Who Is Michael Ovitz? Quotes

“Brian asked, “How did you learn to think so big at CAA?” I reminded him that Airbnb had consistently thought big: it hadn’t been at all content with its original business of renting out air mattresses on floors. Then I added that one way to conceptualize how to think in business is a martial-arts precept: “If you aim at the target, you lose all your power. You have to hit through the target to really smash it.” To get where you want to go, you have to set out to go even further.”
― Michael Ovitz, Who Is Michael Ovitz?

“Mystique is ten times better than publicity; it’s much better to be thought of as the great and powerful Oz than to be revealed as merely another schemer behind a curtain.”
― Michael Ovitz, Who Is Michael Ovitz?

“believed that nobody wants to be treated as just what they are. Everyone wants to feel encouraged to become even more than they are—to become the best version of themselves.”
― Michael Ovitz, Who Is Michael Ovitz?

“Don’t ever think that what is, is—because it isn’t. Never count on anybody or anything.” Our second big problem arrived by”
― Michael Ovitz, Who Is Michael Ovitz?

“Nothing in Hollywood is anything until it’s something, and the only way to make it something is with a profound display of belief. If you keep insisting that a shifting set of inchoate possibilities is a movie, it eventually becomes one. Sometimes.”
― Michael Ovitz, Who Is Michael Ovitz?

“I didn't want to be standard in any way.”
― Michael Ovitz, Who Is Michael Ovitz?

“He stopped because it was hard. It required discipline, dedication, and hours and hours of time. Everyone stopped. I didn't stop.”
― Michael Ovitz, Who Is Michael Ovitz?

“Felix was quiet, studied, and ferociously intelligent. While he was devoted to Lew, I could count on his pragmatism.”
― Michael Ovitz, Who Is Michael Ovitz?

“technique and the sense of wonder to pull the plot off.”
― Michael Ovitz, Who Is Michael Ovitz?

“Research was the phase Michael enjoyed most. After putting off writing as long as possible, he went at it eighteen hours a day, seven days a week until he was done.”
― Michael Ovitz, Who Is Michael Ovitz?

“Lying, to me, is a point-blank misstatement with no purpose in mind. I viewed what we did as positioning, molding, manipulating: taking fact sets and making them work for the result we wanted.”
― Michael Ovitz, Who Is Michael Ovitz?

“In 1986, we got Rowland and Marty to sell us their equity in return for a million dollars each and lifetime contracts paying $500,000 a year. After that, I owned 55 percent of CAA, with Ron and Bill splitting the balance,”
― Michael Ovitz, Who Is Michael Ovitz?

“across as a nudge, while making myself ubiquitous and inexorable.”
― Michael Ovitz, Who Is Michael Ovitz?

“It wasn’t easy to find someone who could read a script as shrewdly as a spreadsheet: there were only a handful besides Eisner, including David Geffen, Barry Diller, Terry Semel, Bob Daly, and Frank Price.”
― Michael Ovitz, Who Is Michael Ovitz?

“Comparing CAA to its strongest competition is like comparing Tiffany’s to the A&P.”
― Michael Ovitz, Who Is Michael Ovitz?

“I had two hundred magazine subscriptions, and I’d skim the magazines”
― Michael Ovitz, Who Is Michael Ovitz?

“on how having complete information was the key to decision making.”
― Michael Ovitz, Who Is Michael Ovitz?

“was formal, reserved, analytical, and concise, and Ron was sociable, sympathetic, disarming, and loose. You”
― Michael Ovitz, Who Is Michael Ovitz?

“If you want to be happy, forget yourself. Forget all of it—how you look, how you feel, how your career is going. Just drop the whole subject of you. . . . People dedicated to something other than themselves—helping family and friends, or a political cause, or others less fortunate than they—are the happiest people in the world.”
― Michael Ovitz, Who Is Michael Ovitz?

“And by “no pressure,” I meant, “No pressure until the next time I’m in touch, which may be in an hour.” I tried to avoid coming across as a nudge, while making myself ubiquitous and inexorable. The smarter clients could see what I was doing, see how it worked, but it worked nonetheless because everyone wants to be wanted. And the realization that your would-be agent has a plan to handle whatever may be coming, and that he can execute it, is reassuring”
― Michael Ovitz, Who Is Michael Ovitz?

“The other thing that would differentiate us—and it was a big one—was that we would create work for our clients, not just field offers.”
― Michael Ovitz, Who Is Michael Ovitz?