How a Blue-Collar Kid Built the Most Powerful Agency in Hollywood | Michael Ovitz

Harley Finkelstein (00:00:00):
This next episode is we've done a lot. We always say this, but mind blowing, this one almost needs no introduction. This guy is not only the king of Hollywood, but frankly he's the king of creating new business models and what I loved most about this, he teaches about how to think differently about traditional industries, how to get involved in new industries, about how to think about strategy. He talks about loyalty, but he also tells these incredible stories about some of those famous people on the planet that no one's ever heard.

David Segal (00:00:33):
Yeah, and you may not know this person, but he's been from Ghostbusters all the way to Goodfellas have happened.

Harley Finkelstein (00:00:39):
You talk about Dad, how he ended up, I mean, the whole Saturday Night Live stuff is incredible and at the core of all this is one thing. Work ethic.

David Segal (00:00:47):
Yeah,

Harley Finkelstein (00:00:48):
Incredible work ethic. I'm truly blown away.

David Segal (00:00:51):
I've never met anyone where one plus one always equals three. Totally. I mean, he is a master at putting things together to create. He says he doesn't have any talent. This is weird. In the middle of interview, he's like, I don't have any talent. But in many ways he loves art, but he's probably one of the greatest artists of all time. Not in the traditional sense, but just in his ability to spot talent, put it together and create music.

Harley Finkelstein (00:01:14):
Okay. Okay. You're giving it all away. Ladies and gentlemen. You got to watch this. Michael Ovitz. We read this great quote. We were laughing at that early, a quote from Paul Newman saying that Michael is a cross between a Barracuda and Mother Teresa. We're going to talk about Hollywood and what you built, which is legendary. We want to start back. Growing up in the Obits house, did you guys have Shabbat dinner? What was the relationship like around the table? Talk to us about what your childhood was like.

Michael Ovitz (00:01:59):
We grew up in a working class, blue collar neighborhood. The guy next door to us was the mailman guy across the street was a plumber. Next guy was an air conditioning guy. One of the families, the father was a school teacher in the fifth grade at my elementary school, and no one locked their doors. Everyone knew each other. If someone was on the block that didn't belong there, everybody knew kids played in the street. I didn't play much until I just never did. I did early years, but I started working when I was about nine or 10 years old. I had the local paper route and I went to Hebrew school, so I had to fit all that in between three 15 and six 30.

Harley Finkelstein (00:02:51):
Interesting. One of the things we read about two things that we have in common. I went to public high school in South Florida. I was the kid in high school as I was the youngest kid in high school, and I was class president in my 10th grade, which I think you were as well. I was I, which is strange. But the other thing that we thought was so interesting is that your mother wanted you to become a doctor.

Michael Ovitz (00:03:16):
Well, I don't know that it was just my mother. I think every

Harley Finkelstein (00:03:20):
Jewish mother. So actually, let's pause there for a second. Why do you think that I went to law school. I practiced for all of a second before deciding I want to be an entrepreneur the rest of my life.

David Segal (00:03:29):
You also went to law school. You

Harley Finkelstein (00:03:31):
Dropped out, I think, right? I dropped out in the second year. Why do you think Jewish mothers, we've been talking Jewish mothers, gave us all this confidence that we can do things, but they also all want us to become professionals. Why is it so rampant in our culture?

Michael Ovitz (00:03:48):
I think in the fifties and sixties, I can't speak for anything but my own environment. I think that being a professional person was really important to all of them, that their children were educated, had an intellect, but it was strange because I had no intellectual education and never saw a piece of art until I was 18 years old. My grandmother and my mother told me that basically I could be anything I wanted to be while my friends were never told. That, oddly, it seems to be a thing between, it seems to be a Catholic and Jewish thing, especially Italian Catholics. One of my closest friends lives in London. He's an Italian. His parents told him that he walked on water. He was like, Jesus, my grandmother and my mother said the same thing

Harley Finkelstein (00:04:43):
To me. My grandmother and my mother said the same

Michael Ovitz (00:04:44):
Thing. Anything you want to be, you can

Harley Finkelstein (00:04:45):
Be. That actually might be the real secret sauce to Jewish success is the unbridled enthusiasm that our mothers gave us.

David Segal (00:04:54):
You can do anything you put your mind to.

Harley Finkelstein (00:04:56):
I told my parents, I want to be a dj. When I was 13 years old, the next day they came in with a business card that said Harley Finkelstein dj, and it was a silly thing. My parents didn't have a lot of money, but that gave me the chutzpah to be like, oh, I guess I'm a DJ now. The only time my

David Segal (00:05:08):
Parents didn't do something like that is when I told 'em I was going to be center fielder for the blue Jays. They're like, I don't know if that's going to work out for you.

Michael Ovitz (00:05:14):
My parents discouraged anything that wasn't professional. Right. Mine too. They didn't even want me to be a lawyer. They wanted me to be a doctor. Yeah, a doctor. Yeah. And for my whole life, I trained to be a doctor. I mean my whole young, yeah. Well, you were premed. I think

David Segal (00:05:28):
You know the joke about the first Jewish president, right? First Jewish president. I mean, it's an unbelievable thing. Mrs. Goldberg, his mother, they sit her right beside the vice president. Vice president turns to Mrs. Goldberg Like Mrs. Goldberg, this is amazing. Your son, he's the first Jewish president. She's like, I know, I know. But his brother's a doctor.

David Segal (00:05:49):
But by the

Michael Ovitz (00:05:50):
Way, that's really true.

Harley Finkelstein (00:05:51):
Yeah. Yes.

Michael Ovitz (00:05:52):
They believe that.

Harley Finkelstein (00:05:52):
That's a real,

Michael Ovitz (00:05:53):
The worst conversation I ever had in my life is when I told my father and mother that I wasn't going to go to medical school, and I dropped out of pre-med when I went to work at Fox, and it was a tough conversation. I

Harley Finkelstein (00:06:05):
Can imagine that.

Michael Ovitz (00:06:06):
But for me, I got bit by business.

Harley Finkelstein (00:06:11):
Yeah, let's talk about that. Let's talk about Fox. Let's talk about,

Michael Ovitz (00:06:15):
I want to tell you one quick thing to cap this off. I was fortunate enough, and I mean blessed to be a consultant, Akio Marita, the founder of Sony, and I did a ton of business in Japan, as you may or may not know, and loved every second of it. Tokyo and Osaka tour in Kyoto, probably some of my favorite places to be even for time off. And one day Mr. Marie asked me if I would talk to his partner. I never knew he had a partner equal to him who spoke no English and was much older than he was. And he asked if I'd meet with him, and I said, of course I'd meet with him, whatever you want. Because Marita was really good to me and respectful and introduced me to everyone in Japan. And he said to me, I said, what is the meeting about so I can prepare?

(00:07:12):
He said, you've been prepared your whole life. And I said, why? He said, I don't want to be disrespectful and I don't want you to take this out of context. He spoke perfect English. He said, my partner speaks no English. You'll have an interpreter. But he wants to understand what it is that Jewish businessmen have that no one else has. And he wants to talk about your mother. He wants to know what it is, what got you this repertoire of instincts and knowledge and constant pushing yourself and never stopping and no fear of failure and what is it? And I've never forgotten that. He quizzed me over and over again. And just about six months ago, I was in London. I was asked to attend a dinner as a guest and speak to an issue. That issue amongst these businessmen was, what is it about Americans that makes them so entrepreneurial?

Harley Finkelstein (00:08:17):
So this big shot thing is super fun. We're having a great time. People are loving it. It's a little expensive just to say it at the end of the day, we are, I'm glad you said it. We're still stingy Jews here. It's really quite expensive. And you and I are funding this whole thing ourselves. It's not cheap. I think at the very least, we should at least promote our tea business. You all see the production quality. I mean the production quality is incredible. We have an amazing staff, tons of producers, and it's a little

David Segal (00:08:46):
Expensive. So I'm obsessed with tea. I built David's Ste. I left many years ago, and Harley, actually, I can't believe we're doing this. This is perfect. We're doing this. We have great tea, but we also, we got to pay for big shot. Perfect. So Harley got me back into tea. I would curate these green tea collections for you, having trouble sleeping in the evenings. I'm like, oh, you got to drink, switch coffee. You don't need 10 coffee

Harley Finkelstein (00:09:08):
Today. I mean, if we're going to tell the story, let's tell the story. All I had been drinking so much during the pandemic. I was by myself. Obviously the rest of us were, and I was drinking a ton of coffee and my anxiety was peaking. And actually you had said you should switch off of coffee in the afternoon and move to really high quality green tea.

David Segal (00:09:24):
The caffeine and green tea interacts differently. You don't get the big spike in crash.

Harley Finkelstein (00:09:28):
It's like a calm alertness on

David Segal (00:09:29):
Calm alertness and green tea's. Amazing, really high quality green tea. And then,

Harley Finkelstein (00:09:34):
But frankly, most people, I had never had high quality green tea. Most of the tea that I had consumed in my life, it was like in a gift. I'd give a talk somewhere and they give me a gift box or some sort of gift package, and there'd be some random tea bags in there. But I had never actually had really high in green tea. So you very kindly started curating this box of incredibly high-end, amazing green tea. And you also began to sort of jerry rig these accessories for me. You'd say, drop it in here for three minutes and then take it out. Make sure it's not steaming. And you just created this incredible tea setup for me. In fact, you know this, but next to my home office, I now have a little tea area that you actually created for me. But green tea in particular, and having you curate this tea for me was this incredible new element of my life because it allowed me to stay really energized, really focused in the afternoon without having any issue with sleeping.

