Belushi, CAA, Ovitz, Pelicano & An MJ Conspiracy?
My post on John Belushi has had me look deeper into CAA and Michael Ovitz and other connections to MJ...
Here is the original post and this is a work in progress
http://michaeljacksonhoaxforum.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=13343&start=25#p223114
The huge owl statue in Bohemian Grove is called Moloch and the members make a sacrifice of a human "effigy" it.
Moloch
Moloch, Molech, Molekh, Molek, or Moloc, representing Semitic root which occurs in various Hebrew and Arabic words related to kings, is either the name of a god or the name of a particular kind of child sacrifice associated with fire. Moloch was historically affiliated with cultures throughout the Middle East, including the Ammonite, Hebrew, Canaanite, Phoenician and related cultures in North Africa and the Levant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moloch
Moloch
A deity to whom child sacrifices were made throughout the ancient Middle East. The name derives from combining the consonants of the Hebrew melech (“king”) with the vowels of boshet (“shame”), the latter often being used in the Old Testament as a variant name for the popular god Baal (“Lord”).
The laws given to Moses by God expressly forbade the Jews to do what was done in Egypt or in Canaan. “You shall not give any of your children to devote them by fire to Moloch, and so profane the name of your God” (Lev. 18:21). Contemporary scholars now debate whether the Hebrews did initiate their children to Moloch by fire or whether the law is a prohibition against the possibility that they might take up this custom.
Later kings Ahaz (2 Kings 16:3) and Manasseh (2 Kings 21:6), having been influenced by the Assyrians, worshiped Moloch at the hilled site of Topheth, outside the walls of Jerusalem. This site flourished under Manasseh’s son King Amon but was destroyed during the reign of Josiah, the reformer. “And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the sons of Hinnom, that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Moloch” (2 Kings 23:10
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/388467/Moloch
The Owl and Luciferianism - By David J. Stewart
The Bohemian Club is a rich-man’s organization that holds a two-week “camp” in northern California every year at the end of July. This strange and secretive group, which have received very little press coverage, have a 40-foot owl as its central symbol. Each year, approximately 1,500 of America’s most influential CEO’s, government officials, financiers, industrialists, and media moguls gather to hear speeches, network, and share common agendas. They also perform Druid-like ceremonies before a huge stone owl, complete with robes, fire, incantations, and other rituals.
To help you lose more sleep tonight, take a look at what's hidden on every U.S. one dollar bill, that's right, an owl...
There is a small owl just to the left of the "1" which appears on the upper right hand corner of the Dollar Bill. But what does the owl symbolize? The owl is a symbol of wisdom. Owls can see in the dark. They can see what we cannot see. Likewise, members of the Illuminati are privileged to information that is hidden from the general public.
The owl is a nocturnal bird of prey with strong talons. The owl has been associated with wisdom, books, Occult knowledge, shamanism and other spiritual matters. As mentioned, the owl is a bird of the night, so an association with the moon is also suggested. They have short tail feathers and are silent in flight, stealth like. They seem curious about things but are happy to sit and wait until the time is right to obtain their goals (catch or conquer their prey).
The demon goddess Lilith is represented throughout history as an owl. A study of the demon goddess of Lilith will reveal the dark secrets behind the owl of Bohemian grove.
Few magickal orders exist dedicated to the undercurrent of Lilith and deal in initiations specifically related to the Aracana of the first Mother. Two reputable organizations that progressively use initiations and magick associated with Lilith are the Ordo Antichristianus Illuminati and the Order of Phosphorus. Author Joshua Seraphim has written three texts associated with the egregore of Lilith entitled "Rite of Lilith," "Confessionis ex Lilitu," and the "Lamentations of Lilith."
Lilith appears as a succubus in Aleister Crowley's De Arte Magica. Lilith was also one of the middle names of Crowley’s first child, Ma Ahathoor Hecate Sappho Jezebel Lilith Crowley (b. 1904, d.1906). She is sometimes identified with Babylon in Thelemic writings.
A Thelemic rite, based on an earlier German rite, offers the invocation of Lilith (warning: an article on how to summons Satan). Read here about the wicked witchcraft of Lilith, and how it relates to the OWL...
READ MORE AT THE LINK:
http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/False%20Religions/Wicca%20&%20Witchcraft/owl.htm[/quote]
Here is the original post and this is a work in progress
http://michaeljacksonhoaxforum.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=13343&start=25#p223114
John Belushi
John Adam Belushi (January 24, 1949 – March 5, 1982) was an American comedian, actor, and musician best known as one of the original cast members of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live and for his roles in the films National Lampoon's Animal House and The Blues Brothers. He was the older brother of James Belushi.
Finally, The Belushi Story
From the moment his body was found in a Hollywood hotel room in March 1982, the victim of a drug overdose at age 33, John Belushi became the subject of an inevitable barrage of media scavenging. First came the newspaper stories, detailing the cocaine and heroin abuse that led to the Rabelaisian comic's early death. Then a book, Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi, written by Watergate chronicler Bob Woodward. The tell-all tome implicated several of Belushi's Hollywood friends and associates for condoning, or at least ignoring, his self-destructive behavior.
The next step in the media onslaught, of course, is the movie. But that is where this Hollywood story hit a snag. Plans for a film version of Wired were set in motion more than four years ago. But problems in getting financing delayed the shooting until last summer. And not until last week, after months of turndowns, did the producers find a company willing to distribute the film. The stumbling block, say Wired's backers, was a Hollywood community that closed ranks against a picture it wanted to squelch. Says Woodward, an adviser on the film: "A large portion of Hollywood didn't want this movie made because there's too much truth in it."
At the heart of this conspiracy drama is the specter of the powerful Creative Artists Agency, headed by superagent Michael Ovitz. Ovitz was Belushi's agent, and his company's star-packed client list includes several of the comedian's friends who were angered by Woodward's book, among them fellow Saturday Night Live star Dan Aykroyd, SNL producer Lorne Michaels and brother Jim Belushi. Reluctance to alienate Ovitz and his clients, claim the film's producers, is what frightened most of Hollywood away. "In this town," says co-producer Edward Feldman (Save the Tiger, Witness), "the word was put out that this was a project not to be touched."
While admitting that he had reservations about the film "to the extent that it would be exploitative," Ovitz denies that he led a campaign to suppress it. "This movie will rise or fall on its own merits," he says. "There is nothing anyone can do to stop it." Bolstering his argument is the fact that the film, for all its troubles, has found a distributor: Atlantic Entertainment Group, an independent company that has handled such films as Teen Wolf and Wish You Were Here. Some contend that Wired's producers are simply trying to generate controversy over a bad film with poor box-office prospects. "The only thing that the producers have to hang on to is the image of Wired as 'the movie that Hollywood tried to stop,' " says Bernie Brillstein, Belushi's former manager. "I think this is a very good plan to get some excitement for the movie."
As a commercial project, Wired has its problems. Belushi, the brilliant, volatile star of Saturday Night Live and films like National Lampoon's Animal House, has become a posthumous icon, a symbol of the raucous counterculture comedy that Saturday Night Live spearheaded in the '70s. But cinematic tales of drug abuse (Less Than Zero, Clean and Sober) have fizzled at the box office, and Wired is an especially downbeat example. What's more, with Belushi's work so vividly remembered (and still widely available in TV reruns), a movie re-creation might seem morbidly gratuitous, even by Hollywood standards.
Nor does the film offer the easy pleasures of a conventional movie bio. Earl Mac Rauch's script mixes fantasy and fact in an ambitious, if muddled, attempt at surrealistic psychodrama. In the opening scene, the dead Belushi (played by newcomer Michael Chiklis) wakes up in a morgue, escapes in a gown resembling the toga he wore in Animal House and meets a guardian angel in the guise of a taxi driver (Ray Sharkey). Their conversations are intermingled with time- jumbled flashbacks of Belushi's life, snippets of his comedy material and scenes of Woodward pursuing the story.
The film tiptoes around much of Woodward's most sensational material. Missing, for example, is a portrayal of such Hollywood stars as Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, reported in the book to have used cocaine with Belushi. Except for Aykroyd (Gary Groomes), Belushi's wife Judy (Lucinda Jenney) and Cathy Smith (Patti D'Arbanville), the woman who allegedly gave Belushi his fatal drug injection, most real-life characters are given pseudonyms, and none are shown indulging in drug use with Belushi. Only a couple of scenes offer hints that Hollywood might share any blame in Belushi's death. In one, Woodward asks a studio executive about the $2,500 a week reportedly paid to Belushi for drugs. In another, a Belushi assistant admits that he gave the star uppers before a recording session.
The book was so widely disliked in Hollywood that Woodward found little interest when he sought to peddle the movie rights in 1984. Feldman and his partner, Charles Meeker, eventually bought the rights for a relatively modest $300,000. They started feeling pressure almost immediately. Attorneys representing several Creative Artists clients and other Belushi colleagues, like director John Landis (The Blues Brothers), wrote letters warning that portraying them in the film would be an invasion of privacy. Ovitz himself phoned, says Feldman, and "told me it wasn't a good idea to make this picture." (Ovitz says he was simply giving Feldman "friendly advice" that "a lot of people we deal with -- clients and nonclients -- really didn't want to see John's memory exploited.") In the summer of 1986, Jim Belushi stormed into Feldman's editing room at Paramount, trashed his desk and told the secretary, "Tell him I was here." (Her reply: "Who are you?")
When no Hollywood studio came through, Feldman and Meeker got backing from a New Zealand company, Lion Screen Entertainment Ltd. The producers put up $1 million of the film's $13 million budget themselves. They hired Larry Peerce (Goodbye Columbus) to direct and chose Chiklis, a little-known New York actor, for the lead role after auditioning more than 200 aspirants. Following several delays, shooting began last May.
When the producers started showing their finished film to studio executives, the response was another collective cold shoulder. "It becomes a matter of power," contends Feldman. " 'We didn't want you to make this movie, and you did. Now you're going to suffer.' " Studio executives scoff at Feldman's conspiracy charges. "We passed on the movie because it was totally uncommercial and pretentiously arty," says one. Yet several prospective deals seemed to dissolve suspiciously, including one with New Visions Pictures, an independent company headed by director Taylor Hackford.
Now, however, Atlantic Entertainment has come to the rescue and is making plans for a July or August release. Then Wired can finally be judged by the people it was intended for: the audience. But repercussions from the unpopular project may not be over. Actor J.T. Walsh, who plays Woodward in the film, was set to appear next in Loose Cannons, a comedy co-starring Dan Aykroyd. According to insiders, Walsh was let go after just one day on the set, to avoid upsetting Aykroyd. All of which may simply set the stage for another round of the Belushi media blitz. Anyone for The Making of Wired?
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,151663,00.html
Michael Ovitz
Michael S. Ovitz (born December 14, 1946) is an American talent agent who co-founded Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in 1975 and served as its chairman until 1995; Mr. Ovitz also served as President of the Walt Disney Company, from October 1995 to January 1997. He served as talent agent to Hollywood actors such as Tom Cruise, Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Costner, Michael Douglas, Sylvester Stallone, and Barbra Streisand, as well as directors such as Steven Spielberg, Barry Levinson, and Sydney Pollack. Ovitz is a private investor who continues to advise informally the careers of luminaries such as Martin Scorsese, David Letterman and Tom Clancy. Active in philanthropy, he donated $25 million in 1999 to spearhead fund raising efforts for UCLA's Medical Center (The Hospital Michael was taken to), and has contributed significantly to numerous other philanthropic endeavors. A private investor and businessman, his notable activities have ranged from attempts to bring an NFL team to the Los Angeles Coliseum to ventures in online media. Ovitz is considered one of the world's top art collectors. His contemporary pieces include works by Pablo Picasso, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and many others.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ovitz
Feb 29, 2000 - just got this email today. Interesting! "A real mystery to pursue: The TRUE whereabouts of John Belushi's body. It has been moved no less than three times. (Michael's body was also reportedly moved at least 3 times - the Quincy Jones family crypt, the basement of forest lawn then the final crypt) Is it in an unmarked grave on Martha's Vineyard? Or did Jim Belushi make a deal with Judy Jacklin (his widow) when she remarried? Did Jim have John quietly moved to the cemetery in Chicago where his parents are buried? There is a Cenotaph there. But is John there as well? An elderly Palestinian lady who was visiting the grave of her husband swears up and down that she was present when the cemetery workers smuggled John into a freshly dug grave. I don't know. This woman would have no reason to lie. She didn't even know who the hell Belushi was. One of the grave-diggers pointed to the coffin and said: "That's John Belushi in there."
Yes or no? Couldn't tell you for certain. But it's one worth looking into. We do know for a fact he was moved three years after his death because Jimmy was afraid of drunk college kids digging him up. Rumor has it that ground water had gotten into the casket and the bottom fell out, dropping Johnny back into the ground...and his head cracked off! They supposedly stuffed him in a new coffin and into the unmarked grave, where he stayed for several years until Jimmy decided to bring him home to Ma and Pa.
http://www.findadeath.com/Deceased/b/John%20Belushi/john_belushi.htm
John Belushi Movie In The Pipeline
23hrs 39mins ago
John Belushi is coming back from the dead - the late star's life will be documented in a new biopic by The Hangover director Todd Philips. Studio executives at Warner Bros. recently acquired the film rights from Belushi's estate and have hired Phillips to work on his life story with The Pursuit of Happyness screenwriter Steven Conrad. Phillips will produce the picture, while a director has yet to be appointed, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
http://thetvrealist.com/gossip/John-Belushi-Movie-In-The-Pipeline-5336443.html
TMZ's parent company is Warner Bros.http://michaeljacksonhoaxforum.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=11198&hilit=warner+bros&start=25TMZ.com is a celebrity news web site which debuted on November 8, 2005. It was a collaboration between America Online (AOL) and Telepictures Productions, a division of Warner Bros., until Time Warner divested AOL in 2009. The site is now under the sole control of Warner Bros.
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Warner Bros.
Time Warner (formerly AOL Time Warner) is the world's second largest entertainment conglomerate in terms of revenue (behind Disney and ahead of News Corporation and Viacom), as well as the world's largest media conglomerate, headquartered in the Time Warner Center in New York City. Formerly two separate companies, Warner Communications, Inc. and Time Inc.
<!-- m -->http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Warner<!-- m -->
Warner Communications was established in 1971 when Kinney National Company spun off its non-entertainment assets, due to a financial scandal over its parking operations and changed its name.
It was the parent company for Warner Bros. Pictures and Warner Music Group during the 1970s and 1980s. It also owned DC Comics and Mad. Warner made (and later lost) considerable profits with Atari, which it owned from 1976 to 1984.
