Ex-Mogul at Helm Again, for Hospital (original) (raw)

U.S.|Ex-Mogul at Helm Again, for Hospital

https://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/09/us/ex-mogul-at-helm-again-for-hospital.html

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Los Angeles Journal

July 9, 1997

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July 9, 1997

Section A, Page

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There were no mouse ears, only the headphones, walkie-talkies and wireless microphones of a battalion of bustling aides. But for a few magic moments in the dark this morning, Michael S. Ovitz was a mogul again.

So what if the movie was only a six-minute documentary commissioned to help raise half a billion dollars for a new 21st-century medical center at his alma mater, the University of California at Los Angeles? Mr. Ovitz, the former super agent and ousted president of the Walt Disney Company, kicked off the fund-raising campaign with a $25 million pledge of his own last winter, and today he was billed as ''executive producer'' of the fund-raising film.

With university officials at his side, Mr. Ovitz ran the screening in a campus auditorium, introducing the chief planner for the project, his favorite architect, I. M. Pei, who designed the headquarters of Mr. Ovitz's powerhouse Creative Artists Agency in 1989. Now Mr. Pei will supervise his sons, Chien Chung and Li Chung Pei, in replacing the university's 50-year-old, earthquake-damaged hospital with a state-of-the-art ''optimal healing environment,'' as the university called it.

''We are training our future,'' the bespectacled Mr. Ovitz said solemnly of the new 500-bed hospital, which will allow long-distance diagnoses of illnesses by doctors using fiber-optic communications and video-conferencing, at the institution whose staff invented the CAT scan, among other breakthrough technologies. ''We have that responsibility,'' he said.

Since he left Disney last December with a severance package now estimated at $128 million, Mr. Ovitz, 50, has largely kept a low profile, weighing his options and sounding out New York financiers about some kind of new film production venture. But the hoopla surrounding today's announcement made it clear that Mr. Ovitz has at least two important new clients: himself and his reputation.

After his hired publicists repeatedly failed to interest a reporter in the hospital project, Mr. Ovitz -- the master negotiator who built the top talent agency in Hollywood with his ceaseless courtship of stars like Dustin Hoffman and Sean Connery but almost never allowed himself to be quoted by name -- picked up the phone and turned on his charm.

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