After a judge ruled last week that Disney technically had not done anything wrong by firing Michael Ovitz and handing him a $140 million severance check, the giddy, disgraced former uber-agent celebrated by commissioning suggestive headlines about the trial's outcome. Don't judge—everyone needs to feel good about themselves once in a while.
We'll leave the dry analysis of what yesterday's Disney victory in the Hollywood Trial of the Century means for corporate governance and executive compensation to people with "real jobs" who "understand what happened." We're satisfied to focus on the semi-human reaction to the landmark decision, as delivered in a heartfelt statement read by the lawyer of the trial's central figure:
The Hollywood Trial of the Century ended this afternoon in a Disney victory, with a Delaware judge ruling that while it certainly may have a been a pretty dumb idea for Michael Eisner to hire onetime "life partner" Michael Ovitz to help him run the Mouse, then give him a $140 million kiss-off 14 months later when the duo discovered that they would no longer cross a street to urinate on each other if they were engulfed in life-threatening flames, the nine-figure boner didn't constitute a breach of executive duty. Guess there's some kind of ten-figure threshhold where an "oopsie" becomes punishable negligence.
While it seemed like Disney CEO-in-waiting Bob Iger was sending a message to the world with this fortuitously placed ad on the NYT website, now it looks like someone's trying to slip him a warning in the same space.* And by "someone," we think it's pretty obvious we mean "Michael Ovitz." If Ovitz is trying to slip a note to Iger, he's being a little melodramatic; working underneath Michael Eisner didn't kill him, just his career.
We hope that former superagent/Disney president-for-a-day Michael Ovitz hasn't packed away his nicest court suits, because he's being sued by a former pal and business partner Ron Burkle over some failed dot-coms. When billionaires sue mere hundred-millionaires over amounts equal to their Aspen ski chalet decorating budgets, things are guaranteed to get nasty:
Both Disney CEO Michael Eisner and former president/erstwhile "Most Powerful Man in Hollywood" Michael Ovitz hoped to come out of the Hollywood Trial of the Century with their reputations intact, if not restored. That didn't exactly work out now, did it? With the trial ending yesterday, we're left with images of their comically dysfunctional relationship, with Eisner undermining his "psychopath" "soulmate" Ovitz at every turn, and Ovitz whispering in his ear, willing to do anything to get back in his good graces. Denying he was jockeying for some image rehab, Ovitz desperately clings to the idea that "the facts" will set him free:
As if the comparison between Viacom co-president/positivity coach Tom Freston's hiring of manager Brad Grey to run Paramount and Michael Eisner's fateful decision to hire BFF and erstwhile superagent Michael Ovitz to run Disney weren't excruciatingly obvious, the LAT helpfully provides this neon Bad Idea sign:
· Michael Ovitz will produce a feature version of the Tom Clancy videogame Splinter Cell for Paramount. Ovitz is back, baby! By the end of next week, he'll demand that Paramount make him president and erect a bronze statue in his likeness on top of their famous water tower. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Diane Keaton, Sarah Jessica Parker and Dermot Mulroney join Claire Danes, Rachel McAdams and Luke Wilson in the Fox 2000 romantic comedy formerly known as Hating Her, and now tentatively titled Kind of Like Meet the Parents Meets Anything That Meg Ryan Was In Before The Surgery. [THR]
· Working Title Productions has picked up the spec feature Suicide Squad, a caper where a suicide hotline operator "recruits a ragtag group of suicidal outcasts to help him knock over a horse track." You know what? We kind of love this idea, but it's only going to end in disaster when they cast Josh Hartnett. [THR]
· Fox hires former Golden Girls showrunner Mort Nathan to write the sitcom Spirit of America, which will mine endless laughs from the hilarious situation in Iraq. [Variety]
· Fox fails to learn the lessons of this TV season and keeps moving forward with the Fox Reality Channel, hiring David Lyle to run the network that will provide a new outlet for their low-rated reality show flops. [THR]
