Leading Lady: Sherry Lansing and the Making of a Hollywood Groundbreaker

by Stephen Galloway

  Cameron wanted to go even later. “I argued strongly for Christmas,” he said, “because only by having an open playing field, with little competition, could a three-plus-hour movie run long enough to make its money back.”

  He called Chernin to make his case. “I remember my hands shaking as I placed that call. I made my pitch, and Peter, to his credit, took the news soberly that we couldn’t make a summer date and still maintain quality, and he listened to my arguments. He said he needed twenty-four hours to think about it. He called the next day and said we were going with my plan. I’m sure by now it’s remembered as their idea.”

  Throughout “this ugly period,” said Cameron, “Sherry remained staunchly supportive of the movie.”

  At no point was she more so than when she saw parts of it pieced together at Cameron’s Malibu home—the first time she had seen anything other than the raw footage—months after the shoot was over. The director was cutting the film in his compound and invited her to see it on an Avid editing machine.

  “Jim said, ‘Come out, and I’ll show you a few scenes cut together, just a couple of scenes,’ ” Lansing recalled. “It was a Sunday, and I’d made plans to have dinner with my husband later on. John Goldwyn and I drove out to Jim’s home early in the afternoon, and we had a little lunch, and then Jim made the room dark and showed us the first scene, and I was speechless.”

  Cameron asked if she would like to see some more. “Of course,” she replied. “And he showed me another scene, completely different, and that was incredible. Then he said, ‘Another scene?’ And I said, ‘Yes!’ Each time he showed a scene, I was in awe. He just kept showing us more and more, reacting to our excitement. Even with a temp [temporary] score, it was fantastic. I lost all track of time.”

  After an hour had passed—or what she believed was an hour—she said she should call Friedkin to say she would be late for dinner. “I told Jim I was meeting Billy at six,” she said. “And Jim said: ‘What are you talking about? It’s already eight p.m.’ ”

  “She had a very emotional reaction,” Cameron remembered. “She said she thought it was a great love story, on the order of Gone with the Wind, and it really held her throughout. She had a few comments, all of which were positive and insightful. I don’t recall her being overly concerned about length, although there was an overall sense from everyone involved, myself as well, that it needed to be shorter. But to her, the important thing was that the chemistry between Jack and Rose [DiCaprio and Winslet] worked, and the drama paid off at the end.”

  The screening “was a big turning point for me,” he added, “because we were in a very bleak place emotionally, trying to finish the movie. Everyone was against us, and we knew we would always carry this huge albatross of going almost twice [over] the proposed budget for the rest of our careers—if there even was going to be a career after that. And all of a sudden we had a studio head saying that somehow, at some level, it had all been worth it. Mind you, nobody thought we were ever going to break even. And I pretty much assumed at that time that I’d never work again.”

  Lansing only had one reservation: when the score was completed, she argued against the song “My Heart Will Go On.”

  “The movie ended so beautifully, and now we had Celine Dion,” she noted. “I said, ‘Jim, isn’t this a little corny? Do we really need it?’ He said, ‘Oh my God, Sherry! The song is fantastic.’ ”

  —

  Titanic premiered November 1, 1997, at the Tokyo International Film Festival and opened domestically December 14 on 2,674 screens.

  Contrary to industry expectations, it came in number one at the box office, earning $28.6 million its first weekend and beating the anticipated leader, the latest James Bond thriller, Tomorrow Never Dies. More surprising still was its second weekend, which outpaced the previous one, taking in $35 million on its way to a worldwide total of $2.19 billion. That made it the most successful movie ever, a record broken only by Cameron’s Avatar in 2009.

  “The picture went ‘clean’ [into the black] on theatrical alone,” said Bernstein, the business affairs executive. Most movies have to wait for cash to flow in from cable television, home entertainment and ancillary markets before they turn a profit. “I never saw that happen before. DiCaprio wanted more money, and I think we gave him a $5 million bonus.”

