Excellent oral history of CAA which succeeds in getting many key players on the record. Its big flaw is it becomes a lot less interesting once Ron Meyer and Mike Ovitz leave the agency - the ones who are left are super confident and all that but they aren't as colorful and their narrative arc isn't as interesting. I wasn't that fascinated with how CAA became involved in sports.
For me the gold stuff was in the ego clash between agents, leading to Ovtiz leaving, and how they helped films get made - Ovitz was particularly important in rejuvenating Martin Scorsese's career and did wonders for Tom Cruise and Barry Levinson in particularly. I didn't know Edgar Bronfman badly wanted CAA to run Universal (Ron Meyer was the one who ended up going).It was surprising and great to hear Bill Murray analyse CAA and his agents with such preciseness. Ron Meyer comes out of this very well but I think Ovitz comes out of it strongly too.
In hindsight you can see the seeds for the current WGA dispute - CAA gets bought out by TPG increasing the need to make money; also you can see why Me Too happened - these agencies are devoted to helping their clients you can imagine a little sexual harrassment getting swept under the carpet.
There's a lot of ego, hard work, dedication, personal narrative. There's occasionally some love for movies but I think everyone who worked at CAA just liked being part of the circus.
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