Now that Emanuel has successfully merged Endeavor, the agency he co-founded, with the venerable William Morris Agency, he has the opportunity to "fuck CAA," something that's been rumored to motivate him to get out of bed each morning. How will Emanuel do it? By controlling everything.

Ari Emanuel has made a bold calculation: in order to survive, talent firms are going to have to do more. They must stop being simple deal-makers, become "mega-agencies" – vast, multi-faceted companies with marketing departments, events divisions, and new media offshoots which help clients to leverage income from a wide variety of sources.

Agents will also have to take a more pro-active role in the actual creation of films, making them more likely to be called upon to "package" a production: attaching directors, producers, and actors from their own stable to a particular project, before selling it to the studios.

In such a business, larger firms boast a huge competitive advantage. CAA recently announced it will move into new territory financing new films. Taken to its natural conclusion, this could dramatically alter the sort of films that make it to cinemas.

Optimists, which Hollywood is never short of, believe that this represents the potential to produce a new "golden age" of film-making, where power is returned to creatives, instead of being stifled by studios. "Ari created his new firm because he knew he had to be big to be at the level where he could successfully do that," says a former colleague of Emanuel's. "It's a gamble, frankly, but if anyone can pull it off, he can."

Whether or not "packaging" and the ever-growing power of Hollywood talent management firms is a good or bad thing is open to debate, and frankly we're kind of torn on the matter, but for anyone to suggest, as the anonymous "optimists" cited in the article do, that the industry's progression toward mega-agencies is even remotely rooted in an idealistic desire to revitalize its level of artistic integrity is, well, just plain stupid.

The types of people who become agents are almost universally motivated by one thing—Money. And sex, but mostly money. Even more so than the people who work in studios, agents are driven by greed. Just ask anyone who's ever had an agent in Hollywood and we're pretty sure that they'll confirm that. Not that's there's anything all too necessarily wrong with that, we just felt compelled to address that ridiculous fantasy here and now.

Finally, with all this hype going around about Ari Emanuel, we're kind of eager to see how his inevitable downfall will play out. Will some renegade screenwriter step up to be the Joe Eszterhas to Ari's Mike Ovitz? Regardless, we give Ari's reign of terror somewhere between five and ten years, depending on how long his brother is working in the White House. Hollywood may be a town full of pricks, but it's a town with a history of taking down any one prick that dares to swell too much bigger than any of the others.

Ari Emanuel: 21st Century Hollywood Mogul [Independent]

In April 2002, an agent named Sandra Epstein sued Endeavor, alleging, among other things, sexual harassment and pointing out that at one point she had been the lone woman among a dozen male agents. ...

Mr. Emanuel, the filings said, allowed a friend to operate a pornographic Web site out of the agency’s quarters. Also, according to Ms. Epstein’s filings, Mr. Emanuel made antigay and racist remarks — accusations he disputed at the time.

Ms. Epstein said Mr. Emanuel blocked her from sending a script about the Navy Seals to the actor Wesley Snipes. “That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” the agent was reported in the papers to have said. “Everyone knows that blacks don’t swim.”

It's all good now, reports the Times's Michael Cieply, and thank God: We'd hate to see CAA get too far ahead when it comes to classiness.

• Agents Replaying a Hollywood Drama [NYT]

The LA Times's Carla Hall, meanwhile, has courtroom sketches:

Before the verdicts were read, Pellicano seemed at ease, grinning and scanning the room. But when he realized the jury had found him guilty, he crossed his arms, took his glasses off and looked around with a blank expression. A woman on the jury dabbed her eyes with a tissue.

We cried a little, too, for all the potential laid waste in this clusterfuck of justice: The potential for Anita Busch's comeback after Pellicano's dead-fish threat and wiretaps ended her career. The potential for Busch-destroyer Michael Ovitz to get a shovel in the back of the neck after slithering off the witness stand. The potential for the bottomless filth of Scary Hollywood Lawyer Bert Fields' testimony, which never came. The potential for "Mr. Pellicano," as he was forced to refer to himself as his own counsel, to just say, "Yeah, fuck it. Put me away; let's all go home." Or the potential for us to give half a shit this was even happening, day after drawn-out day, even under the threat of mistrial.

