.
Ovitz expanded the purview of the agency by moving into such activities as corporate consulting, investment banking and advertising. He helped negotiate such transactions as Matsushita's acquisition of MCA/Universal, the financial rescue of MGM/United Artists, and Sony's acquisition of Columbia Pictures. He shook up the advertising industry by winning Coca-Cola's global advertising account in 1991. Mr. Ovitz also served as President of the Walt Disney Company, from October 1995 to January 1997.
In January of 1999, he launched a related family of talent management, motion picture and television production companies. Since selling those companies in 2002, he has remained involved in a limited number of film and videogame projects, while devoting the bulk of his time to investing in startup technology and media companies, real estate and other ventures.
In 2010 Ovitz co-founded venture capital fund Broad Beach Ventures, which includes a portfolio of over thirty companies, including Medium, Palantir, Klout, Priceonomics, GoodRx, and others. Broad Beach Ventures consults with venture capital firms, private equity firms and hedge funds, including Andreessen Horowitz, Formation 8, Founders Fund and others.
Ovitz has also served as a member of the Board of Directors for J. Crew Group Inc., Gulfstream Aviation and Opsware. He served as Chairman of the Executive Board of the UCLA Hospital and Medical Center and headed up the Capital Campaign to raise money for their new hospital, designed by I.M. Pei. He also served on the Executive Advisory Board of the Pediatric AIDS Foundation, the Board of Directors of D.A.R.E. America, and the National Board of Advisors for the Children's Scholarship Fund. He is currently involved in numerous cultural and charitable activities. He currently sits on the Board of Directors of the Museum of Modern Art, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is on the Board of Advisors of Andreessen Horowitz.
Video
When Marc Met Mike - Marc Andreessen Interviews Michael Ovitz
Article Archive
Michael Ovitz
The New New Andreessen
Bloomberg Businessweek
As Silicon Valley events go, it was an irresistible draw: Marc Andreessen, Web wunderkind turned venture capitalist, interviewing Michael Ovitz, former superagent and co-founder of the Creative Artists Agency.
The conversation between the pair of icons, staged last month in a packed conference room in the offices of Andreessen Horowitz—Silicon Valley's newest, hottest venture capital firm—turned out to be a lovefest. Ovitz, the most powerful man in Hollywood before his career imploded in the mid-1990s after a disastrous stint at Disney (DIS), called his friendship with Andreessen "one of the single most important relationships in my life." Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, the Web browser company whose 1995 initial public offering kicked off the Internet era, said he modeled his VC firm on CAA. "A lot of what we're trying to do with Andreessen Horowitz is based on what Michael was doing at CAA and his theories about how to build a high-quality service firm," Andreessen said.
The pantheon of elite venture capitalists, as seen from Silicon Valley, is as indelible as the faces on Mount Rushmore. There's John Doerr, who invested in Intuit (INTU) and Amazon.com (AMZN); Mike Moritz, backer of Google (GOOG) and Yahoo! (YHOO); and Vinod Khosla, the Sun Microsystems co-founder who helped propel Silicon Valley's cleantech wave, among others. Every so often an upstart tries to carve his own visage into the granite. At 39, Marc Andreessen, who first made the cover of Time magazine almost 15 years ago, thinks now is his moment to grab a chisel. With his longtime business partner, Ben Horowitz, 44, Andreessen raised $300 million last year amid the miasma of the recession and made big, loud bets on such companies as Foursquare, which lets people broadcast their arrival at shops, bars, and restaurants, and Skype, the Internet calling service. Skype, which could go public as early as next year, received $50 million from the pair, who were part of the syndicate of investors who spun it out of eBay (EBAY).
While many other VC firms are still reeling from a decade of weak returns and an influx of competing capital from Russia and China, Andreessen Horowitz is doubling down. On Nov. 3 the firm announced that it has raised a second $650 million fund. (Bloomberg LP, which owns Bloomberg Businessweek, is an investor in Andreessen Horowitz.) The firm also claims a new, Ovitz-inspired approach to venture capital. Andreessen wants to create a full-service VC firm that helps with all the needs of startups, from recruiting to public relations, just as CAA catered to every aspect of career development—and every personal demand—of film stars and directors.
..."Marc is a guy who believes the past is prologue," says Ovitz, who is on the advisory board of Andreessen Horowitz and also invests in it. "You are dealing with a guy who created the future with Netscape who is basically looking backward for cues on how people behaved, their thought process and creative patterns."
