“Powerhouse: The Untold Story of Hollywood’s Creative Artists Agency“

This book is so depressing I almost want to tell you not to read it.

But that would be a mistake.

I was not going to read it, because I hate oral histories and the reviews were horrid. Then I ran into Steve Barnett who told me he finished it in two days on vacation in Hawaii and I had to dive in.

I did.

It’s a tome. There’s no way you can finish it in forty eight hours unless it’s the only thing you do. But it does call out to me, I have wanted to read it. And I’m just positively stunned…

How it’s all ancient history and so many of the players are irrelevant.

Live in the belly of the beast long enough and it seems so important. But when they go back thirty years and lay it all out, you remember the movies but don’t care about them and realize they’ve got no staying power. It’s as if all this work has been done for naught. As guys, and it is mostly guys, beat their chests, take credit and play chess with each other believing they’re Gary Kasparov when the truth is they’re kids playing Chinese checkers.

The progenitors left William Morris. The Morris agency was a bastion of fiefs with no upward mobility. Ovitz, et al, wanted to start over with a teamwork ethos that truly served the client.

They won.

And in the process they got big-headed and Ovitz alienated everybody and CAA became a monolith… SO WHAT?

My favorite part of the book is when Paula Wagner, known primarily as Tom Cruise’s producing partner, says…

“I left CAA in August ’92. As an agent, you aren’t a principal. You’re the representative of the principal, and I decided I wanted to be a principal.”

Bingo! Exactly how I felt practicing law, something I never planned to do but fell into awaiting my bar results, it takes a long time to get them in California. And I passed and not long into my tenure I said…I don’t want to be a lawyer and be told what to do, I want to call my own lawyer and tell him what to do!

But actually, the truly best part of the book, the laugh out loud part, is a story told by Tom Ross, who goes to rehab for weight-loss:

“I was there a month, and one day I ran into Steven Tyler, who was there for drug rehab and sexual addiction. They arranged for us to spend an afternoon together and Steven said to me ‘Man, I don’t know if I can do this. I just can’t imagine going to a gig and not getting laid or not getting a few blow jobs.’ I looked at him and said, ‘Try being an agent for a few years. You get used to it.'”

Bada-bing!

But the execs have the last laugh, except for a few outliers like Tyler, true stars, the business people outlast the talent. The talent leaves its mark, but the business people make more money and soldier on, until they can’t.

“Mike left because he knew there are good agents and there are old agents, but there are no good old agents.”

Bingo!

A lot of this book is about knowing when to move on, when your time is done, when you’ve got to pass the torch to the younger generation before they gain control and fire your ass. I heard it from a famous A&R guy the other night, he says his biggest challenge is the boomers who hate their jobs who won’t retire. I mean Snapchat? That’s where oldsters draw the line. That’s when you know you’re done. When you’ve built a home on Facebook and find out time has passed you by, there’s a new sheriff in town, and you just want to move on down the road to elude his reach.

But it is old news. CAA is a juggernaut today. But it’s a different company in different businesses. Deep into sports, it’s sold equity to outsiders. Trying to figure out how to survive as movies become marginalized and the realization hits…there’s just not that much money in entertainment.

But you can own your identity.

Mick Fleetwood comes into the office just as Tom Ross has joined the agency and says:

“I can’t talk to you with that tie on. It’s not you.”

And Tom rips it off and never wears one again.

It’s who you are, not your image.

That’s the difference between the rock stars of yesterday and those of today. Before, they marched to the beat of their own drummer, today they’re trying to fit in. And they never really can. Because that’s not their skill. The business people will eat them alive.

And Ovitz screws his partners but makes them money and everybody comes out to piss on his grave, as Ovitz continues to explain away the faux pas. It’s hard not to feel sorry for these people. Who think this is oh-so-important. It’s not. Can you even name the heads of today’s movie studios?

But there are so many lessons to be learned, Bill Haber says:

“In any business on earth – I always say to people – nobody will leave you for the money, and nobody will leave you over titles. People will only leave if they have no loyalty to you.”

