The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood (45 page)

Irving (“Swifty”) Lazar!

David O. Selznick, the most powerful producer in town at the time, said of him: “There is one man who is single-handedly ruining the motion picture industry as we know it. The ridiculous prices he demands for books and plays and writers will surely be the end of us all.”

To Wirtschafter

To lose clients because of stupid things you said during an interview—like William Morris agent David Wirtschafter, who lost clients after an interview he did with
The New Yorker
magazine.

What was that about the black heart of an agent?

W
hen agent Marty Baum retired from CMA, where he’d worked for many years, his fellow agents gave him a Cartier tank watch. He discovered that it was a Hong Kong knockoff.

I wouldn’t hire this guy
.

A
CAA agent hustles new clients by saying, “I want to be your asshole,” or “I want to be your bitch.”

Try to get your agent to lie for you
.

T
his won’t be easy, because your agent will have better relationships with studio executives (whom he’s known for a long time) than with you. But if you can somehow get your agent to do it, it will pay off big-time.

In 1980, I wrote a spec script called
City Hall
and sent it to my agent. He loved it and decided to auction it. He sent it out to Paramount, Universal, Warner Bros., and MGM at the same time. Within hours, Paramount, Universal, and MGM passed. Warner Bros. was thinking about it.

I asked my agent to tell Warner Bros. that one of the three who’d passed wanted to buy it. He said he couldn’t lie to people he’d had a relationship with for a long time. I reminded him of my two little kids, the house we had just bought, the mortgage payments owed, the college educations I would one day have to pay for.

He interrupted me and said, “You really are a Hungarian, you know.”

He called Warners and told them Paramount wanted to buy
City Hall
and he was only calling to inform them of this. Warners decided they wanted to buy it, too—but came in at a low figure. He told them Paramount was at a higher figure. Warners then came in so high that it set a new industry record for a spec script, beating the price for William Goldman’s
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
.

Shortly afterward, the Warners executives who bought the script were fired. Almost twenty-five years later,
City Hall
is still up on the Warner Bros. shelf—unmade. The money they paid for it, though, has long been spent.

Don’t be fooled by the paintings on the walls
.

I
had an agent who lived in a posh Beverly Hills house with spectacular art on the walls—sometimes.

Sometimes when I saw him, the art was there, but sometimes the walls were bare.

One of his colleagues explained it to me: The paintings were rented. Some months he was able to foot the bill and other months he wasn’t.

As a matter of fact, I discovered, the house was rented, too, and both the Jaguar and the Mercedes were leased.

It’s okay to be a pawn in their game
.

I
f you write scripts that are made into movies, agencies will kiss your butt.

This isn’t because they care about you—you are, after all, nothing but a schmuck writer—but because they can use you to convince superstar actors to let them represent them.

The superstar actor will think that if this agency represents him, he will get first crack at your script.

Michael Ovitz was a con artist
.

W
hen superagent Michael Ovitz graduated from Birmingham High School in Encino, California, he received an award of merit at the senior breakfast. It was for being “class con artist.”

Michael Ovitz was a frat boy
.

W
hen superagent Michael Ovitz became president of his fraternity at UCLA, his fraternity brothers called him “King” Ovitz.

Michael Ovitz was a narc
.

W
hen the members of the rock band Sly and the Family Stone took a look at their new agent, Michael Ovitz, one of them yelled, “Narc!”

Michael Ovitz was a mensch
.

T
his is how Mike Medavoy first met agent Michael Ovitz: “I’d never talked to him before, but I knew who he was and took his phone call. He said to me, ‘My name is Mike Ovitz. I don’t know you, but I intend to be your best friend. I want to come and see you.’ I asked when. He said, ‘Now.’ Fifteen minutes later, he appeared at my door.”

Michael Ovitz was a healer
.

W
hen superlawyer Bert Fields’s wife was ill with cancer, agent Michael Ovitz arranged for the best specialists at UCLA to treat her. When screenwriter Robert Towne’s Hungarian dog bit him severely, Michael Ovitz arranged for the best specialists at UCLA to treat him. When I hurt my back in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Michael Ovitz called me and offered to fly his acupuncturist to my home in Marin County.

Michael Ovitz was my fairy godmother
.