<!-- m -->http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Communications<!-- m -->
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros is an American producer of film and television entertainment.
One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank, California and New York City. Warner Bros. has several subsidiary companies, including Warner Bros. Studios, Warner Bros. Pictures, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Warner Bros. Television, Warner Bros. Animation, Warner Home Video, New Line Cinema, TheWB.com, and DC Comics. Warner owns half of The CW Television Network.
<!-- m -->http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros<!-- m -->.
This establishes that Time-Warner (AOL, Warner Bros. etc) is the parent company of TMZ.
Saudi Prince To Double Stake in AOL
By Lori Enos NewsFactor Network November 3, 2000
Billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said Thursday that he intends to double his investment in America Online (NYSE: AOL), bringing his stake to a whopping $2.05 billion (US$).
The prince decided to invest more heavily in AOL because he reportedly believes the company is the "anchor of the industry" and will flourish even though other high-tech companies are "collapsing and going under left and right."
"America Online is the No. 1 Internet company in the world and has a solid foundation and is making profit," the prince said in published reports. "When the dust settles on the dot-com industry, America Online will be around."
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Michael Jackson forms entertainment venture with Saudi Arabian prince
Jet, April 8, 1996
The king of pop, Michael Jackson, recently launched a joint venture with Saudi Arabia's Prince al-Waleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud to promote entertainment based on "family values."
Kingdom Entertainment, the name of the new venture, will develop a variety of entertainment projects such as movies, books, hotels, recordings, licensing, merchandising and theme parks.
"Michael Jackson and I shared the same interests and the same essential values," the Prince said about Jackson, whom he met 18 months ago in Paris and says also shares his "need to preserve family values."
The megastar, who designed the project's logo of a jeweled Excaliburstyle sword in a rock, said he wanted to be "actively involved in all facets of the global multimedia explosion."
Kingdom Entertainment's first project will be to sponsor Jackson's HIStory world tour.
<!-- m -->http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m ... _18170326/<!-- m -->
Kingdom Entertainment
The Kingdom Entertainment Group is a leading event production company providing its services for corporate and non profit events, award and fashion shows, touring presentations and network TV specials.
<!-- m -->http://www.kingdomeventgrp.com/<!-- m -->
[youtube:3semf9l3]
One of the major shareholders (owners?) in Time-Warner (AOL, Warner bros. etc) is a good friend and business associate of Michael Jackson. Maybe this is the influence on TMZ.
TMZ - Celeb Graves
http://photos.tmz.com/galleries/celeb_graves#tab=most_recent&id=29207
John Belushi gave everyone laughter.
Dan Akroyd
Daniel Edward "Dan" Aykroyd, CM (born July 1, 1952) is a Canadian-American comedian, actor, screenwriter, musician, winemaker and ufologist. He was an original cast member of Saturday Night Live, an originator of The Blues Brothers (with John Belushi) and Ghostbusters and has had a long career as a film actor and screenwriter. Aykroyd considers himself a Spiritualist, stating that:
I am a Spiritualist, a proud wearer of the Spiritualist badge. Mediums and psychic research have gone on for many, many years... Loads of people have seen [spirits], heard a voice or felt the cold temperature. I believe that they are between here and there, that they exist between the fourth and fifth dimension, and that they visit us frequently.
His great-grandfather, a dentist, had been a mystic who had corresponded with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the subject of Spiritualism, and who was a member of the Lily Dale Society. Other than Spiritualism, Aykroyd is also interested in various other aspects of the paranormal, particularly ufology. He is a lifetime member of and official Hollywood consultant for the Mutual UFO Network. In 2005, Aykroyd produced a DVD titled, Dan Aykroyd: Unplugged on UFOs. In it he is interviewed for 80 minutes by UFOlogist David Sereda where he discusses in depth every aspect of the UFO phenomenon, and reveals specifically that they are blue, not green, but appear that way because of a filter.
On September 29, 2009, Peter Aykroyd, father of Dan Aykroyd, published a book entitled, A History of Ghosts. This book chronicled the family's historical involvement in the Spiritualist Movement, to which Aykroyd readily refers. Aykroyd wrote the introduction and accompanied his father on a series of promotional activities, including launches in New York City and Toronto, an appearance on Larry King Live and various other public relations initiatives. Aykroyd also read the introduction for the audio version of the book.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Aykroyd
The Richard Pryor Special? (1977) (TV)
Richard Pryor ... Himself / The Reverend James L. White / Idi Amin Dada / Shoeshine Man / Willie
Maya Angelou ... Willie's Wife (She wrote the "We Had Him" poem read at the memorial)
John Belushi ... Slave Driver / Bartender
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0347877/
Dan Akroyd
The Hangover Director Working on John Belushi Biopic
Dorothy of Oz (2012) (filming) (voice) .... Scarecrow (voice)
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000101/
James Belushi
James Adam "Jim" Belushi (born June 15, 1954) is an American actor, comedian, and musician. He is the younger brother of John Belushi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Belushi
James Belushi
Dorothy of Oz (2012) (filming) (voice) .... The Cowardly Lion (voice)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0884726/
Brooke Shields & Jim Belushi Involved In Minor Plane Accident
October 6, 2009
LOS ANGELES, Calif. -- Brooke Shields and Jim Belushi are safe after a minor plane accident last Friday at the Hearst Castle in San Simeon, Calif., AccessHollywood.com has confirmed. The incident occurred just after 5 PM when a plane carrying the two actors, who were attending a private event at the popular historic monument, landed safely at the estate’s private landing strip. San Luis Obispo Sheriff’s Department PIO Rob Bryn told Access the pilot did not set the plane’s parking brake and the Cessna 421B plane rolled into a parked rental car while Brooke and Jim were still on the plane. “No one was ever in any danger,” Officer Bryn told Access. A rep for Brooke told Access, she’s happy no one was injured in the incident. “It was an unfortunate accident but thankfully everyone is fine,” the rep said. The parked car sustained the majority of the damage. Though the incident was minor, Bryn said the NTSB was notified of the incident, which is required when any aircraft is involved in an accident.
http://www.accesshollywood.com/brooke-shields-and-jim-belushi-involved-in-minor-plane-accident_article_23877#
William Hearst
William Randolph Hearst (April 29, 1863 – August 14, 1951) was an American newspaper magnate and leading newspaper publisher. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887, after taking control of The San Francisco Examiner from his father. Moving to New York City, he acquired The New York Journal and engaged in a bitter circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer's New York World which led to the creation of yellow journalism — sensationalized stories of dubious veracity. Acquiring more newspapers, Hearst created a chain that numbered nearly 30 papers in major American cities at its peak. He later expanded to magazines, creating the largest newspaper and magazine business in the world.
He was twice elected as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives, but ran unsuccessfully for Mayor of New York City in 1905 and 1909, for Governor of New York in 1906, and for Lieutenant Governor of New York in 1910. Nonetheless, through his newspapers and magazines, he exercised enormous political influence, and is sometimes credited with pushing public opinion in the United States into a war with Spain in 1898.
His life story was a source of inspiration for the lead character in Orson Welles' ("War of the Worlds" fame) classic film Citizen Kane. His mansion, Hearst Castle, near San Simeon, California, on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, was donated by the Hearst Corporation to the state of California in 1957, and is now a State Historical Monument and a National Historic Landmark, open for public tours. Hearst formally named the estate La Cuesta Encantada ('The Enchanted Slope'), but he usually just called it 'the ranch'.
Yellow journalism
As Martin Lee and Norman Solomon noted in their 1990 book Unreliable Sources, Hearst "routinely invented sensational stories, faked interviews, ran phony pictures and distorted real events." This approach came to be known as yellow journalism, named after the Yellow Kid, a character in the New York Journal's color comic strip Hogan's Alley.
Hearst's use of yellow journalism techniques in his New York Journal to whip up popular support for U.S. military adventurism in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines in 1898 was also criticized in Upton Sinclair's 1919 book, The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism. According to Sinclair, Hearst's newspaper employees were "willing by deliberate and shameful lies, made out of whole cloth, to stir nations to enmity and drive them to murderous war." Sinclair also asserted that in the early 20th century Hearst's newspapers lied "remorselessly about radicals," excluded "the word Socialist from their columns" and obeyed "a standing order in all Hearst offices that American Socialism shall never be mentioned favorably." In addition, Sinclair charged that Hearst's "Universal News Bureau" re-wrote the news of the London morning papers in the Hearst office in New York and then fraudulently sent it out to American afternoon newspapers under the by-lines of imaginary names of non-existent "Hearst correspondents" in London, Paris, Venice, Rome, Berlin, etc.
St. Donat's Castle
After seeing photographs of St. Donat's Castle in Country Life magazine, the Welsh Vale of Glamorgan property was bought and revitalized by Hearst in 1925 as a love gift to Davies. The Castle was restored by Hearst who spent a fortune buying entire rooms from castles and palaces in Europe.
War on marijuana
Hearst sympathized with Harry J. Anslinger in his war against marijuana. Between 1936 and 1937, Hearst associated marijuana with hemp in his newspapers and published many of the stories that Anslinger fabricated. Hearst played a major part in aiding the anti-marijuana movement, leading to its prohibition in the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, a law which also effectively outlawed hemp.
Jack Herer and others argue that Hearst's paper empire (he owned hundreds of acres of timber forests and a vast number of paper mills designed to manufacture paper from wood pulp) in the early 1930s was threatened by hemp, which: 1) like wood pulp, could also be used to manufacture paper and 2) also had an advantage over wood pulp, because it could be regrown yearly as well.
Other commentators have subsequently pointed out that the Hearst chain was one of the biggest buyers of newsprint in the U.S. As buyers of newsprint, the Hearst chain had a strong interest in a low price for newsprint. If anyone could produce large amounts of cheap newsprint from a new crop it would lower Hearst's purchasing cost for newsprint. These commentators conclude that Hearst had no relevant financial interest in a ban on hemp cultivation.
The Family Club
Through the rise of Hearst's yellow journalism, he was blamed by many for the Spanish-American War. His dubious stories were what many believed to be the spark of the fighting. Once a decorated member of the Bohemian Club, Hearst branched off to form his own private club, The Family. The Family keeps a clubhouse in San Francisco and a rural retreat in Woodside, California.
Other works
* Jo Stoyte, a principal character of Aldous Huxley's ("A Brave New World") 1939 novel After Many A Summer Dies the Swan is a name-change for Hearst. The story is set in and around Hearst Castle.
* Hearst is a major character in Gore Vidal's Narratives of Empire historic novel series.
* The character Gail Wynand in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead is considered to be loosely based on Hearst.
* In Gabriel Over the White House (1933), the U.S. president in the movie is "loosely based on" Hearst. Hearst himself was one of the producers of the movie and he wrote some of the speeches made by the character of the president.
* In the Family Guy episode "420", Brian explains Hearst's campaign to criminalize marijuana in order to prevent hemp from replacing paper as an alternative for producing newspapers.
* Hearst is played by Edward Hermann in the Peter Bogdanovich film The Cat's Meow (2001).
* Hearst is featured in a small supporting role in Fred Saberhagen's 2000 novel The Arrival based on the science fiction television series Earth: Final Conflict.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Randolph_Hearst
Marijuana Found at Michael Jackson's Home
By Howard Breuer Thursday August 27, 2009
Marijuana and numerous empty drug bottles were found by police officers at Michael Jackson's home shortly after he died, according to search warrants unsealed on Thursday. Two bags of marijuana were discovered during the search.
http://www.people.com/people/package/article/0,,20287787_20300946,00.html
St Donat's Castle
St Donat's Castle is a medieval castle in the Vale of Glamorgan, Wales, overlooking the Bristol Channel in the village of St Donat's near Llantwit Major, and about 25km west of Cardiff. Since 1962 the castle has housed the international Sixth form college Atlantic College. Within the castle grounds lies St Donat's Arts Centre, housed in a 14th century tithe barn which has been converted to a professionally equipped theatre, together with a contrasting new addition of the Glass Room. This offers stunning views across the sea towards Exmoor to create "one of the most inspired and inspiring public buildings in Wales". The centre provides a varied programme of cinema, exhibitions, festivals and live shows. St Donat's Castle is reputed to be one of the most haunted places in Wales, and is associated with numerous tales of the supernatural. An exorcism was reportedly performed in the early 20th century, which was claimed to have succeeded in ridding the castle of several apparitions, including a hag and a mysterious disembodied eye in several guest rooms. The owner at the time, Godfrey Williams, disliked the castle and may have been responsible for the spread of these stories.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Donat%27s_Castle
The Family (club)
The Family is a private club in San Francisco, California, formed in 1901 by newspapermen who left the Bohemian Club. The club maintains a clubhouse in the city as well as rural property 35 miles to the south in Woodside. An exclusive, invitation only, all-male club, it calls new members "Babies", regular members "Children" and the club president "Father".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family_%28club%29
Bohemian Club
The Bohemian Club is a prominent private men's club in San Francisco, California, United States. Its clubhouse is located at 624 Taylor Street in San Francisco. Founded in 1872 from a regular meeting of journalists, artists and musicians, it soon began to accept businessmen and entrepreneurs as permanent members, as well as offering temporary membership to university presidents and military commanders who were serving in the San Francisco Bay Area. Today, the club has a diverse membership of many prominent local and global leaders, ranging from artists and musicians to leading businessmen.
Bohemian Grove
Every year the club hosts a two week long (three weekends) camp at Bohemian Grove, which is notable for its illustrious guest list and its eclectic Cremation of Care ceremony which mockingly burns "Care" (the normal woes of life) with grand pageantry, pyrotechnics and brilliant costumes, all done at the edge of a lake and at the base of a forty-foot 'stone' owl statue. In addition to that ceremony, there are also two outdoor performances (dramatic and comedic plays), often with elaborate set design and orchestral accompaniment. The more elaborate of the two is the Grove Play, or High Jinks, the more ribald is called Low Jinks. More often than not, the productions are original creations of the Associate members but active participation of hundreds of members of all backgrounds is traditional.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemian_Club
[youtube:3semf9l3]
Bohemian Grove Fact Sheet
http://www.sonomacountyfreepress.com/bohos/bohofact.html
Dark Secrets Inside Bohemian Grove: The Occult Nature of our Illuminist Leaders Exposed
http://www.postpositive.org/?p=17
There was also a post in a thread on the forums about how John Belushi was murdered in a conspiracy to keep him quiet or something but I haven't been able to locate it.
