Powerhouse audiobook

Loved the book because I lived it during my 25 years at CAA and knew all the players/stories.

Very entertaining reading and very informative about the agency world. I loved the format of the back and forth comments by all the relevant parties. I recommend this book to anyone in the sports/entertainment business.

More than anyone could possibly care to know about Hollywood talent agents.

Power! Money! Fame! Influence! Luxury! Scandal! Art! This book is about all of these things . . . but most of all it is about . . . HURT FEELINGS. Pretty much every senior male agent or executive interviewed for this book complains about being underappreciated and undercompensated. There are so many variations of "Sure, I got paid a lot, but I was paid $X million less than I was bringing in in revenue. Lots of guys there didn't pull their weight." This is interesting, particularly considering that CAA was well-known for paying extra for talent so their people would not look elsewhere. Either these guys are mistaken or there was one terrible agent losing the company hundreds of millions over the years--like a black hole of revenue. Anyway, this is lively and fun if you like James Andrew Miller's way of doing things. The only part that I found dull was the sports-related material near the end.

After reading "Who is Michael Ovitz" I felt that I needed to go deeper into the history of CAA. What happened after Ovitz and Mayer left the company? What's the story of a private equity fund TPG involvement? Is onesided Ovitz's version of this history shared by other people? This book provided me with answers to much of my questions. CAA seemed to be the most powerful service organization in the world (excluding investment funds). The history of their journey (into being less client service, more financial and more focused on other businesses than representing their clients) is fascinating. Next week I'll speak to Casbeg employees so that I will provide them insight into how CAA has grown and what it had become.This isn't exactly a page-turner. 750 pages of the company biography said in short comments from the author and an overwhelming amount of accounts from founders, employees and other constituencies.

Great book, you can easily tell the abundant of effort the author did to make this book great. Book is based on numerous interviews and here and there the author outlines and provides additional details. Only issue for me was keeping track of the numerous number of people. I knew the main characters well but trying to remember other agents and their significance to the main characters they started to all blend in together. The book is quite long (about 800 pages) but crazy all the drama that took place. I wonder if they'll ever make such a story into a movie (maybe not since it is all about the movie/entertainment industry-they wouldn't want to hurt their reputation). But you get a good understand what is behind the movie and actors playing in them and all the politics that sadly is involved.

I found this book fascinating. Not necessarily for the writing, (this is primarily a compilation of over 500 interviews with the various players involved in the CAA saga since the mid 1970s), but for the story itself. I'm not in a career that involves the sports or entertainment industries, so I've never had any exposure to the agency business. This book will tell you everything you didn't want to know about how the business of Hollywood works and how it has evolved over the years. To think up until now I thought is was the major movie production companies that really ran the entertainment business...Highly recommend.

James Andrew Miller is the man, he knocked it out of the ballpark with this one too. Same style as the one he used with "Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN".The world that these agents navigate is fascinating and this book is testament to the bright and dark sides of Hollywood.I strongly recommend this exquisite and entertaining book.

Fascinating but about 200 pages too long

Well done, but very, very long!

