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Jan 14, 2019 · When Mike Ovitz, Ron Meyer, Bill Haber, Michael Rosenfeld and Rowland Perkins founded CAA in 1975, the agency focused solely on the film and TV industries.
Changing The World By Making Your Listener Your Hero. “You can’t win people’s hearts and their contribution by horrifying them.”. Said Bill Haber, who had co-founded Creative Artists Agency and now was the head of the nonprofit organization, Save the Children.
- Introduction to CAA
- Hollywood History
- The Beginning of CAA
- The Mort Janklow Story
- Stories
- The Agents
- Talent
- Sony / Columbia / Matsushita
- More Talent
- The Split
In recent years, rivals have taken it hard to CAA. There is particular irony in WME’s ascendance, both because it was William Morris from which the founders of CAA fled, spending the next two decades grinding their former employer to near dust; and also because Endeavor, which merged with William Morris to create the new titan, was founded by agent...
In 1925, there were fewer than twelve agencies listed in Hollywood directories, so one could almost empathize with Clara Bow, nationally famous “It” girl, and her professional suffering. Like other actors in pretalkie times, Bow seemed to be on a trajectory toward auspicious stardom, or at least marketable adorability, but also like most actors, sh...
MICHAEL OVITZ: I was student body president for a high school of four thousand students. I was also president of my fraternity at UCLA and dedicated myself to being very well organized. I had a huge appetite for getting deeply involved in everything that interested me. In college, I went to work as a tour guide at Universal. There were ten of us—fi...
It actually started back sometime in 1975. My secretary said, “There’s a man on the phone named Michael Ovitz, from California, do you know him?” and I said no, so she said she’d get rid of him. But she came back a few minutes later and said, “He’s an agent in Los Angeles and he’d very much like to talk to you.” I’m not that hard to reach, so I pic...
RON MEYER: A few years after we started the company, Mike and I had what we used to jokingly call “our walk in Central Park.” We were in New York and went for a long walk and he told me, “I feel like I’m carrying most of the weight here; I’ve got the most important clients; and I’m the face of this company.” And I have to say, at the time, that was...
ERIC CARLSON: I never went onto a desk. I came out of the mailroom and went straight to being an agent. I think I’m the only guy who’s ever done that. What happened was while I was in the mailroom, I wrote a study on all the emerging television markets. It took me three months and was like a thesis. I bound it with all the partners’ names on it, th...
TOM POLLOCK: Twins was a groundbreaking deal at the time. It was not Mike Ovitz who made the deal. Ivan Reitman made it with me personally because I was his lawyer before I left for Universal and there was a writers’ strike going on. We’re five months into the writers’ strike and there’s no product. Ivan had signed his company up to the interim dea...
Walter Yetnikoff was the senior attorney at CBS Records who guided the Sony acquisition of CBS Records, which was a huge success for Sony, both economically and strategically. Yetnikoff developed a close personal relationship with Sony president Norio Ohga, who installed him as CEO of CBS Records and became his key man in the entertainment industry...
KEVIN COSTNER: I didn’t want to have standard deals, and I felt like CAA and Mike would be able to get me away from them. I wanted ownership; and I was willing to be entrepreneurial. ARMY BERNSTEIN: One day Kevin Costner came to my house, and was just really down. I said, “What’s going on?” and he said, “I have this screenplay, I can’t get it made....
IVAN REITMAN: I don’t know what Ronnie’s deal was, but it was way less than Michael had negotiated. Ron was the real workhorse; it was clear Mike relied a great deal on Ron. But Ron saw the writing on the wall, so he made the next smartest deal, and he actually said yes to it. So Ovitz was miserable. And by then all these so-called Young Turks, thi...
Oct 28, 2020 · Bill Haber was one of the most powerful talent agents in the world. Then, one day he quit the powerhouse Creative Artist Agency which he had co-founded to become a leader of the nonprofit organization Save the Children.
Sep 12, 2016 · James Andrew Miller’s new oral history, Powerhouse: The Untold Story of Hollywood’s Creative Artists Agency, is both a narrative of CAA and a broader story about the ways in which Hollywood...
- Isaac Chotiner
Jan 15, 2019 · LOS ANGELES (CelebrityAccess) Thom Duffy and Melinda Newman at Billboard have published an in-depth look at Creative Artists Agency’s music division, which is celebrating its 35th year. Digging deep into the history of the agency co-founded by Michael Ovitz, Ron Meyer, Bill Haber, Michael Rosenfeld and Rowland Perkins, the two reporters ...
Aug 10, 2018 · Rowland Perkins, who launched Creative Artists Agency with Michael Ovitz, Ron Meyer, Bill Haber, and Michael Rosenfeld, died Wednesday of pneumonia in Sherman Oaks, Calif. He was 84.
