American Rebel (38 page)

S
ondra Locke’s very existence was a recurring nightmare for Clint. Every time he thought she was out of his life, she returned, and every time the bad dream got a little worse.

In December 1990 Locke had finalized the details of her lawsuit against Clint, and before the start of the traditional Christmas break, when the entire industry disappears from town until after New Year’s, she had moved into her new offices at Warner, per her settlement deal with Clint. She pored over scripts in search of a new project to develop, eager to get something going because
Oh Baby
had collapsed due to Orion’s lapse into bankruptcy.

Knowing that Arnold Schwarzenegger had shown some interest in playing the lead, Locke figured it was a no-brainer to walk it over to Warner. She confidently pitched it to Terry Semel and Tom Lassally, together with a shooting script and Schwarzenegger’s interest.

Semel and Lassally passed.
^*

Every day for the next three years Locke, with her $1.5 million development deal still in place, went to her office at Warner, searched for scripts, and tried to interest Terry Semel, Bob Daley, or Lucy Fisher in a project, or even to get the okay to direct one of the hundreds of scripts that were earmarked for future production by the studio. But there was nothing for her. Nothing.
Nada
.

Meanwhile Clint began work on his next film,
In the Line of Fire
, for Columbia. It was his first film for a studio other than Warner since 1979, when he had made
Escape from Alcatraz
at Paramount. Perhaps he felt that after all that had gone on, a change of corporate scenery might be good for both him and Warner Bros.

For this film Clint took a (relative) backseat to director Wolfgang Petersen (best known for
Das Boot
and personally chosen by Clint, who maintained directorial approval). Clint plays a retired Secret Service agent who was present at John F. Kennedy’s assassination and is called back to duty to prevent an attempt on the new president’s life. The film costars a slew of midlevel stars, including John Malkovich and Rene Russo.

One likely reason Clint wanted to take it easy was the outsize success of
Unforgiven
. More often than not in Hollywood, when a film wins that many Academy Awards, the director and the star do not immediately try to compete with their previous success. The next film they make is unlikely to be as successful, and they often prefer to do another film or two before their next “big” film.

Finally, if anyone deserved to take it a bit easier, it was Clint. At sixty-three years old, kicking back for one film and “only” acting in it was completely understandable.

So naturally
In the Line of Fire
became the highest-grossing film of Clint’s career to date, taking in over $200 million in its initial domestic release and twice that overseas. Yet it was an ordinary film with a decidedly nonsuspenseful plot that some critics dubbed “Dirty Harry Goes to Washington,” and the cast had no single star other than Clint who ever attracted anything near those kinds of numbers. The only logical explanation for the film’s success was the tremendous drawing power of Clint Eastwood, once more the most popular movie star in the world.

    
I
n 1993, the third and final year of her contract at Warner, Locke was doing postproduction on a TV movie she had taken on,
Death in Small Doses
. She hoped it would be the icebreaker that would bring her back to features. While sitting in her office, she received a phone call from, of all people, Clint—she hadn’t spoken to him or had any contact at all with him in years. This was just weeks before the big Academy Awards night, Clint and
Unforgiven
were the big favorites, and with all the promotion he was doing, his was about the last voice on earth she expected to hear in the receiver.

Their conversation was short and sweet and completely puzzling to Locke, even more so when Clint told her he was happy she had a movie and would love to see a rough-cut cassette when it was finished.
With that he hung up, leaving her bewildered. Kindness was not a part of Clint’s personality she was that familiar with, especially after all the legal ugliness they had put each other through.
^*

    
N
ot long after Clint’s grand night at the Oscars, Locke learned from mutual friends that Fisher was pregnant and had been for several months, although she had not been showing the night of the Awards telecast. Could that possibly have had anything to do with Clint’s phone call? But trying to figure out his motivations, she knew, was like trying to solve Rubik’s Cube.