Back in the early 2000s I read scripts in a Hollywood production company for a year, and frankly had no idea that the scripts that came with the red and white covers had so much intrigue, ego, and cash behind them!This was a great story of five guys who left the comfort of their careers with the William Morris Agency and decided to set off on their own.  From humble beginnings of a card table and some telephones, these guys outgrinded everyone around them, forming an agency that started with TV but quickly moved into the movies and grabbed every major star imaginable.  The book is equally divided between the first and second decades.  The first was dominated by the likes of Mike Ovitz, the ultra-driven Hollywood super agent who outworked, outplayed, and outgunned everyone around him, and Ron Meyer, his more personable pseudo-second in command (even though they were equal partners on paper).  The second half was dominated by the Young Turks, a league of young men driven by the love of money and a desire to build CAA into something even greater, where it evolved into a powerhouse that included investment banking, sports, and a host of other businesses.The book is also a very unique style, told in snippets from interviews with over a hundred different people, including agents, stars, and the likes of Ovitz and Meyer themselves.  You’ll hear the story-behind-the story behind iconic films like Risky Business (and where Tom Cruise got his start), Ghostbusters, and Jurassic Park.  You’ll also learn some of the creative financing options that these super agents created for their clients, which resulted in more than a few mega-millionares as many clients, from Bill Murray to Tom Hanks, opted for highly-lucrative backend deals instead of collecting the typically inflated salaries associated with Hollywood blockbusters.The early days were fascinating, as was the political infighting surrounding the original gang of five.  Ovitz left to work for Eisner at Disney for a year, and after a failed attempt to recruit Ovitz, Universal changed their tune and brought in Ron Meyer to run their studio.  The story started to lose me for the last quarter as they went into the backstory behind CAA’s extension into sports, at which point it felt like another typical story of a billion-dollar firm that reached out into every possible side vertical it could (losing it’s way along the way).This was my only complaint with the book.  If you’re interested in the business of Hollywood, and you’re interested in getting a backstage tour direct from the mouths of the players both on and offscreen, pick up a copy.  It’s a long book, fitting with the long journey the agency took to become the firm it is today, so settle in and prepare to be entertained!

The author conducted over 500 interviews with entertainment agents, executives, studio chiefs, actors, actresses, sports personalities and other Who's Who of Hollywood starting from around 1975 when 5 William Morris agents split and formed CAA which over the years became a"Powerhouse" in the entertainment business. Most liked and enjoyed about the book was the writer's format that each paragraph stated a name and excepts from that person in the interview process over the years and the reader sits back and is like a person across the desk listening these people taking to you.

Up until 1995, this book is incredible. Amazing story, interesting people profiled, and a great look at how movies and packages used to come together. Then the new wave took over CAA, and it all got super muddy super quick. Where you really knew Mike Ovitz and his time at CAA, and the projects he made happen through his power, you got no sense of the 5 Young Turks who replaced him, and almost all the anecdotes stopped. But still a really fun read into a fascinating world.

From this take on show business, you can learn a lot about any business, and a lot about the culture entertainment shapes and is shaped by. Efforts are usually collaborative, incremental, and well-intentioned.

Enthralling history on CAA with loads of entertaining stories and anecdotes on Hollywood and the movie business. Loved.

One of my favorite guilty pleasures is stories of Hollywood people having badly.  Love The Player.  Love Entourage.  Always a good time.I was therefore naturally attracted to Powerhouse by James Andrew Miller.  This is the story of the founding of Creative Artists, the ground-breaking literary agency.  (I also read Miller's book on ESPN).  Miller's trademark is writing oral histories, and he is extremely good at it.  There is commentary when needed, but it is used sparingly.  He doesn't re-invent dialogue (I'm looking at you Bob Woodward), but takes the actual quotes and puts them under the name of the actual person who said it.  (It's a little Studs Terkelish).There's a huge amount of skill in how these things are assembled.  He lets the reader play along.  For example, he will juxtapose two recollections which are 100% divergent, and let you, first, gawk, and then second decide for yourself who is right.  ProTip:  When you are faced with an employee saying that the work environment is shit and a CEO saying it was collegial and supportive, believe the employeeAnyway, the book has more than its share of bat-shit crazy people, starting with Michael Ovitz.  There are certainly others--this is Hollywood--but Ovitz is the king of the bat house.  Someone calls him a "maniac" and that might be the most perfect word for it.Not only are the agents included, but many of the clients as well.The only thing I didn't expect to find was good guys.  Ron Meyer, a co-founder, is just a 100% good guy.  In fact, there are numerous testimonials of performers who credit CAA for their very career--people like David Letterman, Sarah Jessica Parker, Tom Hanks, Eva Longoria--and do so in such an emotional and effusive way that it blows away the caricature of the agent we usually see.  CAA's innovation was to work across the functional lines of the company, allowing Eva Longoria (for example) to develop a film career along with extending her into other businesses.  Letterman had a similar story and there are others.  And they made a difference in the lives of a wide variety of artists and performers in a wide variety of fields.One other thing.  I don't know what I thought, but the agents in this book work incredibly hard.  It's a 24/7 story, at least for the ones who excel.  There's no downtime and little sleep.  I am not sure I have ever met any single person who works as hard as ALL these people do.  It's a lifestyle decision.  Yes, you will get rich but you have to live like this to get it.  Nothing comes without trade-offs.My recommendation is that if you like stories of Hollywood, this book is for you.  And if you like business dramas, this book is for you.

