Salon.com > Kathleen Sharp

Hollywood’s battle of the sexes over Arnold

Tue, 07 Oct 2003 06:24:00 +0000

The minute Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that he was running for California governor Aug. 6, all of Hollywood knew that tales of his womanizing would make headlines again. The prospect of news cameras zooming in on Schwarzenegger's private life was supposedly the big reason his wife, Maria Shriver, had reservations about his running. There had been plenty of stories about the actor's high jinks even before he'd officially become a politician: In March 2001 Premiere magazine printed a now-notorious article by writer John Connolly that featured named and unnamed sources detailing instances in which the actor groped women's breasts, bullied and humiliated assistants and crew members on movie sets, and cheated on Shriver.

Years earlier Connolly had revealed, in an October 1993 US magazine, that several women who worked for famed Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss had auditioned for Schwarzenegger's unsuccessful movie "The Last Action Hero." The Los Angeles Times reported that Columbia Pictures' parent company Sony was investigating whether these women were hired as "extras" on the overbudget movie. Around the same time, a French women's magazine reported that one of Heidi's women claimed the muscleman himself was a client while on the set of "Last Action Hero." Schwarzenegger sued and won under France's stringent libel laws, but with the actor's sudden entry into the recall race, all the old stories were being chased again.

Death of the last tycoon

Wed, 17 Jul 2002 20:00:00 +0000

When Lew Wasserman died on June 3, his wife of 66 years, Edie, didn't want a show-business funeral. Instead, she quietly buried her husband, the former chairman of Universal Studios. Wasserman slipped from bedside to grave site in five and a half hours -- surely some kind of record -- and his unusual burial added to his iconic status. But it left a gaping hole in an industry that needed to mourn its patriarch's passing.

So, earlier this week, Edie Wasserman and Universal Studios hosted a memorial inside the Universal Amphitheater. The somber event was attended by movie and political stars: Sharon Stone, Warren Beatty, Jodie Foster, Larry King, producer/director Ron Howard, investment banker Robert Strauss, Jayne Meadows (aka Mrs. Steve Allen), Suzanne Pleshette, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, California Gov. Gray Davis, House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt and about 4,000 others.

Although eight Wasserman associates eulogized him, none conveyed the scope and import of the man's accomplishments. How could they cover seven decades in 90 minutes? Barry Diller, now chairman of Vivendi-Universal Entertainment; Sidney Sheinberg, former president of MCA Inc.; Jack Valenti, Hollywood's lobbyist in Washington; actress Suzanne Pleshette; Dreamworks co-founders Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg; AFL-CIO president John Sweeney and ex-President Bill Clinton certainly tried.

Storming Hollywood

Fri, 14 Jul 2000 14:37:00 +0000

Wolfgang Petersen, 59, is the German director of "The Perfect Storm," starring George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg. The film's strong opening over the July Fourth weekend, and continued strength at the box office, have surprised many industry veterans, who were betting that "The Patriot," starring Mel Gibson, would do bigger business. As it happened, "Storm" racked up $63 million over the holiday while "Patriot" brought in a paltry $35 million. Result? Petersen's a happy man and Clooney and Wahlberg aren't feeling so bad themselves. As for Gibson, he's undoubtedly hanging in there.

Petersen began his directing career in German television during the 1960s. His first feature film, "One of Us Two" (1973), won the German National Film Prize for director. In 1981, he directed the acclaimed "Das Boot," for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for best director. And after moving to the United States, Petersen wrote and directed the stylish thriller "Shattered."

“Erin Brockovich”: The real story

Fri, 14 Apr 2000 16:00:00 +0000

The Julia Roberts film "Erin Brockovich" is in its fourth week as one of the most popular movies in America. It's billed as being based on a true story. But the film tells only half of it -- and the half it doesn't tell isn't pretty.

The film is about a down-on-her-luck but defiant, twice-divorced, working-class mother of three. As a lowly clerk in a small, private law firm, she independently starts looking into a case involving pollution in the small town of Hinkley, Calif. In the movie, the foul-mouthed, full-cleavaged Brockovich travels to the town on her own initiative, investigates the case with the help of dogged smarts and a few low-cut dresses and persuades her employer to take on the case. When he joins forces with a big-time Los Angeles law firm, she defiantly resists. In time, her street smarts outbalance the incompetent, unfeeling lawyers at the downtown firm, and the residents come out with a $333 million award -- and Brockovich herself gets a check for $2 million.

The truth is different. That's not unusual for Hollywood, and doesn't mean that the film -- which has garnered favorable reviews -- is bad.