The huge owl statue in Bohemian Grove is called Moloch and the members make a sacrifice of a human "effigy" it.
Moloch
Moloch, Molech, Molekh, Molek, or Moloc, representing Semitic root which occurs in various Hebrew and Arabic words related to kings, is either the name of a god or the name of a particular kind of child sacrifice associated with fire. Moloch was historically affiliated with cultures throughout the Middle East, including the Ammonite, Hebrew, Canaanite, Phoenician and related cultures in North Africa and the Levant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moloch
Moloch
A deity to whom child sacrifices were made throughout the ancient Middle East. The name derives from combining the consonants of the Hebrew melech (“king”) with the vowels of boshet (“shame”), the latter often being used in the Old Testament as a variant name for the popular god Baal (“Lord”).
The laws given to Moses by God expressly forbade the Jews to do what was done in Egypt or in Canaan. “You shall not give any of your children to devote them by fire to Moloch, and so profane the name of your God” (Lev. 18:21). Contemporary scholars now debate whether the Hebrews did initiate their children to Moloch by fire or whether the law is a prohibition against the possibility that they might take up this custom.
Later kings Ahaz (2 Kings 16:3) and Manasseh (2 Kings 21:6), having been influenced by the Assyrians, worshiped Moloch at the hilled site of Topheth, outside the walls of Jerusalem. This site flourished under Manasseh’s son King Amon but was destroyed during the reign of Josiah, the reformer. “And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the sons of Hinnom, that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Moloch” (2 Kings 23:10
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/388467/Moloch
The Owl and Luciferianism - By David J. Stewart
The Bohemian Club is a rich-man’s organization that holds a two-week “camp” in northern California every year at the end of July. This strange and secretive group, which have received very little press coverage, have a 40-foot owl as its central symbol. Each year, approximately 1,500 of America’s most influential CEO’s, government officials, financiers, industrialists, and media moguls gather to hear speeches, network, and share common agendas. They also perform Druid-like ceremonies before a huge stone owl, complete with robes, fire, incantations, and other rituals.
To help you lose more sleep tonight, take a look at what's hidden on every U.S. one dollar bill, that's right, an owl...
There is a small owl just to the left of the "1" which appears on the upper right hand corner of the Dollar Bill. But what does the owl symbolize? The owl is a symbol of wisdom. Owls can see in the dark. They can see what we cannot see. Likewise, members of the Illuminati are privileged to information that is hidden from the general public.
The owl is a nocturnal bird of prey with strong talons. The owl has been associated with wisdom, books, Occult knowledge, shamanism and other spiritual matters. As mentioned, the owl is a bird of the night, so an association with the moon is also suggested. They have short tail feathers and are silent in flight, stealth like. They seem curious about things but are happy to sit and wait until the time is right to obtain their goals (catch or conquer their prey).
The demon goddess Lilith is represented throughout history as an owl. A study of the demon goddess of Lilith will reveal the dark secrets behind the owl of Bohemian grove.
Few magickal orders exist dedicated to the undercurrent of Lilith and deal in initiations specifically related to the Aracana of the first Mother. Two reputable organizations that progressively use initiations and magick associated with Lilith are the Ordo Antichristianus Illuminati and the Order of Phosphorus. Author Joshua Seraphim has written three texts associated with the egregore of Lilith entitled "Rite of Lilith," "Confessionis ex Lilitu," and the "Lamentations of Lilith."
Lilith appears as a succubus in Aleister Crowley's De Arte Magica. Lilith was also one of the middle names of Crowley’s first child, Ma Ahathoor Hecate Sappho Jezebel Lilith Crowley (b. 1904, d.1906). She is sometimes identified with Babylon in Thelemic writings.
A Thelemic rite, based on an earlier German rite, offers the invocation of Lilith (warning: an article on how to summons Satan). Read here about the wicked witchcraft of Lilith, and how it relates to the OWL...
READ MORE AT THE LINK:
http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/False%20Religions/Wicca%20&%20Witchcraft/owl.htm[/quote]
Comments
Creative Artists Agency (CAA) is a prominent entertainment and sports agency headquartered in Los Angeles. CAA represents A-list and emerging stars in movies, television, music, and sports. It is often cited as the leading talent agency.
CAA 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[2] 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.
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.
When Ron Meyer and Michael Ovitz left in 1995 for MCA and Disney respectively, the entertainment community watched to see if CAA would fall from the top. Ovitz, Meyer, and Haber's departure led inevitably to an exodus of some of CAA's top-marquee names. In addition, there was some internal turmoil with respect to management. Talent Agent Jay Moloney was originally part of the transition team. However, due to his increasingly serious [b]drug addiction,[/b] he was fired and later committed suicide. CAA's position in the industry is best understood by the number of "A-List" clients they service across Film, Music Television and Sports.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Artists_Agency
I am not sure exactly why CAA was compared to the Moonies...
Unification Church - Moonies
The Unification Church is a new religious movement founded by Korean religious leader Sun Myung Moon. In 1954, the Unification Church was formally and legally established in Seoul, South Korea as The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity (HSA-UWC). In 1994, Moon changed the official name of the church to the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.
Members are found throughout the world, with the largest number living in South Korea or Japan. Church membership is estimated to be several hundred thousand to a few million. The church and its members own, operate, and subsidize organizations and projects involved in political, cultural, commercial, media, educational, and other activities. The church, its members and supporters as well as other related organizations are sometimes referred to as the "Unification Movement". In the English speaking world church members are sometimes referred to as "Moonies" (which is sometimes considered offensive); church members prefer to be called "Unificationists".
Unification Church beliefs are summarized in the textbook Divine Principle and include belief in a universal God; in striving toward the creation of a literal Kingdom of God on earth; in the universal salvation of all people, good and evil, living and dead; and that a man born in Korea in the early 20th century received from Jesus the mission to be realized as the second coming of Christ. Members of the Unification Church believe this Messiah is Sun Myung Moon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonies
List of Creative Artists Agency clients
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Creative_Artists_Agency_clients
Why Is CAA Doing Market Research On Michael Jackson's Death?
Monolithic agency CAA is in all kinds of cookie jars, taking percentages of all kinds of famous cookies' salaries. But did you know about their market research firm...that's crowdsourcing answers on Michael Jackson's death the night after it happened?
Ominously named The Intelligence Group, CAA's market research subsidiary "builds creative solutions for (their) clients." But their "best known division" is Youth Intelligence. According to their language they're the "premier research group focused on Gen X and Gen Y (ages 14 to 39)," to all of which I say: nice demos.
But: do the higher ups at CAA know that the swarmy pollsters Youth Intelligence put a poll out in the field only a day after Michael Jackson's death, looking to do focus group work on Jackson's demise? The email:
From: YI PANEL
Subject: the passing of michael jackson
To: [Redacted]
Date: Friday, June 26, 2009, 9:05 PM
Hello friends-
The passing of Michael Jackson was a crazy surprise, and has left many of us truly saddened. He was a pretty incredible artist whose influence on pop culture is immeasurable. Because the impact of his music, his fashion, and his talents was felt by so many around the world, we're very much interested in your reaction to his passing.
What does Michael Jackson mean to you?
What kind of impact did he have on your life?
Are you doing anything to memorialize him? If so, what?
It would be awesome if you could send us your thoughts by Sunday night - and thank you for sharing.
Awesome, indeed. We received this email late Friday night; I contacted The Intelligence Group for comment, they have yet to get back to me.
On that note, we've got three questions for The Intelligence Group:
1. Aren't the results of this research ultimately going to be swayed and too varied due to the intense newsdump that's taken place over the weekend to be of any substantial use?
2. Market research one day after Jackson died, with the body still warm, and someone's looking for answers that will eventually lead them to build a "creative solution" somewhere?
3. Won't the gigantic celebrities CAA represents - among them, friends and cohorts of Jackson's, surely - find this a little, uh, callous?
You can reach us here with whatever answers you've got for us. It would be awesome if you could send us your thoughts by the time your CAA overlords read this. And thanks for sharing.
http://gawker.com/5303473/why-is-caa-doing-market-research-on-michael-jacksons-death
The Intelligence Group,
The Intelligence Group is a youth-focused consumer insights company dedicated to identifying emerging movements in popular culture and then translating that information into relevant knowledge for companies, brands, and institutions.
We are passionate about young consumers. We immerse ourselves in their lives, their environments, their concerns, and their desires. This allows us to stay ahead of emerging consumer attitudes and cultural trends. We then use this information to generate breakthrough ideas and strategies, and solve problems, for our clients.
For nearly 15 years, our syndicated Cassandra Report has been the leading ongoing study of youth trends, behaviors, and preferences in the US. For many clients, we bring our Cassandra-driven insights to life through our immersive day-long Trend School programs, as well as through customized presentations and proprietary research and consulting engagements.
IG is a subsidiary of Creative Artists Agency (CAA), the leading entertainment and sports agency.
Cassandra: Your Decision Engine
You’re the leader of a consumer insights or market research function, brand marketing team, product development organization, business communications group, or a strategic planning department. Every day, you’re faced with critical decisions that depend on your ability to predict how consumers are going to act, or react...decisions that call upon your experience and savvy, but are also informed by whatever data your team can obtain, aggregate and analyze.
As data has become more ubiquitous, capturing that information, and making sense of it, has become increasingly challenging. Analytics abound but, in the end, statistics are just that – measures of what people are doing and how often they’re doing it. The behavioral patterns these analytics reveal can surely hasten better decisions. But is it enough?
The Essence of Insights
Understanding the key drivers behind into why people do what they do – behavioral drivers, attitudinal drivers and preference drivers – unlocks the vagaries of those analytics and affords you the opportunity to forecast likely outcomes...especially when they’re placed in the context of the social forces that are defining our societal perspectives and aspirations. We call these “insights.”
For instance, we all know that young girls are consuming vampire-related content intensely, in massive numbers. But once you know why they are, you can begin to engage them in a more powerful and lasting way than merely joining the vampire stampede as others do. Specifically, our knowledge of what’s driving them to seek out vampires might suggest other themes or character sets to which they’d be similarly drawn.
This is not a hypothetical. As IG has been assessing and sharing its insights about the vampire phenomenon, we’ve been able to identify other sub-genres likely to be spawned by the same cultural and generational shifts that compels an 18-year-old girl to view “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” three times within the first 48 hours of its release. And our clients are acting on these insights.
The IG Difference
Over the years – through our syndicated Cassandra Reports, presentations and Trend Schools, consulting engagements and daily email newsletter trendcentral – we’ve forecast the arrival of cultural phenomena well before they entered the mainstream, ranging from branded designer jeans and video blogging to Twitter and augmented reality. And vampires.
We gather and disseminate these insights through a rigorous but flexible process, the nucleus of which is a powerful Online Opinion Network that includes our private, 5,000-member consumer community Cassandra Speaks, as well as a global network of trend correspondents. This network is unlike any other in that every member has been personally screened in face-to-face interviews. We’ve been populating and nurturing it for nearly 15 years. So we know them, and we know that they are motivated to provide us with the types of observations and opinions that generate real insights.
Those insights are the seeds of understanding the “whys” of consumer behavior and yielding the foresight you need to make better, more informed decisions.
Want to learn more? We’re ready to talk.
OUR Clients
Our clients come from a wide range of industry segments, including entertainment, technology, packaged goods, fashion, retail, and non-profit organizations. They include some of the biggest and most recognizable corporations and brands in the world, such as Microsoft, Time Warner, Visa, P&G, and Nordstrom. What links them is the desire to understand as deeply as possible how to engage young consumers in powerful and lasting ways.
http://www.youthintelligence.com/
Cassandra
In Greek mythology, Cassandra ("she who entangles men", also known as Alexandra) was the daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy. Her beauty caused Apollo to grant her the gift of prophecy. In an alternative version, she spent a night at Apollo's temple, at which time the temple snakes licked her ears clean so that she was able to hear the future. However, when she did not return his love, Apollo placed a curse on her so that no one would ever believe her predictions. She is a figure both of the epic tradition and of tragedy, where her combination of deep understanding and powerlessness exemplify the tragic condition of humankind.
In more modern literature, Cassandra has often served as a model for tragedy and romance, and has given rise to the archetypal character of someone whose prophetic insight is obscured by insanity, turning their revelations into riddles or disjointed statements that are not fully comprehended until after the fact. Notable examples are the character of River Tam from the science fiction TV series Firefly, the character Cassandra in the TV series The X-Files (an alien abductee that nobody took seriously), the character of James Cole from the science fiction movie 12 Monkeys, and the science fiction short story "Cassandra" by C. J. Cherryh. Pop group ABBA recorded a song titled "Cassandra" about her. In the fifth series of the British reality television series The Apprentice, contestant Lorraine Tighe was frequently refered to as "Cassandra" by Margaret Mountford due to her difficulty in getting other team members to listen to her views. In Scream 2, Neve Campbell's character Sidney is attacked during a rehearsal of a stage performance of Cassandra where she plays the lead. This mirrors a frequently tragic theme of Sidney's character that she often warns those around her of the danger the killer poses but is frequently ignored. The character of Fiver in Watership Down can be considered as a classical allusion to Cassandra.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra
Very strange that a marketing company which is looking at trends would name their report after a Greek Goddess and it also brings to mind Cassandra Gretchen Sims (Derek Klontz) and that manipulation...
Next: A deeper look at Michael Ovitz...
I ran across this video about 4 months ago. I am surprised No One else found it.
I waited and waited to see if it would be posted.
Well here you go. lol
This is alot to absorb on the other stuff you posted.
Peace
I was laying in bed this morning listening to the radio (my husband always turns it on), and there was an interview with this guy who wrote a book on worldwide corporate dis/honesty. He described the procedure to know and understand whether something is true or not. It involves heavy research online reading articles, cross-references, chatrooms, facebooks, comments, digging into backgrounds, etc. I'm going--yah that is so right. You can NEVER just take anybody's word for it. There are consummate liars all over the place with their own hidden agendas, whether for money, fame or other gain. And there have been liars for thousands of years, even in religious, historical, and every field of so-called expertise. I really believe this Michael Jackson hoax is a mother-load of mystery, and may connect us to finding anwers to other mysteries while we're at it.