Sensing something was not right but having no clue what it was, Locke tried to find out what was going on. In her office she reached for the phone and direct-dialed Clint’s office. According to her, when Clint picked up, this was what she said: “I don’t know what’s going on, Clint, but something’s not right with Warners and my deal. Nothing at all has come together here. I mean, I hope that they aren’t still uncomfortable about our split-up. I would hate to think that’s what’s been going on.” Not hearing anything on the other end, she continued: “Look, I have a script now which has a lot of potential. I’ve submitted it to one executive who likes it, but hasn’t been able to get it past his boss, Bruce Berman. If you read it and like it, would you step in on my behalf? After all, the deal was I’d make some films here. And if you don’t like it, I’d like to hear where you think I’m off-target.”

Clint’s response, according to Locke, was to quickly agree to look at the script and to remind her that he still wanted to see a cassette of her TV movie. That last suggestion sent up a flag for Locke. Clint seemed a little too interested in that movie. Was he afraid it was some kind of exposé, something personal and revealing about their time together? Three weeks later she called him again, and she brought up the script, and he promised to see if he could get Warner to green-light it.

Despite the two phone calls, nothing happened with the script, but
weird things continued to appen with her other potential projects. Lance Young, a former Paramount producer who had moved to Warner, wanted to hire Locke to direct a movie there. A friend who knew Young from Paramount told Locke that he had been told Warner would not work with her because she was “Clint’s deal.”

“Clint’s deal.” What could that possibly mean? Exasperated and confused, Locke changed agents again, this time signing with International Creative Management (ICM) to try once more to jump-start her career. She brought up her Warner “deal” with them. They looked into the situation and reported back to her that Warner was simply not going to make a film with her. Any film.

Early in 1994 Locke retained counsel with the intent to sue Warner Bros. for breach of contract. Her hope was that Warner would extend her contract by one year and give her at least one film that would fulfill the conditions of her signing off on her lawsuit against Clint. One film, she felt, was all she needed to regain her career momentum.

The response from Warner to Locke’s counsel was swift and direct. According to Locke, Terry Semel and Bob Daley made an insulting offer for her just to go away: “We have no interest in making any
real
deal with Sondra. We can give her a twenty-five-thousand-dollar settlement for her trouble, but that’s it.” Locke said no, moved out of her office at Warner, and necessarily changed lawyers because of her increasingly precarious financial condition. She acquired the services of Peggy Garrity, who, after reviewing all the facts involved, agreed to handle the case that Locke wanted to bring against both Clint and Warner on a contingency basis.

Winning a lawsuit against Warner was not going to be easy. Few witnesses would be willing to come forward and testify; for anyone looking ever to work again in Hollywood, it would be a career-ending move. Warner’s initial reaction to the filing of Locke’s suit was to shrug it off, claiming they simply had not been able to find anything for her; nor had she brought them anything that they felt was up to the studio’s extremely high standards. But they
had
given her a parking spot on the studio and a free turkey every Thanksgiving, proof of their good intentions, they said.

For the rest of 1994 and 1995 and through the summer of 1996, Locke, via David-like Garrity, took on Warner’s legal representation, the Goliath-like O’Melveny & Myers. Depositions were taken, during
which Warner steadfastly maintained they had done nothing wrong. Not long afterward Garrity, sensing this was less a breach-of-contract case than one of actual fraud, a far more serious charge, urged Locke to add Clint to the lawsuit.
^*
Locke agreed, Garrity filed, and in Locke’s words from her memoir, Warner “went ballistic and mounted a massive campaign to keep Clint out of the lawsuit.”

To Locke’s shock and dismay, the motion to add Clint was denied.

Garrity then asked Warner Bros., as part of discovery, for a copy of the final cost runs for Locke’s studio deal—everything that had been charged against her account in the entire three years. It was not an unusual request in these types of lawsuits. In order to find out how the studio would prepare its financial counterclaim, Locke needed to know how much money and service value Warner had advanced to her and her staff during that period.