David Segal (00:10:24):
And that was the inspiration for Fire Belly. Finally, I was like, you're like, let's do it. I'll be your partner. So we started Fire Belly Tea. Most people want to take a tea bag and dunk it in the water. And the reality is there's this rich experience you can get with tea where you take the time to make it properly. Whether it's green tea, black tea, oolong tea, herbal teas. We're doing something special with Fire Belly.

Harley Finkelstein (00:10:44):
Yeah. So Fire Belly is the highest, the best tea. And actually you got a chance to design every single accessory yourself. Absolutely. You went ahead and figured out this is the best tea cup. This is the best strainer for it. This is the best whisk in terms of how to make great matcha. But this is the best tea and the best tea products ever. And please buy our tea. We need a way to pay for more big shot episodes so we don't need your money. But we would appreciate you buying some amazing green tea from fire belly tea.com. It is not just a pitch. It is also the greatest tea ever. And it would make us really happy. If you don't like it, we'll give you your money back. No, no, we don't. Not with it. We're not giving the money back. You're not. We're keeping your money going to, but you're going to love it.

(00:11:23):
You're going to love it. All of a sudden you're such a big shot, you're giving people's money back away. Don't money back. You'll give it as a gift. It makes a great gift. It's a great gift. It's great tea, it's great accessories. You actually will really, really love it and allow us to pay for more of these big shot episodes. So that's our pitch. And all of you must be laughing wherever you're sitting right now watching this. We don't care. We have, we actually know T well though. I mean we also know e-commerce well too. Yeah, true. So we know e-commerce, we know T Fire Belly. T go buy some, help us pay for more Big shot episodes. So I know our audience, I know our aunt. They're going to say, yeah, they need the code. We love your tea. We want to buy from you. We want to support Big Shot. Is there a coupon code I'm going to get my aunts or someone in my family's going to call me and be like, I love the tea. It's really great. Can I get a discount? So is there a code we can give them?

(00:12:10):
Big shot 15. Big shot 15, okay, big shot, 15 use code, big shot 15 for 15% off our tea and tea accessories. And if you don't like the tea, you don't like the accessories, David will give you your money back. I will not. He will. That's it. I'll give you your money back. I got you. Okay. Alright. I won't.

Michael Ovitz (00:12:26):
And I started the meeting and it was all of us sitting around in suits, which is quite interesting in London. They're still wearing suits. And I'm sitting around and I said, okay, let's get down to it. I don't like to waste time. And I said, let's get down to what are we here for? And the guy who put the dinner together through someone else, he was embarrassed, said, we're here. We want to understand how you do it. Not you, you and everyone in

Harley Finkelstein (00:12:55):
America. American exceptionalism.

Michael Ovitz (00:12:56):
Yeah, that's what we want to know. I said, what business are you in? He said, well, I just lost my business. I said, great. What are you doing next? He said, I'm moving to Guad. And I said, is that Guad or, and he goes, either one. I said, what are you doing there? You starting a business there? He said, no, I'm moving with my family. I said, why? He said, I failed. I said, so what? And he said, well, I'm a failure here. I really have to get out of London. And I said, wow, this dinner's over. And he said, what do you mean? I said, you made my point. I said, don't move Toad or you're going to die. I said, stay here. Take a few months to gather your thoughts. Get on the horse. He said, what are you talking about? He said, I failed. I said, so what? I've failed a hundred times, no risk, no reward.

David Segal (00:13:56):
Right?

Michael Ovitz (00:13:56):
Every

David Segal (00:13:57):
Experience is an opportunity

Michael Ovitz (00:13:58):
To, yeah. I said, I've been fired from a public company. Who cares? I said, it was their loss, not mine. And they wrote a whole book about it. I said, get back on the horse, get back. Get your nose to the stone. He was in a state of shock and I moved the dinner along. I said, let's get dessert. This is a bore.

Harley Finkelstein (00:14:19):
Yeah,

Michael Ovitz (00:14:19):
Sure. Because this is not a question worthy of discussion because they kept saying, well, let's talk about it.

Harley Finkelstein (00:14:25):
You're like, this is what it is. This is it. It's right

Michael Ovitz (00:14:27):
Here. I said, there's nothing to

Harley Finkelstein (00:14:28):
Talk. You like theme at the home. You guys see a tidal wave and you take your towel and head for the shore and we see a tidal wave and we grab our surfboards,

David Segal (00:14:37):
Duck under and let it go. Come up the other side. I'm telling

Michael Ovitz (00:14:40):
You guys, he thought I was nuts. And then he got the message.

David Segal (00:14:44):
Well, but we're also, not only are we not afraid of failure and not afraid of what comes with that, but we're not afraid to start over and start from the bottom. You started at WMS in a mail room, right? You started right at the bottom of the agency world. Talk to us about those early days early on in which you took,

Michael Ovitz (00:15:03):
Well, I'll take it a step further, please. I did this Fortune Brainstorm conference, and Alison Chantal was a brilliant editor, asked me a very apocryphal question. She said, I don't know a lot of people who have built a career, gotten to a great place, dropped out, started another career, gotten to a great place, and in a different world. How did you do that? And I said, I don't know. How do you not do it? It's second nature to me, and it's my grandmother and my mother talking,

Harley Finkelstein (00:15:38):
Saying, you can do this.

Michael Ovitz (00:15:40):
You can do it. So when I met Mark Andreessen in 1998, and he asked me to go on the board and I asked him if he was really that stupid and he said, what are you talking about, dude? And I said, what do you want me on your board for? I don't know anything about tech. This is when I learned how smart he was. He said, that's why I want you on the board. He said, I want someone who has no fear of the big deal. Guys on the board will stand up and talk to 'em and will not back down. And I went on his board 26 7 years ago. He and Ben Horowitz are still two of my closest friends. I respect them so much. And they changed my life because three years later, mark and Ben from a remote location and Mark and Herb Allen. Then Laura Andreson had a dinner with me in New York. And I just thought I was meeting friends for dinner. And I was actually at Mark and Laura's wedding, and one of the three people that gave them a toast, Peter Thiel and I and one other guy, I forgot. And I sit down and there's no smiles, which was weird. These are fun guys that are friends. I actually introduced Mark to Herb,

(00:17:00):
And this is about 2002, and I sit down maybe 2003, I don't remember. They go, this is an intervention. I go, what are you talking about? I don't take drugs. They go, no, but you're wasting your life. I said, what are you talking about? I said, well, you're here in New York and you're consulting for all these people and you need to be in the San Francisco or in Palo Alto. You're wasting your life. And Mark says, you and Ben said the same thing. You package people into product. He said, that's what we do. He said, it's the same thing. Stop consulting for all these ridiculous large companies. You're doing fine. Which I was. He said, but you're not building anything.

Harley Finkelstein (00:17:46):
They felt you didn't have skin in the game. Was that kind of it? I

Michael Ovitz (00:17:47):
Wasn't building anything. I was getting fees. A lot of them.

Harley Finkelstein (00:17:50):
No equity though.

Michael Ovitz (00:17:52):
No, I'd get shares.

Harley Finkelstein (00:17:54):
But you weren't in the arena.

Michael Ovitz (00:17:55):
You know what? It was too Harley. I got no satisfaction out of it. And they saw it. They saw it.

Harley Finkelstein (00:18:00):
Yeah.

Michael Ovitz (00:18:00):
I'd give ideas as an advisor and never get to the pleasure of the execution. So then I finished the dinner. They made a lot of sense. It was quite earth shattering to me. And I left the dinner, and as I'm standing on the street, mark says to me, you want to have breakfast in the morning? Which I said, that's weird, mark, you're actually going to sleep tonight. He always stays up in those days. He stayed up all night coding and he said, well, I am staying up all night tonight, but I'm going right to do CNBC at seven 30. I'll meet you at the best breakfast in New York, the Parker Meridian. And I said, I live right next door. I'll see you at eight o'clock. Got there at eight and he sits down and he said, I've doubled down on what? I said, you're an idiot. You have to do this, blah, blah, blah. At nine o'clock, nine 30, he went to the airport. I went to my apartment, I packed. I flew to San Francisco and I rented an apartment and I moved up there.

David Segal (00:19:14):
But what do you tell yourself in the moments? You have these ups and downs and my wife calls it Bumi bar, right in the desert. Calls it what? Bumed bar Hebrew for in the desert. Right? The 40 years in the desert. So you described these ups and these downs and these moments where you're not getting satisfaction out of the work. You're kind of in an in-between transitory,

Michael Ovitz (00:19:31):
But no one knows that except yourself.

David Segal (00:19:32):
Right. So what are you saying? I mean, mark obviously called out something you intrinsically knew to be true. What are you telling yourself in those moments? You've been through a couple of those moments in your life.

Michael Ovitz (00:19:43):
Yeah. Look, one thing is, I always know, I had one of my best friends in my life who passed away, two young named Michael Creon used to always say to me, by the way, that was one of the greatest lunches I ever had. As I put Andreessen and Creon at opposite ends of a table and I sat in the middle, was like watching

Harley Finkelstein (00:20:01):
Incredible. I cannot believe what dialogue. It

Michael Ovitz (00:20:04):
Was the best three hours of my life, two of the smartest guys I've ever met.

