Who Is Michael Ovitz?: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Most Powerful Man in Hollywood

by Michael Ovitz

Hirata made good on the Brink’s truck. He gave me a colossal check to distribute as I saw fit: $135 million. After paying the bankers and all the consultants, I was left with $60 million for CAA (worth $110 million today). It changed everything for us. First, it put more money in our partners’ pockets—ten million for Ron; ten million for Bill, one to three million each for the guys who’d worked on it; and the rest for me. Second, it enabled us to hire more people without depleting our reserves. Third, it allowed us to keep paying our agents well-above-market rates and to ensure they didn’t leave. And fourth, it signaled that our company had stepped up in class. In Hollywood, where people didn’t know Goldman Sachs from Saks Fifth Avenue, everyone was dumbstruck that a talent agency could earn that kind of fee, let alone arrange and execute a deal of that magnitude.