Hollywood is incredibly tribal. It’s all about gangs. You’ve got your people and you’d take a bullet for them.

Or you’re not in the game.

That’s one of the eye-opening elements, how Ovitz and his gang foist advantages upon their clients.

Sign with CAA and they’ll introduce you to Marty and Bob. They can not only solve problems, they can create opportunities. Who you’re with is sometimes more important than who you are. There are very few slots in Hollywood, in filmed entertainment and music too. If you think you can just waltz in and take your shot, you’ve got no idea how the game is played. It’s a controlled universe. You need your team. And this book makes that very clear.

It all seemed so important at the time. The Eszterhas affair. “Legal Eagles.” Ovitz going to Disney and getting fired.

But not only is Ovitz out of the picture, so is Eisner. Sid Sheinberg too. Take away their power base and they’re mortal. Meanwhile, the youngsters want to freeze you out, they don’t want to give you another shot, Ovitz had no chance with AMG.

So where does this leave us?

It’s about you baby. Follow your dream. You think you want to be at the center of it all, but the more you read the book the less you care. Never mind everybody working 24/7 just to stay in place, it’s just a matter of when the clients will leave you, not if.

But wisdom comes with experience and age. One can tell youngsters how it works but they never listen, they need to do it for themselves.

And I don’t think any youngsters are reading this book. Because they can’t catch the references, they have no idea who the people are, all plowed under, in the rearview mirror. Sydney Pollack is six feet under. Dustin Hoffman is a guy who had a series on HBO that got cancelled. Bob Redford is that old guy with a film festival. There’s a whole section on “Sneakers.” Do you even know that film? I saw it, I liked it, but it’s a distant memory, a faded photograph of a Little League team, if you were there it’s meaningful, if not, it’s meaningless.

Boys and their toys. Their Ferraris and their private jets. And you buy it, you want what they’ve got. Even though so many are faking it, and are unhappy inside.

To hear competitors rain on Ovitz’s parade, to say he was a bad businessman…

I mean come on, even if in some instances that’s true, it’s basically jealousy. Ovitz changed the agenting industry. And made beaucoup bucks doing it. Hell, he even changed the medium, both movies and TV. He left his mark.

But he did have blind spots.

We’ve all got blind spots.

And you conquer them via information. That’s what Hollywood runs on, information. If  you’re not communicating 24/7, if you’re not hoovering up tidbits and analysis, you’ll never make it.

It’s good to be the king.

But it never lasts.

P.S. Read the damn book. Your eyes will glaze over at times as they go down the rabbit hole, jumping around in the process, but you’ll learn more about how Hollywood really works than in a lifetime of college courses.

Taylor Swift has a rich father. Florida Georgia Line auto-tune their vocals. Scott Borchetta built his company upon Scott Swift’s cash.

The wannabes complain, they could do it better.

But they hardly do it at all.

I’m not saying you have to like the work of those who make it, but you do have to admire their pluck, their perseverance, all the hard work they put into making it.

Sure, Taylor Swift got a leg up by having a rich parent. You grew up poor, it sucks. But the truth is many people are just poor-mouthing. You see it all the time in interviews. Some actor or comedian will say they grew up lower class, and then they’ll let slip that their father was a lawyer or a bank president… It’s the great American game, downplaying your advantages. When you’re not boasting about all the money you’ve made. I know, I know, it’s a conundrum. But never ever take Hollywood publicity at face value. It’s lies. It’s images. It’s for your consumption. Most of these people came from backgrounds no different from yours. Although they may have made choices you wouldn’t. Like screwing friends, stepping on others… Because it’s a jungle out there and you don’t get to roar by being a nice guy or gal.

As Helen Kushnick so famously put it to Jay Leno… “I’ve been serving you steak dinners for almost eighteen years, I just haven’t bothered showing you how I slaughtered the cow.”