Brillstein-Grey Entertainment
Brillstein Entertainment Partners (Previously "Brillstein-Grey Entertainment"" is a talent management film and television production company formed by the 1991 addition of Brad Grey to The Brillstein Company, founded by Bernie Brillstein in 1969. Brillstein managed Saturday Night Live cast members Gilda Radner , John Belushi and Lorne Michaels, as well as Jim Henson (of Muppets fame) and Paul Fusco (voice and operator of ALF). Productions for television included Alf: The Animated Series, and Normal Life. The company became Brillstein Entertainment Partners when Brad Grey left the company to become head of Paramount studios.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brillstein-Grey_Entertainment
Bernie Brillstein, Film Producer, Dies at 77
By MICHAEL CIEPLY Published: August 8, 2008
Beginning in 1985, Mr. Brillstein worked closely with Brad Grey, a protégé who is now chairman of the Paramount Motion Picture Group. The two were allied in what evolved into one of the most influential management and production companies in Hollywood, Brillstein-Grey Entertainment
Mr. Brillstein remained associated with the company after Mr. Grey bought out his interest in 1996, before selling his stake in what is now known as Brillstein Entertainment Partners on joining Paramount in 2005.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/08/arts/television/09brillstein.html
Company Town Annex
July 10, 1995|Times Staff and Wire Reports
Michael Jackson Signs With United Talent, Trade Paper Says: The pop superstar, a client of Hollywood's most powerful talent agency, Michael Ovitz's Creative Artists Agency, made the move in an effort to revive his marginal movie career, Daily Variety reported. The trade paper said the self-styled King of Pop had signed with United Talent Agency, which will represent him as an actor only. Variety said it was unclear whether CAA would continue to handle other Jackson affairs, such as his concert and personal appearance bookings. Jackson, 34, is set to embark on a major domestic and international tour in support of his new Sony Corp. album "HIStory." He has appeared in only two movies in his career-- "The Wiz" in 1978 and "Moonwalker" in 1988.
http://articles.latimes.com/1995-07-10/business/fi-22335_1_united-talent-agency
United Talent Agency
United Talent Agency was founded in January of 1991 by the merger of two California-based agencies, Bauer Benedek and Leading Artists. The former was run by one-time William Morris Agency (Ovitz started out here too) representative Marty Bauer and entertainment lawyer Peter Benedek, while Leading Artists' senior partners included Jim Berkus and Gary Cosay. Each firm was respected within the industry, but both found themselves overshadowed by giants like Creative Artists Agency (CAA), International Creative Management (ICM), and William Morris, and the two organizations decided to combine forces to boost their stature.
In 1995 pop icon Michael Jackson left industry powerhouse CAA and selected UTA to find him acting work. He would be represented by partner Nick Stevens,who had helped Jim Carrey win roles that made him a star.
http://www.answers.com/topic/united-talent-agency-inc
So was this the start of Michael making Ovitz an enemy? If so he isn't a man to mess with lightly...
I also found something interesting on a completely different subject but I will include it here:
Nigel Phelps is a Production Designer Represented by UTA and I found his resume online look what it says...
THE FURST COMPANY – 1990-1992
Full Time Designer (based at Sony Studios)
Worked on various projects which included:
- MIDKNIGHT, conceptual design for a feature film to star Michael Jackson
http://www.utaproduction.com/talent.php?tid=73&titl=4
Now batting second.(Michael Ovitz named president of Walt Disney Co.)
Article from: Newsweek Article date: August 28, 1995 Author: Roberts, Johnnie L.
ON FRIDAY MORNING SUPERAGENT Michael Ovitz prepared for a conference call in his art-filled office at Creative Artists Agency, the legendary talent-supply house. The subject: the affairs of his new employer, the Walt Disney Co. As he awaited the call, Ovitz thought aloud about an upcoming trip to scout sites for Disney theme parks and entertainment complexes in Florida and Europe. "We are kicking around some great ideas," he said enthusiastically. Elsewhere in CAA's Beverly Hills headquarters, though, a dozen or so agents and executives were kicking around ideas of a very different sort. Quickly, they must show agents and stars that the departure of Hollywood's best-known agent won't destory the company he built. The tone was not enthusiasm but worry. Said Ray Kurtzman, CAA's business chief, "It's harried around here."
In Hollywood, as at CAA, an abrupt transition is underway. The entire entertainment industry is remaking itself in a frenzy of mergers, jolting job changes and blockbuster contracts for stars like Sylvester Stallone. And, as he has so often been during the past decade, Michael Ovitz is a leading character in Hollywood's own drama.
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-17229481.html
In October 1995, the company hires Hollywood super agent Michael Ovitz to be president.
December 1996, Michael Ovitz, president of the company, leaves "by mutual consent".
<!-- m -->http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_o ... ey_Company<!-- m -->
OVITZ TO LEAVE DISNEY : EX-AGENT TO END BRIEF, UNHAPPY STAY.
Byline: Bernard Weinraub The New York Times 13-DEC-96
In a move that rocked the entertainment industry, the Walt Disney Co. announced Thursday the departure of Michael Ovitz, one of the most formidable power brokers in Hollywood over the past decade.
Ovitz was known to be unhappy in his brief stay at Disney, and Michael Eisner, Disney's powerful chairman, was known to be equally unhappy with his performance. By all accounts, Ovitz's resignation was welcomed by Eisner and other top Disney executives.
Ovitz had been talking privately with Sony about possible top jobs. But the swiftness of the announcement - only a day after the first hint that he might leave - sent shock waves across Hollywood, where the former talent agent had built a reputation that was both fearsome and mysterious.
Ovitz met earlier this week with Viacom Inc. Chairman Sumner Redstone, who dismissed second-in-command Frank Biondi nearly a year ago, prompting speculation that Ovitz could be heading in that direction.
Through a spokesman, Ovitz said he was not planning to move to another company but would seek to start his own business. "It is important to recognize when something is not working,'' he said in a statement. "I hope the decision to leave will eliminate an unnecessary distraction for a great company.''
Disney said it would not replace Ovitz, which some found troubling because of Eisner's history of heart problems.
"The biggest question is succession at Disney,'' said Dan Shannon, an analyst at STI Capital, which manages 873,000 Disney shares. "There is no number two to Eisner. He is a man with a bum ticker running a company with no backup,'' said Ted Turner, vice chairman of Time Warner Inc."
Speculation about Ovitz's replacement focused on, among others, Robert Iger, president of ABC. Disney merged with Capital Cities/ABC last year, creating one of the largest entertainment companies in the world. On a day when the whole stock market plummeted, Disney's shares fell 1-7/8 each, to 70-1/4, on the New York Stock Exchange.
The resignation, which Ovitz's aides said had been discussed as far back as September, is a big personal embarrassment not only to Ovitz but to Eisner, whose highly successful reign has been marred in the past two years by his inability to keep top executives like Jeffrey Katzenberg, the former studio chief, and Stephen Bollenbach, the former chief financial officer. In the past six months Eisner had privately told associates that he was disappointed in Ovitz's performance.
In a statement, though, Eisner said: "I will miss Michael's energy, creativity and leadership at Disney. We have been doing business together while being friends for many years and I know that both our personal and professional relationships will continue.''
Ovitz, 49, will serve as an adviser and consultant to the company and the board, the announcement said. He will depart officially Jan. 31. Ovitz's severance package is considerable. People close to Disney estimated that he would receive $50 million in cash plus the option to buy three million shares of Disney stock, options now valued at $40 million.
Ovitz's yearlong stewardship at Disney was difficult almost from the outset. A top Disney executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, said of Ovitz on Thursday afternoon: ``He's an agent in every respect. He never got traction as an administrator.''
https://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-8482746/OVITZ-TO-LEAVE-DISNEY-EX.html
Eisner vs Ovitz: this time in court - Bitter dispute over $140M exit package to eye board oversight, exec pay; and a broken friendship.
October 18, 2004: 9:38 AM EDT By Krysten Crawford, CNN/Money staff writer
he trouble started in 1995 when Eisner recruited longtime pal Ovitz to fill the No. 2 spot at Disney. Ovitz, co-founder of Creative Arts Agency and at the time the most powerful talent agent in Hollywood, didn't last 15 months at the House of Mouse.
The two men fell quickly into a bitter power struggle. And in late 1996 Eisner forced Ovitz out with a severance deal that gave Ovitz about $38 million in cash and roughly $100 million in stock.
Shareholders, using their power under law to sue on behalf of Disney (unchanged at $24.91, Research), promptly dragged Eisner, Ovitz and the board into Delaware state court. The crux of their case centered on what they claimed was an egregious abuse of power by Eisner and Ovitz and an inexcusable lack of oversight by directors handing Ovitz such a hefty parting gift.
Since it was filed in 1997, the case has lumbered through the courts, bogged down by legal procedure. Through it all, defense lawyers have argued that Ovitz and Eisner & Co. broke no laws.
http://money.cnn.com/2004/10/15/news/fortune500/ovitz/index.htm
Disney/Ovitz case.
November 01, 2005 Karpeles, Michael D.
The August decision by the Delaware Chancery Court on the The Walt Disney Company's board hiring (and firing) of Michael Ovitz is a landmark in governance law. Despite finding Disney Chair Michael Eisner overbearing with the board, the directors weak, and internal governance lax, the judge still found Disney had satisfied minimal legal standards. Yet the next corporation facing such allegations may not be as lucky.
In an August ruling in the Walt Disney derivative litigation (Delaware Chancery Court), Michael Ovitz won his huge severance package from Disney. The directors and general counsel of the company were held to have minimally complied with their fiduciary duties in allowing Ovitz to have the package in the first place and letting him keep it on his termination 14 months later.
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-11898464_ITM
Brillstein-Grey Connection - Belushi's Agent
Agent Provocateur
Yorn's youthful client list was exactly what Ovitz was looking for to complement the over-the-hill gang -- Kevin Costner, Sydney Pollack, Martin Scorsese, Warren Beatty, Bill Murray, Robert De Niro, and Dustin Hoffman -- that Ovitz had long boasted would join him in any new Hollywood adventure. Among entertainment's powers-that-be, and beyond, his just representing Costner or Pollack was too easily shrugged off. But representing the star of the most successful movie ever made would be another thing altogether.
As it happens, yorn was not Ovitz's first choice but his third. About six months ago, Ovitz approached his former best friend and protégé Brad Grey, of the long-established management company Brillstein Grey, with an even better deal than he's currently offering Yorn. According to knowledgeable sources, Ovitz "wanted to know if Brad was interested in getting into business with him. It was that vague in the beginning." Ovitz pressed Grey to become his partner, folding his successful management business into an umbrella company that Grey and Ovitz would run and that would include Livent, sports franchises, and so on.
Grey spoke openly with Ovitz about the fact that not only does the ex-uberagent have an enemies list more prominent than Nixon's but, more to the point, most of those people won't do business with him -- making his prospects for running a talent-management firm dim indeed. Ovitz's response, according to sources, is that if he amasses a big enough list of A-level clients, then Hollywood will have to deal with him.
But there is another problem raised by Grey: Ovitz's deal-making style -- an unnerving mix of irresistible charm combined with threats, intimidation, and blacklisting made famous during his twenty-year tenure at CAA -- isn't in keeping with the low-key mood in Hollywood today. Neither ICM nor William Morris has ever operated along those lines, and CAA post-Ovitz has transformed itself into a kinder, gentler agency.
In the end, Grey walked away from the deal. "I just couldn't see it," he told friends. "It was a nonstarter. This is 1998 and life is short." Ovitz did not take Grey's rejection well, reverting to form and threatening Grey with words, sources tell me, like "You don't want to compete with me" and "I'm going to take all your clients away."
Ovitz then tried -- and failed -- to entice several CAA and ICM agents, notably CAA's Patrick Whitesell, who was thanked effusively at this year's Academy Awards by those Hollywood kids-of-the-moment Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Only then did Ovitz turn his attention back to managers -- and specifically to Yorn.
http://nymag.com/nymetro/movies/columns/hollywood/3209/index1.html
In 2002 Ovitz sold AMG to Jeff Kwatinetz for an estimated $12 million, which was merged into his management group The Firm. After the sale of AMG, Ovitz became the subject of controversy for remarks made in a Vanity Fair interview. He later apologized. Ovitz is a private investor who continues to advise informally the careers of luminaries such as Martin Scorsese, David Letterman and Tom Clancy. Active in philanthropy, he donated $25 million in 1999 to spearhead fund raising efforts for UCLA's Medical Center, and has contributed significantly to numerous other philanthropic endeavors]. A private investor and businessman, his notable activities have ranged from attempts to bring an NFL team to the Los Angeles Coliseum to ventures in online media. Ovitz is considered one of the world's top art collectors. His contemporary pieces include works by Pablo Picasso, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and many others
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ovitz
By L.J. Davis Published: July 9, 1989
HOLLYWOOD, NORMALLY A TOWN EX-traordinarily fond of talking about itself, is a closed shop when it comes to Michael S. Ovitz, the 42-year-old president of the spectacularly successful Creative Artists Agency. Of the industry figures who will speak, few will permit their names to be used. And those who flatly refuse to comment include some of the most powerful and respected figures in the film community.
A call to the office of the veteran producer Ray Stark elicits the information that Mr. Stark will discuss Michael Ovitz only if the interview is cleared by the C.A.A. office. A spokeswoman for Grant Tinker, the former NBC chairman, says that Mr. Tinker will have no comment, echoing a spokesman for Michael D. Eisner, chairman and chief executive officer of the Walt Disney Company.
''It's National Enquirer stuff to say that Ovitz runs this town,'' says one production chief. ''Money runs this town.'' True enough. But Michael Ovitz controls access to a very great deal of potential money.
...Debra Winger also walked -abandoning Ovitz because she was aggrieved at having been treated as a commodity rather than as an artist. Many in the film industry regarded this as the first hint of C.A.A.'s vulnerability, but Winger soon returned to the fold.
In today's Hollywood, if you want your career to thrive, you do not cross Michael Ovitz. ''I've never seen such a climate of fear in this town,'' says one talent agent.
...It has been repeatedly demonstrated that Ovitz's close involvement is not indispensable to the making of profitable movies. There is, for example, the hugely successful Steven Spielberg-George Lucas partnership (the ''Indiana Jones'' trilogy, which did use some but not many C.A.A. clients). And it is possible to do business in Hollywood without running into Michael Ovitz. But it is difficult. The reason is something called the package deal.
In the simplest and most traditional package, a television network or a TV production company turns over much of the casting of a series or a show to an agency like William Morris, perhaps also accepting the agency's director and/or writing talent. Because the talent has been packaged, the agency does not collect the usual commission (10 percent of earnings) from each of its clients. Instead, it receives the equivalent of 5 percent of the money paid the show's production company by the network; 5 percent of half the profit, if any, the production company gets from the network, and 15 percent of the adjusted gross - basically, syndication sales less the costs not picked up by the network.