  Lansing bought Landau a home aquarium and Cameron an African safari—gifts that not even the most cynical observers could question, given the enormous profits Paramount reaped from Titanic. “Jim gave up his salary and profits when there were all those budget problems, and we restored them,” said Lansing. “He made a fortune and deserved it.”

  Titanic was nominated for a record-tying fourteen Oscars and won eleven, including three for Cameron. The day after the Oscars, Lansing ordered a photo of the moment when he and Landau learned their movie had been named Best Picture.

  “She sent over the photo in a silver frame,” said Landau. “It’s a moment I’ll have forever.”

  Courtesy of Paramount Pictures

  Hiring Demi Moore (right) for Indecent Proposal was easy. But signing her costar, Woody Harrelson, led to a $5 million lawsuit.

  Berliner Archives/Rex by Shutterstock

  With husband William Friedkin.

  BEI/Rex/Shutterstock

  Celebrities from Diane Keaton to Sidney Poitier came out when Lansing received her star on the Walk of Fame.

  SGranitz/WireImage/Getty

  Lansing only became friends with Jodie Foster (right) after they wrapped The Accused.

  Courtesy of Paramount Pictures

  As Paramount chairman, Lansing became Hollywood’s most powerful woman for the second time in her career.

  BEI/BEI/Shutterstock

  Even after Mel Gibson hurled an ashtray through a wall during the Braveheart negotiations, he and Lansing remained close.

  Titanic © 1997 Twentieth Century Fox and Paramount Pictures Corporation. All rights reserved.

  “Everyone thought they were going to lose money,” said James Cameron, seen with Lansing on the set of Titanic. “Nobody was playing for the upside.”

  Kevin Winter/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty

  Jonathan Dolgen, Sumner Redstone and Harrison Ford (left to right) with Lansing at the premiere of 2002’s K-19: The Widowmaker.

  Kevin Winter/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty

  Actor Jon Voight cautioned Lansing against hiring his daughter, Angelina Jolie (left), for Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, warning that she was extremely fragile.

  Evan Agostini/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty

  Lansing was trapped between two warring giants, Harvey Weinstein (left) and Scott Rudin (right), on The Hours.

  Stephen Shugerman/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty

  Delivering the commencement address to the UCLA School of Theater, Film and TV graduates in 2004.

  Courtesy of Vince Bucci Photography

  Lansing with some of the girls from Big Brothers Big Sisters, whom she championed through the Women in Entertainment Mentorship Program.

  Courtesy of ABC Photography

  Katie Couric, Sue Schwartz (front row); Kathleen Lobb, Lansing, Ellen Ziffren, Lisa Paulsen, Rusty Robertson and Pam Williams at the 2014 Stand Up to Cancer telecast.

  Berliner Archives/Rex by Shutterstock

  With President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalynn Carter.

  Alexandra Wyman/WireImage/Getty

  Presenting Meryl Streep with the Hollywood Reporter’s Sherry Lansing Leadership Award.

  Courtesy of the Sherry Lansing archives

  With sons Jack and Cedric.

  AP Photo/Chris Carlson

  Lansing adored Tom Cruise, though both could be like “immovable mountains,” according to one executive.

  Berliner Archives/Rex by Shutterstock

  The paparazzi turned out in force when Lansing received her star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

  Lester Cohen/WireImage/Getty

  Receiving the Jean Hersholt Humanitaria
n Award, an honorary Oscar, in 2007.

  With Titanic, Lansing was at the peak of her game.

  “I was in a producer’s candy store,” she said. “I relished every moment I got to read a great script, or one that had the potential to be great. Each time I said yes, I was furthering a filmmaker’s dream, and becoming part of that dream myself. I loved everything about being at Paramount, except for the rare times when the problems became so contentious they made me nauseous. But they had to rise to a pretty high level for that.”

  Her executives adapted to her hands-on management style, which involved rapid-fire calls, multiple meetings and an immersive involvement in every project, from the first draft of a script to every aspect of a film’s marketing and release. If some studio chiefs were absentee landlords, this one believed in examining each building as carefully as her mother had done.