Florida Georgia Line, hell, they’re not the best singers. But they have hit records, because they found a niche and exploited it. Mashing up hip-hop and country. With a beer/bro viewpoint that no one else had expressed quite the same way. You could have done the same thing, only you didn’t pay your dues at Belmont and you didn’t play without a net. Talk about risk… If you want to make it in music it can’t be your side gig, but your only gig. And it takes years to make it. So while others are coding at Google, buying houses and getting married, you’re renting an apartment, driving an old Nissan and have nothing to show for it. Are you willing to go that route? Almost no one is, not for a long time. As for those bitching that they’ve been playing but not winning, odds are inherently long, but these people never look at themselves and examine their flaws, their hard to get along with personalities, their lack of talent. Just because you desire something that does not mean it can be so. It’s like being 5’2″ and wanting to star in the NBA. Or being the same height and wanting to be a runway model. Impossible. Oh, now I’m gonna get e-mail about Muggsy Bogues and… That’s exactly the point, you’re trying to prove me wrong as opposed to digesting my lesson, which you’re free to embrace or discard. But you think by playing gotcha you’re winning, but the joke is on you.

Scott Borchetta ASKED Scott Swift for the money. Couldn’t have been easy. Then again, he asked so many who wouldn’t pony up before Swift. How many doors are you willing to knock on? How many times are you willing to hear no? And still soldier on with a smile on your face without sour grapes.

I’m not saying the winners are admirable people. I’m not saying all their work is of the highest standard, never mind a breakthrough. But I am saying you’ve got to applaud them for making it. And rather than point out their flaws, look at their attributes, what they have that pushes them over the line. People talk crap about Irving Azoff all the time, do you know that he’s charming and the life of the party? As for Michael Rapino, do you know he’s the best politician in the music business? Come on, he killed Michael Cohl! But rather than investigate his relationship with Greg Maffei, rather than uncover the choices that go along with the steps, you just knee-jerk your hatred. All the songs on the hit parade suck. The person singing or writing or agenting or directing has your job. That’s what it is, raw jealousy. And if you want to sit on the sidelines and carp, that’s your prerogative. But the truth is those who’ve won are ignoring you, they’re circling the wagons and leaving you out, you’re the one who’s empty inside. You could move to Hollywood, you could scrape and save and try to find a way in, lose your job and network for another. You could get a record deal and lose it and still keep making music. But that’s too hard.

America’s a great country. More doors are open than closed. Especially in fast-moving enterprises like entertainment where where you went to college is irrelevant and except for a chosen few who your daddy is doesn’t matter. It’s a roiling cauldron that might boil the life out of you, but might just yield riches and fame. This is not banking, a soulless enterprise where cash is the only dividend. This is not tech, where you have to know how to code. This is a realm where street smarts are everything, where emotional intelligence is key. Are you up to it?

Well step up to the plate and find out.

God, Your Mama, And Me – Spotify

God, Your Mama, And Me – YouTube (It’s blocked, but you can hear a snippet)

Everybody hates Florida Georgia Line but its fans. One of the biggest acts in country, FGL is excoriated by traditionalists and so many modern listeners, but they keep burning up the charts because they’ve managed to capture the zeitgeist of the younger generation, mashing up rap and other elements of today into a genre that prefers to be walled off from pop and the mainstream. But…

I’m addicted to Release Radar. All the publicity is about Discover Weekly, but it pales in comparison to Release Radar, Discover Weekly will tell you where you’ve been but not where you’re going, it’ll hook you up with your old girlfriend and take you on a tour of your high school, but Release Radar is like a trip to a destination you not only have never visited, but didn’t even dream of, but one that fits like a glove. I find myself skipping through Discover Weekly, but I LISTEN to Release Radar.

And that’s where I heard “God, Your Mama, And Me.”

The funny thing about music is you know immediately, not always, but usually. A sound resonates, you start nodding your head, you begin singing along. I’m riding the recumbent bike and I’m asking myself…WHAT IS THIS?

Oh, I knew it was FGL, the lead vocal is unmistakable. But, other than that, it’s not country, and then in the second verse a mellifluous voice that feels so right takes over and…

IT’S THE BACKSTREET BOYS!

