To His Old Partners, ‘New’ Ovitz Hasn’t Changed a Bit

A scorpion asks a fox for a lift across the river. “But you’ll sting me and I’ll drown,” the fox objects. The scorpion replies, “If I sting you, we’ll both drown. And I want to get to the other side.” The fox agrees and the scorpion hops on his back. Halfway across, the scorpion stings the fox. “Why?” gasps the fox. “It’s my nature,” the scorpion says, the final words before they both drown.

--A version of an ancient parable

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When Michael Ovitz made his latest comeback, he wanted everyone to think he was a changed man. He told friends he was humbled by his firing at Walt Disney Co. and as a result of being relentlessly vilified by enemies he never even knew he had from years of being regarded as the most feared and powerful man in Hollywood.

Though skeptical, some of his former followers chose to believe him and extended their hands to clear the way for future good relations. But Ovitz, they contend, has reverted to using some of the same tactics that made him reviled in his earlier incarnation.

Those who were stung have concluded that this is the same man they had always known. It is, they note, in his nature.

No one would dispute that business is business. And that Hollywood, in particular, is a cutthroat environment where ruthlessness may be a virtue rather than a character flaw.

Agents tend to be among the fiercest warriors of all. Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”--which Ovitz once considered his bible--has become an obligatory reference work on the Hollywood agent’s bookshelf. It’s the nature of their business, if you will.

So there is at least some irony in the leaders of Hollywood’s dominant talent agency--men known throughout the business for their toughness and grasp of the practical--carping about the behavior of a competitor. Sort of like the lion complaining that the tiger is too ferocious.

Yet that is precisely what happened this week after Ovitz poached box-office heavyweight Robin Williams from his former colleagues at Creative Artists Agency, setting off a war with the agency he had co-founded and brought to prominence in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

CAA found itself with considerable support from others in Hollywood who believe Ovitz has crossed the line of acceptable behavior in his endeavor to reinvent himself as a talent manager. How could Ovitz betray the very agents that once loved, idolized and canonized him, Hollywood asked.

Law of the Jungle

Many compared it with a time decades ago when Ovitz left William Morris Agency and then raided many of its top clients--most handled by the legendary Stan Kamen--when he, Ron Meyer and Bill Haber were building CAA.

Stuart Fischoff, a media psychologist and professor at Cal State Los Angeles, offered one explanation. “What’s going on is simply he’s basically reverting to what he knows,” he said.

“It’s known as instinctual regression in the animal world. No matter what you try to teach them, they go back to their native ways. What Ovitz did at CAA, he’s doing now to CAA. It’s expecting a leopard to change its spots.”

Advice columnist and psychologist Joyce Brothers doesn’t agree: “Absolutely, you’re capable of changing any time. . . . You can change even on your deathbed. Seeing life from the downside can change a person.”

Ovitz suffered public embarrassment when he was fired from the Disney presidency by his once-best friend Michael Eisner and more recently when he invested in Livent Inc. shortly before it was forced into bankruptcy.

Brothers, noting that Ovitz, when he was a young agent, once offered to help her in “anything I wanted,” said: “One of the things about him is that he does what he says he will do. . . . A lot of people are flocking to him again, people who he’s been intimately involved with want him again.”

Indeed, Ovitz’s imbroglio with CAA may not deter him from regaining the kind of clout he once knew. Ovitz in short order has catalyzed a formidable array of talent in Artists Management Group, a month-old outfit he founded with two young managers, Rick Yorn and sister-in-law Julie Silverman Yorn, who represent such stars as Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz.

He aims to build a kind of all-in-one entertainment company that will attempt to turn the conventional studio system upside-down. Among other elements, Ovitz plans to model a self-financing production and distribution company after First Artists, which was founded in 1969 by Barbra Streisand, Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier and the late Steve McQueen to give artists equal shares in the profits of their movies and control of their copyrights.

Earlier this week, the leaders of CAA--who are still months away from paying off Ovitz and his partners the remainder of the $150 million-plus they owe him for buying the company in 1995--struck back against their former leader and mentor.

