But there’s very little self-reflection here. And the little there is seems a bit too neatly packaged. He writes of his life being “a story of three valleys” — the San Fernando Valley (his childhood home), Silicon Valley (where he is busy getting richer) and “a Valley I’d dug for myself.” He opens this book with a scene in which he watches “Terminator 2” and suddenly realizes that he used to be as ruthless, frightening and tough as the Arnold Schwarzenegger character.

Image Michael Ovitz Credit... Lars Niki/Getty Images

“That was the image I took great care to project, anyway,” says the new and improved author. “It was an image I grew to hate.” You hated the cold, brutal, attention-commanding Ovitz? Take a number, sir.

Learning about C.A.A.’s rigid, Ovitz-imposed rules is one of the more interesting aspects of this memoir. Employees have talked about these rules, but they’re more interesting when articulated by the boss. Ovitz adapted the formal dress code enforced by one of his heroes, M.C.A.’s Lew Wasserman: suits, black shoes, white shirts, ties, no casual Fridays. (Wasserman may have been a hero, but when Ovitz was given the chance to deal him a tough business blow, he took it.) He was also influenced by many things Japanese and combative; sorry, no Zen. Ovitz famously had his troops read Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War,” and also insisted that they regularly read at least one newspaper and some magazines so they would have subjects to discuss with clients.

For a man who once knew everybody who was anybody without having to advertise it, Ovitz has now become a shockingly frequent name-dropper. The book’s selection of photos is a trophy wall of very dated shots (some signed) of Ovitz hobnobbing with Hollywood royalty. There are pictures of him adorning magazine covers, and a reprint of a New Yorker cartoon that name-checks him. (“So what if he doesn’t know Ovid,” one glamorous young woman says to another. “He knows Ovitz.”)

The book cites the lists on which he has appeared (Most Fascinating, Most Powerful, Most Intriguing and so on), and even includes blurbs praising C.A.A.’s ad campaign for Coca-Cola. The trouble with all this vanity is that it obscures Ovitz’s real accomplishments. The Coke campaign was a coup; it overturned the advertising model of an army of hacks and substituted a small, Ovitz-led S.W.A.T. team ready to throw conventional ad precepts out the window. Ovitz proved that manpower didn’t matter as much as having the right man. But he can’t tell this story or any of the others in this book without a brag tag. Most of its anecdotes end with lines like: “The movie grossed close to $300 million.”