Ovitz: The Inside Story of Hollywood's Most Controversial Power Broker - Hardcover

Slater, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0070581037 ISBN 13: 9780070581036

Publisher: McGraw-Hill, 1997

Synopsis

Recounts the talent agent's rise to power in the entertainment industry and his downfall as the president of the Walt Disney Company.

About this title

Review:

Once the most powerful and feared agent in Hollywood, the notoriously press-phobic Michael Ovitz cooperated with this biographer, so you won't hear about the arrogance or bullying business tactics that were common Tinseltown knowledge. (For a more critical evaluation, see the July 7, 1997 issue of Fortune.) Instead, you get a revealing account of his childhood and his only public discussion of his disastrous 14 months as president of the Walt Disney Company. It's a worthwhile trade, but bear in mind that it's only one side of the story.

Review:

His career as an agent--and his astonishing year as president of the Walt Disney Company ... is the basis for an utterly reverential biography Ovitz by Robert Slater ... Not only did Mr. Slater extensively interview Mr. Ovitz, which is unusual, since the former agent has terrible relations with the press, but he was also given access to Mr. Ovitz's family, associates and some top clients like Mr. Hoffman, Tom Cruise, Robin Williams, Jerry Seinfeld, Barry Levinson and Magic Johnson. Yet Mr. Slater either failed to interview anyone who had a harsh word to say about Mr. Ovitz ... or didn't believe that his subject was flawed. -- The New York Times Book Review, Bernard Weinraub

Ovitz has made a career out of being persuasive--and he has certainly manhandled biographer Slater.... This "inside story" needs more outside perspective. -- Entertainment Weekly, Caren Weiner

About this edition

• Publisher: McGraw-Hill
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0070581037
• ISBN 13: 9780070581036
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 360