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

by Stephen Galloway

  “The most astonishing aspect of this picture”: Ibid.

  When Indecent debuted in April 1993: Boxofficemojo.com.

  “[That] was a whole reconnect for him”: Author interview with Bryan Lourd.

  CHAPTER 11

  “Studio executives, at that particular time”: Author interview with Wayne Rogers.

  It was a small affair by Hollywood standards: Luttrell believed she and Lansing were two of the party’s organizers. Lansing remembered it differently.

  He had once raced a car through the streets: William Friedkin, The Friedkin Connection (New York: HarperCollins, 2013), 179.

  On another occasion, after winning: Ibid., 207.

  He had worked with many of the same people: Author interview with William Friedkin.

  “We drove to the Rockridge market”: Ibid.

  Many were skeptical, said John Goldwyn: Author interview with John Goldwyn.

  Jaffe had been at Paramount Communications: Alan Citron and Nina Easton, “Tartikoff Takes On a Challenge at Paramount,” Los Angeles Times, May 2, 1991.

  “He would have these crazy ideas”: Author interview with Michelle Manning.

  More than anything, his work was hindered: Bill Carter, “Tartikoff Is Injured in Car Crash,” New York Times, January 3, 1991.

  “I remember coming to his office one day”: Author interview with Stanley Jaffe.

  “Brandon said, ‘Oh, we just need some clips’ ”: Author interview with Michelle Manning.

  Jaffe and his boss, Martin Davis, conferred: Author interview with Stanley Jaffe.

  “I remember the two of us meeting with [Jaffe]”: Author interview with William Friedkin.

  Jaffe said yes to both demands: Johnnie L. Roberts, “Paramount Names Sherry Lansing Chairman of Motion Picture Operations,” Wall Street Journal, November 5, 1992.

  CHAPTER 12

  Women were still nowhere near equal: Jaclyn Fierman, “Why Women Still Don’t Hit the Top,” Fortune, June 30, 1990.

  In the entertainment industry, several women: “The Employment of Executive Women in Film and Television: 1991,” cited by Claudia Puig, “Hollywood’s ‘Glass Ceiling’ Cracking?” Los Angeles Times, August 13, 1991.

  Indications that a tectonic shift was under way: Martha Lauzen, executive director of San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, questioned this. “The mention of a few high-profile women in positions of power can skew and distort our perceptions of reality,” she said. “The blatant sexism of the fifties, sixties and seventies was giving way to the subtler sexism of the eighties, nineties and [later]. The attitudes about what women could and could not achieve were still present; they just went underground.” Author interview with Lauzen.

  “It didn’t feel that things were utterly impossible”: Author interview with Stacey Snider.

  The promise that rippled through Hollywood: Stacy L. Smith, Marc Choueiti, Elizabeth Scofield and Katherine Pieper, “Gender Inequality in 500 Popular Films: Examining On-Screen Portrayals and Behind-the-Scenes Employment Patterns in Motion Pictures Released Between 2007–2012,” Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California, 2013.

  “It wasn’t that Brandon had left bad stuff”: About a week into the job, said Lansing, “I called up Stanley and I said, ‘Stanley? You forgot to tell me something.’ He said, ‘What?’ I said, ‘You got titles—you ain’t got scripts!’ He said, ‘You didn’t want me to tell you everything.’ ” Robert W. Welkos, “Every Day Was High Noon,” Los Angeles Times, August 22, 1993.

  She was the only one who did not know Lansing: Author interview with Michelle Manning.

  It was crucial to get at least one franchise film: Tartikoff wanted the sequel, but hit a stumbling block, Goldwyn recalled. “Lorne Michaels said, ‘Brandon, this is how you do your job. Give Mike and Dana [Carvey] a check for $1 million each and then say to Mike, “I want the next one in nine months.” ’ ” Tartikoff did just that while on a plane with Myers. “[He said] ‘What would you like to do next, Mike?’ Mike said, ‘I would like to do my version of Fellini’s Satyricon.’ They got off the plane and there was no Wayne’s World 2.” Author interview with John Goldwyn.

  Mike Myers’s debut feature, Wayne’s World: Boxofficemojo.com.

  On-screen, Myers was an endearing personality: Kim Masters, “Ganging Up on Mike,” Vanity Fair, October 2000.

  “Mike had always wanted to do Passport to Pimlico”: Author interview with Lorne Michaels.