Pellicano is indeed going home — like "federal prison" home, up to 10 years' worth, we hear. He'd be 74 when he got out, with a few years left to enjoy the fruits of keeping his mouth shut: A couple well-scrubbed dollars trickling in now and then from grateful clients to whom he's anything but the footnote the rest of us will know. At the end of the day — especially today — we struggle to care but somehow wish there was more, as if it was all just about to get good.

Alas, the end is as good as it gets, when we can at last peel away the "alleged" and say yeah, the fucker did it. Finally. And good riddance.

[Photo Credit: LAT]

Under stern cross-examination by Pellicano, who was wearing green prison drab and white sneakers, Busch became emotional again.

"I was scared 24/7 for my life," she said. "I didn't know how I was going to survive financially. I thought (the book) would be the way to do it, but I realized it was not the right way. It was a big mistake. After the threats and everything happened to me, I couldn't focus. Because of the wiretap, my sources fell away. I struggled to be a journalist, but I couldn't continue. I couldn't see a future, I saw everything slipping away. I didn't know what I was going to do."

At this point Busch couldn't speak and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. "It was a relentless attack, Mr. Pellicano, as you know."

The judge wasn't having any of that. Nor, alas, will he have any more of Ovitz slithering out of a criminal courtroom; as Allison Hope Weiner noted late Wednesday at The Huffington Post, California's statute of limitations put an end to that hope:

A source close to the case (who didn't want to be identified because they believe that Mr. Ovitz should have been charged) happened to mention that the statute runs out today on any charges in connection with Mr. Ovitz's alleged wiretapping of his enemies (including Ms. Busch). So, the good news for Mr. Ovitz is that unless he committed perjury today during his testimony today, he's in the clear.

However, Busch's civil case against Ovitz still has a future pending the outcome of the Pellicano verdict, and there's always that hovering rumor of CAA's Bryan Lourd and Kevin Huvane laying waste to their former boss with a civil charge of their own. God's spokespeople, meanwhile, declined comment on the status of Ovitz's pending damnation, suggesting the potential civil verdicts would eventually influence the temperature of his eternity. We can hardly wait.

• Busch, Pellicano face off [Variety]
• Ovitz in the Spotlight and in the Clear... [The Huffington Post]

Talking about how difficult a time he was having selling his company AMG in May, 2002, Mr. Ovitz tried to elicit sympathy from the jury while he talked about using Mr. Pellicano to get "embarrassing information" on his enemies. "Yes, it was an extraordinarily difficult time for the company and for me," he said, looking pained by the memory. "There was all this negative press saying we had client problems and financial problems. There were morale problems as well."

"All I wanted was a graceful exit from the business," explained Mr. Ovitz. And, apparently, in order to get that graceful exit, he needed to stop the articles being written by [Anita] Busch and [Bernard] Weinraub. As to the information Pellicano gave him, Mr. Ovitz expressed gratitude to Mr. Pellicano for providing such good stuff. "It was incredibly helpful to me," he said of the information.

Naturally, HuffPo correspondent and resident A/V geektress Allison Hope Weiner has audio excerpts of Ovitz's pants-pissing chats with Pellicano, while Nikki Finke just published brief testimony transcripts Ovitz fingering Ron Meyer and David Geffen as sources of the ever-threatening Busch/Weinraub articles in The New York Times. Meanwhile, court is in recess until Thursday pending the clean up of acrid old douche around the witness stand.

