I appreciated his candor. “But what would it be like if that rare ‘yes’ really made a difference?” I asked. “What if some smart, young people were given the chance to make smart pictures?”
Koch gave me a pained smile. “You realize, the only reason most guys want a job at a studio is girls or money.”
“Evans has all the girls he needs,” I said. “And I’m a happily married man.”
“Then take the job, kid,” he advised. “You and Evans—you’re both so far off the charts, you may actually make things work for you.”
I flew back to New York to tell my editors that I was leaving the Times but doing so regretfully. Claude Sitton was incredulous. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I never figured you for the Hollywood type.”
“I never did either,” I said.
Clifton Daniel, who now held the title of executive editor, stared at me with the disdain of a father whose son had just told him he was dropping out of college. He said he wished me well, but he didn’t really.
David Halberstam was blunt. “They’ll chew you up and spit you out,” he warned. “I never thought you’d go to the dark side.”
Halberstam’s words stung. Roughly a year later, Halberstam was to call me at Paramount to ask for a favor. It seems he was seeing a beautiful young wannabe actress and he wondered whether, in my new post at the studio, I could arrange for a screen test.
I told him I would be glad to do so.
It was a wrenching experience to leave the Times, but to my surprise there was not one moment in the coming months when I regretted it. I knew I was now on a theme park ride with freaks and demons, crooks and visionaries popping up all around me. Within weeks I became resigned to the fact that nothing would really make sense, and it was naive of me to expect as much.
I was no longer the earnest young journalist. I was a stranger in a strange land, and I savored it.
Within my first three or four weeks at Paramount, two realities became vividly clear. The first did not surprise me: my presence was not welcome on the lot. The Paramount studio, like every institution, was ruled by its resident bureaucrats, some of them second or even third generation. I was an alien invader and, as such, a threat to the established order. I was certainly not to be trusted and no special favors were to be accorded me.
The studio itself, I learned, had a feudal structure. Each fiefdom had its own leader who presided over his army of serfs. The art director had his constituency as did the head of physical production, the editing staff, and even the commissary. The various units operated with a high degree of autonomy, with everyone guarding their jobs warily.
It wasn’t just about money. The chieftains who presided over the music department or casting or editing had great prestige among their peers because they controlled the budgets and the jobs. The head of music was influential in hiring composers and musicians and thus was accustomed to being fawned over. Even the head of the story department was revered for his influence in recommending scripts and hiring screenwriters for rewrite jobs.
As far as these folks were concerned, I had nothing to bring to this party, and their cool reception did not surprise me. What did surprise me, however, was my own reaction to the studio and its environs.
After a long and argumentative production meeting I took a thirty-minute stroll around the lot and came to terms with my epiphany: I loved the place. I knew I did not belong here. I was not a student of studio lore. Unlike hard-core movie brats like Peter Bogdanovich, I did not know where Cecil B. DeMille’s old office was located, nor on which soundstage Elvis Presley had just finished shooting.
Friends had warned me that I would be seduced by the studio glamour and power, but it was not glamour or power that was grabbing me now. The studio seemed like a wonderful old village that had grown shabby, but was still clinging zealously to its dignity. The paint was peeling from the faux tenements on the New York street; there were shingles missing on the dusty structures lining the Old West town, and it had clearly been a long time since the last scene had been shot there. In the screening rooms, the seats were worn, and a musty smell pervaded.
The studio was a land of shopworn make-believe, but its integrity was oddly intact. Every corridor, every room, bespoke its past. People had worked diligently to craft their scripts, hone their reels of film, or act out their fleeting bits of dialogue. Walking the studio streets, I heard their cumulative noise. And it was a welcome sound.
My office exuded the contradictions of my new environment. It was a big room, downright stately, with handsome paneling. Its furnishings, however, seemed like they’d been recycled from an old rooming house. The oak desk had served many masters, and the faded green sofa sagged morosely.
One day, after a production meeting, the erudite head of the story department, a self-described “failed novelist” named John Boswell, asked for a few private words in my office.
Boswell, it seemed, hadn’t taken a vacation for two years because of his nervousness over the transitions at the studio, and he wanted to go away for a week. “Fine by me,” I told him.
Boswell seemed relieved. “By the way,” he confided, “this sofa I’m sitting on—it was in my office for five years before I asked for a replacement. It doesn’t seem fair that you would end up with it.”
“My whole office is strictly from Goodwill,” I said. “Or maybe from the Salvation Army. I think the powers-that-be are delivering a message.”
“You are the powers-that-be,” Boswell replied. “I don’t want to give away secrets, but have a look at the building behind Stage Twelve. It’s the studio’s furniture trove. It would satisfy a foreign monarch.”
I thanked him for the tip and decided to take the action that I’d been putting off. As the chief of physical production, Frank Caffey controlled studio facilities and their furnishings. I phoned him and asked if he would drop by my office. “Be right over,” he said.
Caffey was smartly attired in a dark brown suit and tie. With his regal bearing, his appearance matched his reputation—he was the studio’s mayor.
