July 31Amid all the speculation about who did what to whom, here are some of the positive things that could come out of Rick Nicita’s unexpected departure from CAA.
--Morgan Creek, a self-funded company that has been dead in the water for over a year, could start making some good movies.
--Some talented filmmakers, who have been distressed by the cutbacks among the specialty film suppliers, may find a fresh buyer willing to take risks.Nicita, who is very much a private person, has been contemplating a change of scene for some time.
Now 62, the repetitious pressures of the agency business have been getting to him.
Friends say he did not want to exchange those pressures for the traumas of corporate life.
Nicita will now be partnered with the combustible Jim Robinson in a company that can fund its own movies (perhaps as many as four a year) without dependence on foreign pre-sales.
Universal distributes its pictures on a first-look basis.
Did CAA push Nicita out?
No responsible player buys that.
On the other hand, agenting is a young man’s business and CAA has lots of hungry young men eager to step up.
Despite CAA’s vaunted “team” system of representation, Nicita’s departure leaves a power vacuum and a feeding frenzy will doubtless commence.
The Tom Cruise situation is especially intriguing.
Two of the three senior CAA agents representing Cruise have departed --
Tori Metzger and now Nicita.
This leaves Kevin Huvane as the last mainstay and Huvane is a man with myriad other responsibilities.
All this occurs at a taut time in Cruise’s career --
the release of “Valkyrie” is still months away.
Cruise’s producing partner, of course, is Nicita’s wife, Paula Wagner who, as president of United Artists, may now find herself competing for projects with her husband.
Nicita is a very thoughtful, cautious man whose idiosyncrasies are vastly dissimilar from those of the brash agents depicted on “Entourage.”
He may fit comfortably into the independent film world -- provided, of course, that he can work amicably with Robinson.
The extroverted Baltimorean scored handsomely with early movies like “Ace Ventura” and “Young Guns,” but has had a rough go recently with “The Good Shepherd” and “Georgia Rule.”
Nicita might turn Robinson’s fortunes around, if he lets him.
(Photo of Rick and Paula by Kevin Winter/Getty Images) Which Woman Has The Perfect Body?
A survey in Fabulous magazine reveals some surprises about how we idealize the female form (NSFW).
Though there’s no way to tell if their survey was accurate, the magazine says men in the U.K. find a size 12 to be ideal,
whereas women think a size 8 is the right size to be (the average national body size there is 14).
AHMADINEJAD BLAMES WEST FOR AIDS:
Iran's president on Tuesday blamed the US and other "big powers" for nuclear proliferation, AIDS and other global ills and accused them of exploiting the UN and other organizations for their own gain
- and the developing world's loss.
But, he said, time was on the poor countries' side.
"The big powers are going down," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told foreign ministers of the Nonaligned Movement meeting in Teheran.
"They have come to the end of their power, and the world is on the verge of entering a new, promising era."
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