Pellicano Trial: Michael Ovitz Paid for Dirt on Rivals
You know, it does my heart good to see all of these power-hungry Hollywood brokers brought to their knees in the scandalous wire-tapping trial of private eye Anthony Pellicano. It’s like the facade of their lives is shattered into a thousand pieces. Ok, maybe not. Maybe the facade was shattered years ago, but it’s still interesting.
Yesterday, Michael Ovitz, a former agent who shaped the careers of Martin Scorsese and David Letterman, testified that he paid private eye Pellicano $75,000 through lawyers and $75,000 in cash to dig up dirt on rivals, including DreamWorks co-founder David Geffen, Universal Studios President Ron Meyer, and New York Times reporters Anita Busch and Bernard Weinraub.
“We were in an extraordinarily tenuous time [at Artists Management Group],” Ovitz testified, adding that bad publicity in 2002 threatened to thwart his sale of AMG and his “graceful exit from the business.” “We were being battered in the press. It was wildly embarrassing.”
Read on for more Pellicano mayhem, including a dead fish…
“I wanted to know when I was going to be ambushed…when the next shoe was going to drop,” Ovitz said, describing Pellicano as “incredibly helpful.”
“I was under the most pressure I’ve ever been in my life,” he pleaded. “[Pellicano] was always an open ear….I assumed that whatever he did, he did it legally.” Riiiigggghhhtttt.
In an emotional testimony, NYT reporter Busch tearfully recalled the day that a dead fish (that’s the best they could do?) was left on her Audi in 2002, and that a Mercedes tried to run her down a few months later.
“I remember thinking I was going to die,” Busch said. “I was scared for my life.”
Image: Jane Boursaw, 2008
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1 opinion for Pellicano Trial: Michael Ovitz Paid for Dirt on Rivals
Prosecution Rests in Pellicano Trial
Apr 29, 2008 at 9:19 pm
[…] slashed tires, and hacked computers…just another day in the life of celebrity sleuth Anthony Pellicano, whose wire-tapping trial is currently taking place in Los […]
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