David Segal (00:20:09):
Cool.

Michael Ovitz (00:20:09):
And I always know Michael Kreon used to say to me whenever I had a problem at the agency, he always said to me, don't worry about, there's always another rodeo. And that's his quote. There's always another rodeo. He said, there are times I've written books, they don't work. Next case I get another book. And I was having a good time. I was making money. I loved being in New York and traveling to Chicago and to LA and San Francisco for consulting gigs. But I realized I wouldn't have changed that significantly because it was comfortable for the time being. And I had come through a rough patch in the mid nineties because the guy who fired me was my best friend in my life.

Harley Finkelstein (00:21:01):
He was hosting a birthday party for you I think a week after.

Michael Ovitz (00:21:05):
But he was in the hospital when my children were born. I sat at,

Harley Finkelstein (00:21:12):
This is Michael Eisner we're talking

Michael Ovitz (00:21:13):
About. Yeah. I sat at Cedars with him when he had a heart attack at the Allen conference. I flew.

Harley Finkelstein (00:21:19):
He had a heart attack at Sun Valley.

Michael Ovitz (00:21:21):
Yeah. Wow. I flew when I heard about it, the minute the airport opened at five 30 in the morning and went straight to Cedars and sat in his room for three days helping him because he was out of it beyond belief. He had quadruple bypass surgery. And he and another close friend who was the CFO of Disney, Gary Wilson, who I owned a boat with, convinced me to go to Disney,

Harley Finkelstein (00:21:49):
Become the president,

Michael Ovitz (00:21:52):
And to create a team like Roberto gta and Don Keel were a team, or Bob Daley and Terry Soel. He said, I need this. It was like Tom Murphy and what's his name? I can't believe this amazing guy. I can't remember his name. But there were teams that ran these big companies and I was so stupid. I blocked out all the things that said to me, don't do this. And I didn't have me as an advisor, so I did it.

Harley Finkelstein (00:22:25):
Well, also, you were being offered this role first. So Disney is iconic. The role was supposed to be an incredibly, I mean, you were going to be in charge with Eisner.

Michael Ovitz (00:22:35):
He couldn't have done it himself because he had just, we were doing the A, B, C deal. I actually integrated A, B, C in Disney. He wouldn't have had the time. Plus he didn't travel. So I was traveling to Tokyo for Tokyo, Disneyland. I was on a plane every minute. I wasn't the guy with the, but

Harley Finkelstein (00:22:54):
That Disney thing, back to sort of the concept of failure, and back to that talk you gave in London, that was a very public thing, right? Is that why you felt beaten? You said you were beaten down. Did you feel beaten down or was it the public thing

Michael Ovitz (00:23:06):
You were beaten? No, I wasn't beaten down at all. There's a big difference, and I'll explain it to you. I have a real problem with betrayal. I don't care about being beaten down. I get beat up every day or I beat somebody up every that's part of life. I

Harley Finkelstein (00:23:19):
Don't care. That's the Barracuda.

Michael Ovitz (00:23:21):
Yeah, I don't care. But what I care about, I mean, Paul's saying that I treated Paul in a way. He never had a friend like me, and he'd had agents before, but I cared about his life. And I was in all my clients. I was in their personal lives. We had multiple clients marry and get divorces and helped both sides. Never lost one client in the process I cared about.

Harley Finkelstein (00:23:50):
Well, even people that weren't your clients. I mean, magic Johnson had no business being at ca a a, but you negotiated his MBA contract.

Michael Ovitz (00:23:55):
Well, I also put him into business with Pepsi Cola and Sony Theaters started his business empire. Incredible. And to this guy wrote it in his book. He wasn't bashful about

David Segal (00:24:10):
It. I mean, you're the consummate power broker. You're supposed to be an agent, but you're brokering deals between, so

Michael Ovitz (00:24:15):
Columbia, this had nothing to do with power or brokering.

David Segal (00:24:17):
This was

Harley Finkelstein (00:24:18):
Beal

Michael Ovitz (00:24:18):
Strategy.

Harley Finkelstein (00:24:19):
Yeah. Well, sorry, it's, talk to us about that

Michael Ovitz (00:24:21):
On betrayal. I've had a thing since I was a kid, and I think it's because I'm Jewish. When I was a kid, I remember being called a kike by some kid in my class.

David Segal (00:24:32):
Yikes.

Michael Ovitz (00:24:32):
I went home and asked my dad what it meant. I had no clue. I was a kid. I was in the sixth grade. I didn't know what that meant. And this kid, my dad was a kid who grew up in the streets of Chicago, never went to high school. And he was a very tough guy. And he, boy, he came home glued, not at me. He came, he wanted to go see the kid's father. I wouldn't let him do it. And I felt this weird feeling. I was friends with this kid and I learned quickly what betrayal was. And from that day on in the sixth grade, it's the single thing in my life I have trouble coping with. I can't cope with betrayal and Eisner. 30 years my best friend. The betrayal was insane. Insane. All the promises out the window, finding out that he called the press leaking things about me the week I got there.

Harley Finkelstein (00:25:35):
Why do you think, ultimately, with all this hindsight now 30 years later, what do you think actually was what changed for him?

Michael Ovitz (00:25:42):
It was he threatened. It's a question I think about often, and I have no idea. I can only assume he couldn't work a full day and I was working 15 hour days. Oh, interesting. If you asked me to guess, he was threatened. He was insecure. He wanted no other opinions. I remember flying in from Tokyo. This is in the book, Disney Wars, and I had sold, I used to be partners with a guy named Teddy Forman who lived in New York, very famous private equity guy. He pioneered the use of equity plus debt, and we bid he and I on Ziff Davis magazines and maus son was the underbidder. And I'm always trying to engage. It doesn't matter what it is. I like engagement. And I stayed in touch with Maso and I went to Tokyo. He hosted a lunch for me. I brought like five people to the lunch. When it was over. He was walking me to the door and I knew from a banker that he wanted this asset badly for what he was doing, and he needed money. He also owned half a Yahoo. So we're walking to that door and I said, you still interested in Ziff Davis? I knew the answer. And he said, yes, I really like the business. I said, well, you have something I'm interested in. He said, what? I said, Yahoo. He said, for what? Why You're at Disney? I said, we should own Yahoo because we can put our characters up on the homepage. We can start delivering entertainment. It's the future.

Harley Finkelstein (00:27:26):
Wow. Streaming almost.

Michael Ovitz (00:27:28):
And he said, you're

Harley Finkelstein (00:27:29):
Ahead of your time.

Michael Ovitz (00:27:31):
I'll sell you my shares. I need to think about it. But he said, can you get me Zif Davis? I said, I'll over give a day. I want to talk to Teddy. I said, we'll sell you as N Davis, but I'm not the principal, but I'm telling you I'll kill myself to make this happen. So two things happened. I flew back to LA on an overnight flight. I was so excited. I didn't even change. I went right to the office. On the way to the office, I called Teddy. I said, I can sell Ziff. He said, what do you think you can get? I said, I think I can get us from 500 to seven 50 more than we paid. He said, if you can do that, sell it. You have my approval, but you can't close till it's a long-term gain. So from the car, I said, great.

(00:28:28):
I got to the office. I went right into Eisner's office. He was sitting there. It was about nine o'clock, I remember with one of our lead board members, Stanley Gold, and I said, Michael, you're not going to believe this. I couldn't say this over the phone because who knew who was listening. But I said, I can get us Yahoo or half of it. I said, it's for us. I said, it's the holy grail of starting a foundation in this revolution that's going to happen. I'll never forget this as long as I live. He said, that's the dumbest idea I've ever heard. He said, everybody knows that the internet's for education and information not for entertainment. And I said, well, I'm not sure everybody knows that, but I think a lot of people think that, and I respect your opinion, but this is going to cost us 250 million bucks. Maybe

Harley Finkelstein (00:29:23):
Take it.

Michael Ovitz (00:29:24):
I said, just inventory

Harley Finkelstein (00:29:25):
All that. Yeah, just take

Michael Ovitz (00:29:26):
It. I said, we're making 4 billion a year in revenue. This is a rounding error. And he said, no. And I walked out of there so

David Segal (00:29:35):
Upset. Was that personal or did he really believe this was causing error? I think I No

David Segal (00:29:41):
Idea what it's

Harley Finkelstein (00:29:42):
Thinking. Maybe a little not created into syndrome. Right?

David Segal (00:29:44):
Because these always loves to say there's a one-way door and a two-way door decision. Right? This feels like a two-way door decision.

Harley Finkelstein (00:29:50):
You're wrong.

David Segal (00:29:51):
Big deal.

Michael Ovitz (00:29:51):
Dave. I couldn't tell you how this guy thought. I used to worship his creative abilities as an executive. You could count in those days the number of executives like Iller or Daley or me or Eisner, that could read a script and think through, is there a movie? Can it be made for a price? And then also read a balance sheet. There were under 10 people in the business that could do that creative end business. I mean, when Michael Creon pitched me a story about in a Bel Air Hotel at eight 30 in the morning, about three people in an amusement park off the coast of South America. And this amusement park happens to breed a prehistoric animals

David Segal (00:30:37):
Jurassic part. Wow.

Michael Ovitz (00:30:39):
And I have to sit there and decide at ca, we were buyers, not sellers, because we packaged everything.

