James Andrew Miller

POWERHOUSE: The Untold Story of Hollywood’s Creative Artists Agency is an astonishing—and astonishingly entertaining—history of Hollywood’s transformation over the past five decades as seen through the agency at the heart of it all, from the #1 bestselling co-author of Live from New York (on SNL) and Those Guys Have All the Fun (on ESPN). The movies you watch, the TV shows you adore, the concerts and sporting events you attend—behind the curtain of nearly all of these is an immensely powerful and secretive corporation known as Creative Artists Agency. Started in 1975, when five bright and brash employees of a creaky William Morris office left to open their own, strikingly innovative talent agency, CAA would come to revolutionize the entertainment industry, and over the next several decades its tentacles would spread aggressively throughout the worlds of movies, television, music, advertising, and investment banking. Drawing on unprecedented and exclusive access to the men and women who built and battled with CAA, as well as financial information never before made public, author James Andrew Miller spins a tale of boundless ambition, ruthless egomania, ceaseless empire building, greed, and personal betrayal. It is also a story of prophetic brilliance, magnificent artistry, singular genius, entrepreneurial courage, strategic daring, foxhole brotherhood, and how one firm utterly transformed the entertainment business. Here are a few of the classic “only in Hollywood” moments revealed in the book that Jim could discuss in an interview: · Trying to get traction in Hollywood, the then-little-known nineteen year old Tom Cruise crashed at Sean Penn’s place and had to borrow Penn’s sport coat for a lunch meeting with his future CAA agent. · Sylvester Stallone was originally offered the lead role inBeverly Hills Cop, and when he went against his CAA agent’s wishes on rewriting the script in a direction the studio didn’t want, he was replaced by Eddie Murphy. · When CAA agents met with their client Prince they were instructed not to look him in the face and have no eye contact. The pop star sat in a different part of the room with his back to the group. · One CAA agent displayed his influence at the studios by turning his martial arts instructor—a man named Steven Seagal— into a huge action star, following a brutal show of physical force during a “demonstration” for studio executives. · In order to ensure that a producer made his flight to Paris, a CAA assistant once had to delay the flight by calling in a bomb threat to Air France. · CAA didn’t commission a new TV show so a dear friend and former mentor could serve, along with his partner, as producers. The show wasSeinfeld and the “favor” cost as much as $400 million in lost earnings. · A CAA agent, after reading the original script forRain Man, fought to change Dustin Hoffman’s brother from an older one to a younger one so the film so Tom Cruise could play the role. · A CAA agent found an old rejected movie script in the agency library which would go on to be the pilot for ER, one of the most successful television shows in history. · A very resistantSarah Jessica Parker had to be talked into accepting the lead role by her CAA agent for the TV seriesSex and the City. · A CAA agent was part of a global search for client Chris Farley after he disappeared on a Los Angeles bender, only to be eventually located days later in Southeast Asia. · Cher acknowledged her CAA agent “tricked" her into taking the lead role inMoonstruck, which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. · A star CAA agent once claimed to have been carjacked and held hostage as a cover up for his own multi-day cocaine binge and likely assault by angry dealers. · CAA came up with the famous Polar Bear/Coca-Cola commercial, one of the most successful branding efforts in history. Just how influential is CAA in movies, TV, music, sports, advertising, investment banking and Silicon Valley? · In film, CAA represents more 2015 Academy Award winners than the next three agencies combined. CAA clients took home Oscars that year for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Lead Actor, Best Lead Actress, Best Original Screenplay, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Foreign Film, and Best Song. They have recently brokered some seventy movies per year, more than all its competitors put together, and its clients produce many of the fattest, most fruitful franchises: Star Wars, Marvel, DC Comics, Transformers. · For television, CAA pulls off the trifecta (that is representing the executive producer, director, and star) for the number one show on broadcast TV (Empire), the number one show on pay cable (Game of Thrones), and the number one show in basic cable (The Walking Dead). · Billboard has named CAA Music the Agency of the Year for nine of the past twelve years, andPollstar,the leading music touring trade publication, named CAA music the booking agency of the year for twelve times in thirteen years. At the Grammys, artists represented by CAA won more awards over the past three years than any other agency. · Of all the productions opening on Broadway in the 2014/15 season, 73 percent were written, directed, or designed by CAA clients. · Forbesnamed CAA the Most Valuable Sports Agency of 2015, with $6.4 billion in contract value under management. · For four years in a row, a CAA agent was one of the most must successful investment bankers in the entire country. · Both CAA and their chief competitor WME are headed toward IPO’s that promise to be among the biggest business stories in the history of the entertainment industry. JAMES ANDREW MILLER is an award-winning journalist and co-author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN; Live from New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests, which spent four months on the New York Times bestseller list; and Running in Place: Inside the Senate, also a bestseller. He has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and many others. He is a graduate of Occidental College, Oxford University, and Harvard Business School, all with honors.