Powerhouse: The Untold Story of Hollywood's Creative Artists Agency

by James Andrew Miller

TONY KRANTZ: In the training program, I had written a paper that was a hundred-page document about CAA and the music business, because CAA was not in the music business at the time. My vision was not to get into the booking of bands because I really didn’t love that business, having been the concert promoter at Berkeley; it was really about a different vision, about taking brilliant musical talent and moving them into film and television—say, Quincy Jones producing a movie, a Broadway musical starring Prince, having Ricki Lee Jones score a movie, having Elvis Costello write and produce a movie, taking advantage of CAA’s core strengths and bringing music people into the fold into this new kind of music/film/television programming that I really loved. Fred Specktor was my mentor and sort of supervised the writing of this document. It was, in many ways, the artistic dream of a twenty-two-year-old guy who led with his heart but didn’t necessarily lead with the practicality of agency commission. I delivered it to Fred; he gave it to Mike Ovitz. About a week later I was made an agent, not because of that document only, but also because Robb Rothman left the TV/literary department for a smaller agency. It was unheard of that any agent at CAA would ever leave because it was so clearly the place to be, but Robb did, and I had my shot finally to begin my career at CAA.