Do you own “Millennium”? Released in the spring of ’99, it only sold 40 million copies world wide, a mere trifle, ha! I had to go out and buy it because of “I Want It That Way,” the Max Martin/Andreas Carlsson nugget that superseded anything recorded by the legends of the era, it made the Backstreet Boys superstars, an incredible follow up to one of the great breakthrough cuts of all time, “Quit, Playing Games With My Heart.” If you don’t like “Quit, Playing Games With My Heart,” you don’t like Jon Secada’s “Just Another Day Without You,” possibly SBK’s greatest hit, it’s moody and infectious and… Never forget that the Beatles started as pop, then they expanded the medium, tested limits, classic rock was birthed and dominated and ever since we’ve gone down a rabbit hole of ever more derivative numbers that are so far from the garden that…people have tuned out.

And speaking of rock, as good as “I Want It That Way” was, it was the opening cut on “Millennium” that sealed the deal, that made me a Backstreet Boys fan, that had me blasting the CD in my car to the point my BMW shook, because “Larger Than Life” rocked harder and more endearingly than anything on rock radio, which is not hard to believe, since Max Martin started out in a metal band.

So, if you haven’t tuned out yet…

That’s the problem, self-identifiers stuck in the past. You know them, wearing their black clothing and silver jewelry, waiting for the eighties to come back, putting down all that which is not pure…the train has positively left them behind, times have changed, they’re the ones who are out of the loop.

And now the people being left behind are all those mired in the modern machine pop/urban landscape, playing it safe to appeal to a brain dead audience. Meanwhile, Florida Georgia Line goes back to the well and comes up with something that can be loved by EVERYBODY!

“That Sunday morning choir, church doors open wide”

I’d be lying if I didn’t say I winced. That’s a big problem with country, they appeal to right wing canards. Turns out the nation is becoming less religious. Country acts drug and booze, can they stretch the paradigm a bit, stop pandering? Sturgill Simpson had it right, the Nashville establishment is two-faced, it runs Merle Haggard out of town and then wants to embrace him. Didn’t catch that memo? It burned up the country newswires, Sturgill excoriated the establishment on Facebook, read it here: http://bit.ly/2bR2lKx?utm_source=phplist5547&utm_medium=email&utm_content=text&utm_campaign=God%2C+Your+Mama%2C+And+Me And while you’re at it, listen to Sturgill’s “Brace For Impact (Live A Little),” which I also discovered via Release Radar. I’ve been hyped on Sturgill for years, but this track finally closed me, listen to it if you like to go to dive bars in your cowboy boots and sip a longneck as you twist your toes in the sawdust and get your juices flowing. This is more rock than modern Metallica, more soulful than Sharon Jones, it’s the ghost of Waylon with some Willie and even if you think you hate country you’ll like this, it’ll sex you up to the point you’ll stop reading this to relieve yourself.

ANYWAY…

I’ve got to calm myself down, get back to where I once belonged.

So, my point is “God, Your Mama, And Me” is the best Backstreet Boys track in excess of a decade. It’s got melody, you sing along, it makes you feel good…ISN’T THAT WHAT MUSIC IS SUPPOSED TO DO?

But most people have not heard it. That’s the modern era. You can make it, but if it’s not marketed, if it’s not pushed, it’s like it doesn’t exist. But I’m sure Scott Borchetta is gonna push the button on this. It’s stuff like this that used to be the song of the summer before we moved so far from the mainstream there was no way we could hit the target.

That’s right, sometimes you’ve got to go back to basics.

There was a reason those Backstreet Boys records were so successful. They appealed to EVERYBODY! Maybe not you, but you’re the minority, and right now the minority is ruling in music, its tail is wagging the dog.

