JOB HUNTING WITH MIKE

By KIM MASTERS/LOS ANGELES

So now that Michael Ovitz is out of a job, what's he up to? Shopping, for one thing. Recall that Ovitz was dispatched as president of the Walt Disney Co. in December, after 14 unhappy months. His wounds were soothed by a handsome contract settlement worth $130 million, give or take a dollar, depending on the performance of Disney stock.

These days it's easier to spot Waldo than Ovitz. He's been out of strobe range for the paparazzi, who haven't seen him at a single Hollywood event. But his movements are tracked with interest by the entertainment community, whose denizens wonder whether the former superagent will be able to reinvent himself and return to his old glory.

"You can't ever find him," says a prominent industry figure. "He has this pager number and he calls right back, but you never know where he is." Late last week his office said he was "traveling." Entertainment-industry analyst Hal Vogel also has no idea what Ovitz is doing. "It's amazing," he says. "The most powerful man in Hollywood has disappeared."

Well, not quite. Ovitz spent Christmas hopping from his new yacht, The Illusion, in the Bahamas to Auldbrass, Lethal Weapon producer Joel Silver's estate in South Carolina. From there he headed to Aspen, Colorado. He returned to Los Angeles to attend the funeral of Phil Weltman, his mentor at the William Morris Agency.

Ovitz has also been spotted at repasts with the rich. In Los Angeles he lunched at Italian trattoria Locanda Veneta with investment adviser Richard Salomon of Spears, Benzak, Salomon & Farrell, and turned up at dinner at the very chic Nobu in New York City with real estate developer Jerry Speyer and dealmaker Leon Black of Apollo Advisors. As he casts about for a new career, he will serve as a patron of the arts in Manhattan, chairing a Municipal Art Society awards dinner in March and a gala for PEN, a writers' group, in April.

At Disney, Ovitz's expensively renovated offices stand empty. His Gulfstream III jet, which he sold to the company when he went to work there, is now happily occupied by ABC president Bob Iger. Apparently Ovitz has replaced it with a more modest Westwind.

While Ovitz is unlikely to settle for a mere job, investment banker Herbert Allen, head of Allen and Co., has told inquiring moguls that he thinks Ovitz would have no trouble raising money to acquire a midsize company--and Allen's clearly a guy who would know--though no obvious candidate springs to mind. And Gordon Crawford of the Capital Group, which controls major stakes in Disney and Time Warner, says he would consider investing in an Ovitz venture. After all, he observes, "the guy was very successful in one career." He's referring, of course, to Ovitz's work building the formidable Creative Artists Agency, not Disney.

Meanwhile, Ovitz has been upgrading his real estate portfolio. Even as the ax was poised at Disney, he sewed up the purchase of the Dancing Bear Ranch in Aspen for $5.5 million. The 500-plus acres are near Disney chairman Michael Eisner's home, although presumably they won't be vacationing together as they have in the past. In Malibu, California, Ovitz is buying a few acres of property on a seaside bluff, a $5 million parcel belonging to Motown mogul Berry Gordy. Malibu property has a distressing habit of sliding into the sea or turning into charcoal, yet this particular purchase caused great chagrin to Ovitz's former Creative Artists partner Ron Meyer, now president of Universal. Seems Meyer had unwarily confided in Ovitz that he absolutely coveted the property, only to learn two days later that Ovitz had snapped it up. In addition, Ovitz apparently isn't satisfied with his Brentwood residence, hard by the O.J. Simpson estate, which, presumably, is for sale. He's looking elsewhere, including at a place off Mulholland Drive.

But Ovitz isn't being profligate, as is clear from a story that Seagram's scion Edgar Bronfman Jr. has told friends. Years ago, Ovitz, then an agent, called Bronfman to ask him to prevent the forced retirement of Ovitz's father, who worked for a Southern California liquor distributor affiliated with Seagram. Bronfman complied. In 1995 the two had a much publicized encounter when Bronfman nearly hired Ovitz to run Universal but balked at his extravagant compensation demands. They hadn't really talked since--until Bronfman called Ovitz recently to ask whether he could drop the elder Ovitz from the payroll after all this time. Ovitz apologized and said he thought that had been done a couple of years ago. Just one thing, Ovitz asked: Could Bronfman give his father a nominal salary? That way, Ovitz pointed out, his father could at least keep his benefits.

Some of Ovitz's former friends in Hollywood are surprised by this story, observing that Ovitz might have done better than just thanking Bronfman for taking care of his old man--and then asking for more. But then again, Ovitz is out of a job, and he can't be too careful. He has to make every million count.