Word: cantonization
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Union College, B.A., 1948; William McKinley School of Law, LL.B., 1952 FAMILY: Wife, Mary; three children RELIGION: Episcopalian MILITARY: Navy, 1944-46 OCCUPATION: Lawyer; businessman POLITICAL CAREER: Ohio Board of Education, 1960-64; Ohio House, 1965-66; Ohio Senate, 1967-72; U.S. House, 1972- ADDRESS: 733 42nd Street, N.W., Canton, Ohio...
Early last week, Mark Canton went to a screening of Jerry Maguire, an upcoming Tom Cruise vehicle about a sports agent, and started to think that life might get better. Yes, the chairman of Sony's film studios, which include Columbia and Tri-Star, had presided over a particularly dreadful summer. He had been excoriated for paying Jim Carrey $20 million for The Cable Guy, which faltered at the box office. And as his competitors feasted on the returns from Twister and Mission: Impossible and Independence Day, Canton suffered the further indignities of Multiplicity and The Fan. But the screening...
Then a Sony public affairs man handed him an article from Fortune magazine. There Canton read in the first paragraph that his boss, Sony Pictures Entertainment president Alan Levine, was going to can him. The news shouldn't have startled anyone, but no one from Sony had bothered to tell Canton. The week dragged on, and no word came. On Thursday night Canton and Levine both uncomfortably attended Hollywood's splashy Clinton fund raiser. The next day Levine finally pulled the trigger...
...Canton is widely regarded as a braggart who was lucky to have become chairman of a studio in the first place. But his twisting-in-the-Santa-Ana-winds demise didn't raise spirits at Sony. And he wasn't the only casualty. On Wednesday Variety confidently reported that Arnold Rifkin, worldwide head of motion pictures for the William Morris Agency, had been offered Canton's job. Many observers were surprised, as Rifkin lacks executive experience. But since joining William Morris nearly four years ago, he has done much to re-energize the agency's sleepy movie business, adding such...
...Sony, it now appears that just talking to the studio can damage a career. Canton will not be replaced for now (two deputies will share his duties for the time being). But most industry executives believe Sony must do more to fix its studio than merely shuffle executives. After a profligate run that astonished Hollywood, Sony acknowledged in 1994 that it had lost more than $3 billion on its filmed-entertainment operations since it bought Columbia Pictures from Coca-Cola...