As the partners point out, CAA under Ovitz controlled most of the major writers, directors, and actors in Hollywood. Andreessen contends this type of dominance would be impossible to achieve in Silicon Valley. Anyway, he doesn't really want all the deals—just the best ones. "When it comes right down to it, there are 15 tech companies a year you actually want to back," he says. "Our fundamental goal is to be a major investor in as many of those 15 as we possibly can, and we are set up to do that."
Ovitz says he talks to Andreessen often about the challenges of time management. "Most of the conversations are probably irrelevant because I have never met a human being with such a fertile mind, photographic memory, and retention ability," he says. Ovitz, though, has other insights that may be more helpful. At the end of his public conversation with Andreessen, the ex-mogul said he regretted scorched-earth tactics such as poaching every last movie-director client from the rival William Morris Agency. "We were too competitive," he said. "If I had to do it again, I'd ratchet back."
Michael Ovitz
A Tough, Innovative Superagent Emerges as King of the Hollywood Deal
People Magazine
In the new buttoned-down Hollywood, power and access are more important than prestige and pay-and yet there is a single man who has cornered all four. He is neither director nor star but a dealmeister extraordinaire, a Lubitsch not of film but of finances, who in November brokered the sale of Universal Studios' brand equity along with the King Kong ride, Bruce the shark, publishing's Putnam Berkley Group and MCA's mat-black skyscraper to the Japanese electronics giant Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. for $6.9 billion.
Michael Ovitz added the top line to his credit crawl by providing a service usually performed by Wall Street investment houses. His take on the MCA deal: a reported $40 million. Last year, Ovitz did a push-up to this task by marrying Sony to Columbia Pictures Entertainment. "Hollywood is about relationships," a well-connected TV producer once said, "and everybody today wants an even warmer relationship with Mike."
So as Hollywood slides across the Pacific Rim to Japan, the man greasing the wheel is Ovitz, the 44-year-old superagent who. as chairman of Creative Artists Agency, has assembled an unparalleled stable of actors, directors and screenwriters. Among them: Madonna, Kevin Costner, Barbra Streisand, Steven Spielberg, Sylvester Stallone, Cher and Ovitz's former aikido instructor, Steven Seagal.
Much of Ovitz's most-powerful-man rep still comes from "packaging" clients-actors, directors and writers-to make films like GoodFellas (Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, director Martin Scorsese and writer Nicholas Pileggi). And he pulls all these strings with consummate skill. Says Disney Chairman Michael Eisner: "He's among the most tenacious people one would ever meet."
The spotlight rarely shines on the publicity-shy agent, who started out as a mail boy in the William Morris Agency. Devoted to Judy, his wife of 21 years, and their three children, Ovitz spends much of his time at their art-filled Brentwood home. Some think he may take over a studio. But why bother? He is already the shogun of Hollywood.
Michael Ovitz
By: Liz ZackOctober 31, 1999
Fast Company
Hollywood talent agencies never functioned the same after Ovitz sunk in his teeth. Now crunching the industry for the second time, the titan of talent intends to surpass his own reputation.
Back when Michael Ovitz ran the Creative Artist's Agency, hailed as the most powerful talent agency in the world, he would hand out copies of Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" to his staff. In 1995, Ovitz parted amiably with the company he had founded two decades earlier and the industry he had revitalized, and ascended the throne of the Disney empire as president. It was a career move he hoped would catapult him to the top of an even older and larger entertainment kingdom than the one he built himself. But instead, 14 months after unsuccessfully casting himself as Disney's president, Ovitz clashed irrevocably with Chairman of the Walt Disney Company Michael Eisner, collected an estimated $128 million in compensation, and boomeranged back to Hollywood. Last winter he formed AMG, the Artists Management Group, and is now testing his ex-employees on their knowledge of Chinese philosophy.
Same job different company: Sometimes it's best to Boomerang back an alternate route
Ovitz could have waltzed back into CAA like nothing happened, but he really had nothing to gain from returning to his old stomping ground. He left as founding father and king of the hill. By returning after his failed stint at Disney, he might have marred his reputation as a brilliant and brutal businessman. For Ovitz and for a war-gamed Hollywood, a return to CAA would not be a return to grandeur; instead, it would appear a whimpering retreat.
Ever the forward thinker, Ovitz chose the braver route. He realized that he should return to the business he knew best, but he conceded that he had learned all he could from his 20-year career at the I.M. Pei building on Wilshire Boulevard. Ovitz decided to move on to a new big, and perhaps even better, project.
