Word: cohn
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Even on his own terms, Mansfield doesn't make sense. A few examples will serve: Who was a more ruthless enforcer of conventionality than McCarthyite henchman Roy Cohn? Who spread more "civilization" than Alexander the Great? Who has less style than--take your pick--Martina Navratilova or Liberace...
...Cohn's ostentatious snobbery (he slags Hollywood at every opportunity) and quirks (he eats paper, he doesn't return phone calls) have been finally more self-defeating than charming. And while talented performers and directors can ^ remain willfully removed from the West L.A. schmoozathon, in this day and age an agent really cannot...
During preproduction on Wolf, Nichols' forthcoming movie starring Jack Nicholson, a source close to the director says that when Nichols encountered serious impediments -- Nicholson wouldn't commit, Columbia wouldn't approve the budget -- Cohn did not quietly throw his weight around and fix everything, Ovitzishly. "Mike ((Nichols)) would try to reach Sam," recalls the source, "and he'd have left the office for the night. And Mike couldn't just call ((Columbia chairman)) Mark Canton and yell at him himself." That's what superagents...
...Cohn's shrinkage is not just a matter of his age, his distance from Wilshire Boulevard or his chronic breaches of etiquette. Rather, says a friend, "Sam was the king of artistic seriouness," and the appetite for serious films -- dark and downbeat, reeking of alienation -- is not what it was. In 1993, would studios green-light Lumet's Equus, Allen's Interiors, Altman's Quintet or Nichols' Carnal Knowledge? Cohn was a power broker during the decade or two when every movie director was by definition an untouchable auteur. Nowadays even true auteurs such as Scorsese are kept on rather...
...late, occasionally great age of high-priced show-biz seriousness is over. Cohn will generate a zillion dollars in commissions this year, but he will earn it off pleasant trifles like Nora Ephron's Sleepless in Seattle and Manhattan Murder Mystery -- in which the main characters are habitues of Elaine's, Woody's Upper East Side hangout that was the hottest restaurant on earth during exactly the period when Sam Cohn was the hottest agent. The glorious moment for a certain cliquishly upper-middle-brow Manhattan high life -- back when Saturday Night Live and Vanity Fair were brand new, back...