Nasty, Nasty, Nasty

AFTER 32 YEARS OF WORKING together, it's all over between ICM and iconic motion-picture talent agent Ed Limato, who was also the tenpercentery's co-president. Long, successful and, even more to the point, profitable relationships like this one come along infrequently in Hollywood — where institutional memories are short and personal loyalties shorter still. The brief version of what happened is that Limato's employment contract expired in June and negotiations for a new pact hit a dead end. The long version is a running drama fraught with emotion, ranging from sadness to bitterness to nastiness, that has the town transfixed and taking sides. 

Feasting on the bones of the relationship's carcass are attorneys for the tenpercentery and for Limato who are right now acrimoniously negotiating his exit. Technically, Limato is still under contract with ICM, until all issues — especially current and future commissions for his superstar clients like Denzel Washington, Mel Gibson, Steve Martin, Richard Gere, Liam Neeson and Billy Crystal — are worked out. Limato's attorneys served ICM with legal papers, but don't expect any lawsuits, because Ed's contract calls for arbitration, which is slated to begin August 1.

I reported this story on my DeadlineHollywoodDaily.com Web site from beginning to end over recent weeks. But because of my bombshell posting last Friday that ICM and Limato had called it quits, the agency decided to take the low road. Though chairman Jeff Berg and co-president Chris Silbermann were out of the office rubbing elbows with corporate plutocrats at Camp Allen in Sun Valley, the agency nevertheless chose that moment to issue a statement stripping Limato of his co-presidency "as part of a restructuring of ICM's motion-picture department to deliver long-term growth."

But here's the real kick in the ass: Limato didn't even know ICM's announcement was coming down that day. Instead, he learned about it when his assistant received the interoffice e-mail and read it to him over the phone. "ICM has systematically done everything to humiliate me," Limato told pals. This week, ICM let go three motion-picture agents who'd all been former Limato assistants, and promoted one former Limato aide.

Yeah, what a mess.

For its part, ICM says hurt feelings are inevitable when an agency undergoes first a giant merger (in 2006, with the TV powerhouse Broder Webb Chervin Silbermann Agency), then some necessary bloodletting (key agents jumped, or were pushed, from the combined company), and now a "generational transformation," which is what the tenpercentery is calling its current streamlining to ensure younger agents play a bigger role and have a bigger stake in the running of ICM. (William Morris went through a similarly nasty generational upheaval back in 2004, when many partners left in a snit.) "The agency is making fundamental changes throughout the business to support the next generation of leadership," Berg said in a statement.

Even before things came to a bad end last Friday, tension existed between the 71-year-old Limato and the 39-year-old Silbermann, who came to ICM as a Broder partner. Some said their squabble was All About Eve brought to life. Others said it more resembled Sunset Boulevard. Though it was decided early on that Silbermann was Berg's heir apparent and would run ICM, Chris told everyone he agreed to be co-president "out of respect" for Ed. But it's also been Silbermann's role to be the leader ICM always needed who'd bang heads together and inject some discipline over Hollywood's most independently minded agents — alpha males and females now expected to transform miraculously into team players.

BECAUSE ICM DOESN'T HAVE enough movie stars right now, some felt Limato had leverage because, without him, the tenpercentery would be seen as even more out of the movie-star business than it already is. Motion-picture talent, although not the most profitable department in an agency (except perhaps for CAA), is certainly the most important division of an agency as far as public image goes — and in Hollywood, public image is everything. Limato set his own hours and didn't show up in the office much, so Silbermann decided it was time for Ed to step down as co-president. But Limato didn't want ICM's motion-pic department controlled by "a TV guy" out "for a power play." This big screen–vs.–small screen schism exists within every Hollywood agency. Again, the town took sides: Was this Chris managing smartly or overreaching prematurely?