During his tenure at CAA, Ovitz had reinvented the talent agent world by charging the lowest commission in the industry and beating out all the competition. He had shaken up the studios by demanding previously unheard of salaries for his actors. When word got around about the new game in town, everyone followed suit, and Ovitz succeeded in effectively changing the center of power in Hollywood from studios to agents.
After bidding farewell to Mickey and Friends, Ovitz was ready to move back to the industry he had helped to create, and subsequently formed a monolith one-stop talent management shop: AMG. Whereas CAA agents are legally prohibited from producing projects with their clients, AMG talent "managers" are largely unregulated and have a much more flexible role. They can be financial partners with their clients and usually earn hefty commissions for providing more one-on-one hand-holding services. In his comeback company, Ovitz aims to create a powerhouse that not only manages the careers of stars but also produces and distributes movies -- he reportedly wants all agents and managers to work for him.
If you can't join 'em, fight 'em
Ovitz has the distinct advantage of having done right by his clients, and he therefore has talent that trusts him. This trust has enabled him to go head-to-head with his old company -- and emerge victorious. Already many big CAA names have crossed the line in the sand to join AMG. Claire Danes, Laren Holly, Minnie Driver, Marisa Tomei, Mimi Rogers, Syndney Pollack, Martin Scorsese, and Robin Williams all have been plucked from the CAA waters.
Ovitz is now poised to hoist his newest big project even higher than CAA. The opportunity requires a huge amount of industry expertise, a fantastic reputation, and some hefty nerve. But if the past is any predictor of the future, Hollywood had better take shelter: Ovitz is back in town.
Pocketful Of Stars: Michael Ovitz
By Janice Castro;Elaine Dutka/Los Angeles and Janice C. Simpson/New York
Monday, Feb. 13, 1989
Time Magazine
In Hollywood, they say, any bureaucrat can give the thumbs-down to a film proposal, but the ones with real clout are those who can flash a thumbs-up and make it happen. That power used to be the exclusive preserve of the studio moguls. Not anymore. While studios still control the financing, today the man with the golden thumb is Michael Ovitz, an agent and martial-arts buff who works in quiet but irresistible ways. Nearly everyone in show business agrees that Ovitz, 42, president of Creative Artists Agency, is probably the most powerful figure in Hollywood. Some think he may be a bit too powerful.
Michael who? Most people outside Hollywood would not recognize his name, but that's the way he likes it. The Ovitz team's credo: Don't talk about us, talk about our clients. The 675 names on the agency's roster include actors ranging from Paul Newman to Bette Midler, directors from Ron Howard to Martin Scorsese and musicians from Michael Jackson to Madonna. While CAA's chief rivals -- International Creative Management and William Morris -- may boast longer lists of stars, the 14-year-old CAA has snatched most of the brightest lights in the business. Says longtime agent Irving ("Swifty") Lazar, 81: "There hasn't been a phenomenon such as CAA since 1947, when Lew Wasserman and MCA dominated Hollywood. Comparing CAA to its strongest competition is like comparing Tiffany's to the A&P."
Contrary to the unbuttoned, indulgent style at many agencies, CAA operates with the crisp, well-coordinated teamwork of a Japanese high-tech firm. What adds to the agency's mystique is that Ovitz is extremely press shy. In the first extended interview he has ever given, he described his agency's unusual philosophy to TIME correspondent Elaine Dutka: "Some companies believe that internal competition helps the bottom line, but I'm not of that school. We try to take the paternal approach of the Japanese, who take care of their own, and temper that with Western creativity and ingenuity."
Ovitz, who shares power with CAA co-founders Ron Meyer, 44, and Bill Haber, 46, has shown an uncanny touch for putting stories and stars together. The agency had a hand in assembling the elements of four current box-office hits: Rain Man, Mississippi Burning, Twins and Scrooged. Among its TV successes are Golden Girls and Beauty and the Beast. Says Barry Diller, chief executive of Fox Inc.: "CAA represents a lot of good people, and is very aggressive in how they link them to each other. It's all about selling, and they're very good at it."
Hollywood's superagents have risen in power partly because takeovers and mergers have undermined the traditional influence of the major studios. Today very few actors and directors sign exclusive contracts with studios. Result: agents, who collect 10% of every dollar their clients earn, have become far more influential as matchmakers. Instead of merely peddling artists, they now help create custom-made projects for their stars.