After feeling they had been duped by Ovitz, who had given assurances of friendly intentions to function not as an agent but as a manager, CAA declared it would not do business with him. The ultimatum forces shared AMG clients--a list of about a half dozen that includes directors Martin Scorsese and Sydney Pollack--to make a choice.

If they want to stay in business with Ovitz, they will no longer be clients of CAA. So far, Scorsese, Marisa Tomei and Mimi Rogers have decided on AMG.

‘Clients Aren’t Like Silverware’

CAA principals Richard Lovett and Bryan Lourd took the rare step of denouncing Ovitz publicly for being “untrustworthy,” among other things.

Ovitz declined comment. But a source close to him said Lovett has gone out of his way to sabotage AMG’s plans by trying to persuade Rick Yorn and some clients not to go into business with Ovitz.

CAA sources claim the Williams incident was only the final straw. Agency insiders said Lovett and Lourd heard repeatedly about Ovitz approaching their agents about joining AMG. When called on it, they said Ovitz would respond: “Hey, I know you don’t want to hear this, but they called me. They’re restless.”

CAA’s last meeting with Ovitz was on his birthday, Dec. 9. Lourd and Ovitz met for a three-hour lunch in the private dining room at Beverly Hills eatery Mr. Chow to set some ground rules.

Two days later, sources said, Lourd and his colleagues learned that Ovitz was meeting secretly with one of their clients.

Last week, CAA got a phone call from Williams’ agent, Mike Menchel, after he had been out of the office for two days to say he was resigning and taking his clients with him.

Menchel said in an interview Thursday: “Nobody twisted my arm. It was an organic, natural move. I worked for Mike for 19 years. For the past couple of years I haven’t been happy and started to feel demoralized because I was underutilized.” Menchel said: “I called Mike and said, ‘Have you got room for your old buddy?’ And he said yes. Then I made the decision to go.”

Another industry insider, a former agent, noted that “clients aren’t like silverware. You can’t steal them. These are thinking adults who are making millions of dollars and are surrounded by very high-paid advisors who are helping them make these decisions.”

CAA was also irritated when two weeks ago in New York, Ovitz paid an unexpected visit to his ex-client David Letterman at his Midtown Manhattan offices. When Ovitz walked in, he was shocked to see his former colleague Lee Gabler--head of CAA’s TV department--sitting in the office with the late-night talk show host. After a few minutes of awkward small talk, Ovitz left.

A source close to Ovitz said there was nothing improper about his visit to Letterman and that he has stopped by to see his former client on many occasions.

CAA was not Ovitz’s first target. His first move was raiding a small but established management company for its two top young managers--breaking a long-standing convention that managers don’t poach other managers as agents often do other agents.

Technically, only agents can procure work for clients but in Hollywood managers and agents often perform similar functions. They often share clients and work closely in guiding their careers.

In luring the Yorns--who represent Di Caprio, Claire Danes, Diaz and others--by offering them a partnership in AMG, Ovitz threw their management company, Industry Entertainment, into a tailspin.

Ovitz and his defenders would argue that Industry chiefs Keith Addis and Nick Wechsler had themselves to blame for losing the Yorns, who presumably would not have left if they had been given a piece of the reward when controlling interest in the company was sold to a deep-pocketed advertising conglomerate last year.

Catching the Predatory Wave

Rumors abound that Industry was bullied into granting the Yorns early release from their contracts and into backing down on threats to sue Ovitz. Those in Ovitz’s camp deny any threats were ever made to anyone.

One industry source added: “Ovitz is a no-holds-barred warrior, and you can’t stop a warrior. He just doesn’t care.”

Fischoff, however, sees nothing unusual in the latest headlines about Ovitz.

“I don’t see this as atypical of the shark climate in Hollywood,” said Fischoff, who once worked as a writer in Hollywood and was in private practice as a psychologist for 30 years.

“What we see with Ovitz is the dawn of a new predatory day in Hollywood. Ovitz is simply catching the wave. Managers are the lions to what the agents used to be. Hollywood is an industry where all relationships are viewed as opportunistic. It’s horrendous what goes on there.”