During the course of The Hollywood Trial of the Century, erstwhile superagent and Disney president-for-a-day Michael Ovitz has been called a "psychopath," a "total failure" who couldn't even lie properly, and a "cancer." With the trial winding down as we approach the holidays, the LAW's Nikki Finke piles on by pointing crotchward at Ovitz and snickering:
· Switching to a strategy in which they will only try to court viewers who live within the Los Angeles city limits, Showtime fast-tracks the production of Two Blind Mikes, the story of Michael Eisner and Michael Ovitz's love affair gone sour. Do the Showtime folks know something we don't about how The Hollywood Trial of the Century is going to turn out? [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Warner Bros. becomes the first studio to make over $2 billion internationally in one year. Apparently, Troy and Last Samurai play much better with overdubbing or subtitles. [THR]
· Nicole Kidman ditches the new The Producers movie, claiming she's way too busy to learn the songs and dance routines. [Variety]
· Snoop Dogg will star in and produce a Coach Snoop, a film about his experiences coaching his son's football team. Said Snoop, "But most importantly during the football season, if you aren't wearing a helmet, get the fuck away from me. Football first; everything else second." Well, everything else but weed. [THR]
· HBO claims their in-show product placements are all driven by story and add extra realism, instead of adding huge amounts of cash to the network. Right. Nothing's more real than stealth cash from advertisers. [THR]
With the "psychopath" epithet tossed into the fray early in testimony at The Hollywood Trial of the Century, we knew that it wouldn't be long before someone laid the "cancer" metaphor at Michael Ovitz's feet. Today's testimony, however, contained a much more interesting image courtesy of a former Disney director:
Bereft of high-profile, superstar witnesses (let's face it, the endless parade of current and former Disney executives lacks sizzle) the The Hollywood Trial of the Century hasn't been capturing the town's imagination the way it once was. But in yesterday's testimony, Disney director Gary Wilson recounted how CEO Michael Eisner asked him to take Michael Ovitz out on a "boat ride" and "talk some sense" into him.
Apparently taking a break from writing himself a movie in which he gets to have sex with a woman young enough to be his granddaughter, Woody Allen pens a "Shouts & Murmurs" piece imagining what it might sound like if lawyers called Mickey Mouse to the stand to testify in The Hollywood Trial of the Century:
With the delicious testimonies of Disney CEO Michael Eisner and erstwhile superagent/president-for-a-minute Michael Ovitz fading from memory, the heat on The Hollywood Trial of the Century has all but dissipated. While Ovitz's pathological denial made him feel his time on the witness stand helped to rehabilitate his battered rep around town (being called a "psychopath" isn't so bad, right?), he took another beating in Tuesday's proceedings, when former Disney chief legal counsel branded Ovitz a "total failure." As if this tarring wasn't enough, Litvack dumped the feathers on the ex-president's head, sneakily impugning Ovtiz's vaunted lying ability by claiming that he never lied about any "material" issues while at the Mouse.
Stephen Bollenbach, Disney's chief financial officer during the Ovitz Debacle, took the stand at The Hollywood Trial of the Century and described the former president's "odd" managerial style. Among Ovitz's more charming behaviors was gathering his executives and asking them whom they thought was the most important person in history (among the answers: Jesus and Eisner) and showily pulling aside CEO Michael Eisner to conspicuously whisper in his ear.
The fourth day of Disney CEO Michael Eisner's testimony in The Hollywood Trial of the Century featured Eisner proving that it's not only agents that lie, as he and about-to-be-executed president Michael Ovitz attempted a face-saving, investor-appeasing appearance on Larry King Live in 1996. The two did everything short of an on-air tattooing of heart-encircled "Mike & Mike 4-ever" pledges on each other's chests to make their relationship seem copacetic.
Ken Auletta's explosive article on Harvey Weinstein in this week's New Yorker is sure to warrant Auletta an unpleasant visit from the fat man in blackand probably already has. Harvey insists that he's really lovable guy who just has a passion for movies and occasionally gets carried away. Very Michael Ovitz of him.
This week in the New Yorker [New Yorker]
