THE 10% DISSOLUTION

By Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles

Whoopi and Winona, Madonna and Barbra, Chevy and Sly. Aside from having idiosyncratic first names, these stars all share something else: over the past seven months, they've walked away from the Creative Artists Agency, once the supreme force in Hollywood dealmaking. But that was then--then being the 1980s to the mid-'90s. Since last fall, more than two dozen clients have ankled, as the trade papers would put it, joined just last week by Liam Neeson and Ben Stiller.

Much of the exodus can be directly linked to the departures last year of the agency's shrewd, ruthless chairman, Michael Ovitz, and its charismatic president, Ron Meyer. Both men left for studio jobs--Ovitz to Disney, Meyer to MCA. They took with them the agency's aura of invincibility and its ability to inspire fear in the Hollywood shark pool. Rivals, long resentful of the agency's No. 1 status, are smelling blood in the water.

Dominating the corner of Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards in Beverly Hills, CAA's forbidding I.M. Pei-designed headquarters stands as a Zen fortress guarding entry to the city's sparkling business district. For years the building has been show-biz ground zero, a hot zone where Ovitz--routinely referred to as "the most powerful man in Hollywood"--built up the town's most imposing list of talent. His masterful, softly menacing style, along with his courtship of nontraditional clients like Coca-Cola and Credit Lyonnais, transformed the old stereotype of the talent agent as a hustling flesh peddler into that of a sleek ninja visionary.

"CAA will continue to be a very well-run, very powerful talent agency," says Stephen Singular, whose unauthorized biography, Power to Burn: Michael Ovitz & the New Business of Show Business, is set for publication this summer by Birch Lane Press. "But," he adds, "the aura and intrigue the agency once enjoyed were a direct result of Ovitz's personality."

Yet before anyone files this article under obituary, it should be noted that CAA still represents most of Hollywood's hardest-working filmmakers, including seriously surnamed stars Cruise, Hanks, De Niro, DeVito and Pacino. And the recent turmoil hasn't kept the agency from signing talent like Anthony Hopkins, Nick Nolte and hot newcomer Matthew McConaughey (the upcoming A Time to Kill) while forging multimedia ties with Intel and the creators of an innovative Internet Website known as The Spot.

At the same time, however, several key agents have followed Ovitz and Meyer out the door, and a revamped management team has admittedly experienced some rocky times. One major faux pas occurred in March, when a top agent made a deal for Val Kilmer to star in The Saint, even though its filming schedule conflicted with the actor's commitment to reprise his caped-crusader role in the upcoming Batman and Robin--prompting Batman director and longtime CAA client Joel Schumacher to leave.

In addition, there is an obvious generation gap between CAA's Old Guard and the Young Turks who hold sway over many of the agency's most valuable clients. The awkward management structure Ovitz put in place before his departure had representatives of the younger generation in charge of operations, with oversight provided by three older co-chairmen.

One of the leading Turks, Ovitz's boy wonder and former heir presumptive Jay Moloney, 30, has been in and out of a rehab clinic for drug abuse since last fall; he was due to return to work this week following a lengthy recovery. Moloney's absence has left power concentrated in the hands of agency president Richard Lovett, 35. A go-getter nicknamed L'Ovitz, Lovett has worked at CAA for more than a decade, handling Tom Hanks, Michael Keaton, Nicolas Cage and other A-listers. The perception is that Lovett is performing well, if not exactly thriving.

Fortunately for CAA, the post-Ovitz era has seen its rivals in a state of flux too. Just two weeks ago, the 10% world was abuzz when a self-promoting, self-styled "agent warrior" named Gavin Polone was fired by the United Talent Agency after accusations of "inappropriate" behavior toward a female colleague, then given a seven-figure settlement and an apology by his superiors. She, in turn, took her own revenge: she quit and went over to CAA.

"Everyone's gone crazy," says a rival agent, who claims that raiding and poaching talent from competitors is at an all-time high. "In a strange way, Michael Ovitz's control of the business kept order. With Michael gone, it's like the Godfather has been sent away and the five families are going to the mattresses."