Uber-agent Michael Ovitz and Four Seasons co-owner Julian Niccolini dueled with wisecracking “legal” letters after Ovitz was seated in the restaurant’s Pool Room instead of the mogul-packed Grill Room.
Ovitz, the co-founder of Creative Artists Agency, who’s represented the likes of Tom Cruise, Dustin Hoffman and Michael Douglas, was sent to the Pool Room on Thursday after the Grill Room was overbooked — and decided to dish up some fun with co-owner Niccolini. He fired off a letter from fictitious lawyer I. Really Cheatham of the “firm” made famous by the Three Stooges — Dewey, Cheatham & Howe — claiming Ovitz suffered “significant, physical, emotional, and financial injury.”
“My client is a temperature-sensitive individual whose primary residence is in balmy California. Thus, for purely medical reasons, it is critical that he be able to bask in the warmth of your hospitality and charm,” wrote Cheatham. The “glowing embers of celebrity and power with which you populate the Grill Room have the additional benefit of maintaining [Ovitz’s] lobster miso soup at an agreeable temperature.”
Niccolini’s “laywer,” Pinky Plushbottom, hit back that Ovitz’s “open-toed shoes during a dignified business lunch” caused “disruptive and inappropriate hysteria. When this riot-like stampede of panty-tossing 20-somethings appeared for the third time and confided in the doorman that they suffer a magnetic attraction to Mr. Ovitz’s Prada shoes, my client had no choice but to ban him from the Grill Room.”
Until Ovitz changes his shoes, Plushbottom wrote, “Mr. Niccolini will continue to seat Mr. Ovitz near the Pool, where he can reflect on the potential for catastrophic lawsuits that could result if and when one of these scantily clad damsels trips and injures herself while trying to get a tawdry peep show photo of Mr. Ovitz’s fastidiously groomed feet . . . should this occur, Mr. Ovitz runs the risk of finding himself and his questionable footwear choices splashed across Page Six.”