OVITZ RANTING OVITZ The Inside Story of Hollywood's Most Controversial Power Broker By Robert Slater McGraw-Hill 360pp $22.95 Seven months after his unceremonious resignation as Walt Disney Co.'s president, Michael Ovitz remains nearly as enigmatic as he was during his 20-year climb to become Hollywood's preeminent talent agent. There are, however, some snippets of Ovitz honesty that come through in Ovitz, Robert Slater's account of his rise and fall. What went wrong between Ovitz and Disney Chairman Michael Eisner? ''We were going to be partners. We were going to run the company together....But it didn't work from the day I started.'' And, of his controversial $125 million severance package for 14 months of work? ''I just made a smart deal for myself....This is America. This isn't the Soviet Union. It's the supply-and-demand of the marketplace.'' For 55 pages, Ovitz is fairly littered with the sound and fury of a man seeking vindication, and it can be eye-opening stuff. But the problem with Slater's tome is that it runs 360 pages. And most of the rest of it, while mind-numbing in its detail, never really gets to the man who is Michael Ovitz, the super-agent who loved the deal but rarely had to live with the consequences--until his own future was at stake. Do we really need to know of young Michael's exploits as a baseball player or high school gymnast? Or that it was his father, David, who offered encouragement for his son to leave the William Morris Agency to start the soon-to-be-powerful Creative Artists Agency? Ovitz' rise to power is chronicled with many of the anecdotes that already dot Ovitz press accounts, from his ritualistic lobbying of literary agent Mort Janklow to his deals for Sony and Matsushita that allowed them to buy their way into Hollywood. Slater, a onetime United Press International reporter who has penned largely positive books on superinvestor George Soros and General Electric Co. Chairman Jack Welch, writes openly of his efforts to win Ovitz' help with the book and his ultimate respect for the dealmaker. Like dozens of others, Slater was no doubt mesmerized by Ovitz' charm. Indeed, Ovitz opened his Rolodex for Slater, facilitating interviews with the glitterati of Hollywood, from Sean Connery to basketball's Magic Johnson. Still, not many reporters would succumb to the level of flattery often found here. Slater, who negotiated Ovitz' help just after the agent joined Disney, was seemingly en route to writing the inside tale of a mogul on the rise. Clearly, that changed when Ovitz met his Disney demise, forcing Slater to rush in order to cash in on the publicity. This speed-up shows, as when Slater mistakenly calls Disney board member Gary L. Wilson ''Donald'' or when he says Eisner came to Disney in 1985 instead of 1984. But these mistakes are a small price to pay for unbridled Michael Ovitz--at least for 55 quote-packed pages. BY RONALD GROVER RELATED ITEMS PHOTO: Cover, ``Ovitz''

Updated July 11, 1997 by bwwebmaster
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