Creative Artists Agency

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Creative Artists Agency
Type	Private
Founded	Beverly Hills, California, USA (1975)
Headquarters	Century City, California
Key people	Richard Lovett, President Bryan Lourd, Co-Chairman Lee Gabler, Co-Chairman and Head of Television Rick Nicita Co-Chairman
Industry	Talent and Literary Agencies
Website	www.caa.com

Creative Artists Agency (CAA) is one of the most powerful talent and literary agencies in American show business. Previously headquartered in a I.M. Pei-designed building in Beverly Hills, the agency represents a vast array of actors, writers, directors, and athletes, as well as a variety of companies and their products.

1 History
- 1.1 Expansion
- 1.2 New Management
2 People represented by CAA
3 External links

[edit] History

CAA was founded in 1975 by five dissident talent agents employed by the William Morris Agency. Michael Ovitz, Ron Meyer, William Haber, Michael Rosenfeld, and Rowland Perkins met over dinner one night after they discovered that they all had in mind creating an agency of their own. As Ovitz reminisced in a 1989 New York Times article, 'We all sang the same tune, and we came out of that dinner with a clear understanding of how we were going to do it.' However, before they could obtain adequate financing for their new venture, they were fired.

By early 1975, Creative Artists Agency was in business, with a $100,000 line of credit and a $21,000 bank loan, in a small rented office outfitted with card tables and folding chairs. The five agents had only two cars among them, and their wives took turns as agency receptionist. Within about a week, according to one industry insider, they had sold their first three packages, a game show called 'Rhyme and Reason,' the 'Rich Little Show,' and the 'Jackson Five Show.'

At first, CAA's founders planned to form a medium-sized, full-service agency--one that was as unlike Morris as possible in approach and feel. Ovitz, who shortly assumed de facto leadership of the agency, described the company's corporate culture as a blend of Eastern philosophy and team sports. 'I liken myself to the guy running down the court with four other players and throwing the ball to the open guy,' he once said. Theirs was a relaxed partnership based on teamwork, with proceeds shared equally. Clients enjoyed the services of a number of agents because at CAA information was pooled. There were no nameplates on doors, no formal titles, no individual agent client lists. Work practices followed the company's two 'commandments': Be a team player and return phone calls promptly. There was an endless stream of meetings and talk. Because of this, others sometimes referred to CAA agents as the 'Moonies' of the business, famous for 'walking in lock-step,' according to the authors of Hit and Run, the bestseller Hollywood insider account by Griffin and Masters.

[edit] Expansion

With its stable full of actors and about $90 million in annual bookings in the late 1980s, the agency, led by Ovitz, decided to get into movies. Its timing again was propitious, and its approach to the business inventive: CAA used its growing leverage to apply packaging to the movies. CAA's use of packaging changed the face of movie-making, making CAA increasingly powerful in the process.

Many studio heads, who did not like the way CAA made deals, insisting that along with desirable projects, studios also had to take 'the dogs.' Instead of the ten percent agents typically made on a contract, CAA insisted upon on a share in the product. Some, including former William Morris Agent David Geffen, blamed CAA in the press for throwing Hollywood's economy out of whack. Representing much of the major talent in the industry, CAA reputedly drove up salaries, and thus, the cost of making movies.

By the mid-1990s, CAA divided its agents into two camps: traditional agents, who oversaw the careers of CAA's 1,000 stars, and specialists, whose expertise in investment banking, consulting, and advertising made CAA into a one-stop shop for digital media. When Ron Meyer and Michael Ovitz left in 1995 for RCA and Disney respectively, the entertainment community watched to see if CAA would fall from the top.

[edit] New Management

The new management team headed by Richard Lovett, devised a four-point strategy for keeping competitors at bay during its transitional year: Make sure the 100-plus agents remain committed to the new CAA; re-sign longtime clients whose primary relationship was with Ovitz or Meyer; sign up new clients; and put together new movies.

Ovitz, Meyer, and Haber's departure led inevitably to an exodus of some of CAA's top-marquee names, but CAA recovered and continues to be a leader in the entertainment industry. Recently, CAA decided to expand into sports. Athletes such as Derek Jeter, Peyton Manning, and David Beckham and many agents from IMG have joined CAA to utilize their network in the advertising world.

After years in Beverly Hills, CA, in January 2007 CAA moved to a new building in the Century City neighborhood of Los Angeles.

CAA has offices in Los Angeles, CA, New York City, NY, Nashville, TN, Cape Town, South Africa, London, England, Beijing, China Kansas City, MO, St. Louis, MO, Calgary, Alberta, and Stockholm, Sweden.

CAA is a private company, but revenues are estimated to be between $250 and $300 million.

CAA has recently been linked to the "Lonelygirl15" craze going on at You Tube.