• Pellicano Trial: Michael Ovitz Testifies About How Much He Appreciated The Information He Got [HuffPo]
• Ovitz Testifies Busch/Weinraub NYT Articles "Wildly Embarrassing" [DHD]

Pellicano himself fed speculation that the CAA partners suspected the shamus of bugging their offices last week when Huvane and Lourd testified at his trial. Acting as his own lawyer, Pellicano asked Huvane if he knew a private investigator named Richard Di Sabatino.

The judge said Huvane didn't have to answer the question. But Di Sabatino is known to specialize in "electronic countermeasures" - detecting evesdropping devices - a service he reportedly provided Nicole Kidman during her divorce from Tom Cruise. Di Sabatino declined comment.

Pellicano's spectacular self-destruction — often accompanied by these gleeful grabs at anyone he can take down with him — are of course their own galactic phenomena; as such, a CAA rep dutifully denied reports that Lourd and Huvane are planning a lawsuit against Ovitz. Still, a well-placed source likes the duo's chances for "invasion of privacy and tortuous interference of business opportunity" if/when Pellicano gets sent away, as if they need an anonymous lawyer to excuse their urge to fire a hot, colorful conflagration into Ovitz's living room. The Death Star waits for no verdict.

[Photo Credit: Getty]

• Feud with Ovitz spied [NYDN]

The former reporter, Anita M. Busch, originally filed a civil suit in 2004 that identified Pellicano, several of his associates and numerous unnamed defendants as responsible for an alleged campaign of "threats, intimidation, harassment and invasion of privacy for the purpose of deterring ... and retaliating against [Busch] for investigating and writing articles about the entertainment business."

An amendment to the civil complaint, which was filed Monday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, states that one of those unnamed defendants — identified earlier as "Doe 4" — is Ovitz, a co-founder of one of Hollywood's best known talent agencies, Creative Artists Agency. [...]

The suit says only that he was one of dozens of defendants who were involved in "directing, organizing, commanding, employing and/or hiring individuals to engage in the unlawful and tortious conduct." [...]

According to the indictment, Busch had her records illegally accessed on May 16, 2002, less than a month before she found a fish with a rose in its mouth and a note reading "Stop" on the windshield of her car.

It's important to note that "Busch's filing details no alleged actions by Ovitz," giving no advance insight into what, if any, part he may have played in the infamous windshield incident. If Ovitz is somehow conclusively tied to it, we suspect that no one would be surprised to learn that the fish and rose combination was his idea, as it's been previously alleged that impossibly cheesy threats of women who displease him are kind of "his thing."

• Suit links Ovitz to Pellicano case [LAT]

"Michael Ovitz never agreed to pay Anthony Pellicano to investigate Ron Burkle," Mr. Williams said. "However, it's not surprising that Mr. Pellicano would try to mislead Mr. Burkle in an effort to drum up business."

Indeed, the material reviewed by The Times shows Mr. Pellicano playing Mr. Burkle and Mr. Ovitz against each other, seeking to use his mission in behalf of Mr. Ovitz to gain a much bigger payday from Mr. Burkle. [...]

Mr. Pellicano warned Mr. Burkle that he had already obtained all of his telephone numbers, and "was prepared to use any and every means to" investigate Mr. Burkle, but first asked him to tell his version of his dispute with Mr. Ovitz, Mr. Burkle told the F.B.I.

When Mr. Burkle did so, asserting that Mr. Ovitz owed him money, he told the F.B.I., Mr. Pellicano reacted indignantly, using an expletive to refer to Mr. Ovitz and saying he did not work for "welshers" — an exchange that was partly reported in Vanity Fair in 2004. But in the next breath, Mr. Burkle told the F.B.I., Mr. Pellicano said he would be losing a lot of money by not working for Mr. Ovitz against Mr. Burkle and the men from C.A.A. A few days later, Mr. Burkle met again with Mr. Pellicano, this time in a poolside cabana at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Mr. Pellicano declared that his refusal to work for Mr. Ovitz against Mr. Burkle had cost him $100,000 to $250,000, and asked Mr. Burkle to reimburse him.

