Former superagent Michael Ovitz swears he had no part in the allegedly supershady practices of embattled Hollywood private eye Anthony Pellicano.
The latest Hollywood power broker to squirm his way through embarrassing questions in the trial of the disgraced investigator, Ovitz testified Wednesday that he did hire Pellicano to dig up dirt on journalists writing about Ovitz and his Artists Management Group, but he had no clue Pellicano was breaking the law.
Taking the stand as a witness for the prosecution, Ovitz spent an hour recounting his dealings with Pellicano and trying to distance himself from any wrongdoing.
Ovitz told jurors he paid the indicted P.I. $75,000 in cash in 2002, and his lawyers paid another $75,000, to find out who disclosed private information about AMG to two entertainment reporters—Anita Busch of the Los Angeles Times and Bernard Weinraub of the New York Times.
Both filed negative articles about AMG's financial woes at a time when the company he cofounded was in the process of being absorbed by a rival.
"It was an extraordinarily difficult time for me and the company," said Ovitz, whose previous stints in Hollywood including running the Walt Disney Company and, before that, founding Creative Artists Agency. "We were in a state of negative press, fueled by rumor and innuendo...All I wanted was a graceful exit from the business."
The government alleged the gumshoe unlawfully accessed police and telephone-company databases for information about Busch and bugged her phone lines.
He's also accused of trying to intimidate Busch, orchestrating a plot that left her windshield smashed with a dead fish containing a note saying "Stop." The incident led police to cordon off her neighborhood fearing a bomb might go off.
Under cross-examination from Chad Hummel, the attorney representing Pellicano codefendant Mark Ameson—a former LAPD sergeant accused of taking bribes from the investigator in exchange for confidential records—Ovitz was asked what kind of information he looking for from Pellicano.
"Whatever I could get from him," the onetime mogul replied. "I wanted to know when I was going to be ambushed, and when the next shoe would drop."
But Ovitz was quick to deny ever ordering Pellicano and his codefendants to put the journalists under surveillance or threaten them.
"I assumed what he did, he did legally. I never instructed him to do anything illegal," he said.
Busch followed Ovitz on the witness stand and related the terror she felt upon seeing her car vandalized. She also described another incident that August when two unidentified men in a Mercedes tried to run her down as she was walking to her rental car.
"I remember thinking I was going to die," she testified.
The threats led Busch to subsequently file a civil suit against Ovitz and others.