History
Talent agents employed by the William Morris Agency—Mike Rosenfeld, Michael Ovitz, Ron Meyer, William Haber and Rowland Perkins—met over dinner one night in 1975 after they discovered that they all had the same idea in mind: creating an agency of their own. Before they could obtain adequate financing for their new venture, they were fired.
By early 1975, Creative Artists Agency was in business, with a $35,000 line of credit and a $21,000 bank loan, in a small Century City rented office outfitted with card tables and folding chairs. The five agents had only two cars among them, and their wives took turns as agency receptionist. Within about a week, according to one industry insider, they had sold their first three packages, a game show called 'Rhyme and Reason', the 'Rich Little Show' and the 'Jackson Five Show'.
At first, CAA's founders planned to form a medium-sized, full-service agency—one that was as unlike Morris as possible in approach and feel. Ovitz, who shortly assumed de facto leadership of the agency, described the company's corporate culture as a blend of Eastern philosophy and team sports. 'I liken myself to the guy running down the court with four other players and throwing the ball to the open guy,' he once said. Their partnership was based on teamwork with proceeds shared equally. There were no nameplates on doors, no formal titles, no individual agent client lists. Practices followed the company's two 'commandments': Be a team player and return phone calls promptly. There was an endless stream of meetings and talk. Because of this, others sometimes referred to CAA agents as the "Moonies" of the business according to the authors of Hit and Run, the best-selling Hollywood insider account by Griffin and Masters.
In the late 1980s, CAA's growing success enabled it to commission I.M. Pei to design a new headquarters building at the corner of Santa Monica and Wilshire Boulevards in Beverly Hills. Like most of Pei's work, the 75,000-square-foot (7,000 m2), three story building is a series of geometric forms: consisting of two curved wings, one mainly of glass and one mainly of masonry, set around a central atrium with a skylight that rises to become a low, conical glass tower. The vast 57-foot (17 m) high atrium was designed as an art-filled formal reception hall with a 100-seat screening room and gourmet kitchen and displays a 27-foot (8.2 m) by 18-foot (5.5 m) mural by Roy Lichtenstein, "Bauhaus Stairway: The Large Version". The mural was created specifically for the building and is too large to move. Ovitz was enamored of Asian culture, and incorporated feng shui design practices to allow chi, or positive energy, to flow smoothly through the building.
Ovitz still owns the building along with three of his former CAA colleagues—Universal Studios President Ron Meyer, producer Bill Haber and former Chief Financial Officer Robert Goldman.
Read more about this topic: Creative Artists Agency
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