Harley Finkelstein (00:30:47):
What do you mean you're not sellers? Meaning you guys bring it all together and then you sell the package?

Michael Ovitz (00:30:51):
We had, we put everything together. We took the studios out of the process of development.

David Segal (00:30:57):
Yeah. Well, I mean, you changed the entire leverage game.

Harley Finkelstein (00:31:02):
Let's talk with ca, because ultimately we did all this research, let you finish this story.

Michael Ovitz (00:31:06):
Left it hanging. I'm sitting there, kreins pitching me a line. I have to decide one. Do I?

Harley Finkelstein (00:31:12):
What's the line? The line is basically

Michael Ovitz (00:31:14):
What I just said.

Harley Finkelstein (00:31:14):
Okay. Just like this is it. There's going to be this park, theme park. What do you think? Do you

Michael Ovitz (00:31:18):
Think, should I write it? I say to myself, am I going to, so

Harley Finkelstein (00:31:22):
It's just an idea he has.

Michael Ovitz (00:31:23):
That's all he had was an idea. I said to myself, if I say to him, write it, he's going to take a long time to do it. Can it be made after he writes it, who's going to make it? What's it going to cost? Is it cost prohibitive? Who can make dinosaurs at that timeframe in the nineties Look really real so that the audience doesn't think it's Godzilla with a zipper on the bag? And is anyone going to go see it? This is all going through one part of my brain while I'm talking to him.

David Segal (00:31:58):
Right? All from a cocktail napkin.

Michael Ovitz (00:32:00):
That's the history of being an agent

(00:32:02):
For us, not for anybody else, because we were the buyer. If we said we could make it like a studio executive did, we just assumed someone would pay for it. That was our assumption. The financial climate was so flush. Everyone needed product. So I said to Michael, write it. And six months later, he delivered the first draft of Jurassic Park, and I read it in one sitting or two, and I called him up. I said, this is the best thing you've ever done. I said, there's only one man in the world that can direct this movie and actually make it happen. And I said, it's Steven Spielberg. He said, I agree. And I called Steven and I said, I need you to, he wasn't allowed to work at night. His wife wouldn't let him. They had a lot of kids. She was very grounded and grounded him. And I said, I need permission from Kate, who was also my client to let you read tonight. I have something quite amazing.

Harley Finkelstein (00:33:10):
Even the fact that you knew how to say it to him, I need permission from Kate to let you read

Michael Ovitz (00:33:14):
It is so important. He called me back and said, I asked her. She said, it's okay. I had the book hand carried to him. I had to be very careful not to oversell it, because the beginning of the book, you don't realize that you're getting an education as a paleontologist. It's pretty boring. There's nothing in it. No dinosaurs, chewing people up. In the first third of the book, you're getting an education subtly by Kreon that you don't realize. It gives you a foundation for being scared to death of these things. And he called me up at six 30 the next morning, said, I couldn't put it down. I'm in.

David Segal (00:33:54):
Wow.

Michael Ovitz (00:33:54):
There's no director that commits to a book without a script. And he said, I'm in. I said, are you in all the ways? He said, yes. The guy had giant keone. Wow. And we got a writer and we put it together. And needless to say, it's one of the biggest hit franchisees of all time.

David Segal (00:34:11):
And for every one of those, how many are there that don't paint?

Michael Ovitz (00:34:16):
Well, the movie business is like the tech business. You get one hit and it services 25 misses and misses go Dave from big

Harley Finkelstein (00:34:28):
To small.

Michael Ovitz (00:34:29):
Sometimes they're medium and they're okay.

Harley Finkelstein (00:34:31):
Bit of a power law.

Michael Ovitz (00:34:32):
Yeah. And we were very lucky. We did over 300 films and they were all in one way or another, successful from things from small things like Stand By Me or Gandhi to big things like Ghostbusters and Stripes and Jurassic Park and Tootsie and

David Segal (00:34:53):
Casino. I mean, the fact that you just said, stand by Me is a small thing. I mean,

Michael Ovitz (00:34:55):
Well, it was a tiny movie and wow, big impact, a big impact. I didn't put it together. Norman Lear paid 10 million bucks to Rob Reiner to make it. Rob was my client forever, and one of the great guys in the business, and they got turned down by every studio. So they had no distributors. So Norman was going to eat the money. So basically they knew I could sell it, so I put it on the back of Ghostbusters. So when I gave Ghostbusters to Columbia to Frank Price, who just passed away, we had this amazing relationship. I sold Frank Price Stripes and Ghostbusters from a payphone at Paramount Pictures. They turned it down. They turned Ivan Wrightman down with me in their office when he pitched them three guys running around Manhattan, and they turned down Bill Murray in the Army, and that's all we pitched him. And I call Frank Price. I said, I now have the right to these two ideas. And he said, I'm in. And that's all I needed. There was no contract, there was no nothing. We made both. It was

David Segal (00:36:03):
A handshake.

Harley Finkelstein (00:36:04):
It was a handshake

David Segal (00:36:06):
Ca in terms of becoming Michael Ovitz. Right. You change the entire power dynamic in the movie industry. Tell us about that.

Harley Finkelstein (00:36:13):
I mean, yeah, and start anywhere you want. But I mean, we talked to all these people. We read all these books. CAA is more than simply just another agency or another paradigm. It is. I mean, frankly, you were talking about Mark Andreessen, who I've had a chance to get to meet Mark modeled Andreesen Horowitz after around CAA. That business model. The way you thought about it. Walk us through, for example, first of all, why you decided to take the jump from William Morris to do it on your own, because that was ballsy.

Michael Ovitz (00:36:42):
Well, that was actually much simpler than one would think. Go on. There were weekly staff meetings at William Morris. They were an amazing business. They had a problem that all businesses have that some businesses handled better than others, which is they had a problem called succession. The older guys just didn't want to let go. And it's not an older

Harley Finkelstein (00:37:10):
Guy. We had control. It was a control issue or was that they just didn't think they'd ever have to leave?

Michael Ovitz (00:37:14):
No, no. They just didn't want to bring the young people up. And also they ran a business and it worked well for them. Everyone was a silo. And while I was working there, I was the assistant to the president, which was by design. I manipulated it. I knew as a mail room guy, I went into the mail room. I got the job on my own. I walked in off the street. I didn't know anybody. And I tried to do something arrogant and flamboyant to get their attention. I figured I had to do something theatrical. It's a theatrical agency. And I said to the HR guy, I said, I'd like to be in the training program. He said, it's three years. There's a waiting list, a mile long. I said, look, I'll make you a deal. Let me, in the training program, I'll learn everything there is to learn about the agency business in three months. If I can't, you have all my salary back. He said, I'm going to hire you. You're the most arrogant young guy.

Harley Finkelstein (00:38:20):
That's wonderful. We call it, he can call it arrogance, but its K wasn't, he wasn't Jewish. Oh, he had nothing on

Michael Ovitz (00:38:25):
News. His name was Chuck Booth. He was not Jewish. He said to me, you're in. So I started the next Monday, and it was so simple, frankly guys. It was not complicated.

Harley Finkelstein (00:38:35):
You showed up early, you left late.

Michael Ovitz (00:38:36):
Yeah. I mean, I got there at seven. Everyone else showed up at nine. They'd all leave at six. I stayed till 10.

Harley Finkelstein (00:38:47):
We would do the same thing.

Michael Ovitz (00:38:49):
They couldn't understand it. And I realized that the president of the company went out every night with the founder for dinner at six o'clock to the Hillcrest Country Club. And what I realized, I stayed late reading everyone's files that he came back to do his mail at eight o'clock and he was single. So I put a bunch of files on the front desk that he had a walk by every night, like clockwork. I'd say four or five nights in my phone, rings at that desk at nine o'clock at night. Sam whiteboard here. I said, Michael Ovitz here. What can I do for you? He said, could you come into my office? I was there in a heartbeat. He said, I need X, Y, and Z. Can you get it for me? Never ever said, what are you doing there? He kind of knew what I was doing there. And the minute he did that, that was the beginning for me because I knew I had a foothold. And I stayed there at till midnight that night. He left at 11. I rearranged his refrigerator. I took his stock quotes, because in those days, you had to write 'em down on a, you know what mimeograph is?

David Segal (00:39:56):
No.

Michael Ovitz (00:39:58):
It's so funny. You guys don't know that pre facts. You would type a stencil with a typewriter and then you'd put it on a machine called a mimeograph, and you'd hand crank it and copies would come out. It was like a printing machine. Amazing. So you'd mimeograph his stocks once a week and then you'd have to write in what? They closed that,

Harley Finkelstein (00:40:22):
But they weren't real time. So it was just the end of the day, and then it

Michael Ovitz (00:40:24):
Was the end of the day. They were real time for the

Harley Finkelstein (00:40:26):
Day. Got it.

Michael Ovitz (00:40:27):
He wasn't a traitor. He a,

Harley Finkelstein (00:40:29):
He just wanted to know how he fit.

