Hollywood High School

The New York Times has good coverage of the endless Pellicano wiretap-and-intimidation trial, with former Hollywood and Disney president Michael super agent Ovitz testifying yesterday morning, and the threatened reporter Anita Busch testifying in the afternoon. Timeless dialog includes this:

You believe (Ovitz) was the client who hired Mr. Pellicano to put the fish on your car?” asked attorney Chad Hummel, who represents one of the defendants, former Los Angeles police Sgt. Mark Arneson.

“Yes,” Busch said.

Ovitz, on the other hand, insisted "“Absolutely no, I never instructed him (Pellicano) to do anything illegally."

Of course it's not exactly illegal to leave a fish on somebody's car. What law does that break?

Ovitz calls Hollywood "the campus" and not in the sense of a college campus, because that is too adult. Hollywood, he says, is in fact like high school.

His testimony seems to prove it. Back in 2002, he flipped over rumors that were making him look bad and became dependent on Pellicano's mysterious powers to make it stop. Pellicano the private eye supposedly gave "very good advice," Ovitz said. "Frankly, when a lot of people abandoned the ship, he didn't. He was always an open ear."

Pellicano seems to have become the sad and frightened Ovitz's priest, therapist, friend, and confessor. It's probably not a coincidence that Ovitz paid him $25,000 per case, and an additional $75,000 over the course of that year.