Not that I want to give Scott that much credit. FGL’s new album is not on Spotify, only cherry-picked hits. I just don’t get it, are the people not on the service really gonna give up their CDs and files? As for Jason Aldean keeping his new album off all streaming services… He’s like the last guy to use a wooden tennis racket. Yes, you can win that way, but really it’s all about metal and composites. The bleeding edge is much more satisfying than mopping up the past with the lemmings. As soon as I heard “God, Your Mama, And Me” I immediately wanted to hear the rest of the new album, but I couldn’t.

And “God, Your Mama, And Me” is not perfect. It almost seems unfinished, it could use another section, but it’s like…seeing a beautiful woman and being attracted without speaking to her, not yet knowing who she truly is. But you want to know more. (And feel free to flip the script, think about your hunk.) And isn’t that what we’re trying to do, isn’t that our mission, infecting the public and making people want more?

“God, Your Mama, And Me” is infectious because it builds upon the basic blocks. Employ good voices, have choruses people can sing along with, never underestimate the power of melody, create something so ear-pleasing it can’t be denied.

And one can argue, as Tom Petty has, that country is the rock and roll of the seventies. But I’ll argue that was a golden era, a peak much higher than today, and better to go back to the garden and grow from there as opposed to working untillable soil.

It was a stiff upon release. It cost $3 million and grossed $4 million in a pre-home video era. In other words, it lost money, with only half of gross receipts coming back to the studio. Sure, there was television income, but this was pre-cable. No one knew the movie and no one knew the songs. Yet today, it’s a classic.

Originally it was called “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” A twisted story by author Roald Dahl, there were no songs, but he had a cult following, one of whose members was my younger sister Wendy, she bought all his books, I read it, I saw the movie back in ’71, when it first came out. The Oompa Loompas were too orange, but one viewing and I knew their song by heart. And the kids all had different personalities, not all likable. That’s a fiction of media, that characters have to be likable, no, the story has to be good. And I was the only person I ever knew who saw the flick and then…

Gene Wilder dies yesterday and it’s the first movie listed in his obit.

Mind-blowing. I too first saw Gene in 1967’s “Bonnie & Clyde.” I remember 1968’s “Producers,” which caused a kerfuffle to the point where the Fine Arts in Westport, Connecticut, edited it itself. The scene with the blankie, it was incomprehensible.

And then came “Young Frankenstein.” The Mel Brooks tour-de-force, it cleaned up at the box office at the end of ’74. It was a cultural staple.

Not that I had not followed Mr. Wilder. I remember going to see “Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx” just before I shipped off for college in 1970. Gene played a mentally-challenged dung salesman who fell in love with Margot Kidder. It was the first time I ever saw her, before “Superman,” before the exploits revealing her mental issues, it was a small movie that stuck with me, but don’t they all.

“Willy Wonka” was a small movie. Not shot for a hundred million and marketed at half that number. Sure, the studio wanted to make money, but comic book heroes were not the only stars who could get a green light. But today, today, if you’re not shooting for the moon, the studio doesn’t want to play.

Nor does the record label. There’s all this hogwash about costs, both real and opportunity. No one wants to hit singles, never mind bunts, and…

The movies come and go.

But not “Willy Wonka.”

I was with a bunch of Gen X’ers and we were discussing the greatest comedies of all time.

All of theirs came from the twenty first century. I was stunned. No “Stripes,” never mind thirties classics.

But that’s today, when almost nothing from the past survives, when it’s all new and then thrown away.

Except for “Willy Wonka.”

“Willy Wonka” is Nick Drake. A film from the classic era which got a second chance, which resonated and held on. That’s right, it was re-released in 1996 and made $21 million.

And the lion’s share of streams on Spotify are catalog, old stuff, that just lasts and lasts.

So in an era of flash are we doing it wrong? Are we focusing on blockbuster me-too product when it’s the challenging stuff that tests limits which survives? Led Zeppelin sold out to Atlantic, their manager felt the records wouldn’t be worth anything in the future. Jim Morrison was dead for ten years before “Rolling Stone” put him on the cover. Led Zeppelin and the Doors not only survived, they flourished! Who from today will flourish in the future? Who are our “Willy Wonkas”? Are we even producing “Willy Wonkas”?