  “She was tough when she needed to be tough, and played ball when she needed to play ball to make things happen,” said CAA’s Bryan Lourd.

  Staffers got used to being inundated with calls, even first thing on Saturdays when Lansing would ask about their “weekend read,” the stack of screenplays they regularly took home, which was usually the subject of a Monday-morning conversation at other studios.

  “She would do her reading on a Friday night or Saturday morning, expecting you had done it, too,” said Rosenfelt. After meetings during the week, “she’d say, ‘Call so-and-so,’ but by the time you got back to your office, she’d already have called them. You’d hear from her all through the day. She couldn’t let go.”

  Lansing would buzz each executive directly from her office, bypassing their assistants. “I called it the ‘bat line,’ ” said Manning. “If she was in her office and had a question, she could press ‘Michelle’ and the phone on my desk would ring. It didn’t matter who else was on the phone with me when she called; I had to grab it. I was like, ‘Oh my God! The bat phone’s ringing! I gotta go.’ ”

  As demanding as Lansing was professionally, she was personally caring. “If there was anything to do with an illness, anything medical, she was great, making sure you got the best doctors,” said Manning. “But there’s the leadership of somebody who’s your friend, your mentor, the shoulder to cry on. And then there’s the general. She was the general.”

  This general instituted a weekly meeting with Goldwyn and his production team, who would gather privately just to prepare. Similar regular meetings took place with all the senior staff, as well as those involved with marketing and distribution, and her business affairs team. She was also in constant contact with Dolgen, who would speak to Redstone multiple times each day.

  “Sherry was a really hard worker,” said Scott Rudin. “There was no muscle in her body that was not working 100 percent, all the time. She liked elbowing her way into things, but she had massive available charm, so you didn’t feel like it was elbowing. And if she believed in you, you knew it. She had the ability to make you feel the wind at your back. If you were emotionally endorsed by her, it meant an enormous amount.”

  When Jordan Kerner, a producer, suggested she add weekly get-togethers with her key producers on top of the other meetings, she did so, “letting us decide the agenda and the things we needed to do to cut through all the red tape,” he said.

  Having dealt with several studios, Kerner was struck by Lansing’s decisiveness, in contrast to others’ bureaucracy-laden process, more and more evident as Hollywood moved deeper into the 1990s, when flotillas of senior executives had to sign off on any major decision, “green-light committees” were instituted to determine which movies should be made, and studios developed computer algorithms to help estimate a picture’s success. Lansing believed in none of this; like the old-fashioned moguls, she went on her instinct alone.

  During Kerner’s first sit-down with her, she gave an immediate yes to six of the seven ideas he pitched her. Later, when he was developing a screen version of the children’s novel Charlotte’s Web, he said, “Her notes were specific about wanting to stay true to [author] E. B. White’s intentions. I went to Cornell University, where he had all his handwritten notes, and spent a week and a half researching, and she was really happy about that.”

  Bringing the Paramount-based producers together engendered a loyalty, both to herself and the group, that lasted for years, and a handful of them would have regular reunions well after Lansing had left, dubbing themselves “the green-light club.” “Rather than be competitive,” said Kerner, “we became close.”

  Producers were of vital importance to her, and Paramount became a creative hive of men and women who would ferret out material and send it her way, and then push pictures through the studio pipeline. They included Mace Neufeld and Robert Rehme (who worked on the Clancy movies, along with Beverly Hills Cop III), Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall (the husband-and-wife team who made Congo and were longtime associates of Spielberg) and Rudin (The Addams Family, The Truman Show). These were among the most able producers in Hollywood, each there to feed Paramount some of the fifteen to twenty movies it needed to release per year.

  Many of these producers considered Lansing a friend (“Everyone was an ‘FOS,’ a friend of Sherry’s,” said Manning), though she spent her real social life outside the business. She would have weekly lunches with her girlfriends, just to remind herself of the world outside work. “It was an attempt to keep a balanced life,” she said.

  Even her best films would be taxing. Conflict was rarely absent from any project.