Michael Ovitz (00:40:30):
Yeah, I did that. I rearranged his desk. I took calls that came into him. Time is the enemy of every agent. I took calls and I handled them as a principal having no idea what I was doing, but I took 'em off as he just adding value. Just tons

David Segal (00:40:46):
Of value. Yeah. It's one thing to rearrange his fridge. It's another thing to field the call Michael LO's the agent, even though you're a

Michael Ovitz (00:40:52):
Mailing guy. Next thing I know, I get asked to be his assistant. I'm 22 years old, incredible. And I'm sitting there in his office 12 hours a day. I have every piece of information flowing through that company, coming through him in a company that's siloed. So I'm at the apex with him. I'm reading his mail. I'm taking care of everything for this guy. Everything. I made sure his car was clean. There was nothing in his life I didn't take care of. And he, hi, an assistant for over 20 years. He moved her to a different place and put me at her desk.

Harley Finkelstein (00:41:27):
I'm sure she loved that.

Michael Ovitz (00:41:28):
And within six months, he made me a full agent. And I did there. What I did at, I looked at the business and I said, what's a place that they're not generating income that they should be? And I found a niche that they missed, which was daytime television, which paid like clockwork, huge volumes of money, daytime and late night. And for me, it spawned a run of selling dozens of game shows that yielded millions of dollars of commission. 50 weeks a year, not the normal 22 shows. And it set me up for David Letterman and all the things I did later at where I created a slot for Letterman.

Harley Finkelstein (00:42:19):
And did he know, did the president know how great you were doing at that point? Oh yeah. No, I was. You were the guy, the guy,

Michael Ovitz (00:42:26):
The young guy.

Harley Finkelstein (00:42:27):
Young guy. Because still in your early twenties. And

Michael Ovitz (00:42:29):
Then I'm sitting in meetings listening to what's going on. And there was one meeting that I've written about, so I'll do it very quickly. That blew my doors off. It made me question what I was doing. I thought I'd run that company. That was my goal. And my boss, Sam, announced that he had just signed a woman named Ann Miller, who was a New York song and dance woman who had no future. And our competitor had just signed Robert Redford and Paul Newman and George Roy Hill and every major person on the planet. And they were killing it. And were announcing as William Morris, this 75-year-old company, Ann Miller. And I walked out and I saw a bunch of young guys talking, and we all looked at each other and we were all nauseous. That was the beginning of the end.

Harley Finkelstein (00:43:17):
Did you feel like that William Morris, they were becoming soft dinosaur.

Michael Ovitz (00:43:22):
William Morris. I would walk by a guy named Joe Rivkin's office, who sold job because he was close to 70, would sit and read the newspaper every day and we're all bleeding for time. And he's reading the Herald in the afternoon.

Harley Finkelstein (00:43:37):
They were just getting sloppy and lazy.

Michael Ovitz (00:43:40):
And then they hired a guy that used to be a big deal at MGM, and they would take care of older people, which we did too. But we did it differently. We didn't put them into operating position.

David Segal (00:43:50):
But your mind wasn't a hundred percent made up at that point. I remember something about learning a lesson about people aren't really out until they're out. Talk to us a bit about that. Like how William Morris reacted.

Michael Ovitz (00:44:00):
Yeah, I spoke to this and I wrote it in my book. They could have kept me. I wasn't sure

Harley Finkelstein (00:44:07):
You could have built what you did see at William.

Michael Ovitz (00:44:09):
If I thought I could change their mindset and I was young enough to, they could have kept me.

David Segal (00:44:16):
Did you remember that later in life when perhaps the tables were turned?

Michael Ovitz (00:44:20):
What do you mean?

David Segal (00:44:20):
Well, where you had to deal with the young up and comer, whipper snackers.

Michael Ovitz (00:44:24):
Oh yeah. Are you kidding? I never signed a client that I didn't turn over to someone. The success of CAA was in the thesis of one. Everyone shared every piece of information. Two, you can't lie about anything. People in media all lie. The biggest lies are in the music business. It's part of their culture. They don't tell the truth. The second biggest lies are in the movie business, because it takes two years to put a movie together. You got tons of time to lie. And there's no lying in television because every Thursday something changes and SAG pays you. So by rules you get paid no lying in tv, hundreds of millions of dollars on handshakes. No lying, no lawsuits.

Harley Finkelstein (00:45:07):
You were being paid pretty well, I assume in William Morris

Michael Ovitz (00:45:09):
This point. No, I was being paid nothing.

Harley Finkelstein (00:45:10):
I remember. So the opportunity cost of you leaving to start a A

Michael Ovitz (00:45:13):
Was zero was

Harley Finkelstein (00:45:14):
Very low.

Michael Ovitz (00:45:15):
And

Harley Finkelstein (00:45:15):
You were young

Michael Ovitz (00:45:16):
Guy. I generated multimillions of commissions and they gave me a $7,500 bonus.

David Segal (00:45:21):
Boy, they really screwed it up.

Michael Ovitz (00:45:23):
And I crazy. I did the opposite. At ca, we gave more money than anyone could get elsewhere by a factor of four and cost me and I slept well at night. And I'll tell you something that I told someone a couple months ago at dinner, at a business dinner, I said that we never had a contract with a client or an agent. I want,

Harley Finkelstein (00:45:51):
That's across all of CAA.

Michael Ovitz (00:45:53):
Yeah.

Harley Finkelstein (00:45:54):
You never had a

Michael Ovitz (00:45:55):
Contract. No, because here's the thing about contracts. One, they're worthless.

Harley Finkelstein (00:46:00):
They meaning you can sue against

Michael Ovitz (00:46:02):
Them. Well, if you're an artist and you have a contract, you have outs. If you don't work for 90 days, the guild lets you out. And secondly, my clients never knew they had a contract anniversary date to get pissed off about agency business is all about people, and people get angry if something doesn't work.

Harley Finkelstein (00:46:19):
And your contract was basically the fact that you were producing for them. That's the contract.

Michael Ovitz (00:46:23):
But our goal was to deliver, not deliver hot air agents. Were phone order guys. My thesis was I don't want a phone order. We'll give the orders. So we'll reverse the paradigm. Instead of fielding offers for our clients, we're going to create things for them. I created a department that didn't deny nothing but develop ideas. That's all we did. And then we started passing them out to clients.

Harley Finkelstein (00:46:50):
Wow. Skunk works at Tech company.

David Segal (00:46:51):
It was so rather than the studio saying, we need an actor for this, you go to the studios, you're like, no, no, no. This is what you're going to make. And here's the actor and here's the director,

Harley Finkelstein (00:47:00):
Here's the director's producer.

Michael Ovitz (00:47:02):
Well, we had so many great talented clients that it seemed to me to be stupid to be selling them. Plus I made a rule. We base the company as a literary agency. So all the talent agencies said, talent agency. We said at the top of ours, literary and talent agency. I wanted everyone to think we were word-based. So we started about 400 writers. We kept signing writers. And what I realized was the directors and the actors all wanted the same thing. Written words, you can't make anything without it. Can't even budget it. You can't do anything. So we started becoming a literary agency at the beginning, and actors then came to us. The goal from day one was to reverse the flow. So it's kind of like when you run out of gas and you stick a hose in a tank and you suck the hose and you kind of, all the gas comes out. So in seven years, we went from salespeople to buyers, and the economy was so good. I realized we didn't need any money. We could speak for the buyers because they needed the product. I remember in the early eighties, I had dinner the other night and I was seated next to Lauren Michael, who's one of the greats. And when I was a kid, Lauren and I started together. So we were reminiscing about the early seventies.

Harley Finkelstein (00:48:31):
Good Canadian guy like us.

Michael Ovitz (00:48:33):
Great guy. He says about he is. So we were reminiscing about the old days in the seventies. That's 50 years ago. And Lauren and I were just laughing so hard. And Mike Kavanaugh, who now runs NBC, was there. And we were laughing how I used to come in my suit as an agent and I was a nothing, and Lauren was nothing. Producer. And I used to cover the shows, and we were laughing about the fact that when he started Saturday Night Live, it was not a hit. And I said to myself, I watched it, and I'll never forget this as long as I live, I'm watching it in bed with my wife. It's on at 1130. And I go to her, I go, oh my God. This is kind of scripted, kind of not scripted. And it's brilliant. The next day I went out, I signed everyone in the cast, and I started Bill Murray, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, who I love to this day. Gilda Radner, Chevy Chase, everybody.

David Segal (00:49:42):
And this is some upstart

David Segal (00:49:44):
At the time, right?

David Segal (00:49:45):
Yeah. This is an upstart.

David Segal (00:49:46):
They weren't a hit,

Harley Finkelstein (00:49:47):
Right? Yeah. So were saying it was a massive risk.

Michael Ovitz (00:49:51):
I took lot of written in the New York Times one of many or LA Times, I don't remember which, saying I was an idiot. It may have been variety that I signed all these unknowns telling them I put 'em in movies. What am I going to do with them? And it's part of my upbringing being Jewish.

David Segal (00:50:12):
I'm

David Segal (00:50:12):
Sensing a theme When the world says, Michael Ovitz is an idiot, bye. You

Michael Ovitz (00:50:15):
Tell me I can't do something. That is a challenge to me. Tamara said to me, we were in Paris three months ago and we passed by this boutique. She said, I have been trying to get one of those things and I can't get it. It's been a year. I challenge you to get it. She knew

David Segal (00:50:36):
Exactly what she was doing, and I delivered it three days ago.

Harley Finkelstein (00:50:40):
You did? Yeah. Amazing.

David Segal (00:50:41):
Who was the first client, if you, sorry, who was your first client? Very first client. Yeah. You leave this thing, you're like, you got to, it's

Michael Ovitz (00:50:50):
A very prescient question. What led me to Saturday Night Live? I'm watching the Lowman and Barkley show, a local LA show at 1130 on a Saturday night. And I see a guy who calls himself the roller skating

Harley Finkelstein (00:51:06):
Rabbi. Oh my God.

