His work cannot be trusted said the agency’s president Richard Lovett
Posted in General on 03. Aug, 2010
His work cannot be trusted,” said the agency’s president, Richard Lovett.According to sources at the agency, Ovitz has been calling every big name there to try to lure them across. Not only did Creative Artists cry foul, it also issued an unprecedented ultimatum last week: telling its remaining clients they had to make a straight choice between them and Ovitz “He is a competitor, not a collaborator. Many of his signings were also clients of Creative Artists, whose new management immediately began to suspect he was trying to poach away their business while pretending to be offering a complementary, rather than competing, service. The final straw came when Mike Menchel, a Creative Artists agent whose client list includes one of Hollywood’s highest-earning stars, Robin Williams, announced he was quitting and setting up in business with Ovitz instead.
Together with two other partners, Rick Yorn and Julie Silverman Yorn, he formed the Artists Management Group at the beginning of this month and immediately started announcing some of the big names he was recruiting – Martin Scorsese, Sydney Pollack, Minnie Driver, Claire Danes, and so on.There was, however, a problem. But he has just roared back into town, and in true Ovitz fashion has managed to antagonise just about everyone within weeks of launching his new enterprise.Tired of the agency business, Ovitz has opted instead for talent management. He made an unsuccessful bid to take over the music and entertainment group PolyGram, messed around with plans for a football franchise in Los Angeles and – most spectacularly – sunk $20m into the Broadway production company Livent six months before it went belly-up under a mountain of hidden debts and dubious accounting practices.Ovitz’s old sparring partners in Hollywood might have thought, a touch gleefully, that he was finished. He served as the number two at Disney for a rocky 15 months before being tossed out by the company supremo Michael Eisner.
Since 1995, when Ovitz left his agency, Creative Artists, he has been somewhat adrift. Unlike Wylie, though, he managed to turn himself into the focal point of the whole industry, the middle-man nobody wanted to deal with but nobody could afford to ignore. Ovitz helped push the star system to unprecedented heights of media fetishisation and, more than anyone, was responsible for the dizzying inflation in big- name salaries from $5m to $10m to $20m per picture.
Well, that was then. Ovitz was to the movie business something akin to what Andrew Wylie was in the publishing world – a notorious booster who brought almost as much publicity to his own activities as he did to his clients’. What on earth could he have been doing here? Plotting with other shadowy centrist fanatics before bursting into “Auld Lang Nein” at midnight? “Well, I do know one thing he did, Captain,” volunteers Ms Currency. “He popped into a bookshop and bought that book by Hugo Young of The Guardian all about the British and Europe, post-war. And he’s read it.” Good grief, I reflect, on replacing the receiver, things are far worse than we thought.
Has anybody else noticed, by the way, the amazing resemblance between Otto Schily, the interior minister, and Rod Stewart? Next!
t THE CAPTAIN is very big on the World Wide Web, you know I even have my own e-mail address: moonlight independent co.uk. Great place out there, isn’t it? Only last week I came across e-mail addresses for both HM The Queen and Elvis Presley Naturally, I whizzed off messages to both of them. A loyal greeting, on your behalf, to HM (no, no reply yet; boot up and check that mail, your Maj!). And to Elvis, whose address, curiously, is elvis tesco.co.uk: “Nice to see you in work. Which branch are you at? Do you have responsibility for any particular aisle? Confectionery? Relishes?” In response, this message flashed up, several times: “Recipient’s mailbox busy/not found/no access.” Cripes! Keep your eyes peeled, Tesco shoppers!t ACTUALLY, that little mention of Tesco reminds me that I have momentous news! Yes, Pru has been in touch! Dogged readers have thrilled and gasped at my exhaustive (and perhaps a little exhausting!) attempts to get in touch with Ms Prunella Scales, the fine actress, to ask her whether she thinks there might be any conflict in her twin roles of Tesco advertising icon and President of the Council for the Protection of Rural England, given that supermarkets are supposed to be attacking rural England at every turn.
“I’m so sorry not to have been in touch before,” writes Prue. “We’ve been out of the country, and are now deep in rehearsals for the regional tour of The Birthday Party, and I’m finding it hard to catch up with correspondence.” A confident start, I think you’ll agree. And it’s sustained as Pru points out that the character she plays in the ads, as in her plays, does not necessarily bear any resemblance to herself or her views. She goes on to praise the new Tesco Metro stores, built on brownfield sites “which stay open late and help the regeneration of urban life”. She continues: “Although CPRE is opposed to all inappropriate building on greenfield sites and has never fought shy of dialogue with Tesco or any other supermarket chain, we believe it is through dialogue with the corporate sector that corporate responsibility and environmental performance will improve. We are keen to stimulate debate about the role of supermarkets in all our lives, and are grateful to your column for contributing to it” Well! She’s certainly convinced me. But what do you think? Is Pru off the hook? Let me know now on 0171 293 2462.