Ovitz Smoothing Feathers Around Town

In his role as a corporate chieftain this year, Michael Ovitz has been globe-trotting, meeting this week with Disney division heads in Europe and breaking bread last spring with the president of China. But several meetings closer to home in recent weeks may have required more finesse.

The Disney president of one year has initiated meetings with some of his archenemies, including NBC’s West Coast head Don Ohlmeyer and DreamWorks mogul David Geffen, in hopes of making peace with those who have been openly critical of the former superagent.

Ovitz, founder of Creative Artists Agency, would not comment on the meetings, but sources close to him say the meetings are merely a way to try to clear the air of misunderstandings and close some festering wounds.

One source suggested: “He’s a great politician. And if you want to be Lew Wasserman, you have to make amends with everyone.” But some Hollywood executives believe Ovitz is primarily concerned with his image. In recent months, several articles have contended that there is a rift between Ovitz and his new boss, Disney Chairman Michael Eisner, and there are likely to be a series of one-year anniversary reports about his move to Disney.

Such treatment in the media is new to Ovitz, who after years of being glorified there as the most powerful figure in Hollywood, has come under more open criticism since leaving the agency business for the corporate world.

“He’s burned a lot of bridges and wants everybody to say nice things about him,” says one high-level studio executive. “There’s no question he cares about what people say and write about him. He’s always cared about public perception.”

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Ovitz recently met with Ohlmeyer at the NBC chief’s office for more than an hour to smooth relations that got rough between Disney’s ABC and its top-ranked competitor in February. The flare-up occurred when ABC approached Jamie Tarses, the top development executive at NBC, to become its president in the midst of development season. Tarses was released a year early from her contract amid rumors that she had threatened to allege sexual harassment by a top NBC executive as a lever to free herself. NBC sources denied the accusations and quickly speculated that Ovitz was bringing his special talents as an agent to bear in orchestrating her release.

The feud got uglier and more public when Ohlmeyer was quoted in a Newsweek story calling Ovitz “the antichrist.”

When “The Jeff Foxworthy Show” and “The Naked Truth” faced cancellation on ABC, they were picked up by NBC in what some Hollywood insiders saw as a thinly veiled effort to discredit ABC’s decisions. But the move made for a strange paradox since ABC is a half-owner of both shows with its partner Brillstein-Grey.

As a result, Ovitz naturally has a business reason for trying to make peace with Ohlmeyer and NBC. In fact, a source suggested that NBC President Robert Wright encouraged the get-together and talked with both executives afterward.

Two days after meeting with Ohlmeyer, Ovitz called to set up a lunch with the NBC West Coast chief. Ohlmeyer still hasn’t committed to a date.

“Ovitz came in to bury the hatchet, and Don said, ‘I’ll forgive but not forget,” said a source familiar with the meeting. Ohlmeyer would not comment on the get-together.

The meeting between Ovitz and Geffen took place about a week ago at DreamWorks’ private dining room at Amblin Entertainment’s headquarters on MCA/Universal’s back lot. Sources say that the meeting with Ohlmeyer was at least civil but that the one with Geffen quickly disintegrated into a heated exchange, sources said.

There’s been bad blood between Geffen and Ovitz since the early ‘80s, and friction between DreamWorks and Disney over a multimillion-dollar lawsuit filed against Disney earlier this year by its former studio head, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Geffen’s partner in DreamWorks. Earlier this summer, during the Herb Allen Jr. mogul retreat in Sun Valley, Idaho, Ovitz attempted to sit down with Katzenberg but schedules did not allow it. Ovitz had been acting as a go-between of sorts between Katzenberg and Katzenberg’s former boss, Eisner, in trying to settle the matter, but to no avail.

In the last couple of months, Ovitz’s new corporate role has also brought him face to face with another longtime foe, Jeffrey Berg, chairman of the International Creative Management agency.

A meeting at ICM’s Wilshire Boulevard offices was not intended foremost as a rapprochement but rather was called by the agency to discuss how it and Disney might work together on international business. But it apparently was the first time that Berg and Ovitz, longtime heads of rival talent agencies, had sat in a room together to discuss business, and the tone of the meeting became hostile at one point.

As one source close to Berg and ICM President Jim Wiatt, who also attended the meeting, described it: “It got very combative in the room.”

Another source characterized the session as “a funky meeting” and said that Ovitz vented anger he still harbors toward Berg for publicly attacking him and CAA three years ago over advising French bank Credit Lyonnais about its then-ailing MGM studio.

Berg had contended it was an inherent conflict of interest for Ovitz, as the head of a talent agency, to have influence over MGM because many CAA clients had business with the studio.

After the industry guilds failed to pursue the complaint, Berg backed off. But apparently Ovitz never got over it. A source said after 20 minutes or so, the 1 1/2-hour meeting ended with a productive discussion about the business at hand.