An agency like Morris can expect to make anywhere from $21,000 to $100,000 from every episode of a network show, and the eventual take from the syndication of a hit can be staggering. The Cosby show, a Morris package, is expected to give the agency an income of $50 million from reruns alone.
Increasingly, however, package fees are paid because an agency provides a single stellar attraction: a producer like Aaron Spelling or an actor like Bill Cosby. In other words, the packaging agency receives a great deal of money for doing little more than maintaining an excellent client list - which automatically skews the process in favor of the three major talent agencies: William Morris, I.C.M. and Ovitz's C.A.A.
Furthermore, the first 5 percent of the packaging fee amounts to a tax on a show's budget, and the eventual agency take from syndication could involve vast sums that far exceed the traditional commission on the services of, say, a director, two stars and a writing team -money that is no longer available for future television productions.
But for many years there was an unwritten Hollywood rule: You were not supposed to package theatrical films. Michael Ovitz changed all that.
Michael Ovitz and his associates at C.A.A. have created a gold mine, although they make manful attempts to confuse the issue. They deny that the agency has control over casting or wages or the choice of a director, or that it engages in packaging.
To mediate his relations with the world beyond Hollywood, Ovitz employs the services of Howard J. Rubenstein, a New York publicist whose other clients include Rupert Murdoch and Donald Trump.
Ovitz himself becomes comparatively expansive on the subject of his agency's corporate culture. ''It's hard to articulate where our management philosophy comes from,'' he says. ''Most of it comes from basic experience and studies that I've been involved with through my formative years in high school and college. In student government in high school, I learned how to deal with people, and in college I studied Eastern philosophy. I'm also an avid team-sports fan. I think I just blended them all together and came out with a business management philosophy that combines the Eastern ethic with the Western sport concept, basically. I've tried to create an environment here where everyone's on the same team.''
Leaving the team, however, is not regarded as a friendly act.
''People move around in this business all the time,'' says a former C.A.A. client. ''It's inevitable and accepted. But when I left C.A.A., they became very unpleasant. They sat me down, told me it would be very unpleasant for me, and said that I really should reconsider. They will literally tell a studio that it can't have their actors with a certain director, and vice versa, if you've left them.
On occasion, the question has arisen as to what, exactly, C.A.A. is representing: the best interests of the client, or itself and its profits.
It was just such a conflict of interest that Kenneth Hyman, producer of ''The Dirty Dozen,'' believed he had discovered in 1986, when he sued Bavaria Film Atelier over the 1981 movie ''Das Boot.'' Hyman's attorney, Paul Leserman, also turned up a memo from Ovitz to Ray Kurtzman:
''I do not want this agency involved in another lawsuit. We have spent far too much money defending claims from second-rate non-clients, e.g. . . . and now Ken Hyman. Please do whatever you have to do and bring whatever pressure you have to place on Ken Hyman. . . .''
Hyman's suit against C.A.A. was dismissed when the court ruled that the statute of limitations had expired.
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/09/magazine/hollywood-s-most-secret-agent.html?ref=michael_s_ovitz&pagewanted=1
The Coca-Cola Connection
Coke Sees Marketing Help Of Hollywood's Top Agent
By PETER KERR Published: September 5, 1991
In a highly unusual and somewhat mysterious move, the Coca-Cola Company announced yesterday that it had hired Creative Artists Agency Inc., Hollywood's most powerful talent agency, to help Coca-Cola mold its marketing and media strategies around the world.
While both companies described their new relationship in only general terms, Coca-Cola executives said Creative Artists and its increasingly influential chairman, Michael S. Ovitz, would help Coca-Cola develop long-term strategies and present a unified message to consumers in the 107 countries where it does business.
The announcement comes as executives at Coca-Cola face rising pressure to improve the company's domestic advertising and marketing campaigns, which have been criticized by industry analysts as lackluster and outshone this year by the company's age-old rival, the Pepsi-Cola Company.
The deal is also a new coup for Mr. Ovitz, who has expanded his role from representing actors, writers and directors to become one of the most important deal makers and corporate consultants in Hollywood.
"American culture broadly defined -- music, film, fashion and food -- has become the culture worldwide," said Peter S. Sealey, Coca-Cola's senior vice president and director of global marketing. "We are in a global village and C.A.A. represents the single greatest source in understanding that culture."
An executive involved in the discussions between the two companies said Creative Artists had presented more than 50 ideas on how Coca-Cola could promote itself through motion pictures, tie-ins to popular music, television commercials and charitable causes. The executive said Creative Artists would not be directly involved in producing commercials nor would it promote the artists it represents for Coca-Cola productions.
Mr. Sealey said the deal would not affect the company's relationship with its advertising agencies, including McCann-Erickson, New York, which handles the flagship Coca-Cola Classic brand. A spokeswoman for McCann-Erickson said it would have no comment on the announcement. 'This Is a Wise Choice'
Several industry analysts praised the new arrangement, saying Coca-Cola needed a new approach to marketing a number of its products.
"This is a wise choice," said Tom Pirko, president of Bevmark Inc., a beverage consulting company in Los Angeles. "This has been a long, lax period for Coca-Cola. There is now a great deal of anxiety about the most widely known trademark in the world."
Industry analysts say Pepsi's ads in recent years have often been more memorable than Coca-Cola's. This year in particular, Diet Pepsi scored a success with a television commercials that featured Ray Charles crooning, "You've got the right one, baby, uh-huh."
Coca-Cola last year made an embarrassing gaffe when a much-heralded promotion featuring special cans with prizes inside them had to be withdrawn when consumers complained that the cans caused the soda to taste bad. Diet Coke Ads Withdrawn
Advertising executives also criticized Coca-Cola for withdrawing its humorous Diet Coke commercials from the Super Bowl last January, after Coca-Cola decided that the advertisements clashed with the national mood on the eve of the Persian Gulf war.
Last July, Coca-Cola's senior vice president and marketing director for the United States, Theodore J. Host, resigned suddenly after 14 months in the job.
"Coca-Cola doesn't have a clear advertising identity," said Jesse Meyers, the publisher of Beverage Digest, a trade journal. "You never hear consumers quoting their commercials. You never see them parodied on sitcoms."
Perhaps an even more striking aspect of the deal is the growing role of Mr. Ovitz, who has increasingly played the role of deal broker and investment banker in some of the most important transactions in the entertainment industry.
Last year, Mr. Ovitz advised the Matsushita Electric Industrial Company, the Japanese consumer-products giant, in its efforts to acquire MCA Inc. Mr. Ovitz was also involved in the $3.5 billion purchase of Columbia Pictures by the Sony Corporation in 1989.
Creative Artists counts as its clients more than 650 top Hollywood actors, directors and screen writers, including Paul Newman, Tom Cruise and Kevin Costner. Such pop stars as Madonna and Michael Jackson have also been represented by the agency.
"The Coca-Cola Company is a communicator's dream," Mr. Ovitz said yesterday.
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/09/05/business/coke-sees-marketing-help-of-hollywood-s-top-agent.html?ref=michael_s_ovitz
C.A.A. to Help French Bank Make It in Show Business
By CALVIN SIMS, Published: March 27, 1993
LOS ANGELES, March 26— Like many others in Hollywood, Credit Lyonnais, the giant French bank, has hired Michael Ovitz's powerful Creative Artists Agency. But unlike those who want movie roles, Credit Lyonnais is seeking help managing its troubled $3 billion portfolio of entertainment and media loans. It also wants the talent agency to explore investment possibilities.
For Creative Artists, the deal greatly expands the reach of Mr. Ovitz, its chairman and one of the most important power brokers in Hollywood. He has been diversifying the agency beyond the basic business of talent management. New Ground for Talent Agency
Never before has a talent agency taken on the role of managing the assets of a lender that has so many interests in Hollywood. Mr. Ovitz's latest venture is being viewed in some entertainment circles as a possible conflict of interest because he could be both a seller and buyer of talent.
Under the arrangement, the two companies said today, Creative Artists is expected to advise Credit Lyonnais, the world's seventh-largest bank, on any sales of entertainment assets and the possible combination of those assets, perhaps into new companies.
The bank has been widely criticized by the investment community in the United States and in France for embarrassing entertainment loans, in particular to financially pressed MGM and Carolco Pictures. Creative Artists is being brought in as management consultants to try to turn things around.
"As we work with our clients to achieve our mutual objectives, the experience and expertise of the Creative Artists Agency team will prove invaluable," Francois Gille, Credit Lyonnais's managing director, said in a statement. "We look forward to receiving their advice and counsel on all aspects of our global entertainment industry activities."
Bank Controls MGM
Credit Lyonnais, in effect, controls MGM because it was forced to take over the studio after Giancarlo Parretti, the Italian financier who borrowed to acquire the company, defaulted. The bank has put more than $2 billion into MGM and is losing an estimated $1 million a day.
Fred Spar, a spokesman for Credit Lyonnais, said in a telephone interview that Creative Artists would be advising the bank "on a consulting level concerning the bank's worldwide activities and not on a day-to-day operating level." "It's similar to the relationship that an investment bank or a management consultant has with a client," Mr. Spar said.
Still, some talent representatives expressed concern that Creative Artists could have an unfair competitive advantage in shopping talent because it would now have substantial influence with the bank and its borrowers. Officials for Creative Artists strongly denied that the agency would have any such advantage and said that its principal task would be to secure the best possible deals for its clients.
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/27/business/caa-to-help-french-bank-make-it-in-show-business.html?ref=michael_s_ovitz
I am just posting the articles as I find them. The one on the Coke connection between CAA and Ovitz seemed very unusual.
So far what I have read about Michale Ovitz, he is not a very nice guy but he is extremely powerful, likes to threaten people and DOES black ball those who leave his Agency...which Michael did in 1995.
People in Hollywood are afraid of this guy...
Anthony Pellicano (born March 22, 1944, in Chicago, Illinois) is a former high-profile Los Angeles private investigator who recently served a sentence of three and a half years in federal prison for illegal possession of explosives, firearms and homemade grenades, and who was arrested on February 4, 2006, on unlawful wiretapping and racketeering charges.
On May 15, 2008, after acting as his own lawyer and suffering a nine day jury deliberation, Pellicano was found guilty on 76 of 77 counts related to racketeering, along with four co-defendants. However, a parade of wealthy witnesses admitted they knew about, paid for and listened to wiretaps, but were not charged. They included Alec Gores, a corporate buyout specialist; Freddy DeMann, a music executive who was once Madonna’s manager; Adam D. Sender, a hedge fund manager and onetime movie investor; and Andrew Stevens, an actor turned movie producer. Summing up, the prosecuting attorney stated that he chose to attack the supply rather than the demand, the way that vice investigators attack pimps and prostitutes rather than johns, because “that’s how you make a dent in it.” The johns in this case were the likes of Bert Fields, Brad Grey, Ron Meyer, Michael Ovitz and Chris Rock, all of whom paid Pellicano for services rendered. “If the government has no plans to go higher than Pellicano, this is a depressingly pedestrian effort that shows a lack of ambition,” commented John C. Coffee , a professor at Columbia Law School and an expert on white-collar crime, as quoted in the NY Times story on the verdict.
In a subsequent six-week Federal Court trial, Pellicano was convicted of wiretapping and conspiracy to commit wiretapping. Facing 78 guilty counts,and not being allowed to co-serve his two convictions, Pellicano was sentenced in December 2008 to 15 additional years in prison, and ordered (with two other defendants) to forfeit $2 million.
Very connected to Michael:
<!-- m -->http://doubledutchblogs.wordpress.com/2 ... on-framed/<!-- m -->
Jackson asked his then-lawyer, Bert Fields, to intervene. One of the most prominent attorneys in the entertainment industry, Fields has been representing Jackson since 1990 and had negotiated for him, with Sony, the biggest music deal ever — with possible earnings of $700 million. Fields brought in investigator Anthony Pellicano to help sort things out. Pellicano does things Sicilian-style, being fiercely loyal to those he likes but a ruthless hardball player when it comes to his enemies.
On July 9, 1993, Dave Schwartz and June Chandler Schwartz played the taped conversation for Pellicano. “After listening to the tape for ten minutes, I knew it was about extortion,” says Pellicano. That same day, he drove to Jackson’s Century City condominium, where Chandler’s son and the boy’s half-sister were visiting. Without Jackson there, Pellicano “made eye contact” with the boy and asked him, he says, “very pointed questions”: “Has Michael ever touched you? Have you ever seen him naked in bed?” The answer to all the questions was no. The boy repeatedly denied that anything bad had happened.
This might be useful info:
<!-- l -->viewtopic.php?f=17&t=13360<!-- l -->
Peace
Bert Fields
Bertram Fields (March 31, 1929) is an American lawyer famous for his work in the field of entertainment law; he has represented many of the leading studios, as well as individual celebrities including The Beatles, Warren Beatty, James Cameron, Mike Nichols, Joel Silver, Tom Cruise, Dustin Hoffman, and John Travolta.
Fields also represented Michael Jackson during contract talks with Sony Music in the early 1990s, as well as during the 1993 child molestation allegations made against Jackson in 1993.
Fields was a long-time client of private investigator Anthony Pellican and has been repeatedly connected to the ongoing federal wiretapping investigation of Pellicano in the press. Reporters allege his celebrity clients have benefited from Pellicano's alleged illegal wiretaps directed against members of the media and prominent critics. As of April 2006, he was under investigation but had not been charged in the matter; whether he would be charged has remained a matter of considerable media speculation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertram_Fields
Bert Fields, celeb lawyer, terrorizes opponents
By A. James Memmott January 31, 2008 at 3:04pm
You’re in trouble. You want a lawyer. And not just any lawyer. You want a scary lawyer. Pick up the phone and call Bertram “Bert” Fields, who is known as “L.A.’s scariest lawyer.”
Fields, 78, has been representing entertainment celebs for more than 50 years. Fields’s luster has been tarnished lately by his connection to Anthony Pellicano, the private investigator who goes on trial in federal court next month. However, the scary lawyer is still getting lots of work.
From the beginning, he fashioned a take-no-prisoners style. “If he’s on the other side, he’s a nightmare,” one Fields client told Auletta. “He’s going to make your life miserable.” At the same time, Fields told Auletta that he was careful to keep the volume down in the courtroom. “A jury doesn’t want some guy shouting at them,” he said. “Even when you think the other side is a scumbag - it doesn’t win you points.”
A partner in the Los Angeles firm of Greenberg, Glusker was charging $900 an hour in 2006, according to Auletta. In addition to his practice of law, Fields is the author of two non-fiction works on history and of two mysteries. Written under the pseudonym of “D. Kincaid,” the novels feature Harry Cain, a lawyer.