Michael Ovitz (00:51:09):
And his name was Barry Levinson. And I went and called him the next day, said, you don't know me. I don't know you. I think you're frigging hysterical. And I signed him as a writer actor. Barry Levinson, when he won the Academy Award for Rainman, thanked me and recalled that moment.

Harley Finkelstein (00:51:28):
Wow. And Dustin Hoffman also won the Academy Award. Thank who also was a client and also thanked you.

David Segal (00:51:33):
Is he one of your first Rayman Levison. Levison, yeah. Levison. Yeah.

Michael Ovitz (00:51:36):
Hoffman and Connery were my two first movie stars. And I spoke at Sean's memorial in Edinburgh a year ago. It was very,

David Segal (00:51:47):
Wait, Dustin Hoffman was one of your first

Michael Ovitz (00:51:49):
Clients? Yeah, I met him at a guy's house named Mike Voy, who I quite like, who was running one of the movie companies. And I went to a dinner. I was a young guy with nothing. We had started, I think I was 27 or eight, and Dustin was there, and I got friendly talking to his wife who was a lawyer. And I started talking to Dustin and I asked if we could have a meeting. And he said,

Harley Finkelstein (00:52:18):
Okay, you was there something? Was there a spark? Oh,

Michael Ovitz (00:52:21):
Please. The guy's

Harley Finkelstein (00:52:22):
Genius. Okay. You saw it right away.

Michael Ovitz (00:52:24):
The guy's a genius. The guy turns himself, he's a chameleon. He can be anything. And he'd already done a Mike Nichols movie, so it's not like I was discovering anybody. I mean, please, he had done the graduate.

(00:52:41):
So he was as important as you could be, beat out a hundred actors for that role. Anyways, I sat with him and I said, look, I don't have the portfolio that these other companies have. I don't have big movie stars. I will kill for you. The whole company will get behind you. There were probably 30 of us. I said, but most importantly, I will work for free. He said, what? I said, yeah, no commission unless I deliver a movie to you. And unless you think I did a good job, your decision, I don't want anything. And he said, okay.

Harley Finkelstein (00:53:18):
I mean, how does William Morris even compete with that type of offer?

Michael Ovitz (00:53:21):
I

Harley Finkelstein (00:53:21):
Mean, that's, guess what the pitch was.

Michael Ovitz (00:53:23):
And we had an amazing run together, and I put Tootsie together.

Harley Finkelstein (00:53:31):
That was your first package where you bring it all together?

Michael Ovitz (00:53:33):
It was one of 'em. We had a lot, but it was one of 'em.

David Segal (00:53:36):
I mean, it reminds me of one of the best quotes I heard about you was from probably one of the greats of all times, Jerry Seinfeld, where he is like, I have a 95 Ovitz. They don't make 'em like that anymore.

Michael Ovitz (00:53:46):
So I just ran into him at a dinner. We were having a lunch at a place called Coco's here, and Jerry was sitting at the next table and Jessica, and she kept texting me. I had sat next to her at a dinner party and I am trying to not be impolite. And I thought she was at home. And then I hear Ovitz Ovitz and I turn, look over Jerry and Jessica sate the next table with a bunch of people. And I said, Jerry, to this day, I never forgot he had another line When I left. He said, I got the last ovitz. And he reminded me of at that thing. Great guy.

Harley Finkelstein (00:54:29):
There's a story that Dave told me over dinner last night about a particular writer who you came to me with in New York who didn't want to sign, but he allowed you to call him every Thursday. What was

Michael Ovitz (00:54:39):
That? There wasn't a writer.

Harley Finkelstein (00:54:41):
Okay.

Michael Ovitz (00:54:41):
So it was a writer's agent.

Harley Finkelstein (00:54:42):
Okay. Tell me about that.

Michael Ovitz (00:54:43):
So there was a guy who passed away a couple of years ago named Mor Chala. He was a lawyer and built a business in the seventies of representing all the authors to the publishers. And as you know, New York is where all the center of publishing in the world. And he built this extraordinary business, had everybody, Sidney Sheldon, Judith Krantz, all the pulp writers, Michael Kreen. Oh wow. And he had a amazing business. And I went to see him and he was just very sweet, but incredibly dismissive of me. And as I'm leaving,

Harley Finkelstein (00:55:28):
Any reason why he was dismissive of you?

Michael Ovitz (00:55:30):
Yeah, I was a zippo. Nothing.

Harley Finkelstein (00:55:32):
Okay.

Michael Ovitz (00:55:32):
And if you're not something in entertainment, you're nothing. It's why it was shocking to people when I said, we don't lie. And I fired people for lying. I fired an agent when I walked into her office and her back was to me and she was facing the window and I heard her bold face lie to a client on the phone and I fired her right there. I had them walked out of the building.

(00:55:57):
We don't lie. And I said to Mor, first of all, when I went into a meeting in those days, I took my watch off, I put it on the table, I asked for 15 minutes. Oh, 10 minutes. And I watched the watch and at 10 minutes I left no matter what. Unless being respectful. Yes. Because no one has time. So my 10 minutes was up with Mort. I said, Mort, I'm going to convince and I'm going to call you every Thursday at 10 o'clock New York time, hell or high water. And for 11 and a half months, I called Mor JLo at 7:00 AM a time. It didn't matter where I was, didn't matter if I was with my kids, didn't matter if I was at a school function, didn't matter if I was in Europe at 7:00 AM on Thursdays, I called Mor, including Christmas week, Thanksgiving week, Thanksgiving's on Thursdays. I called Mort.

Harley Finkelstein (00:56:51):
That's 50 phone calls

Michael Ovitz (00:56:53):
Every week. Finally in the 51st week, Mort calls me and he said, you are amusing. He said, and you're diligent and you're crazy. I'm going to give you a book to represent. I said, that's all I've ever asked for. Sends me a book. It's called Chiefs. And I give it to Bill Haber, who was my partner, who was a brilliant guy at, he was as good as any studio executive at analyzing a piece of material. He reads the book, I read the book, we talk about it. We discover the book's been saturated through the system. Everyone's turned it down and Bill and I sit down, what are we going to do here?

Harley Finkelstein (00:57:33):
This is your shot.

Michael Ovitz (00:57:34):
And we said, we have no choice but to package something that everyone's going to change their mind on. We did it. We put Charlton Heston in it, who was big at the time. We put a director in it who was a big TV director, who was Bill's client. And we went back and we got a deal from NBC for a six part miniseries. And I called Morton. He was in a state of shock. I said, Morton, we have an offer on chiefs. He said, no, you don't. It's not possible. I was turned down by everybody. I said, more send in that money, your wife. We got every book from him to this day.

David Segal (00:58:09):
Yeah. While you're calling him, was he like, Michael, stop calling me. I mean, these is 50 phone calls later

Harley Finkelstein (00:58:15):
Because probably he respected the hustle like

David Segal (00:58:16):
That.

Michael Ovitz (00:58:17):
He was moved by

Harley Finkelstein (00:58:18):
It. Yeah,

Michael Ovitz (00:58:19):
Moved by. We became thick as these

Harley Finkelstein (00:58:21):
After that it shows.

Michael Ovitz (00:58:22):
But lemme tell you what I did for you. Our competitor, ICM, had a genius book

Harley Finkelstein (00:58:28):
Just to set the stage. So the biggest one at the time was William Morris, and then ICM and then CCAA. Is that, no,

Michael Ovitz (00:58:34):
We weren't even in the three.

Harley Finkelstein (00:58:36):
You weren't in top three at this point? Nah,

Michael Ovitz (00:58:37):
Not even close. There were 10 other agents.

Harley Finkelstein (00:58:39):
Okay, so you were the long tail.

Michael Ovitz (00:58:40):
Yeah. So there was a woman named a woman who worked at ICM, who was an amazing agent, book agent, and she, her name was Lynn and Nesbit. She was top of the line and giving Mor a lot of competition. So IA called her up, asked her for lunch. Of course she said yes. Took her out to lunch and by the end of lunch convinced her that she should leave I Sam and merge with more Anglo. I had never talked to Mor. I leave lunch, I get in my car. I had one of the first car phones. It was a radio phone. Cool. Nice. And I had a big giant radio in the trunk.

Harley Finkelstein (00:59:30):
Cool. What kind of car was that? Do you remember what the kind of car was?

Michael Ovitz (00:59:32):
Yeah, we all had Jaguars.

Harley Finkelstein (00:59:33):
Jaguar was the

Michael Ovitz (00:59:34):
Thing. Couldn't afford 'em. Got Jaguars intentionally put ca on the license plates to tell everybody that we'd made it was bullshit.

Harley Finkelstein (00:59:43):
It was a ca one, ca two kind of thing?

Michael Ovitz (00:59:45):
No, no. It had our initial.

Harley Finkelstein (00:59:46):
Okay, got it.

Michael Ovitz (00:59:46):
And we did that to show people how much money we had none. But

Harley Finkelstein (00:59:50):
Fake it till you make it.

