THIRTY
The last time the studio executives had gathered in Bungalow 8 was the first Sunday in October, when Hirschfield had broken the news that David
Begelman
was to be suspended pending an investigation of financial irregularities. On Monday morning, November 28, they assembled there again for the regular quarterly review of motion-picture projects.
Hirschfield
preferred to hold the quarterly meetings in his hotel bungalow; it was less formal than the studio offices across the hills in Burbank and there were fewer interruptions. Even though the meetings were long—typically 9:30 until about 7:00 with lunch brought in—the studio people generally did not mind them. They were a break in routine. And many of the motion-picture executives rather enjoyed watching
Hirschfield
and Fischer conduct a meeting. It was faintly reminiscent of a good cop-bad cop routine. Hirschfield, the droll, playful chief executive, often would appear to be paying only minimal attention to the proceedings. Though he missed nothing important, he would flip through
Playboy,
or doodle on his agenda sheet, or crack jokes, while Fischer, his tough, solemn deputy, would actually conduct much of the meeting, asking pointed questions, insisting on specific answers, and challenging deviations from film
budgets. It required an agile se
nsiblity to banter with
Hirschfield and fence with Fischer at the same time, and seeing who could do it best had become almost a game.
November 28 was different, however. The lingering Begelman problem infected everyone in the room. Only Hirschfield and Fischer knew the gravity of the crisis, but it was obvious to the studio people that the issue remained contentious and that Alan and Joe were preoccupied.
As Fischer listlessly ran down the agenda of film projects in various stages of production or development, Hirschfield's concentration wavered and he was interrupted frequently by telephone calls from New York.
"Hardcore."
"On schedule, on budget."
"California Suite."
"Ray has it well in hand."
"Nightwing."
"Those fuckin' bats look so real you wouldn't believe they're special-effects bats."
"Altered States."
"Paddy's heart attack has slowed us up a bit," Dan Melnick said, "but we have effective control of the release of both the hardcover and paperback."
"All That Jazz."
"Delayed to allow Fosse to do his Broadway thing, which is tentatively entitled
Dancin'.
We'll have a piece of the show."
The telephone rang and the secretary came in from the next room and put a note in front of Hirschfield: Todd Lang, NY. He took the call in the master bedroom. "They're really gearing up to go after Berte. We'll have to sit down with her and go over the Ed Wolf thing from scratch."
"Kramer vs. Kramer."
"The script's been revised again. It's terrific."
"Ice Castles."
"We're considering three people. Tatum, Jodie Foster, and Marie Osmond."
"Marie Osmond?"
"Yes, and there are two potential problems with Marie. First, can she act? Second, she's a very, very serious Mormon. There's a sexual encounter in the film, and we don't know how she'll take to it.
If she turns out to be our choice, considering everything else, we'll have to play with that scene to see how important it is to the picture."
The telephone again, and the secretary with a note: Leo Jaffe, NY.
Hirschfield
took the call in the bedroom. "It's chaos back here. Herbie and Matty
are
still livid. They're on the warpath. How was your talk with David yesterday?"
"Not good. He wants more than we can possibly give him."
"It's got to be wrapped up soon and a press release issued, or we may be back to square one."
"The board has me coming and going, and I refuse to be placed in this position," Hirschfield said. "I'm handling this in the best way I know how. What about all the support I was promised?"
"It just isn't there."
"Keep me posted."
"1941."
"Christmas, 1979."
"Justice for All."
"We've got Pacino."
"
The
Ravagers."
"It's a junk-food picture."
"What about the Joan Rivers deal?"
"We feel that Joan Rivers can be for us what Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder
are
for Fox,"
Melnick
said. -"She's mad, she's gifted, and she knows where the jokes
are
. The problem is money. She makes incredible money in Vegas, and looks to us to replace those earnings."
The secretary with a note; Herbert Allen Jr., NY. Hirschfield hobbled into the bedroom again. "You still have a chance to change your mind, Alan."
"My mind is made up. I have no intention of changing it."
The talk in the living room turned to the subject of contractual clauses under which filmmakers can be penalized financially for permitting costs to exceed a film's budget. Melnick urged everyone to be "realistic."
"It's difficult to control certain people, and there are certain directors 1 won't work with for that reason. But I'm enough of a whore that if it's a sensational project, I'll take a deep breath and jump in anyway. You can't penalize a filmmaker for getting a new idea. It increases his appetite. And you've got to be pragmatic about other problems. We've got an overage on
Eyes.
You have to be realistic when you hire certain artists. Faye's entourage costs a hundred thousand dollars. The hair-dresser and makeup people we wanted to give her, she didn't want. But we wanted her, so we had to go along."*
"There will be two singles from the
Close Encounters
music," Hirschfield reported. "Clive is reworking it. The basic symphonic, and then a disco."
"That poker game with
Newsweek
over the cover story was ridiculous," Melnick asserted. "They had to bluff us into giving up the photos. Jack Kroll had to ask! Our press manipulation isn't up to snuff
.
We don't have people sufficiently schooled in that sleazy world."
The secretary with a note: Allen Adler, NY. "You better watch your ass," he said. "They're really hammering away back here." "So I hear," Hirschfield replied.