Mr. Burkle refused, saying that Mr. Pellicano had not actually done any work worthy of payment. Mr. Pellicano shot back that "he had been good to Burkle and that Burkle should return the favor," according to an F.B.I. summary.

Exhausted? Yeah, we are too. Splash some water on your face, stand up at your desk and stretch a little, and promptly return to not caring about the story until another director or studio head gets tangled up in this mess.

Related: Nikki Finke points out how one crisis-managing flack seems to be making a nice living off the Pellicano clusterfuck.

• Billionaire Linked to Columnist Reports Being Shaken Down by a Hollywood Detective [NY Times]

AT least Mike Ovitz still has a sense of humor. The former superagent turned Hollywood pariah, who's now caught up in the Anthony Pellicano affair, dined with his wife, Judy, on Valentine's Day at West Village foodie mecca Blue Hill. Apparently, Ovitz - who famously blamed the "gay mafia" for his many travails in a scandalicious 2002 Vanity Fair profile - didn't realize he was in "enemy" territory: "On either side of the Ovitz table there were two gay male couples in their late 30s," says our spy. "One was an accomplished screenwriter . . . as the guy's returning from the bathroom, he sashays past the Ovitz table and sticks out his two index fingers like he's pointing two guns at Mike and says, 'Bang! Bang! You're surrounded!' " Continues our tipster: "There was a second or two of uncomfortable silence" before Ovitz let out a huge belly laugh. "Everyone around his table knew exactly what the guy was referring to, and started laughing along with him. It was surreal." To top it all off, the newly chastened power player left a 45 percent tip. "I hope the gay mob lets him live cause he's one hell of a tipper," our spy squealed.

We don't know what evokes more pity in us: the thought that every time Ovitz dines out, he has to worry that his waiter is a member of the gay mob waiting to pistol-whip him with finger guns, or the suspicion that he's now planting items in Page Six about what a great tipper he is to avoid further uncomfortable confrontations like this one.

• VILLAGE VENGEANCE FOR OVITZ [NY Post]
• Previously: The Anthony Pellicano Trial Of The Century: Ovitz’s Cheesy Threats [Defamer]

According to a lawyer involved in the case, Ms. Schulman told F.B.I. agents in an interview in June 2004 of conversations in which Mr. Ovitz recounted to her details of her private discussions with major Hollywood figures as soon as a day after they had occurred, and told her that he had sources who could provide him with such information.

The lawyer said Ms. Schulman told investigators that on Dec. 1, 2001, she had met secretly with Ron Meyer, the head of Universal Studios, to discuss issues involving a joint venture partner, Studio Canal, and Artists Management.

The next day, Ms. Schulman told the F.B.I., Mr. Ovitz confronted her about the meeting. Ms. Schulman asked how he knew about it, to which Mr. Ovitz responded: "I have eyes and ears everywhere. There's nothing you can do that I won't find out about."

An AMG lawyer blamed the information leaks on a gossipy secretary, denying any shady Pellicano involvement. But Schulman became suspicious that some kind of surveillance was being conducted when Ovitz, rather than leaving his bold, if cheesy, attempt at intimidation well enough alone, added, "What, no courtesy flush this morning, Cathy? I expect better from a classy lady like you."

• Broader Inquiry Examines Ovitz Ties to Detective [NY Times]
• Previously: Naomi Campbell Would Rather Die Than Not Talk To Sylvester Stallone [Defamer]

· Wife Judy Ovitz scolded her for buying a new iron when the old one had a frayed and dangerous cord.

· The Ovitzes offered to pay for Hansen to have a manicure once every two weeks, but made her pay the $2 if she broke a nail and it had to be replaced.

· When Ovitz checked in from a Mediterranean vacation, his first question was, "Is my art okay?"

