Steve Martin joked last night during the Oscars about the offense some took about the “Gay Mafia.” I have heard this term before, but where did it originate? Conan O’Brian, a Catholic, joked about the “Lutheran Mafia” during the Emmys last year, but I don’t think that’s the same thing.
Hey, only I can be making mafia jokes around here. Expect a visit from Boppo later. Maybe Harpo or Groucho would be better. Nyuk Nyuk.
The phrase was used by Michael Ovitz, in an interview about a year ago. Ovitz was once Hollywood’s most powerful “superagent,” and had most of the biggest film stars in his stable. He made a big career change when he took the job of President at Disney Studios… and that move turned out to be a big mistake. His stint there went badly, and he left, under a cloud, in 1997.
I don’t know what really went wrong for Ovitz at Disney (rumors abound, but I haveno inside knowledge, and can’t tell you which are true), but he was all but unemployable afterward… and in the meantime, he’d lost his stable of clients, his agency eventually collapsed. Ovitz, who USED to be called “the most powerful man in Hollywood” is now a nobody.
Now, what’s the “gay mafia”? Ovitz told interviewers that the reason he was persona non grata in Hollywood is that show biz is now controlled by a small number of powerful gay executives (most notably David Geffen), and that they’d conspired to crush him because they didn’t like him.
Now, there’s no doubt that there ARE many highly placed gay men in Hollywood, and that it would be a VERY bad idea to antagonize them… but many of the executives Ovitz named as part of the “gay mafia” aren’t really gay!
In the end, Ovitz only made himself look ridiculous, and pretty much threw away whatever small chance he ever had of making a comeback.
Dammit. I had a reply all ready and previewed, and it got et up. Oh well. If you Google “gay mafia,” you’ll find a ton of reading material. Suffice it to say, for now, that the phrase gained notoriety in the midst of former agent Mike Ovitz’s well-publicized total meltdown in a 2002 issue of Vanity Fair, in which he accused various high-profile Hollywood executives (former business partner Roy Meyer, Barry Diller, Disney’s Michael Eisner, and David Geffen) of conspiring to bring about his downfall in the industry. Said downfall was more the result of poor business decisions and Ovitz’s seriously abrasive personality than the late-night machinations of a shadowy and malicious gay Hollywood cabal.
This is a pretty good summary, including links to relevant news articles: [url=]http://lukeford.net/profiles/profiles/michael_ovitz.htm.
God, I miss Larry Sanders.
And prior to the “gay mafia” phasing there was the “velvet mafia,” apparently consisting largely of David Geffen.
er, “phrasing”
But Otto, it is just a phase. 
Just in case you want to see a film version:
“They’re Here! They’re Queer! Get Used to It!
Is the world ready for a gay mobster comedy? You can bet Carmela Soprano’s manicured nails on it. A new film called Friends and Family will star Christopher Gartin (Johns) and Greg Lauren (Ralph’s nephew) as homo hit men who literally make a lovely couple. When parents show up for a weekend visit, the two have to hide both secrets. Directed by first-timer Kristen Coury, the film co-stars Tovah Feldshuh, recently seen in Kissing Jessica Stein, and Tony Lo Bianco. Friends and Family will be the first theatrical release of Here Films, the new gay movie division of Regent Entertainment, which has a track record with gay-themed movies - it’s the company that produced the Oscar-winning Gods and Monsters and that distributes the current runaway underground gay hit, Sordid Lives.”