Michael Ovitz (00:59:52):
We faked it good. I called Mort. I said, Mort got a great idea for you. He said, what? I said, who's your biggest competition? He said, hands down, Lynn Neman. I said, let's put you two together. He said, why? I said, because she's going to merge with you. He said, it'll never happen. I said, let's just have lunch. He said, great. So I go to New York, take the two of them to lunch. They hit it off. Great. Three weeks later, she quit joined. It's now Anglo and Nesbit still to this day, 35 years later.

Harley Finkelstein (01:00:24):
Wow.

Michael Ovitz (01:00:25):
They were a powerhouse. And they were our powerhouse.

Harley Finkelstein (01:00:28):
Right. And you put it together, put it together. And they both know you put it together.

Michael Ovitz (01:00:32):
Harley, I'm going to explain something. I package anything I see. Doesn't matter what it is. Doesn't matter. I'd package you two guys together if I thought you had rapport. I try to put people and ideas and money together. And that's what Horowitz and Andreessen said to me, get to the Valley because that's what we do. And when I did the fortune interview, they said, how did you do this? I said, I started over. I did 400 meetings in my first 12 months. I met with everyone from Zuckerberg to young people you've never heard of. Mark put dinner parties together for me where I met Peter Thiel, who I'm still friends with, Reed Hoffman, everybody. And I introduced myself to that community with no ego at all. And the nice thing about it is it was very different than entertainment. It was sensitive. Those people do something. Entertainment people at the, and I say this openly to anyone, the top 10% of the entertainment business, some of the smartest, most creative human beings you've ever met. Bottom 10%. Some of the sleaziest and the rest roll between the top and the bottom in the valley. As you know, you started a business, you got to be pretty good.

Harley Finkelstein (01:01:50):
Yeah.

Michael Ovitz (01:01:50):
You get called

Harley Finkelstein (01:01:51):
Out the barrier, the floor is much higher for sure.

Michael Ovitz (01:01:54):
You get called out really fast. Yeah. So for me, I went up there with no ego, no games, no manipulation, none of this, of the tools, of the trade of being an agent, not selling anybody anything except myself and relationship. And I spent years doing things for people for nothing.

David Segal (01:02:14):
Can you learn that clearly? Your superpower is spotting talent and it together.

Michael Ovitz (01:02:20):
Well, I want to stop you, David. I don't think I have any superpower.

David Segal (01:02:22):
Interesting.

Michael Ovitz (01:02:23):
And I'll tell you something else that I think I'm very open about this.

(01:02:26):
I said it at the Fortune. I was sitting at another Patrick O'Shaughnessy podcast. I have no talent, so I can't paint no talent, I can't paint, can't sculpt, can't write, can't direct. I'm a terrible actor. I left multiple sets. I was asked to come on, and I am scared to death of a camera. I have no talent, so I can't code. So all I can do is put things together. I'll tell you what one talent I have, I have some weird God-given gift to meet interesting people and decide if they're worthy of my time. And I'm never wrong ever.

Harley Finkelstein (01:03:11):
Maybe that's taste.

Michael Ovitz (01:03:12):
No, I don't think it's taste because I had a learned taste.

(01:03:16):
When you're 17 and you've never seen a painting and you don't know Picasso from Modigliani, you don't have any taste. My first apartment when I was a kid, had all Mediterranean style furniture from a local junkyard. If I looked at it today, I'd throw off. But I learned to have taste. I learned to look at art. I learned pattern recognition. I learned, it's funny, I mentor a bunch of young people, collectors, they all want to know what to read. I say nothing. Just start looking at images and your brain will index it for you and you'll see what you'll like. But I have no talent. I can't do anything. I can't do anything productive or something that I could get paid for. My friend, the artist, Cecily Brown, she said, I was in her studio once and I said, it's so amazing. Out of nothing, a blank canvas comes, something that's so moving.

(01:04:22):
She says, oh, you could do that. I said, no, I really can't. She handed me a brush. She said, lower left hand corner. So I put a few strokes in. She said, that's good. I bought the painting about a year ago. She had a show at the Dallas Museum of Fine Art, opened her show. My painting was in the show, and I love the fact she did it. And then I had my lawyer send her a letter telling her that I was the co-owner of that co-creator of painting. I was going to sue her, which was a joke,

Harley Finkelstein (01:04:57):
Obvious. Of course, of course.

Michael Ovitz (01:04:58):
But I don't have the ability to do that. And I respect that of people. I was on the phone with this young artist, Nicholas party, and he's so full of ideas and he thinks in color and thinks three dimensional. I don't think like that. I think linear or circular. So there's no middle ground for me.

David Segal (01:05:22):
And yet you earn their trust immediately. I mean, which is hard to do,

Harley Finkelstein (01:05:25):
Which even in itself is a bit of a superpower. Of course, it is this ability to create these relationships, to cultivate relationships. I mean, even just the people I've talked to about you, or the last 24 hours, they have a connection to you that is so much deeper than just someone they met at Sun Valley. There's something incredible about that is a superpower.

Michael Ovitz (01:05:47):
I'll tell you something interesting. I said, A friend of mine, a fantastic guy, got sued by a woman that claims that 35 years ago, he ruined her career. Now, it wasn't sexual harassment. He ruined her career. He blocked her from growth. 35 years later, I got so upset that I went full speed into action on this. And he said to me, he said, the interesting thing about you is you're black and white. You're the world's greatest friend in the world's worst enemy. And that's me.

Harley Finkelstein (01:06:34):
I mean, that's the Paul Newman quote, right? Your Mother Teresa. And you're a barracuda. When you look at business today relative to business in the eighties and the nineties, and frankly even earlier than that, do you think it's really changed? I mean, obviously technology is different. We have new tools, but do you think at the fundamental core of business and entrepreneurship, the lessons and the strategies you use are the same?

Michael Ovitz (01:06:58):
I think that the world that you and I live in today, which is based in Palo Alto in San Francisco, has basically because of the close-mindedness of the media world. In 1992, I was a consultant Andy Grove at Intel and helped him with his marketing. I dunno if you remember Intel of

Harley Finkelstein (01:07:22):
Course Mean in Inside. Yeah. Also, Andy Grove's book is one of my favorite books on management.

Michael Ovitz (01:07:27):
So he asked me to write an endorsement for it on the back cover. Crazy. I respected that man enormously and it was a different world for

Harley Finkelstein (01:07:34):
Me. High Output Management, is that right? Sorry? It was called High Output Management, I think.

Michael Ovitz (01:07:38):
No, I think his was only the paranoid Survive.

Harley Finkelstein (01:07:41):
Oh, so there's two books. There's also High Output Management too.

Michael Ovitz (01:07:43):
But anyways, we decided to do the Intel Media Lab in our building in Beverly Hills, and this was early nineties. The goal was for Andy's company and our company again, for ca to be thought leaders and explain what was coming down the pike to the city. Because I remember I hired the CFO of at t to come work at ca, and everyone thought I'd lost my mind. Not only did I not lose my mind, the guy was like a seeing eye dog to what was going on in tech. And Andy and I, Andy brought every conceivable piece of hardware, made every chip, every piece of technology from San Francisco and Palo Alto and placed it in a room in our office and put five giant dishes on the roof. And we invited the city, not just our clients, which by the way put us in a position over every other agency because everyone wanted to be with us because we're doing cutting edge things.

Harley Finkelstein (01:09:01):
For sure.

Michael Ovitz (01:09:02):
The business rejected the ideas. And today, Netflix, basically under Ted Sarandos, Sarandos has disintermediated the business. They've changed viewer patterns, which people thought was not possible to do. They've taken the theater business away except for special movies. The experiences in home, everything's a flat fee and everything's on streaming. And

Harley Finkelstein (01:09:30):
You could have done the 92.

Michael Ovitz (01:09:32):
And we started that. And no, we didn't start that. We started trying to educate people. They didn't want to hear

Harley Finkelstein (01:09:39):
It. What was it? It was like antibodies of the company. No, it's a closed ecosystem. They didn't want outsiders.

Michael Ovitz (01:09:45):
No. And the thing I learned when I started at the floor as a mail room guy in technology in 1999 was multiple things. One, they didn't eat well. So I'd go to board meetings at LoudCloud with Ben and Mark and bitch about the food. It was awful. Two, they didn't dress. So I'm wearing a suit. And they finally said, if you come in a suit again, we're going to kick you off the board. And three, they love learning. And they're open. Totally. If you've got an idea, they want to hear

Harley Finkelstein (01:10:19):
It. It doesn't matter who you are. What's your last, where you come from idea stands on merit.

Michael Ovitz (01:10:23):
They don't care. And the nepotism thing doesn't exist.

Harley Finkelstein (01:10:25):
Well, yeah, for

Michael Ovitz (01:10:26):
Sure.

David Segal (01:10:26):
Have the incumbents Luther their lesson. Do you think that complete upending of the business by Netflix and others has made it so Today's incumbents are just so much more sensitive to disruption.

Michael Ovitz (01:10:36):
I get a call a day from people that I used to deal with that are beside themselves. Interesting. There's no backend participation in the entertainment business anymore. It's over. You don't get anything. If I package, when we put Jurassic Park out, we got Universal to distribute it. They didn't own it. We did.

(01:10:58):
Creighton gave me the book. We owned it on behalf of Creighton. And when we got Universal to distributor, we made a deal. It was very simple. Put up the money for the movie, which was about 60 million bucks. And every dollar that comes in after you get your 60 back comes half to us. Half to you. That was unheard of. Okay. I'd say a couple billion dollars in profits have been made by our clients. If you did that movie today, those same clients maybe would've gotten front fees from Netflix or Hulu or Disney of maybe 150, 200 million bucks. That's it. There's no place to sell the product once it's in the ether,

Harley Finkelstein (01:11:41):
It's there.

