Word: agent
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...last $3 million campaign at 41. But from November to January, he looked so soft and spent, the Los Angeles papers pleaded with him to stop. It seemed he was going around again just for the money (a stream of failed investments has him at public loggerheads with his agent) or maybe for the curtain calls at all the final stops (testimonials have included a motorcycle in Milwaukee and a chunk of Boston's parquet floor...
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...
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...
...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...
...talent agent has become perhaps the most powerful figure in Hollywood. -- President Bush and Prime Minister Takeshita try to start off on the right foot...