T
he first thing Michael Ovitz asked me at our first meeting—this was about six years before he told me that his foot soldiers would put me into the ground—was this: “What’s your biggest dream? I need to know so I can make it come true.”

Michael Ovitz was Magic Johnson and Aristotle combined
.

S
uperagent Michael Ovitz, explaining his success: “Read
The Art of War
and
Tao Teh Ching
, get it flavored by a little of Aristotle, and watch the Los Angeles Lakers do a fast break. It’s like watching a Swiss watch work as they drive down the court, five guys; Magic Johnson would look, fake, and rarely take the shot. That was my philosophy.”

Michael Ovitz used Robert Redford
.

I
’m not worried about the press,” agent Michael Ovitz told me at a meeting in September of 1989. “All those guys want is to write screenplays for Robert Redford.”

Michael Ovitz was Citizen Kane
.

W
hen he began representing Bill Carruthers, producer of game shows, Michael Ovitz asked him to give his wife, Judy, a spot as a model on the show
Give and Take
.

Michael Ovitz was a killer
.

O
n rare occasions when he told something to his friends confidentially, Michael Ovitz said, “This is a private conversation. If you ever repeat it, I’m going to kill you.”

Michael Ovitz was the Godfather
.

A
fter his first meeting with agent Michael Ovitz, comedian David Letterman told a friend, “I’ve been to see the Godfather! I had a meeting with the Godfather!”

Michael Ovitz was the Antichrist
.

N
BC president Don Ohlmeyer called superagent Michael Ovitz “The Antichrist.” Producer David Geffen then commented, “Apparently Don Ohlmeyer thinks more highly of Michael Ovitz than I do.”

Nobody punked Michael Ovitz!

W
hen I read that Michael Ovitz blamed his demise on what he called “Hollywood’s gay mafia,” I remembered something he’d said to me in our famous meeting in 1989, during which he’d threatened to destroy my career if I left his agency.

“You think you’re just going to leave this agency and I’m just going to take it?” he said. “Nobody makes a faggot out of me—nobody!”

How did Michael Ovitz get away with acting like the Antichrist?

M
ike Medavoy: “Ovitz got away with it because people thought he had his hand on some kind of nuclear launch button. The moment fear of him disappeared, he became fair game for everyone who resented his methods.”

I punked Michael Ovitz
.

I
f you make me eat shit, I’m going to make you eat shit,” superagent Michael Ovitz told me at a meeting in September 1989.

I even stole Michael Ovitz’s best line
.

T
en years after Michael Ovitz told me his foot soldiers who went up and down Wilshire Boulevard would “put me into the ground,” and several years after Ovitz left CAA, his former agency asked me to appear in their annual video.

I improvised my line on the video: “My foot soldiers who go up and down Zuma Beach will put Mike Ovitz into the sand.”

Michael Ovitz believed what they wrote about him
.

I
n the 1990s, Michael Ovitz said to reporters, “I understand I am the single most powerful force in the entertainment industry.” Ten years later, he was out of the business.

Now Michael Ovitz is a fucking bum
.

Y
ears before I had a public fight with him and fired him, Michael Ovitz tried to convince me to let him represent me.

I had a big meeting with him in a CAA conference room, where a bunch of other agents were present, and said no thank you to Ovitz’s pitch and walked out of the room.

Ovitz called Don Simpson, the producer I was working with at the time, and said, “Who is this fucking bum to do this to me?”

Michael Ovitz had a role model
.

W
hen Tommy Dorsey wanted to leave MCA, his agent, Billy Goodhart, said this to him: “Tommy, if you continue this bullshit, making everybody miserable, you see these balls?” He bent over and grabbed his own balls. “I’m gonna cut yours off. Not only won’t you be working for MCA, you won’t be working for anybody else for maybe the rest of your life. You have something to say, put it in writing. Now get the fuck out of here—you irritate me.”

A threesome: Michael Ovitz, Roseanne, and Zsa Zsa
.

A
fter Michael Ovitz threatened to destroy my career, Roseanne Barr, whom I’d never met, sent him a note with the words “Fuck you!” scrawled all over the page.

I was flattered … until I heard that after my fellow Hungarian Zsa Zsa Gabor was arrested for a scuffle with a Beverly Hills cop, Roseanne sent Zsa Zsa a note that said, “Fuck them all!”

The Writers Guild can be punked, too
.