Lies and the Dirty Liars Who Tell Them. Mike Ovitz Takes The Stand

LA WEEKLY ^ | 10/30/04 | Nikki Finke

[Californiajones]

THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS in life that disappoint, and people who don’t live up to their billing. But not Michael Ovitz, in what is sarcastically being billed as “The Trial of the Century.”

For days now, internal memos and expert testimony inside Delaware Chancery Court had described the guy we love to hate as a “psychopath” and “congenital liar” (not to mention recounting behavior that merited other terms of endearment like “spendthrift,” “incompetent” and “fraud”).

Before the trial, sources close to Ovitz told L.A. Weekly that the Creative Artists Agency co-founder was relishing the opportunity to go to court. “He sees this as his opportunity to tell his story and be vindicated,” explained an Ovitz insider. But on the witness stand Tuesday in this shareholders’ lawsuit over his extravagant hiring and even more lavish firing as Disney president, Ovitz told a whiny tale of woe verging perilously close to acute paranoia and utter mendacity. They were all out to get him, every last one of them.

[Californiajones]

Okay, nuttin' to do with the election per se, but it's wild to see Hollywood eat its own. (And Nikki Finke does get her licks in by comparing Ovitz to "Dubya". Nice.) I remember when Ovitz was the Man. One of Ovitz's casualties was the suicide of a kid who was supposed to take his place, Jay Maloney.