Warner’s documents revealed debits totaling $975,000, not all that unusual for a three-year period. But what surely wasn’t normal operating procedure was that the entire amount had been transferred from Locke’s account at Warner to Clint’s, specifically folded into the overall budget and outlay production costs of
Unforgiven
. At first this was puzzling to Locke, as she had had absolutely nothing to do with any aspect of the production of that film. Then it hit her—Clint, she realized, was secretly paying the tab for her Warner deal. Only her Warner deal didn’t really exist, at least not according to the papers Warner had given over to discovery. Locke now believed that Clint must have set up a secret, false, sham deal with Warner, where it would look like Locke had a deal there but really didn’t. The whole thing was to be paid for by Clint, via
Unforgiven
, which meant that not a cent of the $975,000 actually came out of his own pockets. He had set it up in order to induce her to sign off on her original lawsuit for a relatively small amount, with the carrot-dangling promise of a deal at the studio to get her to settle.

The ramifications ran deep. If Clint had, in fact, charged that money to
Unforgiven
, then anyone else who had a profit-based deal connected to the film had also been defrauded by Clint and/or Malpaso, because the net profits of
Unforgiven
were based on all production costs and distribution and advertising expenses subtracted from the film’s gross.
That could mean criminal charges somewhere down the line, and dozens of complicated and dangerous lawsuits both for the studio and for Clint.

Warner’s first response was that that simply wasn’t the case, because the money had come not from Warner or Malpaso but from his personal account. Garrity didn’t think so, at least not according to the documents.

At that point, more depositions were scheduled, but Clint refused his subpoena and ordered Malpaso to also refuse any subpoenas Garrity tried to serve on him. Warner then asked the court for an immediate judgment to remove them from the case without a trial. Such summary judgments are usually requested when one side or the other believes the case has no merit, or the evidence is insufficient and doesn’t merit a full trial. It is always a risk, because losing it usually indicates the judge believes the other side has a good enough case to bring. Asking for a summary judgment is like betting everything on red or black at a roulette table. This time the chips came down on Warner’s side.

Devastated, Locke only had two choices left: to appeal the court’s decision, which in a summary judgment is difficult, costly, time-consuming, and rarely successful; or to start a new lawsuit only against Clint for fraud. In other words, to start all over again, eliminating the studio from any further legal claims she had against them.

She did both.

    
T
his time Garrity filed the lawsuit in downtown Los Angeles, rather than in Burbank, where the first lawsuit had been filed. Bur-bank, she and Garrity felt, was just too close to Warner’s power center. That would make it even more difficult to find an objective jury, as everyone in Burbank was connected one way or another to the film business, the primary reason people lived in this otherwise nondescript, hot, humid, and isolated community. Now, Garrity decided, distance was their best defense.

Without bothering to notify Garrity, Ray Fisher, Clint’s attorney, responded by petitioning to have the case remain in Burbank. He succeeded and it was assigned to a different judge from the one who had heard and granted the summary judgment on the Warner case.

On the first day of trial, September 9, 1996, Fisher moved for dismissal
for “nonsuit,” which is similar to summary judgment; Fisher insisted Locke had no case and wanted the judge to concur. The judge took the motion under advisement and, for the moment at least, let the case continue.

After opening statements, Locke and Garrity starting putting their witnesses on the stand. The first was Terry Semel, who, under direct examination by Garrity, shaped his answers to suggest that Warner had indeed been willing to do business with Locke during the three years she was under contract, but that nothing she brought to them they considered filmable. Garrity then sharpened her focus and asked Semel if he was aware of Clint’s “secret indemnity,” as she put it. Semel agreed that “I would assume that at the end of the day that his intentions were to underwrite the losses.” Garrity asked him when “the end of the day” was. Semel said that he guessed it was when the terms of the arrangement—the three-year contract—had ended.

No further questions.

The next day Locke took the stand, and Garrity led her through a detailed recapitulation of the terms of her original settlement and everything that had happened—or not happened—in the three years she was at Warner. That evening, as Locke left the courthouse, she was intercepted by Kevin Marks, Clint’s full-time personal attorney, who had attended the trial. Earlier that day, on the way into the courthouse’s parking lot, Locke had been in a car accident, smashing her front end. Marks just wanted to tell her that he had seen the whole thing and was willing to testify in her defense when she sued the other driver.