  “Going into that meeting was like the Bataan Death March”: Author interview with confidential source.

  “Mike came in wearing a T-shirt”: Author interview with confidential source.

  “She made up this fabulous story”: Author interview with John Goldwyn.

  Lansing turned to Myers: Author interview with confidential source.

  It did well enough to cover its cost: The film made $48.2 million in North America; Boxofficemojo.com.

  “The first in the series”: Boxofficemojo.com.

  Jaffe had refused to give the series’ original producers: When Frank Mancuso suggested they return $9 million of their salary for Days of Thunder in order to make up for its disappointing performance, “we told them to get fucked,” said Simpson. “We said, ‘We made you $1.6 billion. You people are cheap.’ ” Rod Lurie, “Are They Killing Paramount?” Los Angeles Magazine, July 1993.

  “At the eleventh hour, a memo comes in”: Author interview with Steven E. de Souza.

  “Sherry’s the greatest diplomat in the world”: Author interview with Robert Rehme.

  “It wasn’t particularly the kind of script I liked”: Author interview with Mace Neufeld.

  The movie resumed several weeks later: “Cop 3 was a very strange experience,” director John Landis told the website Collider in September 2005. “The script wasn’t any good, but I figured, ‘So what? I’ll make it funny with Eddie.’ [But] when I started giving Eddie some shtick, he said, ‘You know, John…Axel Foley is an adult now. He’s not a wiseass anymore.’…I had this strange experience where he was very professional, but he just wasn’t funny.” Steve “Frosty” Weintraub, “The Collider Interview: John Landis, Part II,” Collider.com, September 2, 2005.

  “A third stumbling feature”: For Evans’s account see Robert Evans, The Kid Stays in the Picture (Beverly Hills: New Millennium Press, 2002), 408–16.

  “Bob would say things like”: Author interview with Sharon Stone.

  Three weeks into Lansing’s tenure: Author interview with Phillip Noyce.

  The director was in Los Angeles: Patricia Apodaca, “Cameraman Stars in Volcano Ordeal,” Los Angeles Times, November 25, 1992.

  Lansing waited on tenterhooks: Author interview with Sharon Stone.

  Noyce, who had been battling: Ingo Petzke, Phillip Noyce: Backroads to Hollywood (Sydney: Pan Macmillan Australia, 2004), 229.

  “Bob at one point asked for an editing room”: Author interview with Stanley Jaffe.

  Meanwhile, the production was thrown into turmoil: Stone also had issues with Eszterhas. When he and Noyce went to persuade her to make the film, “Joe agreed to be massaged by Sharon,” said Noyce. “He got down on the floor and Sharon was sitting astride him. He was moaning. There was nothing sexual about what they were doing. It was all about control. When he allowed himself to be subservient to her power, that’s when she agreed to play the role.” Author interview with Phillip Noyce.

  “My engagement with Bill MacDonald”: Author interview with Sharon Stone.

  “Fuck ’em!” he said: Lurie, “Are They Killing Paramount?”

  The filmmakers moved forward with the changes: Author interview with Phillip Noyce.

  “a prolonged recession”: “Labor Force Realignment and Jobless Recoveries,” FiveThirtyEight.com, July 25, 2010.

  “The studio bought new $100,000 Mercedes-Benz”: Bernard Weinraub, “The Talk of Hollywood: Good Job! Here’s Your Mercedes!” New York Times, July
12, 1993.

  “merge with Viacom”: Burrough, “The Siege of Paramount.”

  “All the way back, when Sumner just had a few drive-ins”: Author interview with Frank Biondi Jr.

  “We were coming back from [the NBC talks]”: Ibid.

  The two parties entered into secret talks: Geraldine Fabrikant, “Viacom to Announce Deal to Acquire Paramount,” New York Times, September 12, 1993.

  It was “an act of destiny”: Jonathan Weber, “Viacom, Paramount See Smooth Merger: Chiefs Say They Expect No Competing Bid to Be Made for the Latter,” Los Angeles Times, September 14, 1993.

  Davis, sniffing the danger “Killer Diller” posed: Burrough, “The Siege of Paramount.”

  A week after Viacom went public: Kathryn Harris and John Lippman, “Diller Seeks to Outbid Viacom for Paramount,” Los Angeles Times, September 21, 1993.

  “You’d be on the phone with an agent”: Author interview with Michelle Manning.