Fields and his firm had a long association with Pellicano, the private investigator who was charged in 2006 with wiretapping, racketeering, bribery and other charges. Fields has said that he had no knowledge of Pellicano using illegal methods to obtain information during the course of his work for the firm. Pellicano’s trial, in which he will represent himself, begins on Feb. 27.
http://news.muckety.com/2008/01/31/bert-fields-celeb-lawyer-terrorizes-opponents/531
Pellicano Trial: Hear Exclusive Audio Of Michael Ovitz Phone The P.I.
Allison Hope Weiner Posted: April 9, 2008 01:33 PM
Below is exclusive audio tape from an April 2002 phone call of superagent Michael Ovitz -- once considered "the most powerful man in Hollywood" -- asking Anthony Pellicano for a secret meeting. "I need to see you," Ovitz is heard telling Pellicano as he requests an emergency appointment. Mike Ovitz testified today about how useful the information Mr. Pellicano got for him was.
This call takes place right around the time that articles are being written about Mr. Ovitz in the New York Times saying that his talent and production company, AMG, is in serious trouble. Ovitz was concerned that his firms' clients were being raided by his former agency, CAA. Pellicano subsequently pursued information on top CAA agents Kevin Huvane and Bryan Lourd, who testified in the Pellicano trial March 26. They told the court that they both use their work addresses on their driver's licenses so no one performing an illegal search could find out where they live.
In the 2-minute call Pellicano tells Ovitz, "My friend Bert Fields loves you. I love you." (1:03)
Ovitz explains the urgency of the call. "This is the single most complex situation imaginable... I'll come to you but I'm not coming to your office." (1:10)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/allison-hope-weiner/pellicano-trial-hear-excl_b_95810.html
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER and ALLISON HOPE WEINER Published: April 20, 2006
LOS ANGELES, April 19 — When the supermarket billionaire Ronald W. Burkle accused a New York Post gossip columnist of demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars for protection from nasty items in Page Six, it was not the first time that he had told authorities he was the victim of a shakedown.
In 2002, Mr. Burkle has told federal investigators, the Hollywood private detective Anthony Pellicano demanded that Mr. Burkle pay him $100,000 to $250,000 in exchange for Mr. Pellicano's agreeing not to investigate him. Mr. Pellicano told him he had been hired by Michael S. Ovitz, the former talent agent, who had been a partner with Mr. Burkle in several ill-fated business ventures.
Mr. Burkle's account of that meeting to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, related in a summary that was reviewed by The New York Times and corroborated by Mr. Burkle in an interview this week, provides a new glimpse into Mr. Pellicano's methods of drumming up new business and holding himself out as a broker between rich and powerful adversaries — thereby drawing them into his realm at Hollywood's underbelly. In Mr. Burkle's telling, it also shows how he was able to deflect a heavy-handed approach from Mr. Pellicano, while other Hollywood personalities, when similarly confronted, either hired Mr. Pellicano — who was charged in February with wiretapping and conspiracy — or became one of his targets.
In contrast to his run-in with the Post reporter, Jared Paul Stern — which culminated in a videotaped sting in cooperation with law-enforcement officials — Mr. Burkle became friendly with Mr. Pellicano and provided him with favors, but not cash, long after Mr. Pellicano backed off, Mr. Burkle told the F.B.I.
Mr. Ovitz, speaking to investigators, according to F.B.I. summaries, asserted that Mr. Pellicano had investigated him on Mr. Burkle's behalf, but also acknowledged paying Mr. Pellicano $75,000 to dig up embarrassing information on 15 to 20 people including Mr. Burkle. Mr. Ovitz's lawyer, Bart H. Williams, said on Wednesday that Mr. Ovitz had never hired the detective to investigate anyone but those who were suing him — which Mr. Burkle was not, at the time — and that Mr. Ovitz had neither asked for nor knew of any illegal activity by Mr. Pellicano.
"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. Steven F. Gruel, a lawyer for Mr. Pellicano, could not be reached yesterday.
At the root of Mr. Burkle's dealings with Mr. Pellicano was a business partnership between Mr. Burkle, who made billions buying and selling grocery chains in the 1990's, and Mr. Ovitz, who was forced to resign from the Walt Disney Company in 1996 and turned to Mr. Burkle, whom he had befriended a few years earlier, for advice on his next move.
According to the F.B.I. summaries, Mr. Ovitz pressed a reluctant Mr. Burkle to become his partner, and Mr. Burkle eventually agreed to invest up to 10 percent in Mr. Ovitz's new ventures, which would include an unsuccessful bid to bring an National Football League team to Carson, Calif., and Internet startups like CheckOut.com, an entertainment-oriented site.
The alliance between the two men was uneasy from the outset: Mr. Burkle was vexed when Mr. Ovitz trumpeted him as his partner in the N.F.L. project in 1998 without checking with Mr. Burkle first. Tensions boiled over after Mr. Burkle advanced both his own and Mr. Ovitz's shares of millions in investment dollars, but Mr. Ovitz failed to reimburse him, Mr. Burkle told the F.B.I.
While Mr. Burkle mulled whether to sue Mr. Ovitz, an article appeared in The Los Angeles Times on Sept. 19, 2000, declaring that the "honeymoon is over" between the two moguls. Mr. Burkle told the F.B.I. that he knew Mr. Ovitz was behind this article and took it as a "shot across the bow," signaling Mr. Ovitz's willingness to turn their "business dispute into a public affair."
By 2001, as CheckOut.com fell into bankruptcy, Mr. Ovitz's attempt at a Hollywood comeback with Artists Management Group was also unraveling. Mr. Ovitz was warring with his former protégés at Creative Artists Agency, who had issued an edict barring their clients from working with Artists Management.
On Aug. 10, 2001, prosecutors say, Mr. Pellicano had a police source illegally check motor-vehicle records on Bryan Lourd and Kevin Huvane, two top partners at C.A.A.
Sometime later, Mr. Burkle told the F.B.I., an ex-girlfriend put him in touch with a private investigator who reported that Mr. Pellicano had been hired by Mr. Ovitz to get information about him, Mr. Lourd and Mr. Huvane, and that Mr. Pellicano "would use wiretapping" as one of his methods.
(Interviewed by the F.B.I. on May 6, 2004, Mr. Burkle actually posed the first question, asking two special agents if he had, indeed, been wiretapped. The agents demurred, according to their notes, saying they were "not in a position" to answer his question.)
In response to the warning about Mr. Ovitz and Mr. Pellicano, Mr. Burkle told the F.B.I., he arranged a meeting at his offices with Mr. Huvane, Mr. Lourd and a more senior C.A.A. partner, Richard Lovett. Without revealing his source, Mr. Burkle told the C.A.A. agents that they were potential targets of Mr. Pellicano and Mr. Ovitz; they replied that they had heard similar rumors. Mr. Burkle also warned them to be aware that their phones might be tapped.
Mr. Burkle told the F.B.I. that he next turned to his friend Steve Bing, a millionaire movie producer Bing called Mr. Pellicano a "decent guy" and urged Mr. Burkle to contact the detective personally.
Over the objections of his own security aides, who Mr. Burkle said warned him both that Mr. Pellicano was a fraud and that he did illegal things, Mr. Burkle met with Mr. Pellicano at Mr. Bing's home in the summer of 2002. Asked why, Mr. Burkle said, "I thought if someone's coming after you and you get a free meeting, it's a good thing to do."
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. Mr. Burkle countered with an offer to pay Mr. Pellicano only if he could broker a settlement of the Burkle-Ovitz dispute.
Mr. Burkle told the F.B.I. he met a second time at the hotel with Mr. Pellicano, who said Mr. Ovitz was considering a settlement, but none materialized. At one point, Mr. Burkle said, Mr. Pellicano showed him a letter, written a year earlier, between lawyers for Mr. Ovitz and Mr. Burkle detailing their dispute. Mr. Burkle told the F.B.I. that he took the letter as "establishing the bona fides of the Pellicano/Ovitz relationship."
Sometime later, Mr. Burkle told the F.B.I., he bumped into Mr. Ovitz on the street in Beverly Hills, and the two spoke briefly. Mr. Ovitz had more to say about the encounter: he told the F.B.I. that Mr. Burkle had told him Mr. Pellicano had been "bad-mouthing" Mr. Ovitz; Mr. Burkle also mentioned that Mr. Pellicano had told him Mr. Ovitz was planning to sue Mr. Burkle.
"It was then," the F.B.I. noted, "that Ovitz came to the realization that Pellicano had been working both men against one another."
Mr. Burkle, for his part, spoke frequently and met at least once with Mr. Pellicano after Mr. Pellicano's arrest on explosives charges in November 2002. He told the F.B.I. that he had allowed Mr. Pellicano to use his retreat in La Jolla, Calif., had arranged to have Mr. Pellicano's son swim with dolphins at Sea World, and had given Mr. Pellicano tickets to the Hollywood Bowl.
Asked by reporters why he was so generous to Mr. Pellicano, Mr. Burkle said: "He didn't come after me. Not coming after me was a pretty big give."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/20/movies/20holl.html
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER Published: April 10, 2008
LOS ANGELES — A reporter who wrote damaging articles about Michael S. Ovitz, the onetime Hollywood power broker, broke down repeatedly in court on Wednesday as she testified about what she said were threats on her life orchestrated by the private eye Anthony Pellicano on Mr. Ovitz’s behalf.
The reporter, Anita M. Busch, said two men in a dark Mercedes nearly ran her down outside her own home in August 2002. “I remember thinking I was going to die,” she said through tears. “I thought, ‘This is how it ends.’ ”
But Mr. Ovitz, once a top talent agent and later president of the Walt Disney Company, denied any role in threatening Ms. Busch. He acknowledged paying Mr. Pellicano $75,000 in cash to dig up information about her and another reporter who he said were hurting him, but he said he did not know Mr. Pellicano was doing anything illegal.
“I wanted to know when I was going to be ambushed, when the next shoe was going to drop,” said Mr. Ovitz, describing a period in 2002 when his attempt at a Hollywood comeback was collapsing — hastened, he believed, by Ms. Busch’s articles.
The back-to-back appearances by Mr. Ovitz, just before 9 a.m., and Ms. Busch, for three hours afterward — including her contentious cross-examination by Mr. Pellicano — made for a climactic day in the five-week-old trial.
Mr. Pellicano and four co-defendants are being tried in Federal District Court on federal wiretapping and racketeering charges. The prosecution is expected to rest Thursday. Mr. Pellicano, who is representing himself, has indicated he might take the stand at trial’s end.
Mr. Ovitz, a founder of the Creative Artists Agency and once considered one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, entered the courtroom with two lawyers. In his testimony, he detailed the embarrassing and public unraveling of the Artists Management Group, through which he was trying to regain his influence in the industry.
After a deal with AT&T fell through in 2001, he said, he began looking to sell the company and make a “graceful exit.” By May 2002 he was in escrow to sell it to a rival management company, called the Firm. But, he testified, a series of New York Times articles from March to May — written by Ms. Busch, a freelancer, and Bernard Weinraub, the newspaper’s Hollywood correspondent — had made it “more than difficult” to close the sale. “Particularly ones that were accusing us of stealing money from our partners,” he said.
Prosecutors played a recording of Mr. Ovitz calling Mr. Pellicano on April 11, 2002, the day of another Busch byline in The Times on an article that contained negative information about Mr. Ovitz, and asking for a 30-minute meeting to discuss “the most complex situation imaginable.”
On the stand, Mr. Ovitz said he “may have exaggerated a bit,” but said he “had no one feeding me information.” So he turned to Mr. Pellicano to get embarrassing or otherwise useful information about the New York Times journalists and their sources, who he believed included David Geffen, of DreamWorks, and Ron Meyer, the Universal Studios chief who was also a founder of Creative Artists.
“It was an extraordinarily difficult time for the companies and for me,” Mr. Ovitz said. “We were in a consistent state of negative press, filled with innuendo that we were in ruin, which wasn’t true. There were client problems — we lost one out of hundreds — but there was a perception issue. There were morale problems. There was tension among the partners. It was wildly embarrassing to me and my family.”
Mr. Ovitz’s lawyers in three civil cases hired Mr. Pellicano and paid him $25,000 for each case in May 2002. Mr. Ovitz said he had paid Mr. Pellicano an additional $75,000 in cash over the rest of that year, and received “information that was extraordinarily helpful to me.”
That included tips about an employee who was preparing to sue and about Mr. Meyer’s animosity toward Mr. Ovitz. He said he had told Mr. Pellicano he would “pay any amount of money” to effect a rapprochement with Mr. Meyer.
Mr. Pellicano gave “very good advice,” Mr. Ovitz said. “Frankly, when a lot of people abandoned the ship, he didn’t. He was always an open ear.” Mr. Ovitz said he knew nothing of wiretaps, threats or illegal activity by Mr. Pellicano, who gave Mr. Ovitz a code name: Gaspar. As for the cash, he said, Mr. Pellicano had told him only that he needed it “to run his business.”
Mr. Ovitz said he had assumed Mr. Pellicano would get information from people like Mr. Meyer and Mr. Geffen.
“He was someone that moved around in the community at the highest levels,” Mr. Ovitz said. “He talked to the same people that were sourcing the press.” How did Mr. Ovitz know this? “I don’t know how to articulate that,” he said. “I just know.”
Mr. Ovitz said he had referred to Hollywood as “the campus,” calling the entertainment business “much like high school.” But if so, in Ms. Busch’s retelling it was more like “Scream” than “Saved by the Bell.”
She related the June 2002 threat that prompted the Pellicano investigation: a fish and a rose left on her car, next to a note saying “Stop” and a bulletlike hole in her windshield. She told of phone trouble beginning that month, of learning that her D.S.L. service had been canceled without her knowledge and that large chunks of e-mail had been stolen, and of finding a virus on her computer.
On an August morning, she testified, two men in a Mercedes nearly ran her down. One put a finger to his lips, as if warning her to keep quiet, and then motioned with two fingers as if saying goodbye, before the driver sped off.
That November, she finally got the phone company to check her phones, and learned there had been a wiretap on her lines since June. “I was stunned,” she said.
A lawyer for one of Mr. Pellicano’s co-defendants pressed Ms. Busch about a memoir she said she had begun with two other writers, Dan Moldea and John Connolly. She said at first she had thought it could be a way “to survive financially.” But she said she had concluded that she was being used and abandoned it. “There will never be a book,” she said.
In his cross-examination, Mr. Pellicano grilled Ms. Busch at a glacial pace over her account of the August threat, often waiting as she wept and struggled to regain her composure.
