COMPANY TOWN : Day One at CAA Sans the Mighty Ovitz

Monday was a pivotal day in Hollywood, relatively speaking.

No, there wasn’t another multibillion-dollar mega-merger (not by press time, anyway). Nor did Ted Turner and Time Warner change their minds about theirs.

But it was the first day that Creative Artists Agency and the agency world at large officially functioned without Michael S. Ovitz, who has relinquished his crown as that industry’s most powerful figure.

In doing so, he leaves behind an impressive legacy as well as some ruptured relationships with former colleagues. His departure also raises a number of questions about the future of the company he built with Ron Meyer and Bill Haber, and the agency business that he reshaped over the past two decades.

In the weeks after the bombshell announcement that he was leaving CAA to join Walt Disney Co. as its president, Ovitz has gradually been making the transition from the agency to the executive world. His presence has been sporadic at CAA headquarters, but he has been there to personally hand out year-end bonuses and will continue to show up until the task is complete.

This has been somewhat awkward for some of the agents he’s leaving behind.

“Bonuses have always been in the context of a continuum; now they’re clearly not,” said a senior CAA agent, who, like some of his colleagues, is feeling the sting of betrayal by the man whose mantra for so long was “one for all and all for one--we’re all in this together.”

Ovitz’s minimalist, angular office on the third floor of CAA’s I.M. Pei-designed Beverly Hills headquarters will not be reassigned to one of his charges, but rather is destined for communal use once he vacates it completely. Like the office of his former partner Meyer, his may be designated a conference room.

“To move anyone in there is too hyper-symbolic,” said a CAA insider. “In this case, an office is not just an office . . . there is no longer a chairman of the agency.” Rather, in the new management order, three senior agents--Jack Rapke, Rick Nicita and Lee Gabler--now share the chairmanship, and Richard Lovett has been tapped to be the new president.

Ovitz, meanwhile, has moved into the offices of former Disney TV President Rich Frank, displacing Frank’s successor, Dennis Hightower, who’s been forced to move to another floor.

Ovitz spent the first official day of his new job in Paris, where Disney is holding its annual “synergy” (there’s that dreadful word again!) meetings this week.

There was no fanfare when Ovitz left CAA, but according to a CAA source, that’s the way his former boss wanted it. “We discussed it, but he didn’t want a going-away party,” the agent said.

Last Tuesday, Ovitz and his wife, Judy, hosted a party at their home, which some interpreted as his need to make the statement “I’m still standing,” though the affair was thrown in honor of one of their artist friends.

Some of Ovitz’s former CAA cronies were apparently hurt that they weren’t invited. Sources speculated that among those were a few individuals who had privately confronted Ovitz about their feelings of abandonment.

Over the years, certain CAA agents were offered various industry jobs that Ovitz discouraged them from taking. “He would tell them, ‘We’re all in this together’--you know, the pot at the end of the rainbow thing,” said a source.

There are many at CAA and in the creative community who are anxious about what, if any, fallout there will be at the agency without the powerful presence of Ovitz, of Meyer--who started his job as president of MCA last month--and of Haber, who still hasn’t announced his future plans.

At least to some degree, the absences of Ovitz and Meyer are expected to level the agency playing field, which CAA clearly dominated for the past decade.

But it is still too soon to tell just how much rival agencies, including International Creative Management, the William Morris Agency and United Talent Agency, will benefit.

Officials from the Screen Actors Guild, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the Directors Guild of America met with CAA representatives last week to examine the agency’s complicated plan to buy out Ovitz, Meyer and Haber and whether that would raise any conflict-of-interest issues. The guilds have now requested written information on the agreement, which includes the rental of the CAA building that the three former partners still own.

Some of CAA’s competitors have been very aggressive in pursuing CAA agents they believe would be most likely to leave. With the exception of TV agent Marty Adelstein, there have been no defections, but the time to watch for this is after all the bonuses have been handed out.

“There’s a lot of recruiting going on,” said a CAA agent who has been approached by competitors and who added: “There’s still a lot of turbulence and conflicted emotions. There are a lot of questions to be answered as to how things are going to settle down.”

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On the surface, everything looks to be business as usual. Since Ovitz announced his departure in mid-August, the agency has signed a dozen new clients--including Mike Meyers and TV’s Jennifer Aniston (“Friends”) and Jonathan Silverman (“The Single Guy”)--and lost four motion picture clients, the most prominent of them screenwriter Doug Richardson (“Money Train,” “Bad Boys” and “Die Hard 2”) and several TV clients, among them writer-producer David Kelley (creator of “Picket Fences,” “Chicago Hope”).

According to an agent on the new management team: “There’s not the overt, vertical management structure we once had. There’s a good collegial feeling around here. . . . We’re still figuring out how to run it ourselves. But we’ve managed to land the plane when the pilot and the co-pilot bailed out in mid-flight.”

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Odds and ends: As speculated here weeks ago, CAA’s in-house publicist Anna Perez will be joining Disney--but rather than handle media relations, she will be vice president of government relations. That essentially means she will be a lobbyist for Disney, focusing on the company’s government relations and issues in the state of California.

Turner Pictures President Amy Pascal plunked down a cool $1 million over the weekend for a spec script by Nick Kazan called “Fallen,” which she describes as a “sophisticated horror film in the vein of ‘Rosemary’s Baby.’ ” Dawn Steel and Chuck Roven, who have a deal with the company, will produce.