Another great oral history from James Andrew Miller author of "Those guys have all the fun" and "Live from New York", the oral histories of ESPN and Saturday Night Live.The format of an oral history, where we are presented with an endless stream of interview snippets and anecdotes is one people seem to either love or hate. I can't get enough of them and this one has plenty of Hollywood glitz, out of control egos and stories about fame, money and power. Even if you have no interest in the agency or talent business there are so many fascinating stories about how stars and successes came to be. Miller has once again received unprecedented access as he is able to speak to every prominent living player in CAA's story in depth, from the agents to the studio heads to the talent. Similarly to the ESPN story, the early years were the most fascinating, when CAA was operating on a shoestring budget and using their wives as secretaries long before the giant cheques started rolling in.There are a lot of important figures in the story but at the heart of the book is the friendship, collaboration and eventual separation of Michael Ovitz and Ron Meyer. Michael was the brash, cutthroat visionary. Meyer the people person who could charm anyone into liking him. As a fascinating bookend to the story you can hear a 2016 interview between the author, Ovitz and Meyer on the "LA live" podcast that helps to frame the individual personalities even more. Ovitz actually comes across and humbled and contemplative about his mistakes. Highly recommended for anyone that loves "Hollywood insider" stories or oral histories.

The first 500 pages are thrilling and go by like the wind, or The Name of the Wind (h/t Patrick Rothfuss). Miller's working the same oral history magic he worked with Tom Shales on LIVE FROM NEW YORK, and he's somehow gotten -everyone- from the notoriously secretive CAA to talk extensively on the record. You get the POV of all 5 of the original co-founders, including Mike Ovitz and Ron Meyer. The five "Young Turks" who took over CAA after Meyer stepped down and Ovitz left abruptly. And then...the narrative goes slack. Ovitz isn't just a force of nature, he's a great protagonist and antagonist, and once he's out of the picture, the book gets boring. Do you need 40+ pages on how CAA got into the sports business? No? Well, here they are. How about the financial arrangements of the hedge fund that invested in CAA? Those are also here, and they're just as exciting as they sound. And it's at this point that the flaws of the book come into sharper relief--the disjointed transitions, the jam-packing of unrelated events into too-thick chapters, etc. One wonders if one of the unique skills of Miller's co-author on the prior two oral histories was knowing what to leave out.But the first 500 pages will stand as the definitive history of CAA and a gorgeous, complex, Shakespearean portrayal of Ovitz; one emerges from Powerhouse having considerable sympathy for the man described, somewhat unfairly, as "the most hated man in Hollywood."

I am not the type that cares about glitz, glamour and celebrity. But I had read Millers two previous books and really enjoyed them, so I thought I would give it a shot. I was not prepared for an amazing business start to worldwide power broker business and all the steps along the way. I have read other books like that in the past - but this one was so fascinating because they were not selling widgets. They were representing most of the major actors, films, shows that I grew up with. The business side is the story here and what grabbed my interest so much. The stories of how so many of those incredible projects came to be was fascinating. This is one of those books I want to read again the minute I finished it. Also it is in the oral history format which i often find incredibly insightful. Most books tell you what happened, oral histories tell you what happen from the perspective of multiple people involved. That is always so much more interesting and true to the way we all experience the world. Will be hard to pick because I loved the McConaughey book so much but either that or this is the best book I read this year.