Smackdown Of The Week

Pity the Creative Artists Agency. It was bad enough that rival ICM boasted 22 clients with Oscar nods this year to its mere 14. But in a pre-Oscar ad in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, CAA congratulated 26 clients — including some, like Monsters, Inc.’s John Goodman, who weren’t actually nominated. That didn’t sit well with the Academy, which took out a Whoopi-worthy ad in the April 12 trade papers lambasting CAA: ”It seems prudent to nip this form of enthusiasm in the bud, lest CAA…decide next year to celebrate its clients by awarding several dozen of them not just nominations but actual Oscars, or Congressional Medals of Honor, or Nobel Prizes.” (CAA didn’t return calls for comment.) The lesson: Don’t mess with the little gold man.