THE DEAL THAT WASN'T

What does $250 million buy these days? Lots of things, but not Michael Ovitz. That wad was not enough for Seagram's CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. to lure Ovitz from Creative Artists Agency, the talent shop he built into Hollywood's prime power brokerage, to become chairman of MCA, the show-biz conglomerate (movies, music, TV shows, theme parks) that Seagram's purchased last week. Thus ended the hottest nonevent since Comet Kohoutek. Except that this one had bigger stars ready to collide. And the meteor showers may be felt for years.

"It wasn't about money," everybody said, after Ovitz told his team at last Monday's regular meeting that he and two other CAA officers were staying put. No, of course not. Money has mainly a symbolic value in the entertainment business. It tells the top players how much they are wanted or not wanted. You want Sylvester Stallone for a picture, so you pay him $20 million. You want to get rid of Robert Morgado, the recently deposed head of Warner Music, so you contemplate a buyout package that's been estimated at upwards of $30 million.

Since the bust-up of the MCA deal is a Hollywood story, it must also be about relationships. It was about Ovitz's friendship with Bronfman, which was tested by Ovitz's demands for more money and power. It was about the family atmosphere, nurturing and disciplined, in which the lords of CAA raise their younger employees. It was also about the agency's awesome client roster: the Costners and Cruises, Redfords and Streisands, Keanus and Winonas, Spielbergs and Zemeckises. These are people who don't like to feel deserted by their 10-percenters.

According to CAA sources, the reported "preliminary agreement" between the agency and MCA never happened; there was only the back-and-forth of negotiations. But that doesn't really matter. In his flirtation with MCA, Ovitz was like the husband who has a notorious fling with a tootsie, then returns to his wife and children with a blithe, "Honey, I'm home!" The tootsie is MCA. The wife is Ovitz's list of clients, each of whom must now be reassured that, yes, Michael still loves her best. The children are CAA's Young Turks, who during the scare of rumors dared to imagine a scenario of the agency without Ovitz. Elvis is dead. Oops -- the King is back.

Maybe no one is the perfect person for a job that depends so much on dumb luck in guessing the public's whims. An idiot could succeed in such a position, a genius could fail, simply by picking or passing on a Star Wars or a Forrest Gump. It's also possible that Ovitz was unsuited for the position. As a talent agent, he is a seller in a seller's market; the studios want his clients and will pay hugely for them. As MCA czar, he would have been a buyer in that market. The fellow who helped jack up the price of the product would now be asked to run a lean, mean company. It's like putting the mice in charge of the pantry.