And so he has been at war with his two main rivals the Morris Agency still and International

And so he has been at war with his two main rivals, the Morris Agency, still, and International Creative Manage- ment (ICM), headed by Jeff Berg.Ovitz has done very well for his clients, most of whom swear by him and are a little afraid of losing his favour. It has also been an assiduous hijacker of other agencies’ stars. And agents now negotiate not just an up-front salary, but a part of the profits and residuals, all the way down to video sales in far-flung territories. The contracts are thicker than the scripts – and they are read more carefully.CAA has a commanding list of star clients, and Ovitz has had a beguiling way of strategising their careers: Kevin Costner, Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise, Warren Beatty, Robert De Niro, Robin Williams, Michael Doug-las, Sylvester Stallone, Sean Connery, Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Francis Coppola, Tim Burton, Robert Red-ford, Barry Levinson, Steven Spiel-berg, Barbra Streisand. Without Ovitz’s care, that troubled picture might have fallen apart.

They have a steady list of clients in the way studios once had contract artists. They are eager to package those clients, and so they facilitate the making of pictures Rain Man had two stars and a director from CAA. And agencies now are often the stable, generating forces in pictures They remain and abide as studios come and go. It also bestrides the business of high-concept pictures made for a young audience. For more than a decade, CAA has been the dominant agency in showbusiness. With Mike Ovitz as its chairman, CAA is established in purpose-built offices – designed by IM Pei, the architect of the Louvre pyramid – at the junction of Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevards.

Ovitz and four other young hustlers at Morris believed their employer was going stale and complacent. They started meeting as a group, brainstorming to get ahead – and Morris proved all the kids’ suspicions correct by firing them for attempted mutiny. William Morris has never quite been the same again.Without any other choice, the five set up a new business, and they called themselves Creative Artists Agency – CAA That was 1975.CUT TO today. An agency can function very nicely on the status quo, but the great agents are those who look ahead at new technologies and fresh opportunities. He was surely the best example Mike Ovitz had as he began at William Morris in the late Sixties. In those days, the Morris Agency was the class act in talent, but inclined to take too much for granted.

Tall, upright, with silver hair and black horn-rim spectacles, he is a commanding figure and the elder statesman of the business. He is also a testament to hard work, domestic decency and keeping everyone happy. So MCA crossed over; it was a classic example of lawyers and agents taking over the movies from old-fashioned showmen.Wasserman is 82 now, but still with MCA. MCA became more powerful than movie studios, and in 1962, led by Stein and Wasser-man, it bought out Universal – but Attorney-General Robert Kennedy approved the deal only if MCA gave up its agency business (by then only 10 per cent of its operation), for to be an agent and a producer was by then established as monopolistic. Without an obliging Guild president there would have been no deal That president was Ronald Reagan. Ron’s agent was Lew Wasserman.I’m cutting a long story very short, but Wasserman was (before Ovitz) the most innovative agent the business has ever had. He foresaw the money factory in network television and syndication rights, and he appreciated the bonanza in the sale of old movies to television.