Michael Ovitz & Ron Meyer in conversation with James Andrew Miller

This talk took place September 29, 2016, at the Director's Guild in Los Angeles as part of Live Talks Los Angeles.  

Michael Ovitz was a co-founder of CAA, and served as its chairman until he left the agency in 1995 to become president of The Walt Disney Company. He later launched AMG, Artists Management Group, and is now a businessman and investor.

Ron Meyer was a co-founder of CAA, and served as its president before being named president and chief operating officer of Universal Studios in 1995. He is now Vice Chairman of NBCUniversal.

James Andrew Miller is an award winning journalist and co-author of the New York Times bestseller Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN; Live from New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests, which spent four months on the New York Times bestseller list; and Running in Place: Inside the Senate, also a bestseller. He has written for the Washington Post, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, and many others. He is a graduate of Occidental College, Oxford University, and Harvard Business School, all with honors.

POWERHOUSE: The Untold Story of Hollywood’s Creative Artists Agency unveils an astonishing—and astonishingly entertaining—history of Hollywood’s transformation over the past five decades as seen through the agency at the heart of it all.  Launched in 1975, when five bright and brash employees of a creaky William Morris office left to open their own, strikingly innovative talent agency, CAA would come to revolutionize the entertainment industry, and over the next several decades its tentacles would spread aggressively throughout the worlds of movies, television, music, advertising, investment banking, and sports. Drawing on unprecedented and exclusive access to the men and women who built and battled with CAA, as well as financial information never before made public, author James Andrew Miller weaves a story of prophetic brilliance, singular genius, and entrepreneurial courage. It is also a tale of boundless ambition, ruthless egomania, ceaseless empire building, greed, and personal betrayals. Here are the real Star Wars—complete with a “Death Star”—all told through the voices of those who actually fought in the arena.