  “Sumner said, basically, ‘I’m doing it’ ”: Author interview with Frank Biondi Jr.

  “Our current position demands brevity”: Ian Johnson, “Viacom Captures Paramount,” Baltimore Sun, February 16, 1994.

  “She was very vulnerable”: Author interview with John Goldwyn.

  Martin Davis was edged aside: Jaffe subsequently sued for $20 million, but lost. See Geraldine Fabrikant, “Ex-President of Paramount Sues over Stock Options,” New York Times, April 15, 1994.

  “There was a house-of-cards theory”: Author interview with Karen Rosenfelt.

  “He said, ‘I’m going to prove that synergy works’ ”: Author interview with John Goldwyn.

  CHAPTER 13

  “The book had its charms”: Author interview with Eric Roth.

  Forrest had been developed by Warners: Kristen O’Neill, “Gumption,” Premiere, April 1995, 102.

  One of Lansing’s top priorities: Other actors including Robin Williams, Michael Keaton and Bill Murray had all passed. Author interview with Wendy Finerman.

  “The script went around to any number of directors”: Author interview with Tom Hanks.

  “I remember reading the script on an airplane”: Author interview with Robert Zemeckis.

  It was still unclear whether Sonnenfeld: Finerman was having dinner with Zemeckis when she heard Marshall was back in. “Ovitz calls and says, ‘Penny is having second thoughts,’ ” she recalled. “I said, ‘Oh my God! You can’t do this! This is my project. This is my future.’ ” After “a bit of a struggle, Penny went away.” Author interview with Wendy Finerman.

  “I had just done [1993’s] Philadelphia”: Author interview with Tom Hanks.

  Goldwyn had given her a warning: Author interview with John Goldwyn.

  “It was a pretty nice day”: Author interview with Jack Rapke.

  “We were forty-eight hours from turning on the camera”: Author interview with Robert Zemeckis.

  “I said, ‘There’s only one reason to continue’ ”: Author interview with Jack Rapke.

  “There was a donnybrook going on”: Author interview with Tom Hanks.

  After days of talks, both sides: Author interview with confidential source.

  At the same time, Lansing persuaded Jaffe: Starkey, one of the producers, had a different recollection of the sequence of events. “There were two different renegotiations,” he said. “Renegotiation number one was getting the movie started when we were in South Carolina for the first day of principal photography. There was a second renegotiation that occurred when we got back to Los Angeles.” Author interview with Steve Starkey.

  “I was alone”: Author interview with Tom Hanks.

  “We shot on Sundays with a splinter unit”: Author interview with Robert Zemeckis.

  “We worked twenty-seven straight days in a row”: Author interview with Tom Hanks.

  “Bob finds me there and drags me out”: Author interview with Michelle Manning.

  “Everybody at the studio was pissed off”: Author interview with Robert Zemeckis.

  “It was very, very tense”: Author interview with John Goldwyn.

  “Bob was adamant the audience shouldn’t fill out”: Starkey believed it was he who clashed with Lansing. “I was up at the front saying, ‘You guys, you can pass the preview cards back,’ ” he said. “Sherry’s yelling, ‘Send them out!’ Bob did not say one word. Bob was sitting in the back, horrified.” Author interview with Steve Starkey.

  “He shouted: ‘I don’t know what your problem is’ ”: Author interview with John Goldwyn.

  “Forrest Gump is one of those movies”: Frank Rich, “The Gump from Hope,” New York Times, July 21, 1994.

  The picture became one of the highest-grossing movies: Boxofficemojo.com.

  “They were all so hungover that Bob”: Author interview with Michelle Manning.

  “It was rough”: Author interview with Robert Zemeckis.

  CHAPTER 14

  The same was not true for Biondi: Ken Auletta, “That’s Entertainment,” New Yorker, February 12, 1996.

  “Boy, he could blister people”: Author interview with Frank Biondi Jr.

  Back in Los Angeles, she gave detailed notes: Author interview with Frank Marshall.

  A critical drubbing did not sink the film: Boxofficemojo.com.

  “Sherry understood how to deal with complicated men”: Author interview with John Goldwyn.

  “He could be ferocious”: Ibid.

  “I knew nothing of my genealogy”: Author interview with Randall Wallace.

  “I decided to pass”: Author interview with Mel Gibson.

  After finishing 1994’s Maverick: Ibid.