Michael Ovitz (01:11:42):
It's there. He can pull it, his kids can pull it off the internet. That's right. It's over. There's no video cassette. There's no HBO. There's no A-B-C-N-B-C or CBS. There's no foreign, there's no kennel police in France. No Sky. And it's over.

David Segal (01:12:01):
Wow.

Michael Ovitz (01:12:01):
There's nothing. So I get these calls that are nauseating. I feel horrible for these people.

Harley Finkelstein (01:12:08):
I don't. But also, you kind of saw this coming.

Michael Ovitz (01:12:11):
Well, that's why I got out. Everyone says, why'd you get out? I said, simple. I saw the train wreck coming. I probably got out five years too early, but I don't care. The train wreck was on the way. And those businesses are all

David Segal (01:12:26):
In trouble. So what's the solution? I mean, if people want to be entertained and the entertainers need to get paid, how does it work? That's another podcast. Yeah.

Harley Finkelstein (01:12:34):
I want to ask something because we already talked of your time here. Two things. First of all, we mentioned Bronfman family. One of the things Charles Bronfman told Dave and I is, you have to be careful, but picking your industry, because the industry that may have been good previously doesn't mean it's going to be always going to be good. And this idea of actually looking at whether or not the thing you're betting on is going to have continuity or not, I think is really interesting. I mean, if you wanted to stay in the traditional entertainment industry, you no longer have a business today.

Michael Ovitz (01:13:03):
Well, it's interesting that he said that. And he's a very smart guy. I knew his brother

Harley Finkelstein (01:13:11):
Edgar.

Michael Ovitz (01:13:11):
Well, no, Charles,

Harley Finkelstein (01:13:13):
Charles' brother was Edgar

Michael Ovitz (01:13:15):
S Edgar s. But I'm thinking Edgar, Jr. Jr. Yeah. He was a very nice guy who I went to. Never met him in my life, ever. My dad was turning 65. He had worked for Seagram's for 35 years and they were going to retire him. And I went to Edgar, Jr. I called him up. I said, you don't know me. I don't know you. I would like 10 minutes of your time. He said, of course. I went, put my watch down on his desk. I said, Edgar, my dad's work for you. He said, I looked at the file, I said, if you retire him, he's going to die. I believe that. By the way, I believe if you retire, you die as a man, A or woman. I think you're, if you don't have something to get up four in the morning, it's over. Wow. And I said to him, I'm asking you as a personal favor, and I will owe you for the rest of my life. I'd like you to keep my dad on until he drops, and I'll reimburse you his salary. Wow. And if you do that, I'm indebted to you forever. And he said, consider it done and you don't have to reimburse me. Incredible. And my dad stayed with him for another 16 years, and I ended up representing Edgar in buying Universal from mat because I had sold Universal to mat. So it shows you how life moves in mysterious ways.

Harley Finkelstein (01:14:40):
There's almost karma there.

Michael Ovitz (01:14:41):
What Charles said is interesting. I didn't go into the entertainment. I loved entertainment. I went in because there were only two places to make money when I was a kid. And I didn't want to live in the San Fernando Valley as an adult. And that's a big motivator. And the only two places you could make any money in those days in the sixties was the entertainment business and being in the finance world.

Harley Finkelstein (01:15:07):
Yeah. Wall Street.

Michael Ovitz (01:15:08):
Wall Street. That was it. And I was too stupid at the time. And I mean stupid. I live here now and I switched my ratio between LA and New York, and I just love it. I've always come here half the year, but I love being a citizen here.

Harley Finkelstein (01:15:25):
You're humming electric about

Michael Ovitz (01:15:27):
It. The energy. I get up in the morning and I take my dog for a walk at seven and six 30 in the morning, and I feel alive here. And I didn't want to go to New York when I was 21. I didn't want to leave la. I thought LA was the center of the world because that's how I was brought up. My dad thought it was, my mom thought it was, you didn't know otherwise. All my friends were there, my relatives were there. And I didn't figure this out until later in my life at ca, that New York is when I went on the board of MoMA, I figured that's what it worked. And when we gave that trustee party I was talking about, I told the story of going to Momed 18, and David Rockefeller's son was there because a trustee. And he kind of welled up because I said that David kind of took the kid out of the valley and gave me an opportunity that I never would've had. And it was such an amazing thing to go to my first MoMA board meeting, knowing that it's where I discovered art at 18. And now I own a lot of art. And there's not a day that goes by that I'm not invested in looking at art because it is my form of relaxation.

Harley Finkelstein (01:16:50):
Last thing before we close, David and I often talk about that us as Jewish entrepreneurs, we stand on the shoulders of giants like you as we kind of hear your story. My final sort of note that I took last night was there is one particular theme that keeps coming up across everything from the mail room to you go to the valley, which is there's a work ethic that you have. You arriving early, staying late, cleaning the refrigerator. Dave and I, our IQs, we're not the smartest people in the world, but I think the reason we've been able to have some success in our life, nothing like you yet, but certainly to date is because we simply, we give a shit and we work really, really hard.

David Segal (01:17:32):
Go the extra

Harley Finkelstein (01:17:33):
Mile. What is it about Jewish entrepreneurs or Jews in general that you think gives us this work ethic? What are we,

Michael Ovitz (01:17:39):
First of all, I want to be clear. I'm happy to take your Shopify stock. Okay. So when you talk about not doing so well, I'd beg to differ with that at the price you're at. I've made a few bucks along the way. So look, when I grew up, my best friend, I had two best friends. One was Jewish, one was Catholic Scorsese. And I used to joke, I love that man. He's a devout Catholic. We'd say our mothers were the same. The guilt instilled in us was insane. The only thing that separated them was the cuisine they made. My mom made brisket and his mom made

Harley Finkelstein (01:18:15):
Spaghetti. Yeah, I would prefer that.

Michael Ovitz (01:18:17):
And we came up with this thesis. The only thing different between Catholics and Jews is one's guilty before the fact. The other's guilty after the fact. Ethnic people, for some reason, in my mind, this is a broad generalization that you could pick apart, but ethnic people strive for a kind of challenge. And it's a broad generalization, and it's probably not true, but a lot of my friends that were Catholic did incredibly well. They were supported by other Catholics. And my friends that are Jews are supported by other Jews. This is going to sound so stupid, and I'm sure it's published. It's published. I'm going to get just dumped on for this, but Jews kind of have been so oppressed over the years, even though now we're being accused of genocide and everything else, and everyone's forgetting that it's a country not a religion. And I'm not saying it's right or wrong, I'm just saying

Harley Finkelstein (01:19:24):
It's confused.

Michael Ovitz (01:19:25):
It's confused. Totally agree at best. But I have to say, I've always felt I'm like in a club, and I always view people of the religion so small as having some tie to me. And I can't explain it because it's not intellectually accurate

Harley Finkelstein (01:19:47):
And we're not religious,

Michael Ovitz (01:19:49):
Which is, but if,

David Segal (01:19:51):
Yeah, we all feel that way, right? We that way. It's this all credible thing. Well, I'll tell you a weird thing, Dave. Yeah.

Michael Ovitz (01:19:58):
I had got into an incident about a year ago where someone suggested that I sue someone for something they did that was really wrong. And when I found out he was Jewish, I wouldn't do it. There's no rhyme or reason. I just have this weird connection to people of the religion. And I'm not really ultra religious. Neither are we. I do too, but I raise my kids Jewish with fake names.

Harley Finkelstein (01:20:29):
My best friends are Jewish. I didn't pick them. That's kind of how it happened.

Michael Ovitz (01:20:33):
Well, I'm friends with a lot of people that are of all different races, religions. I've never chosen my friends by anything except are they smart? Right? If they're smart and they can hold my interest, I have a real problem, which I can't tolerate people that aren't bright, and I can't tolerate wastes of my time anymore because my runway's limited. And I don't want to be with uninteresting human beings. I find it's got nothing to do with religion. My friends are all a smorgasbord. But I do find a kinship in the religion that I can't really articulate a reason for. It's like we kind of all come from this group that have just had the crap beat out of us from day one,

Harley Finkelstein (01:21:24):
15 million people on the entire planet. It's an unbelievable number. It's tiny.

Michael Ovitz (01:21:26):
And it cracks me up when people make these statements that we control this, we control that. It's just not true. But we have that image of that, and I guess we also help propagate it

David Segal (01:21:46):
Well in punch above the Ray

Michael Ovitz (01:21:47):
Class. Well, I think we all share that in common. I said to one of my young mentees who was so smart, and I think he's Armenian. I don't really know. He's one of those countries over there. I was at lunch with him and I was on the phone with him last week, and I said, I've got some really bad news for you. He said, what? I said, did you do 23 and me? He said, no. I said, you're so smart. You're so aggressive. You're so good. Somewhere in the family tree, one of your relatives slept with a Jew.

Harley Finkelstein (01:22:25):
Well, we don't want to waste more of your time and cross that threshold. Michael, thank you so much. It has been. Thank you. Great honor. I hope you enjoyed this conversation much. We did.

Michael Ovitz (01:22:34):
I could talk for

Harley Finkelstein (01:22:35):
Hours. So can we