Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon Media

Alt
Wine, it's the other red fluid
Wine X's attempts at hipsterism evoke the not so subtle smell of oak barrel-aged fish. Plus: Geeks, freaks, fashion weeks and conspiracy theorists.
By Jenn Shreve
[10/01/99]

Media
Bright lights, big titties
As the lad mags in the U.K. wither, their American counterparts try to give the formula one more squeeze.
By Sean Elder
[10/01/99]

Media
How they got the Korean War atrocity story
With a year's worth of digging, a team of stolid AP investigators searched records and interviewed survivors to piece together a horrifying story.
By Sean Elder
[09/30/99]

Media
Death of a journalist
Reporter Sander Thoenes was touring a neighborhood in Dili, the capital of East Timor. Then soldiers opened fire.
By Eve Pell
[09/30/99]

Brand X
Why is Madison Avenue gripped by insanity?
After pondering the "cultural meat values" of Peparami, the only question remaining is: What are these guys smoking?
By Ruth Shalit
[09/29/99]

Complete archives for Media

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

In retaliation, CAA has declared publicly that it will not share clients with AMG, even though that's common practice among agents and managers, and accuses Ovitz's firm of acting more like a rival agency than a traditional management company. If Ovitz's AMG were an agency, it would become subject to Hollywood guild conflict-of-interest rules preventing it from finding work for its clients and also producing their projects. So far, at least, the guilds have not formally pressed the matter.

Further setting tongues wagging was the unorthodox way Ovitz submitted "Timeline" to Hollywood. First, in a deliberate breach of protocol, under tight wraps he showed the secret manuscript -- whose publisher, Knopf, is not slated to send it to bookstores until Nov. 16 -- to a handful of CAA's top directors, including Steven Spielberg, without going through the agency. Clearly, Ovitz was hoping one of them would become interested in the project, but they all passed. One CAA agent speculated that Ovitz was using Crichton's book as "bait‚" to try to sign more of CAA's high-end director clients.

Then, Ovitz breached protocol again in the way he sent the book to Hollywood studios. It's customary that when a major novel is going out to the majors for a first look, it goes out to all the majors at the same time. In this case, however, Ovitz did not submit the book to Universal on Sept. 24 when he presented it to the other entertainment giants. Only on Sept. 27, after word was received that deep-pocketed studios like Sony and Disney were rejecting the manuscript after a weekend's perusal, did Ovitz's AMG send over the novel to Universal -- a full three days after rival studios had received it.

On the surface, it seems bizarre that the studio home of Crichton's biggest money-maker ever, the "Jurassic Park" film series, would be left out of the process. One Universal production executive even went so far as to call up AMG to wonder why the submission was so late. (AMG didn't have a good answer.) But Universal executives, while livid, were hardly surprised by the slight.

The reason is rooted in Hollywood history. Back in 1995, Ovitz was negotiating with Universal's parent company boss, Seagram's CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr., to become chairman of the studio (then known as MCA). But when the bargaining broke down because of Ovitz's excessive demands, Bronfman hired Ovitz's CAA No. 2, Ron Meyer, to become Universal's president and COO, which left Ovitz out in the cold. It's a well-known fact in Hollywood that, ever since then, there has been no love lost between Ovitz and Bronfman or Meyer. "The last thing Ovitz would want is to give it to Ron or Edgar," one Universal executive explained. "Sure, Crichton gets screwed by it. But when has that ever been a problem for Ovitz?"

In the end, Universal, like the other majors, is deciding to pass on the project. "It sounds expensive and boring," one top suit at the studio muttered. "It'll end up a TV miniseries." (TV miniseries pay less for books than movies.) In fact, those who have read the Crichton manuscript admit that "Timeline," which is about a bratty tycoon who invents a time machine as the cornerstone of a chain of historically accurate amusement parks, then uses it to travel back to 1357 France, where he gets trapped -- may not be compelling subject matter for the movies. "The provocative thing about Crichton is that he's always able to tap into the Zeitgest of popular culture -- cloning, anti-Japanese sentiment, sexual harassment," one studio executive commented. "This book has none of that."

Several film executives who'd perused the manuscript also pointed out that the period nature of the book turned them off because it would cost a fortune to reconstruct the castles, armies and other accoutrements of medieval times. Besides, one movie wag snickered, "Do we really want to see a film filled with defrocked monks?"

Ovitz, no doubt, will take the Crichton book to second-level moviemakers before offering the project to the networks. It is almost inconceivable that a Crichton book would not be made into a movie (his previous book, "Airframe," represented by CAA, was sold immediately to Disney), but then again anything is possible during these belt-tightening times in Hollywood.

That also may be the fate of Scorsese's project. His movies have barely, or not even, made a profit in recent years. They also have been troubled by either controversial subject matter, like "Kundun," whose Tibetan theme angered Chinese officials who held up joint ventures with distributor Disney, or repetitive subject matter involving the Mafia or urban crime. In fact, at a recent media and industry pre-release screening of Scorsese's last film, "Bringing out the Dead," starring Nicolas Cage, at least four members of the audience walked out during the gritty film about a New York City ambulance driver having a nervous breakdown. The buzz on the movie prior to its opening this fall has ranged from lukewarm to terrible.

As for DiCaprio, he has become more known for his nightclubbing with pals than acting on screen post-"Titanic." The opening of his next movie, "The Beach," was just pushed back from Christmas 1999 to February 2000 by 20th Century Fox amid whispers that the film is disappointing.
salon.com | Oct. 5, 1999

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

  Get a printer-friendly version

  E-mail a friend about this article

  Backflip this article to find it again

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Search Salon