“I am a journalist by training, so I am going to get right to what we call our lead,” I said. “You and your colleagues are convinced that Evans and I are mere passersby. You are entitled to your opinion, but our attitude is that we are going to be here for a while. Hence, we want to be reasonably comfortable.”
Caffey peered at me and then glanced around my office. “I take it you are referring to furniture, among other things,” he said, not at all defensively.
“Let’s just focus on the furniture,” I said. “I don’t want grandeur, but I don’t want Goodwill, either. And I assume this is an issue that can be resolved by tomorrow morning.”
Though my tone was respectful, my words caused him obvious disquiet. “I don’t think the situation can be resolved that easily.”
“I know they call you the Mayor,” I said. “If I do not have new furniture by ten tomorrow morning, either your tenure or mine will end abruptly. Thanks for dropping by.”
Frank Caffey nodded and departed. When I arrived at work the next morning my office had undergone a smart makeover—new desk, sofa, matching chairs, even a rather elegant painting to adorn the stark walls. There was a terse note from Caffey. It simply said, “I hope you have a long and successful stay.”
Evans, too, was quickly rewarded with some new pieces, and he, too, was relishing his environs. To the press, however, the casting of Bob Evans as a studio chief was still less than credible. He was too young, too inexperienced, and too good looking. In their eyes, he remained an actor playing the part. Even as new deals were announced—Goodbye, Columbus; The President’s Analyst; The Odd Couple—items also were regularly planted in columns and in Variety that the new Paramount regime was shaky.
I was regularly getting calls from journalist friends asking about my well-being and whether I had made contingency plans. I could detect their skepticism when I assured them that I was enjoying myself thoroughly.
While Evans was unnerved by the fusillade of bad press, I found it downright amusing. My journalistic experience had taught me that reporters habitually write their stories in advance. To them, the making and unmaking of Bob Evans was a hot story—one they were certain would reveal itself imminently. To my mind, they were anticipating it too greedily.
And my fall from grace would provide a delicious nugget too. I was keenly aware that my journalistic colleagues were either contemptuous or envious of my new position. My dismissal would affirm their view that writers should not stray. True to expectations, Variety ran a speculative story six months after my arrival at Paramount suggesting that my departure was expected hourly.
“Don’t get used to the big paydays,” Art Murphy of Variety warned me one day.
If journalistic friends were cool to my new responsibilities, more and more producers and filmmakers were displaying a sharply contrasting attitude. With each passing week, I was receiving more visitors who were looking for a receptive ear, or rather, for a sympathetic sensibility. The fact that I had been a newspaper reporter with the New York Times intrigued them. And they had interesting stories to tell.
Sure, they were looking for a deal—I was alert to that fact. I was a new buyer, but I was also a different type of buyer, and the folks who were coming in to see me were different types of sellers. They weren’t the standard hustlers with shrewdly crafted packages. They were poets and songwriters and artists and novelists and even an occasional scientist. They were brilliant, creative people who normally would not have invaded the precincts of a Hollywood studio.
And I realized: They were here for the same reason I was here. There was a new adventure at hand. And a lot of free spirits wanted to be part of it.
CHAPTER 2
The Tenuous Team
Not long after joining Paramount, I was privy to a debate between two key executives of its corporate parent, Gulf & Western. One argued that Charles Bluhdorn had the soul of a romantic but the mind of a criminal. The other contended that he had the soul of a criminal but the mind of a romantic. Listening to them, I realized that the Führer, as he came to be called by some of his associates, was both inspired and crippled by these contradictory traits. As a wannabe Don Quixote, he desperately yearned to foster great movies, build a global business empire, teach the glories of capitalism to the leaders of the Dominican Republic and even Cuba, and transform himself into a modern Renaissance man.
Not only did Bluhdorn harbor the Big Dream, but it all but burned a hole in his consciousness. When I was in proximity to him, I sensed a curious heat—his mind was whirling too intensely, his heart beating too fast. The ideas came bursting out in a disorderly, unedited, uncensored clump—great ideas, terrible ideas, and vulgar ideas. But like a small child, he seemed incapable of assessing or prioritizing them, nor could he keep himself from impulsively putting them into action. Further, no moral compass was ever in evidence: a strategic objective was put on the table and its implementation became an instant imperative. Questions of ethics, or even efficacy, were not part of the equation. Anything was possible in the Bluhdorn universe. And any tactic, whatever its implications, was an open option.
If Charlie Bluhdorn was a man possessed, he never tried to disguise that fact. Michael Korda, the acerbic editor in chief of Simon & Schuster, a distinguished publishing house acquired by Bluhdorn, described him as a man who “had a wild look in his eyes and the red complexion of someone whose blood pressure was off the scale. Bluhdorn’s teeth seemed either too big or too many, like those of a shark. Huge and glistening white, they filled his mouth like bathroom tiles.”
The fact that Bluhdorn would end up owning a renowned book publisher was perplexing to Korda. Gulf & Western’s array of scattered holdings included the New York Knickerbockers basketball team, Madison Square Garden, Dutch Masters Cigars, a zinc mine, vast sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic and in Florida, an auto parts business that comprised the original core of the Bluhdorn empire, and, of course, now Paramount Pictures.