But Ms. Busch rallied. “Mr. Pellicano, I was scared for my life, 24-7,” she said angrily at one point. Later, she told of her sources deserting her and her career falling apart.
“I saw everything slipping away,” she said. “I didn’t know what I was going to do. There were a number of incidents, one after another. It was a relentless attack, Mr. Pellicano — as you know.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/10/business/media/10pellicano.html
It was therefore in Ovitz's and Pelicano's power to create the second false molestation accusations against Michael that resulted in the 2005 trial.
Could these allegations have been retribution, a means of trying to regain control of Michael and if not successful than an attempt to destroy him completely?
Are these the people Michael was afraid of?
Is this part of the conspiracy the family is talking about?
Is Pelicano the fall guy for them all?
Columbia Journalism Review • Nov-Dec, 1995 • Walt Disney Company president Michael Ovitz
The National Mercantile Bancorp of Los Angeles is another case Ovitz would rather forget. And, for the most part, the press has accommodated him. It is an embarrassing tale of apparently poor business judgment. In February 1990, CAA -- then majority-owned by Ovitz -- bought just under 10 percent of National Mercantile, barely short of the legal definition of a controlling interest. which carries with it government-mandated disclosure requirements. At the same time. a group associated with Hollywood business manager, Gerald Breslauer, who had close ties to CAA, also bought just under 10 percent of the bank, making the two group Mercantile's largest shareholders. According to Forbes report, Breslauer -- "Hollywood's most powerful money manager" -- and Robert Goldman. CAA's c.f.o., "decided to pool their talents and some of their respective capital and get into the banking business.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:CGcGdCiLzaYJ:www02.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/print/17631328.html+National+Mercantile+Bancorp+and+Michael+ovitz&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk
This Starry New Hollywood Bank Is No Hit So Far
Entertainment: Gerald Breslauer's plans for a showbiz financial institution find the rich and famous wary. Besides, they already have a bank.
November 11, 1990|MICHAEL CIEPLY and JAMES BATES, TIMES STAFF WRITERS
Gerald Breslauer, business manager to such stars as Michael Jackson and Steven Spielberg, long dreamed that he would close the circle of celebrity wealth by creating a manager's bank. He and his clients, and his friends and their clients, would own the bank. They would keep an eye on their own deposits, enjoy the profits and, perhaps, fatten the bank up for eventual sale.
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In a rough approximation of that vision, associates of Hollywood's Breslauer, Jacobson, Rutman & Sherman management firm in February joined the star-packed Creative Artists Agency to pay a total of $6 million for stakes of nearly 10% each in National Mercantile Bancorp. The company owns Mercantile National Bank, a small business bank with offices in Century City and Irvine.
Yet the results have been anything but dreamy so far. Mercantile National profits have plunged since the investment, and the parent company's stock has lost half its value in a weak market. The bank quickly found itself in a war for deposits with a rival, Beverly Hills' City National Bank, where most of Breslauer's clients kept accounts. It also has become the focus of heated debate among Hollywood's agents, lawyers and managers--many of whom were Mercantile National customers when the investments were made--as to the wisdom of banking with an institution partially controlled by potential business rivals.
The fortunes of Mercantile National during the past year provide a behind-the-scenes view of a part of Hollywood business few outsiders see. The attempt to create a glamorous celebrity bank may prove that the normally cool, detached business of banking does not mix with the heated currents of star finance. It also shows that Hollywood executives, usually wide open to creative business arrangements, may be uncomfortable when it comes to something as sacred as the personal or corporate bank account.
Read more: http://articles.latimes.com/1990-11-11/business/fi-6315_1_banking-business
Hollywood Group May Sell Bank Stake
December 07, 1990|JAMES BATES, TIMES STAFF WRITER
A group of Hollywood insiders--including stars Richard Dreyfuss, Demi Moore and Jane Fonda--that invested some $6 million in a Century City bank struggling to become a major force in the entertainment business has registered its shares for possible future sale, Securities and Exchange Commission documents show.
The 548,945 shares--a stake of nearly 20%--in National Mercantile Bancorp, the parent of Mercantile National Bank, were originally bought in a private placement of stock last year. The purchase was made by two groups: a partnership affiliated with the powerful Creative Artists Agency and by associates of Hollywood's Breslauer, Jacobson, Rutman & Sherman business management firm. The two groups each own nearly 10%.
The celebrity investors, who were with the Breslauer group, have not been identified previously by the bank. They include such music industry figures as musician Glenn Frey, singer Tina Turner and record executive Irving Azoff. Others include author Sidney Sheldon, director Tim Burton, singer Olivia Newton-John, actresses Susan St. James, Sally Field and Stockard Channing and actors Richard Chamberlain and Robert Duvall.
Fonda, Dreyfuss and Duvall are listed as owning 4,100 shares each. Sheldon and Azoff own 12,300 shares and 8,200 shares, respectively.
Registering privately placed stock for possible future sale is common. It does not mean that the shares will be sold soon but gives investors that option. A lawyer for the bank said the step was agreed to when investors bought the stock last February.
The investment in the bank was spearheaded by Gerald Breslauer, who heads what is generally regarded as Hollywood's top business management firm. So far, the investment has not worked as well as planned, in part because Mercantile National found itself in a war for business with rival City National Bank in Beverly Hills, where most of Breslauer's clients kept their accounts.
http://articles.latimes.com/1990-12-07/business/fi-6222_1_hollywood-group-may
Bernard Madoff
Bernard Lawrence "Bernie" Madoff is an incarcerated former American stock broker, investment adviser, non-executive chairman of the NASDAQ stock market, and the admitted operator of what has been described as the largest Ponzi scheme in history.
In March 2009, Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 federal crimes and admitted to turning his wealth management business into a massive Ponzi scheme that defrauded thousands of investors of billions of dollars. Madoff said he began the Ponzi scheme in the early 1990s. However, federal investigators believe the fraud began as early as the 1980s, and that the investment operation may never have been legitimate. The amount missing from client accounts, including fabricated gains, was almost $65 billion. The court-appointed trustee estimated actual losses to investors of $18 billion. On June 29, 2009, he was sentenced to 150 years in prison, the maximum allowed.
Madoff founded the Wall Street firm Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC in 1960, and was its chairman until his arrest on December 11, 2008. The firm was one of the top market maker businesses on Wall Street, which bypassed "specialist" firms by directly executing orders over the counter from retail brokers.
On December 10, 2008, Madoff's sons told authorities that their father had just confessed to them that the asset management arm of his firm was a massive Ponzi scheme, and quoting him as saying it was "one big lie." The following day, FBI agents arrested Madoff and charged him with one count of securities fraud. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had previously conducted investigations into Madoff's business practices, but did not uncover the massive fraud; critics contend that these investigations were very incompetently handled
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Madoff
Madoff's Hollywood Connection
By Amy Wallace | April 16, 2009
...There's a saying in Hollywood: Publicists and agents come and go, but business managers are forever. Steven Spielberg, for instance, has been a client of Gerald Breslauer's for more than three decades. According to the Los Angeles Times, they first met in the early 1970s. After seeing Amblin'-a 24-minute film Spielberg had made while interning with Universal Pictures' editing department-at the home of Ray Stark, the legendary movie producer, Breslauer sought out the then-unknown director and offered his services. Soon, Spielberg was serving as Breslauer's conduit to young Hollywood.
By the mid-'80s, Breslauer and the partners in his firm, then known as Breslauer Jacobson Rutman, had formed alliances with Barry Hirsch, an entertainment attorney, and Michael Ovitz, one of the biggest agents in town. As Ovitz built Creative Artists Agency into the reigning talent mill for the film and television industries, Breslauer's practice grew too. His firm's clients included superstars Barbra Streisand and Prince; movie producers Jon Peters, Peter Guber, Jerry Bruckheimer, and Don Simpson; Fox Inc. chairman Barry Diller; and music executive Irving Azoff, among many others.
David Geffen, who was a Breslauer client for years, referred Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, and other performers to the firm, which at one point reportedly controlled an estimated $750 million in assets. It was often described as Hollywood's premier management company. "Gerry Breslauer was the king," says a person who was close to clients who invested with him in the '80s and '90s. "His was the club everyone wanted to be in."
Precisely when and how Breslauer hooked up with Madoff is unknown. (Breslauer refused requests for an interview.)
http://www.entrepreneur.com/growyourbusiness/portfoliocombusinessnewsandopinion/article201302-3.html
by Jeswald W. Salacuse
Deal-Making Mediation in Hollywood
The acquisition in 1991 by Matsushita Electric Industrial Company of Japan, one of the world's largest electronics manufacturers, of MCA, one of the United States' biggest entertainment companies, for over $6 billion illustrates the use of mediators in the deal-making process. (See Bruci, 1991) Matsushita had determined that its future growth was dependent upon obtaining a source of films, television programs, and music,-- what it termed "software",-- to complement its consumer electronic "hardware " products. Matsushita knew that it could find such a source of software within the U.S. entertainment industry, but it also recognized that it was virtually ignorant of that industry and its practices. "For Matsushita executives, embarking on their Hollywood expedition may have felt almost interplanetary. They were setting out for a place that was ... foreign to their temperament, culture, and business experience..."(Bruci, 1991, pp.39-40). They therefore engaged Michael Ovitz, the founder and head of Creative Artists Agency, one of the most powerful talent agencies in Hollywood, to guide them on their journey.
After forming a team to assist in the task, Ovitz, a man who was fascinated Asian cultures and who had been a consultant to Sony when it had purchased Columbia Pictures, first extensively briefed the Japanese over several months, sometimes in secret meetings in Hawaii, on the nature of the U.S. entertainment industry, and he then proceeded to propose three possible candidates for acquisition, one of which was MCA. Ultimately, Matsushita chose MCA, but it was Ovitz, not Matsushita executives, who initiated conversations with the MCA leadership, men whom Ovitz knew well. Indeed, Ovitz assumed the task of actually conducting the negotiations for Matsushita. At one point in the discussions, he moved constantly between the Japanese team of executives in one suite of offices in New York City and the MCA team in another building, a process which one observer described as "shuttle diplomacy," a clear reference to the mediating efforts of Henry Kissinger in the disengagement talks between the Israelis and the Arabs following the 1973 October War. Although Matsushita may have considered Ovitz to be their agent in the talks, Ovitz seems to have considered himself to be both a representative of Matsushita and a mediator between the two sides.
Because of the vast cultural and temperamental differences between the Japanese and American companies, Ovitz's strategy was to limit the actual interactions of the two parties to a bare minimum. During the first six weeks of negotiations, the Japanese and Americans met only once in a face-to-face meeting. All other interactions took place through Ovitz. He felt that to bring the parties together too soon would create obstacles that would inevitably derail the deal. He was not only concerned by the vast differences in culture between the two companies but also by the greatly differing personalities in their top managements. The Japanese executives, reserved and somewhat self-effacing, placed a high value on the appearance if not the reality of modesty, while MCA 's president was an extremely assertive and volatile personality. Like any mediator, Ovitz's own interests may also have influenced his choice of strategy. His status in the entertainment industry would only be heightened by making a giant new entrant into Hollywood dependent on him and by the public image that he had been the key to arranging one of the biggest deals in the industry's history. It should also be noted that Ovitz's primary interest was in making the deal happen, and only secondarily in creating a foundation that would result in a profitable long term acquisition for Matsushita.
Although Ovitz launched the deal-making process and moved it a significant distance, he was not able to bring it to completion alone. Eventually the talks stalled over the issue of price, and meetings between the two sides ceased. At this point, a second deal-making mediator entered the scene to make a crucial contribution. At the start of the negotiation, Matsushita and Sony together had engaged Robert Strauss, a politically powerful Washington lawyer who had been at various times U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union and U.S. Trade Representative, as "counsellor to the transaction." Strauss, a member of the MCA board of directors and a close friend of its chairman, was also friendly with the Matsushita leadership and did legal and lobbying work in Washington for the Japanese company. In effect, his strong personal and business relationships with the two sides led them to appoint him to represent them both. Although his letter of appointment merely stated that Strauss was to "co-ordinate certain government relations matters," and even excluded his participation in the negotiations themselves, it appears that both MCA and Matsushita felt that he might be useful in other, unspecified ways.
When the talks stalled on the question of price, Strauss' close relationship to the two sides allowed him to act as a trusted conduit of communication who facilitated a meeting between the top MCA and Matsushita executives that ultimately resulted in an agreement on what Masushita would have to pay to acquire the American company. In arranging that meeting over some fifteen hours, he apparently gained an understanding of the pricing parameters acceptable to each side and then communicated them to the other party. The Japanese, at that point, apparently had greater trust in Strauss, particularly because of his former role as high U.S. government official, concerning the delicate issue of price than they did in Ovitz, who they sensed had a dominant interest in simply getting the deal done, regardless of the price the Japanese would have to pay for it.( Bruci, 1991, p. 66) In the end, as a result of that meeting, the two sides reached an agreement by which Matsushita acquired MCA.
The Matsushita-MCA case shows clearly how two mediators facilitated the deal making process, a deal that the parties probably would not have achieved by themselves. The factors that allowed Ovitz and Strauss to play successful roles were their knowledge of the two parties and their industries, their personal relationships with the leadership of the two sides, their respective reputations, the trust that they engendered, and their skills and experience as negotiators. On the other hand, although Matsushita did succeed in purchasing MCA, the acquisition proved to be troubling and ultimately a disastrous financial loss for the Japanese company. One may ask whether Ovitz' strategy of keeping the two sides apart during negotiations so that they did not come to know one another contributed to this unfortunate result. It prevented the two sides from truly understanding the vast gulf which separated them and therefore from realizing the enormity -- and perhaps impossibility -- of the task of merging two such different organizations into a single coordinated and profitable enterprise.
http://fletcher.tufts.edu/faculty/salacuse/pubs/mediation.html
When Michael Ovitz’s National Mercantile Bancorp (a saving & loan) began getting into the quicksand of several lawsuits & scandals, attorney Robert Strauss represented him
Robert Schwarz Strauss
Robert Schwarz Strauss is a figure in American politics and diplomacy. A Texas political figure, Strauss’s political service dates back to future president Lyndon Johnson’s first congressional campaign in 1937. By the 1950s, he was associated in Texas politics with the conservative faction of the Democratic Party led by Johnson and John Connally. He served as the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee between 1972 and 1977 and served under President Jimmy Carter as the U.S. Trade Representative and special envoy to the Middle East. Strauss was selected by President George H. W. Bush to be the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1991 and after the USSR's collapse, he served as the U.S. ambassador to Russia from 1991 until 1993. Strauss has advised and represented U.S. presidents over three administrations and for both major U.S. political parties.
