PositiveDeadlineIs Michael Ovitz, the confessional diarist, truly changed? The delightfully self-deprecating kickers at the end of many sub-chapters in Who Is Michael Ovitz? could certainly make you think so. \'I had become everything I detested in the sixties when I was a bleeding-heart liberal at UCLA — the very symbol of the establishment. I had become The Man,\' Ovitz writes of his now-gone power persona. \'The win, nowadays, is breaking even. But I’ll take it,\' he says in summing up a late attempt at reconciling with David Geffen. As for his final thought about show business, it is purely personal. \'I miss the people,\' he says. But can you trust it? Does Ovitz really at least half-regrets the self-described vindictiveness, meant to instill fear in enemies of CAA, and convince clients and agents that they would be much safer inside the fold than out? Or is this just another construct, a tactical lie designed to soften the Ovitz image in old age, and make him seem more approachable, more Yoda-like, to the younger Silicon Valley entrepreneurs with whom he now works ... So is the memoir a genuine bid for redemption? Or is it one more deceptive tool in a bottomless kit? Even Michael Ovitz may not know the answer.