Bluhdorn’s buyout of Paramount was almost an inadvertency. He had been looking for other random industrial companies to scoop up when a search committee headed by an exhibitor named Sumner Redstone contacted him to see if he’d have any interest in a movie company. Despite its history, Paramount was floundering. It needed both money and initiative. Its head of publicity, a dour man named Martin Davis, was especially ardent in courting Bluhdorn because he had heard the financier loved Hollywood movies. Davis also intuited that if Bluhdorn got involved, it would mean a new career for Davis, too.
Bluhdorn was thrilled by the notion of owning an old Hollywood company. There’s disagreement as to the true cost of his investment, but insiders said Bluhdorn paid only $100 million for the takeover.
Paramount, Korda knew, had come to represent an obsessive toy for Bluhdorn, but that obsession surely didn’t extend to books. Indeed, shortly after gaining control of Simon & Schuster, the Gulf & Western chairman toured the company offices and complained to Korda that he saw too many employees reading at their desks. “When are these people going to get down to work?”
“They are editors and part of their job is to read,” Korda responded patiently to his new boss, but Bluhdorn was dissatisfied with the explanation.
It didn’t take long for Korda or the rest of us to realize that Gulf & Western was not a conventional corporation. Bluhdorn ran it like a personal fiefdom. He regularly took personal loans from theG&Wtreasury. When he traveled the world on his corporate jet (which he did almost constantly) he carried no personal money, but lavished millions of dollars on art for his personal collection in addition to buying the rights to movies. Upon his return he would hurl packets of receipts at his financial flunkies and they would duly record his expenses (an SEC investigator was stunned years later to come upon these records and learn that Bluhdorn had reimbursed the company for his personal purchases, including the art).
He spent much of his workday trading in securities including G & W stock. On several occasions when I visited his office, I would find him in a veritable trading frenzy, aides scurrying. He would often shout orders, as though he were actually on the floor of a commodities exchange.
His skills as a trader were formidable. Bluhdorn would shortly build up a portfolio approaching $850 million (worth several billion in today’s dollars). These were Gulf & Western funds—his personal portfolio was of even greater value.
Though the Gulf & Western chairman was spending so much of his time trading, rather than managing, he had no concern about scrutiny from his board of directors because he saw to it that it was a “friendly” board.
Eight of his sixteen board members worked directly for G & W or its subsidiaries; three had formerly worked for Bluhdorn and remained large shareholders; two were lawyers whose firms drew large retainers from G & W; and two were large shareholders in companies acquired by G & W. That meant the only independent director was an obscure rumpled little man named Irwin Schloss, who claimed to be an investment banker but was a Bluhdorn sycophant.
Bluhdorn’s operating philosophy was no secret to government regulators. During my years at Paramount there were constant rumors of SEC investigations and even speculation that the boss might end up in jail. One SEC probe focused on Bluhdorn’s obsession with the old A & P chain of markets, a sprawling and badly run company which Bluhdorn felt symbolized capitalistic ineptitude. He was desperate to add it to his collection of holdings, and he played with its stock relentlessly. Contrary to SEC regulations, however, he steadfastly refused to publicly declare his takeover attempt. Under SEC pressure, Bluhdorn finally relented and sold his A & P shares, charging that the government had acted to protect the “business establishment” from the incursions of the new class of “Jewish money.”
Bluhdorn’s representations startled associates, since he had always steadfastly denied any connection with a Jewish identity. “New money,” he later explained to me, was always wrongly characterized as “Jewish mo
ney.”
Clashes with government regulators also focused on another Bluhdorn favorite—the Dominican Republic. Everything about the island nation fascinated him—its climate, its politics, the paramilitary protection provided him on his visits, and, especially, its sugar crop. He purchased a vast beachfront estate on the island and regularly entertained present and prospective business associates.
On two occasions I found myself on the invitation list along with an exotic mix of corporate players, film producers, fashion designers, and mysterious Europeans who always identified themselves vaguely as “bankers,” but didn’t look like bankers. A few of the “bankers” at Bluhdorn parties would shortly end up in jail, as I was later to learn. But at the Dominican soirees, the food was sumptuous, the alcohol flowed freely, and guests seemed relaxed in the tropical heat.
Yet while the atmosphere on Bluhdorn’s estate was hospitable, it was also vaguely threatening. If a guest wandered toward the periphery of the property, he encountered machine-gun-bearing security guards attired in paramilitary uniforms. The cadre of personal security men was buttressed by soldiers dispatched by the government.
As far as the Dominican government was concerned, Bluhdorn was not only an occasional tourist but a major benefactor, and the SEC knew the reasons. G & W was the sugar daddy to the regime, advancing aid on an as-needed basis. In one transaction, G & W advanced the Dominicans $40 million in sugar export money to help bolster the regime’s balance of payments. In return for this convenient prepayment, the government “adjusted” G & W’s foreign exchange rates to enhance the unrestricted profits the company could take out of the country. The SEC remained on full alert to Bluhdorn’s Dominican dealings, at one point declaring that Gulf & Western failed to disclose the full scope of its profits from sugar revenues.
Peter Bart Page 3