  She tussled with one of the most promising young directors in America, Alexander Payne, on his second feature, Election, about a teacher’s efforts to prevent a nakedly ambitious girl from being elected student president. When she asked him to revise the ending, he complied. But when she wanted further revisions, he resisted. What had been a sweet experience for both suddenly turned sour.

  “To my dismay, she now said she wanted changes to even this new ending,” said Payne. “When I insisted that she had already approved these pages, and we had scouted and prepared the shoot, the meeting grew very tense. She became angry and accused me of suggesting she was lying. I said no, I was just going by what we’d all agreed upon previously, and I couldn’t permit any more changes to what I thought would be a successful outcome for the film.”

  Lansing leveled a finger at him. “She went, ‘Listen, do you know who’s sat on that couch?’ ” Goldwyn recalled. “ ‘Bob Zemeckis has sat on that couch. Sydney Pollack has sat on that couch. Peter Weir has sat on that couch. Every one of them is a final-cut director and you aren’t. And let me tell you, they’re my partners. They understand how to be a partner with a company that has spent money making a movie, and you had better learn how to be a partner if you want to stay in the business.’ It was just incredible. Alexander looked at her—and there’s something about having a woman of that stature yell at you. It’s intimidating. She was Sherry Lansing and she had that giant job and was coming at him.”

  Later, despite their clash, Payne credited her with financing “a new ending that was not more sentimental, but rather more cynical than the original” and for “being good enough to offer a half million dollars or so for us to shoot a new ending.”

  Lansing’s irritation welled up when Edward Norton repeatedly refused to take the roles Paramount offered him, despite being under contract to the studio.

  After being cast in 1996’s Primal Fear, Norton had committed to make two more movies for the studio, though which ones were never specified. According to the terms of the deal, he would receive $75,000 for one and $125,000 for the next—a lot of money at the time the near-unknown signed the deal, but nothing compared to the $10 million he would soon be getting elsewhere.

  When Fox cast him in 1997’s Fight Club, Paramount sent a cautionary letter reminding that studio he was under contract to make a movie for Paramount and warning that it would sue. Fox refused to move forward until the situation was resolved. In the negotiations that followed between Paramount and
Norton, Lansing offered a compromise: she would allow the actor to make one movie for Paramount instead of two, and she would pay him $1 million—but he had to make a film.

  Still he wavered, and over the following five years he turned down everything Paramount showed him. When he finally said no to The Italian Job, it was one time too many. Lansing called Mark Wahlberg, who was set to co-star, and asked him to intervene. For Wahlberg, it was an extremely important film, given that he was coming off two flops.

  “Did he have a deal?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Lansing.

  “And no one held a gun to his head?”

  “That’s right,” she replied.

  “Then he should do it,” said Wahlberg.

  Norton continued to resist. “It wasn’t a film I had much interest in,” he said, “and I was going to do a play for my theater company at the same time, so I asked [Lansing] to not force me to do the film, but she insisted. I tried to be politely firm that I really couldn’t bail out on the commitment to the play, which had a lot of our company’s economics on the line.”

  Lansing maintained her ground, though she later gave a generous gift to Norton’s theater company to make up for any losses.

  “Sherry said, ‘We’re going to force his hand,’ ” recalled Wahlberg. “At first I didn’t think that was a good idea, because unless somebody is really passionate about something, they may not do their best work.”

  Lansing had no doubt that Norton would deliver a stellar performance, as gifted as he was. When he persisted in saying no, she hired a litigator and the actor hired another.

  “I was informed, again, that Paramount would sue me,” said Norton, “and this time was told specifically that they’d sue me for $20 million.”

  Faced with the real possibility of a lawsuit, he gave in, only to arrive on set with an assistant ready to videotape his every move, almost daring the studio to find him out of line.

  “It was surreal,” recalled Donald De Line, the picture’s producer. “I said, ‘What’s going on?’ He said, ‘I’m going to protect myself and have it documented that I’m doing what I’m told.’ He was clearly shaken up. But Sherry was like steel. She wouldn’t back down.”