Word: donner
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This summer, as director and mogul, he has more than enough work to keep him happy. Two new comic adventures bear the "Steven Spielberg Presents" imprimatur. The Goonies, directed by Richard Donner from a Spielberg story, earned a healthy $41.4 million in its first 24 days' release; Back to the Future, a spiffy time-machine comedy from Director-Writer Bob Zemeckis, opened last week to positive reviews and audience acclaim. But that is just for openers. Next week E.T. will beam back down to 1,500 theaters for a saturation rerelease. At Amblin Entertainment, Spielberg's studio-within-a- studio...
...enough to be the classmate-coach at a college touch-football scrimmage. He has time for everyone, with a few jokes in between: "TV stands for Tender Vittles. That's what we're givin' 'em, folks, Tender Vittles." Spielberg's noncombative vitality infects everyone he works with. Says Richard Donner: "Steven is over your shoulder the whole time. He always bows to you because you're the director, but he's got so many good ideas that you want to grab every one of them. It's as if he's 17 going on 18. Next year he's going...
...rattrap sprung on a boy's foot. Dense, oppressively frenetic, heavy on the slapstick and low on the charm meter, the film asks to be experienced, not cherished. This efficient thrill machine contains gag homages to its makers' earlier work (E.T., Screenwriter Chris Columbus' Gremlins, Director Richard Donner's Superman) and even self-critical lines of dialogue ("I feel like I'm baby- sitting except I'm not getting paid...
...ironic superheroes have a mediating companion, the impish cutpurse Phillipe (Matthew Broderick again). Not a bad premise for a wistful romance, especially when it stars three such appealing actors. Alas, the script (by Edward Khmara, Michael Thomas and Tom Mankiewicz) jumbles modern slang with chivalric sentiment; and Director Richard Donner (The Omen, Superman) is no spellbinder of medieval melancholy. "I believe in miracles," says the evil bishop (John Wood) who laid on the curse. "It's part of my job." Making miracles is Donner's job--and, Dick, you're fired...
Executives can argue that they have some catching up to do. After an adjustment for inflation, for example, the current GM chairman's $1 million salary is actually worth far less than the $925,000 earned by GM Chairman Frederic Donner in 1965. Says Sibson Senior Consultant Alan Johnson: "The average person's pay has at least doubled in the last 20 years, which is a lot bigger than the pay raise of the chairman of GM." Indeed, at a conference on executive pay last week at the University of Rochester in New York, researchers vigorously defended hefty...