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Some observers have trouble picturing Eisner, 53, and Ovitz, 48, coexisting in the same company. Eisner calls it a partnership, but Ovitz's title is president--not president and chief operating officer, as Wells' had been before his death in a helicopter crash last year. On the company's official power flowchart, Ovitz is below Eisner and just above chief financial officer Steve Bollenbach and chief of corporate operations Sanford Litvack, who continue to report to the chairman. "How can he run the operation," an industry potentate wonders, "when the operations people don't report to him? Ovitz is the most calculating person who walks the earth--and I say that as a compliment. So there must be another agenda at work here."
As an agent, Ovitz had hundreds of masters. "I've always worked for clients," Ovitz says. "You're always working for somebody." Now he has to please only two people: Eisner and himself. "What's important is what Mike wanted for himself and feels good about," says Freddie Fields, a film producer and the former head of Creative Management Associates, "not what other people perceive of his move." Jim Wiatt, president of International Creative Management, spoke with Ovitz last week and says, "He sounded very relieved and happy he had made a decision--any decision. But clearly he's happy he made this decision."
It's been a long, gold-paved road for the Agent on High. In 1969, after ucla (major: psychology),he entered the William Morris Agency via the mail room and was soon packaging daytime TV shows. In 1975 he founded CAA with four William Morris partners, and within a decade it was Hollywood's largest agency. Now Ovitz packaged movies, presenting a studio with star, director and script of big-ticket properties; some (Ghostbusters, Rain Man) were hits, others (Legal Eagles, Havana) pricey flops. He brokered the multibillion-dollar sales of Columbia and MCA (twice). He brought the telephone companies to Hollywood. Along the way, he made deals, fortunes, kings and enemies.
Eisner and Ovitz go way back. In the early '70s, Ovitz was pitching show ideas to Eisner at abc. Eisner tried to hire him then and, a few years later, at Paramount. After Wells' death, Eisner put out further feelers. The occasional business spat--Eisner was angry that Ovitz's client Letterman spurned a Disney TV offer--never soured their relationship. The two families often vacation together. Decades ago, when the Manhattan-bred Eisner first visited Disneyland, California boy Ovitz was his guide.
Last month, three days before he announced Disney's acquisition of Cap Cities, Eisner called Ovitz and asked him to come to his home. "It's nothing bad," he assured Ovitz, meaning that Eisner, who last year underwent a quadruple bypass, had no medical crisis to report. He spelled out the abc deal to Ovitz, adding, "We now have this giant company, and I'd like you to seriously think about this." Ovitz, Eisner says, "was shocked." Two week s later, the friends went hiking in the 12,095-ft. elevation of Independence Pass, near Aspen, Colorado. Eisner again popped the question, and Ovitz agreed. Why, finally, this time? Reports Ovitz: "He said, 'Please.' "