"What about delaying the foreign opening of
Close Encounters
till the fall?" somebody asked. "Doing a really proper job of dubbing is going to take a lot of time. We'll really have to rush to get it out in the spring."
"It'll lose its momentum by the fall. It won't be the event that it will be in the spring."
"It has to be dubbed in French, Italian, Japanese, German, and Spanish, with subtitles for Scandinavia."
"Let's forge ahead for the spring," Hirschfield finally interjected. "I don't care if they have to work around the clock, seven days a week. The longer we wait, the greater the chance that we'll lose the sense of a cosmic event that we've built up now." He ordered that Columbia's top dozen foreign executives be flown to New York to sec the film the following weekend. "Show it to them at the Ziegfeld and then bring them up to my house and I'll give them a pep talk."
The phone calls from New York tapered off toward evening and the meeting in the bungalow broke up around seven.
Hirschfield
, Fischer,
*The film's final title was
The Eyes of Laura
Mars.
and Melnick had dinner at the Mandarin and talked about various ways of replacing
Begelman
. Was Melnick a realistic candidate for permanent president of the studio? No, he did not want the administrative burdens. He only wanted to "make pictures." Could Fis
cher move to California as co-he
ad of the studio, handling the business and administrative functions while Melnick confined himself to the substance of pictures? No, Fischer did not want to move to California.
"Let's face it," Hirschfield said. "The board would consider that a jerry-built solution anyway. The only way to get the board off my back is to come up with somebody from outside, somebody demonstrably sensational, a known quantity. It's going to be tough."
"Good morning, Rona."
"Good morning, David, and good morning, America. Industry speculation as to the fate of Columbia Pictures' president David
Begelman
, who took a temporary leave of absence from the studio several weeks ago due to reported financial irregularities,
has now been settled. After a se
ries of highly charged, closed-door meetings, the board of directors of Columbia Pictures Industries is expected to announce that they will offer
Begelman
the opportunity to serve out the remaining two years of his Columbia contract as both an independent producer with the studio as well as a studio adviser.
...
It is expected that
Begelman
will accept
the Columbia offer, although we
understand that he has been approached by three top studios to be an independent producer for them. The decision to remove
Begelman
from the presidency reportedly came at the insistence of Alan Hirschfield and was allegedly contested by other board members. The board is also expected to publicly exonerate Begelman from any financial wrongdoing, noting that the former president returned to Columbia some thirty-seven thousand dollars which was in dispute. . . . This removal of
Begelman
leaves the studio without any strong hand at the helm, and industry insiders say confidence in Columbia is low. Therefore, while winning the battle, the forces opposing
Begelman
may have lost the war."
Hirschfield
found t
he press coverage exasperating, but he supposed his reaction was another reflection of his naivete. The only voices being heard consistently were those of Rona Barrett and Art Murphy, whose coverage seemed to Hirschfield to be unduly harsh on him and unduly sympathetic to
Begelman
. It was the standard Hollywood line—David's misdeeds were matters of "judgment"; Hirschfield stood alone against the board in ousting him; it was David who was mainly responsible for Columbia's financial recovery; removing
him would leave the studio leade
rless and shake confidence in the company. Rona had said the board was expected to "exonerate Begelman from any financial wrongdoing"—an extraordinary concept in view of what he had done. Alan wondered if Rona knew that David had forged checks and embezzled thousands of dollars. He found it difficult to believe that Rona, as the best-informed reporter in town, didn't have at least some of the facts. Why wasn't she putting them on the air? Alan assumed that Rona was getting many of her "insights" from Ray Stark and, secondarily, from Sue Mengers. (Rona and Sue were called the "Starkettes" in some quarters.)
And where was the national press? A sensational story was unfolding and nobody seemed to be covering it. Hirschfield, for one, had kept the vow of secrecy toward the press taken by everyone inside Columbia who was privy to the details. Still, one would have anticipated leaks by now. It had been more than two months since the company had known of Begelman's embezzlements. Hirschfield's task would be so much easier if the world knew the nature of David's crimes. The board couldn't possibly take the stand it had if the public knew Begelman was an admitted forger.
Unbekn
ownst to Hirschfield, a few non-e
ntertainment reporters were beginning to work on the Begelman story.
The Wall Street Journal
was interested. And Andrew Tobias, who had been briefed by a friend a month earlier, had finally found the time to investigate. In only a few hours of telephoning from his New York apartment in late November, Tobias had confirmed the salient facts of the Cliff Robertso
n, Martin Ritt, and Pierre Grole
au embezzlements. Unfortunately for Tobias, he had promised the story to
Esquire
which could not publish it until February.
Jeanic Kasindorf of
New West,
meanwhile, had nearly completed her examination of Sid Luft's files on David
Begelman
's handling of Judy Garland's funds in the early 1960s. Indeed, while the studio executives were conferring at Hirschfield's bungalow on Monday, Kasindorf had spent nearly all day at Luft's Wilshire Boulevard apartment, sifting through old manila folders spread across his dining-room table. But Kasindorf still had not had time to investigate Begelman's more recent difficulties at Columbia. And she could not expose what he was alleged to have done in 1962 without placing it in the current context.