Today's LAT previews the Disney shareholder lawsuit over Michael Ovitz's disastrous term at Mouse Headquarters, noting that CEO Michael Eisner and Ovitz are going to have to play nice during the litigation—but not too nice—to avoid getting fleeced by the plaintiff. We're really trying to disassociate the term "Gay Mafia" from Ovitz, but there are about a dozen ways to read quotes like these, all of them filthy:

[Ovitz's] firm, Creative Artists Agency, represented numerous A-list actors and directors, including Tom Cruise, Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand and Steven Spielberg. He will contend in court, according to deposition testimony, that after Eisner lured him away, he "never came out and took my back. Ever."

It seems so simple: If Eisner had merely "come" and "taken" Ovitz's "back," this ugly situation—the lawsuit, the Gay Mafia paranoia, their ruined friendship—could have been avoided. We're sure Disney's army of Imagineers are hard at work on a time machine and will eventually correct this mess, and the resulting alternate reality will be a better, less litigious one.

[Photo: Chris Pizello/AP]

• It's a Small World After All: Eisner, Ovitz United in Court [LAT, reg. req'd.]


• Michael Ovitz's Disney Expense Account Binge [Defamer]

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