An accomplished lawyer, Strauss founded the law firm now known as Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in 1945, which has grown to be one of the largest in the world with offices in 15 cities and employing over 900 lawyers and professionals worldwide. His business activities included serving on the Texas Banking Commission and as Chairman of the U.S.-Russia Business Council. Strauss was inducted into the Academy of Achievement in 2003 and was recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian award, on January 16, 1981. He is a trustee of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and The Forum for International Policy, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission.
Strauss has occupied academic chairs and lecture positions, including one as the Lloyd Bentsen Chair at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas. He is also the namesake of The Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at The University of Texas. Additionally, Strauss has an interest in biomedical issues and has endowed two chairs at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas: the Helen and Robert S. Strauss Professorship in Pediatric Neurology and the Helen and Robert S. Strauss Professorship in Urology.
Strauss was hired as a special agent by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and served in the FBI throughout World War II. At the end of the war, he settled in Dallas, where he and a fellow FBI agent, Richard A. Gump, founded their own law firm. This firm, originally known as Gump and Strauss, would eventually grow into the international law firm Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Schwarz_Strauss
Robert Strauss Biography
In law school at the University of Texas, he met another student who would have a large impact on his career
John B. Connally.
By the 1950s, Strauss's law school friend, John Connally, was serving on the staff of Lyndon Johnson, who soon became Senate Majority Leader. Connally had hitched his wagon to Lyndon Johnson's star, and Strauss hitched his to Connally's.
When John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were elected President and Vice President of the United States in 1960, Connally, a former naval officer, was appointed Secretary of the Navy. Within a year, at Strauss's urging, Connally returned to Texas to run for governor. At the time, the Republican Party had no significant presence in Texas, but Connally faced stiff opposition in the Democratic primary. Strauss's skill as a campaign adviser and fund-raiser was a crucial factor in Connally's narrow victory. Having secured the Democratic nomination, Connally easily won the general election. Connally's election finally brought Strauss the access to the Dallas business establishment he had long sought. Governor Connally appointed Strauss to the Texas Banking Commission, and Strauss's law firm grew and prospered.
The world of Texas politics was turned upside down, along with the rest of the country, by the events of November 1963. Governor Connally and his wife Nellie were riding in the limousine with President Kennedy in Dallas when the President was fatally shot. Governor Connally was severely wounded by the assassin's bullets, but soon recovered. Connally and Strauss's mentor and patron, Lyndon Johnson, was now President of the United States. Although Strauss did not regard himself as part of the President's inner circle of political advisers, Connally certainly was, and Robert Strauss's connection to Connally brought him closer to the President.
http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/str0bio-1
John Connally
John Bowden Connally, Jr. (February 27, 1917 – June 15, 1993) was an influential American politician, serving as the 39th Governor of Texas, Secretary of the Navy under President John F. Kennedy, and as Secretary of the Treasury under President Richard M. Nixon. While he was Governor in 1963, Connally was a passenger in the car in which President Kennedy was assassinated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Connally
Bilderberg Attendees
Robert Schwarz Strauss (1982, 1989, 1990, 1992), former Chairman of the Democratic National Committee
http://oneworldscam.com/?p=185
WHAT I DID AT SUMMER CAMP
A reporter gets inside Herb Allen’s C.E.O. retreat.
The New Yorker - July 26, 1999 BY KEN AULETTA
For a media mogul, the five-day Sun Valley, Idaho, camp conducted for the past seventeen years by the investment firm Allen & Company offers similar advantages. There is a head counselor and there are activity directors; each day has a morning activity period, canteen, then playtime and evening programs. The session culminates in an awards ceremony. This year, for the first time, an outsider, a reporter, was permitted to attend. This is my diary.
To read the guest list is to savor the class list in “Lolita” but then to recognize the cast in the pages of Forbes. Among the C.E.O.-ish men and women arriving are Paul G. Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft, and now of Vulcan Ventures; C. Michael Armstrong, of A.T. & T.; Jeffrey Berg, of International Creative Management; Jeffrey P. Bezos, of Amazon.com; Michael R. Bloomberg, of Bloomberg L.P.; Warren E. Buffett, of Berkshire Hathaway; Stephen M. Case, of America Online; Michael Dell, of Dell Computer Corporation; Barry Diller, of USA Networks; William T. Esrey, of Sprint; William H. Gates III, of Microsoft; Donald and Katharine Graham, of the Washington Post Company; Andrew S. Grove, of Intel; Christie Hefner, of Playboy Enterprises; John S. Hendricks, of Discovery Communications; Nobuyuki Idei, of Sony; Steven P. Jobs, of Pixar Animation Studios and Apple Computer; Robert L. Johnson, of BET Holdings; Mel Karmazin, of CBS; Jeffrey Katzenberg, one of three DreamWorks SKG partners; Geraldine B. Laybourne, of Oxygen Media; John C. Malone, of the Liberty Media Group; Thomas Middelhoff, of Bertelsmann AG; Jorma J. Ollila, of Nokia; Sumner M. Redstone, of Viacom; Oprah Winfrey, of the Harpo Entertainment Group; Robert Wright, of NBC; and Jerry Yang, of Yahoo!
The camp is referred to, without irony, as “a family gathering,” but the family has got quite big.
Robert Strauss, the former Democratic National Chairman, has been a friend of Herbert Allen, the patriarch of the investment bank that bears his name, for thirty-five years. “I’ve been to every one of these,” he tells me. “The first one was the best: thirty-five people and one speaker—me!” Strauss, who is eighty, loves coming here, and not just because his Washington law firm can garner clients here. “There’s a bunch of people here I know are not the nicest people in the world,” he says. “But here they’re nice.” Here is the Sun Valley Lodge, which is just outside the town of Ketchum, six thousand feet above sea level. The lodge was built in the thirties by Averell Harriman and his Union Pacific Railroad’s millions. One begins to imagine this sort of gathering at the turn of the last century. Did Rockefeller go rafting with Carnegie?
There are other leadership retreats: the Bilderberg conference; the World Economic Forum, in Davos; Bohemian Grove; investor conferences. Allen & Co.’s retreat, though, is longer than most. It is also confined mainly to a single industry—communications. And, most distinct of all, it includes families. There’s one other difference, as Sumner Redstone points out: “This conference has a host in Herbert Allen”—a single figure who dominates, even as he shies away from the stage.
Many C.E.O.s have been attending the camp for most of its seventeen years, and, in addition, Allen has a large extended family. He has sons and nieces and nephews of his own and sons and daughters of close friends who work for Allen & Co. There are people he always invites because they’re old friends: Bob Strauss and his law partner, Vernon Jordan, of Akin, Gump; former Vice-President Walter Mondale; former Senator Bill Bradley, who is running for President; Meredith and Tom Brokaw; Diane Sawyer; the producer Ray Stark, who first introduced Allen to Sun Valley; the actress Candice Bergen; the director Sydney Pollack. Then, he has people who always came when they headed powerful organizations, and he makes sure they keep coming, even though they’re no longer in charge, such as James Robinson, the former C.E.O. of American Express, and Frank Biondi, the former C.E.O. of both Viacom and Universal. Allen gets upset at those who misbehave. A couple of years ago, Ronald Perelman both brought his own security detail and hired locals to protect him. No other C.E.O. comes with an aide, not to mention a security army, and Allen was mightily offended.
Allen, fifty-nine, is an unusual head counsellor. Unlike most investment bankers, he is a billionaire, yet in a business of salesmen he acts like a buyer. Day and night, he wears a cap pulled down to his ears. During the morning presentations, he sits off to the side near the front of the stage; he invites junior bankers to introduce all the speakers. One of the morning’s presenters is an unshaven, black-turtlenecked Steve Jobs. Jobs talks about the importance of stories, of marrying technology and storytelling skills. Most computer geeks, he says, don’t get it. “Silicon Valley thinks ‘creative’ is a bunch of guys sitting in a condo thinking up dirty jokes.”But Hollywood, he says, doesn’t get it, either: “Hollywood thinks technology is something you buy.”
Read the rest here: http://www.kenauletta.com/whatididatsummercamp.html
Oh yes as Joe says this "Conspiracy" goes to the highest levels...
By: Alan DeutschmanJuly 1, 2005
Odds are you've run across one of these characters in your career. They're glib, charming, manipulative, deceitful, ruthless -- and very, very destructive. And there may be lots of them in America's corner offices.
One of the most provocative ideas about business in this decade so far surfaced in a most unlikely place. The forum wasn't the Harvard Business School or one of those $4,000-a-head conferences where Silicon Valley's venture capitalists search for the next big thing. It was a convention of Canadian cops in the far-flung province of Newfoundland. The speaker, a 71-year-old professor emeritus from the University of British Columbia, remains virtually unknown in the business realm. But he's renowned in his own field: criminal psychology. Robert Hare is the creator of the Psychopathy Checklist. The 20-item personality evaluation has exerted enormous influence in its quarter-century history. It's the standard tool for making clinical diagnoses of psychopaths -- the 1% of the general population that isn't burdened by conscience. Psychopaths have a profound lack of empathy. They use other people callously and remorselessly for their own ends. They seduce victims with a hypnotic charm that masks their true nature as pathological liars, master con artists, and heartless manipulators. Easily bored, they crave constant stimulation, so they seek thrills from real-life "games" they can win -- and take pleasure from their power over other people.
On that August day in 2002, Hare gave a talk on psychopathy to about 150 police and law-enforcement officials. He was a legendary figure to that crowd. The FBI and the British justice system have long relied on his advice. He created the P-Scan, a test widely used by police departments to screen new recruits for psychopathy, and his ideas have inspired the testing of firefighters, teachers, and operators of nuclear power plants.
According to the Canadian Press and Toronto Sun reporters who rescued the moment from obscurity, Hare began by talking about Mafia hit men and sex offenders, whose photos were projected on a large screen behind him. But then those images were replaced by pictures of top executives from WorldCom, which had just declared bankruptcy, and Enron, which imploded only months earlier. The securities frauds would eventually lead to long prison sentences for WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers and Enron CFO Andrew Fastow.
"These are callous, cold-blooded individuals," Hare said.
"They don't care that you have thoughts and feelings. They have no sense of guilt or remorse." He talked about the pain and suffering the corporate rogues had inflicted on thousands of people who had lost their jobs, or their life's savings. Some of those victims would succumb to heart attacks or commit suicide, he said.
Then Hare came out with a startling proposal. He said that the recent corporate scandals could have been prevented if CEOs were screened for psychopathic behavior. "Why wouldn't we want to screen them?" he asked. "We screen police officers, teachers. Why not people who are going to handle billions of dollars?"
It's Hare's latest contribution to the public awareness of "corporate psychopathy." He appeared in the 2003 documentary The Corporation, giving authority to the film's premise that corporations are "sociopathic" (a synonym for "psychopathic") because they ruthlessly seek their own selfish interests -- "shareholder value" -- without regard for the harms they cause to others, such as environmental damage.
Is Hare right? Are corporations fundamentally psychopathic organizations that attract similarly disposed people? It's a compelling idea, especially given the recent evidence. Such scandals as Enron and WorldCom aren't just aberrations; they represent what can happen when some basic currents in our business culture turn malignant. We're worshipful of top executives who seem charismatic, visionary, and tough. So long as they're lifting profits and stock prices, we're willing to overlook that they can also be callous, conning, manipulative, deceitful, verbally and psychologically abusive, remorseless, exploitative, self-delusional, irresponsible, and megalomaniacal. So we collude in the elevation of leaders who are sadly insensitive to hurting others and society at large.
But wait, you say: Don't bona fide psychopaths become serial killers or other kinds of violent criminals, rather than the guys in the next cubicle or the corner office? That was the conventional wisdom. Indeed, Hare began his work by studying men in prison. Granted, that's still an unusually good place to look for the conscience-impaired. The average Psychopathy Checklist score for incarcerated male offenders in North America is 23.3, out of a possible 40. A score of around 20 qualifies as "moderately psychopathic." Only 1% of the general population would score 30 or above, which is "highly psychopathic," the range for the most violent offenders. Hare has said that the typical citizen would score a 3 or 4, while anything below that is "sliding into sainthood."
READ MORE: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/96/open_boss.html
It’s true, your boss is a psychopath
Surprising insights from the social sciences
By Kevin Lewis June 20, 2010
Watching the news some days, you’d think a lot of companies were run by psychopaths. And, according to a recent study, some might well be. One of the authors of the study was hired by companies to evaluate managers — mostly middle-aged, college-educated, white males — for a management development program. It turns out that these managers scored higher on measures of psychopathy than the overall population, and some who had very high scores were candidates for, or held, senior positions. In general, managers with higher scores were seen as better communicators, better strategic thinkers, and more creative. However, they were also seen as having poor management style, not being team players, and delivering poor performance. But, apparently, this didn’t prevent some of them from being seen as having leadership potential. The authors conclude that “the very skills that make the psychopath so unpleasant (and sometimes abusive) in society can facilitate a career in business even in the face of negative performance ratings.”
Babiak, P. et al., “Corporate Psychopathy: Talking the Walk,” Behavioral Sciences & the Law (March/April 2010).
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/06/20/its_true_your_boss_is_a_psychopath/
Behav Sci Law. 2010 Mar;28(2):174-93.
Corporate psychopathy: Talking the walk.
Babiak P, Neumann CS, Hare RD.
Abstract
There is a very large literature on the important role of psychopathy in the criminal justice system. We know much less about corporate psychopathy and its implications, in large part because of the difficulty in obtaining the active cooperation of business organizations. This has left us with only a few small-sample studies, anecdotes, and speculation. In this study, we had a unique opportunity to examine psychopathy and its correlates in a sample of 203 corporate professionals selected by their companies to participate in management development programs. The correlates included demographic and status variables, as well as in-house 360 degrees assessments and performance ratings. The prevalence of psychopathic traits-as measured by the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) and a Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version (PCL: SV) "equivalent"-was higher than that found in community samples. The results of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) indicated that the underlying latent structure of psychopathy in our corporate sample was consistent with that model found in community and offender studies. Psychopathy was positively associated with in-house ratings of charisma/presentation style (creativity, good strategic thinking and communication skills) but negatively associated with ratings of responsibility/performance (being a team player, management skills, and overall accomplishments).
PMID: 20422644 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20422644
It has been estimated that at least 1-10 executives are psychopaths. Psychopathy is about power and control whether that is achieved through murder or other means makes no difference....it is all power and control.