Clients appreciate the fact that Ovitz not only pampers them but also teaches them to become more self-sufficient. Says actress Sally Field, a CAA client: "We used to be totally helpless, talking about what lessons to take or how thin we'd got our thighs while we waited for the phone to ring. Michael encouraged me to pick up the phone and develop my own projects. He told me, 'Be your own studio.' "
Since stories are the indispensable raw material of show business, CAA has built a development department that generates ideas for its clients. Ovitz has cultivated close ties with Manhattan gliterary agent Morton Janklow, who represents such best-selling authors s Judith Krantz, Danielle Steel and Jackie Collins. That collaboration has produced some 100 hours of network mini-series. Now Ovitz hopes to work an even richer literary vein. In December Janklow announced a surprise merger with longtime ICM literary agent Lynn Nesbit, whose clients include Tom Wolfe, Ann Beattie and Michael Crichton. According to sources close to the negotiations, the publishing coup was arranged by the invisible hand of Michael Ovitz.
The boyish 5-ft. 9-in. dynamo with the gap-toothed grin was reared in a $9,000 tract house in the San Fernando Valley. He originally wanted to become a doctor, but show business kept catching his eye. Sally Field, a classmate at Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, remembers him standing quietly in the back of the room, watching her drama-class rehearsals.
While a premed student at UCLA, Ovitz worked part time at Universal Studios. After graduating in 1968, he landed a job in the mail room at the William Morris agency. Within a year, he was promoted to agent. Six years later, he and four other young colleagues quit to form CAA with only a $21,000 bank loan. Says Ovitz: "Of course I was scared. I was barely 27 at the time. We didn't take a paycheck for almost two years. Our wives took turns serving as secretaries. In the early years, I couldn't get a good table at a restaurant. I felt like an extra on a set."
The days of making do are long gone. In the fall CAA will move into a new 65,000-sq.-ft. headquarters building in Beverly Hills designed by architect I.M. Pei. Ovitz, who lives in tony Brentwood with his wife Judy and their three children, often attends Los Angeles Lakers games, where he can keep an eye on one of his newest clients, star guard Magic Johnson. Every morning at dawn, he practices aikido, a Japanese form of self-defense that turns the attacker's momentum against him. Says he: "We're painted as aggressive, which is true to a point, but everything is balanced."
Ovitz, who reputedly earns more than $3 million a year, rewards his 65 gung- ho agents with outsize salaries and a share of the agency profits. In exchange, he demands loyalty and discipline. CAA even has an unspoken dress code. Says Ovitz: "When we hire agents, we spend most of the time examining how they'd fit in. We agonize over our personnel."
Critics say the agency's clout has become excessive. Says a top studio executive: "CAA packages are a prefab, take-it-or-leave-it way of making movies. Some pictures get made that maybe shouldn't be made." Ovitz has had his share of feuds, most notably with David Puttnam, who lost his job as chairman of Columbia Pictures last year after alienating much of the Hollywood establishment. Insiders say the abrasive Puttnam's most expensive gaffe may have been his brusque treatment of Ovitz and CAA client Bill Murray. Recalling a spat with Ovitz, agent Bernie Brillstein explains, "I didn't pander ((to Ovitz)), which was probably the source of our fallout."
In his own defense, Ovitz insists that his private feelings do not interfere with business. Says he: "We may be in a personal dispute with someone, but if they have a project that's right for one of our clients, it will be analyzed on the merits. Anyone who says any different is kidding himself."
Some of his colleagues think Ovitz may be getting restless. Says a friend: "CAA is just a bridge he is building so that he can take over Columbia Pictures, MGM/UA or MCA. Michael would like to end up as the Lew Wasserman of his day." History records that Wasserman, who has headed MCA since its 1940s heyday, was known around Hollywood first as "the Octopus" and later as "the Statesman." Most film aficionados would say Ovitz has already earned the first title and is working on the second.
Michael Ovitz, Top 100 People of the Advertising Century, Ad Age
Creative Artists Agency, Hollywood, CA
List No. 87 of 100
Ad Age
One of the most powerful dealmakers in Hollywood with his innovative talent "packaging" company, Ovitz personally changed film industry dynamics in 1990 by brokering huge studio mergers for Japan's Matsushita and Sony. Then, in September 1991, he rocked the advertising world by signing Coca-Cola, ostensibly for marketing and media aid. That partnership set off bicoastal shockwaves and embarrassed longtime Coca-Cola agency McCann-Erickson, especially after the soft-drink giant began airing CAA's commercials featuring high-tech, animated polar bears and a catchy "Always" jingle. Such a la carte options still affect agency-client relationships.
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