Ovitz Issues an Apology for Comment About ‘Gay Mafia’

Onetime superagent Michael Ovitz apologized Tuesday for his comments in a Vanity Fair magazine article, due to hit the newsstands today, in which he blames his downfall on a group he calls Hollywood’s “gay mafia.”

“I made some statements that were inappropriate during an open and frank discussion with Vanity Fair,” Ovitz said in a statement. “In particular the term ‘gay mafia’ does not reflect my true feelings or attitudes. It is regrettable and I am truly sorry.”

Ovitz’s comments in the Vanity Fair story, which were furiously faxed and e-mailed around Hollywood starting early Monday, stunned even the town’s most blase insiders. Some questioned Ovitz’s sanity and others said he was homophobic.

Once Hollywood’s most powerful agent, Ovitz’s career initially stumbled in the early 1990s when he left the Creative Artists Agency he co-founded for the No.2 job at the Walt Disney Co.

That job lasted 18 months and sent him into retirement with a handsome severance. He reemerged in 1999 with a management firm called Artists Management Group that he sold this year after its television business failed and investors backed out.

Ovitz told Vanity Fair that he was the victim of a well-orchestrated attack campaign by his numerous enemies in Hollywood.

He blamed many people, not all of them gay, for his problems. Among those singled out were Dream Works SKG founder David Geffen and Universal Studios chief Ron Meyer, who was a founding partner at Ovitz’s former agency, CAA.

“I know how hard it is for people to see me as a victim,” he is quoted as saying, “but in this case it’s pretty close to the truth.”

Many of those named in the piece declined to comment; others, such as Geffen, suggested Ovitz needed psychiatric care.