· When the Ovitzes received a pair of stuffed Mickey and Minnie Mouse dolls from Michael Eisner, Ovitz's future boss at Disney, for their anniversary, Judy griped, "That's it. The Eisners have more money than God, and what do they get us for our anniversary. Two stuffed rodents. I'll bet they didn't even pay for them."

Admittedly, we're not exactly up to date on the best-nanny-practices of the industry's elite, but whatever sympathy we felt about potential electrocution hazards of the Ovitz workplace was quickly dissipated by the thought of complaining about insufficient manicure-maintenance benefits. If you're going to write a tell-all about a player like Ovitz, anything less than a highly detailed account of a time he stuck the barrel of .357 magnum in his assistant's mouth and politely reminded him that there's no such combination of words in the English language as, "His secretary said he's unavailable," then casually urinated on a Bruce Willis headshot, is going to be a major disappointment.

• Ex-nanny gives Ovitz a spanking [NY Daily News]

• Walt Disney executive’s package [Legalbrief.co.za]
• Previously: Hollywood Trial Of The Century: The Aftermath: Ovitz Reacts! [Defamer]

[Former superagent Michael] Ovitz, while on a boating vacation in the Mediterranean with his family, said through his lawyer that he was relieved by the decision. "Obviously, I'm pleased that the chancellor found the allegations against me to be completely groundless," he said. "I'm looking forward to putting this behind me and moving ahead with my life."

We can almost see Ovitz on the deck of his yacht, a satellite phone to his ear, dictating to his lawyer as he looks out over the placid sea. "You think it's a good idea if we put something in about how fucking happy I am that I get to keep the whole hundred million or whatever it was? No? That's too smug? OK, then let's cut the part where I brag to the shareholders about how this boat runs on hundred-dollar bills, and it gets shitty mileage."

• Judge Rules in Favor of Disney in Ovitz Case but Criticizes Eisner [LAT]
• Hollywood Trial Of The Century Finally Ends In Disney Triumph [Defamer]

We're sure that the morning will bring further analysis of the landmark decision, and we'll use the intervening time to try to come to terms with the feelings of loss and abandonment we're experiencing now that a verdict has been rendered. Thumb-sucking, the fetal position, and a soothing session with the Fantasia 2000 DVD may be involved.

• Judge Sides With Disney Board Over Ovitz [AP]
• Disney Dodges Ovitz Bullet [LAT]
• Mickey smites Mike [Variety]

[*The ad's gone now, but we screen-capped it last night after an eagle-eyed reader noticed it.]

• Iger Is Said to Be Choice for New Chief at Disney [NYT]
• 
  
• Disney Taps Iger [Defamer]

Burkle said in a statement Thursday: "Every day I wake up, knowing I'm still Ron Burkle, not Michael Ovitz, and every day Michael Ovitz wakes up knowing he's still Michael Ovitz."

We're going to have to disagree with Gagillionaire Number One on this. By now Ovitz has certainly developed some kind of psychological coping mechanism where he wakes up imagining that he's someone who hasn't lost all of his power in Hollywood. (Say, Barry Diller?) Otherwise, he would've crashed a Disney shareholder meeting and dramatically self-immolated by now.

• Burkle, Ovitz Trade Barbs Over Websites [LAT, reg. req'd.]

In a statement Wednesday, Ovitz said: "I never really viewed the trial as any type of reputational battle. I simply wanted the real facts to come out — under oath — and speak for themselves. And I believe they did in this case. Now, I'm looking forward to putting this behind me and moving on. There are a lot of exciting things I still intend to do."

As he enters this post-trial period of diminished expectations, Ovitz would probably settle for visiting Disneyland without suffering the indignity of watching children fire water guns into a replica of his head until a balloon pops, or eating out at The Ivy without running a gauntlet of people coughing "douchebag" into their fists.

• Ovitz, Eisner Can Win and Still Lose [LAT, reg. req'd.]


• Previously: Hollywood Trial Of The Century: Delaware Ain't Hollywood [Defamer]