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

by James Andrew Miller

There was a moment early on that to me really defined Jay. He wasn’t an agent yet, and Madonna, who was a CAA client, was playing Anaheim Stadium. At this time, she was a big music star, but CAA wanted to get her acting career going, so they decided to bring a lot of studio people, big people in the business, to the stadium so they could see her. The agency organized buses to go from their offices in Century City to the stadium, and others followed in their private cars. Jay was one of the people who had to make sure everything turned out okay, and so he brought me. We all got on the bus, got down there, saw the concert, and then after went to the underground parking lot to get on our way home. Jay walks up to the guy at the gate and hands him this gigantic stack of garage tickets for all the buses and cars and a ton of validation stickers, so everyone could get past the gate. And the guy at the gate just says, “Nope, can’t do that. You have to take each sticker and put it on each ticket.” There were a lot of tickets. I was standing right there, and Jay says, “Look, I have all these important people who need to leave right now. It’s really late. Please do it this way,” and the guy just says, “No.” Jay tried to reason with him once more, but again, the guy wasn’t budging. Finally Jay said, “Okay, you’ve given me no choice,” and you know that wood bar that goes up and down that blocks passage to a parking garage? Jay went up to it, grabbed it, pulled it, and broke it totally...