The Much Maligned Mike Ovitz Moving Mansions

SELLER: Mike and Judy Ovitz
LOCATION: N. Rockingham Avenue, Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $14,950,000
SIZE: 13,000 square feet (approx.), 7 bedrooms, 7 full and 2 half bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Rare opportunity to live on Rockingham Rim. !st offer of this classic estate w/ views W. of mountains & canyons and sprawling flat yard E. with mature trees, grass, double auto court behind gates and a long drive. Exemplary privacy, pool & pool house complement the home, expanded to designs by Casper Ehmcke. 7 beds & 2 powders, 6 wbfps, FDR, Full Projection Room, Library, Den, Office, Family Rm, Art Studio/Gallery. Auto courts w/ extensive add'l parking.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Yesterday morning Your Mama received a covert communique from Our Ladee in Brentwood who whispered in our big ear that fallen Tinseltown titan Mike Ovitz listed his long-time residence in Brentwood, CA with an asking price of $14,950,000.

However, we're a little late to the rodeo with this one as Miz Anne Brenoff, who writes the Hot Properties column at the L.A. Times, beat us to the punch and already penned a post on the posh property. We've decided to speak on this this listing anyway because that is our prerogative.

While he once sat at the tippy-top of the Hollywood hotshot heap as the powerful (and notoriously vindictive) founder of the Creative Artists Agency (a.k.a. CAA) where he made deals for a-list celebs like David Letterman and screenwriter Joe Eszterhas, Mister Ovitz now seems to make only waves and enemies wherever he goes. All the children who haven't liquefied their brains with the GHB will surely recall that back in 1995, after just 14 months on the job as the president of the Walt Disney Company, he was unceremoniously fired by his former friend Michael Eisner. The board at Disney was so desperate to boot the much maligned Mister Ovitz that they agreed to pay him a jaw-dropping severance widely reported to be nearly $140,000,000.

He used some of those Micky Mouse millions to found the the Artist Management Group (a.k.a AMG and now part of The Firm). However, poor Mister Ovitz was unable to make a serious go of it with AMG and reportedly lost upwards of $100,000,000 on the failed venture. In 2002, in a eye popping article in Vanity Fair magazine, the gap toothed Mister Ovitz famously blamed media mogul David Geffen and the "gay mafia" for sabotaging his efforts at post-Disney success.

Several years after he completely cooked his professional goose with that Bitter Betty Vanity Fair article, Mister and Missus Ovitz were sued when their big dogs allegedly mauled a neighbor who was out walking her little dogs. Not surprisingly, the suit resulted in an out of court settlement not long after the press got wind of the matter. However, settelment or not, Your Mama is hard pressed to believe their well to do neighbors in hoity toity Brentwood Park were not left with a seriously bad taste in their mouths.

Mister Ovitz hasn't made many friends in his new Beverly Hills neighborhood either. Mister and Missus Ovitz have long been building a monstrous mansion at the top of itty bitty Leona Drive–where their neighboring properties are owned by such luminaries as celebrity house flipper John Bersci and Bruce "The Boss" Springsteen–and was reportedly planned to measure nearly 30,000 square feet which pisssed off many of his new neighbors who were concerned about the scale of the project and their neighborhood being turned into a colossal construction zone. Who can blame them?

Listen puppies, if anyone were to ask Your Mama, and of course no one did, we'd posit that Mister Ovitz's new hotel-sized house–which practically hovers over Miss Geffen's 10-acre compound on Angelo Drive–is nothing more than mad Mister Ovitz using his Disney Dollars to gleefully flip the big bird at Hollywood. If that house could talk, we think it would scream at the top of its lungs, "Looky here all you fucktards, you may have bullied me, black balled me and squashed me like a freaking bug, but I've got a house with a basement bigger than your entire fucking house." We're just sayin'...

Other planned amenities of Mister Ovitz's new dee-luxe digs have been reported to include garaging for 13 cars, a 2,400 square foot covered tennis pavilion, a yoga room and an art gallery where he can display his impressive art collection which once was reported to include works by Picasso, Jasper Johns, Mark Rothko, several pieces by Roy Lichtenstein and at least one piece by Franz Kline, an abstract expressionist who happens to be one of Your Mama's most favored artists.

Anyhoo, let's get back to Mister Ovitiz's for sale house which is located on N. Rockingham Avenue in desirable and expensive Brentwood Park. The Ovitz estate is just a few doors down (and across the street) from the N. Rockingham Avenue mansion where the newly jailed OJ Simpson lived before he was unsuccessfully prosecuted for slitting the throats of his ex-wife Nicole and her man-friend Ron. Mister Simpson's Tudor has since been sold, torn down and replaced with a vaguely Mediterranean mansion.

According to property records, Mister Ovitz and his long time wifey Judy purchased their Rockingham Ridge residence in January of 1979 for $660,000. Records show that at the time of the purchase, the house measured 8,339 square feet and listing information indicates it has since been expanded to approximately 13,000 square feet. Now children, 13,000 square feet is gigantic by any one's standards, but if the reports are true the entire Ovitz house in Brentwood Park would easily fit into the approximately 15,000 square foot basement of their behemoth Bev Hills crib with a couple thousand square feet to spare. Good grief.

Listing information reveals the Ovitz's Brentwood manse includes 7 bedrooms, 7 full and 2 half bathrooms, 6 fireplaces, garaging for 4 cars and parking for many more. Other interior amenities include formal living and dining rooms, den, library, office, family room, an art studio/gallery, wine cellar and, of course, a state of the art projection room.

The gated driveway winds through a large, park-like front yard with meticulously manicured grass and a stand of matures trees. The drive terminates in a brick motor court that looks a wee bit cramped to comfortably turn Your Mama's big BMW around without doing a three or four point turn. The rear yard is much smaller than the front and features a heated swimming pool and pool house looking out over the canyons to the west.

Property records indicate that Mister and Missus Ovitz also maintain a house on Broad Beach Road in Malee-boo where nearby neighbors include Danny DeVito and Rhea Pearlman and Goldie Hahn and Kurt Russell. Records show the Ovitz's also own a 7 bedroom and 8.5 bathroom ski chalet on Hidden Lane in swanky Snowmass Village, CO.