  “I thought, directing this thing is going to be a big, epic deal”: Ibid.

  “I said, ‘The fates are saying you’ve got to play the part’ ”: Author interview with Alan Ladd Jr.

  Gibson came to the studio to negotiate a deal: Author interview with Bill Bernstein.

  “He felt he wasn’t being respected”: Author interview with Jeff Berg. Bruce Davey also confirmed the incident.

  “We were right up to the moment of [shooting]”: Author interview with Mel Gibson.

  A week later, Gibson and Davey accepted: Rachel Abramowitz, “Dressed to Kilt,” Premiere, May 1995, 77.

  Production got under way in Scotland: Author interview with Bruce Davey.

  She looked on in wonder as epic scenes unfolded: Ray Bennett, “A Kind of Hell,” Hollywood Reporter, March 5, 1998, S12–S14. Where different sources report different numbers, I have gone with the Paramount Pictures production notes for Braveheart.

  “It took everything I had”: Author interview with Mel Gibson.

  “Some of the stuff was way over the top”: Ibid.

  “Sherry is probably the smartest executive I’ve seen”: Author interview with Bruce Davey.

  “It was extreme”: Author interview with Randall Wallace.

  “It’s two in the morning”: Ibid.

  “Steve and I had the film down to three hours”: Author interview with Mel Gibson.

  Braveheart opened May 24, 1995: Boxofficemojo.com.

  CHAPTER 15

  She was particularly disturbed: Terry Pristin, “Friedkin Signing Keeps ‘Jade’ in Lansing Family,” Los Angeles Times, April 18, 1994.

  She had bought the project, based on a Joe Eszterhas story: Andy Marx, “ ‘Jade’ Deal a $2.5 Mil Gem,” Variety, November 8, 1992.

  Jaffe said he and Lansing discussed the matter: Author interview with Stanley Jaffe.

  “Sherry was the head of the studio”: Author interview with William Friedkin.

  They did not always see things: Ibid.

  Goldwyn had been to a recent exhibition: Author interview with John Goldwyn.

  But Lansing knew it was contending: Richard Natale, “ ‘Waterworld’ Sails to No. 1,” Los Angeles Times, July 31, 1995.

  Costner had almost died along the way: Shelley Levitt, “Kevin Costner’s Hawaii Uh-Oh,” People, May 29, 1995.

  “[Universal�
�s] Casey Silver couldn’t run away fast enough”: Author interview with Bill Mechanic.

  “They were all calling, saying, ‘We had such a good thing’ ”: Ibid.

  “I told Peter that finding a partner was his problem”: James Cameron, email to author, February 16, 2015.

  Lansing sent Bernstein, her chief of business affairs: Author interview with Bill Bernstein.

  He found an operation: For a detailed account of the physical challenges, see Paula Parisi, “Titanic” and the Making of James Cameron (New York: Newmarket Press, 1998).

  “Cameron wanted real wallpaper”: Author interview with Fred Gallo.

  “He said, ‘Your budget’s running way over!’ ”: Author interview with Bill Mechanic.

  Dolgen said Paramount would only stick to the deal: Author interview with Bill Bernstein.

  “This proved later to be an enormous source of animosity”: Cameron email to author.

  Nor did the tension ease when Redstone bragged: Author interview with John Goldwyn.

  “Everyone thought they were going to lose money”: Cameron email to author.

  “Peter was hiding his head in the sand”: Author interview with Bill Mechanic.

  Then, during the shoot, Winslet chipped a bone: Christopher Godwin, “James Cameron: From ‘Titanic’ to ‘Avatar,’ ” The Times (London), January 9, 2010.

  As word leaked about the nightmare shoot: Godwin, “James Cameron.”

  Newsweek headlined a story: “A Sinking Sensation,” Newsweek, November 24, 1996.

  while Time wrote: Kim Masters, “Glub, Glub, Glub…,” Time, November 25, 1996.

  “She was very excited that the raw footage captured”: Cameron email to author.

  “Chernin said, ‘Jon, I need relief’ ”: Author interview with John Goldwyn.

  “We were carrying the movie on our books”: Author interview with Peter Chernin.

  “We got a call from Robbie Friedman”: Cameron email to author.

  “Harrison Ford angrily warned studio executives”: Bernard Weinraub, “As Problems Delay Titanic, Hollywood Sighs in Relief,” New York Times, May 29, 1997.