Word: geffen
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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From the start, says West Coast bureau chief Jordan Bonfante, "the key was exclusive, firsthand access." Jeffrey Ressner, TIME's entertainment correspondent, was able to chat with Spielberg at his Pacific Palisades home. He interviewed Geffen in the record mogul's austere office. And he was with Katzenberg from the producer's trademark dawn breakfast meetings through his final business phone calls, way past the Letterman hour. Says Ressner: "While all three men were press-savvy, they opened up and seemed genuinely stoked about their new adventure together...
This old Britishism, a long-winded way to say "finally," is the mot du jour for Jeffrey Katzenberg and others in the burgeoning world of DreamWorks SKG, the company he created with director Steven Spielberg and pop-music potentate David Geffen. For their infant company, though, it is the beginning of the day--a gold sunrise of high finance and unprecedentedly high expectations...
...toys and computer software, has no film studio or recording studio, no products--indeed, no pedigree but its owners' resumes. No problem either, for Spielberg is the director of Jaws, E.T. and Jurassic Park; Katzenberg supervised the glorious revival of animated features while at the Walt Disney Co.; and Geffen has made stars of the Eagles, Guns N' Roses and Nirvana on records, Tom Cruise in movies and some singing cats on Broadway. So the brand name SKG had a certain allure for investors. Come on in, the Dream team said, and give us $2 billion. Right...
...investors lining up? Because of the team's past. Because of the future it might hold: that DreamWorks will be the prototype plugged-in multimedia company of the new millennium. And because the exuberance of Spielberg, Katzenberg and Geffen is infectious. It suggests that there is still some Hollywood romance in the youthful determination of three middle-aged men to act like Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland in the old MGM musicals, shouting, "Hey, guys, let's put the show on right here...
...Samsung side also apparently agreed the timing was not right, though Lee's niece Miky may still be an investor in DreamWorks. Geffen puts the discussion in bolder relief: "They wanted more than we were willing to give them. We didn't want one group to have too much control. We prefer having three 3,000-lb. gorillas in the room with us to one 9,000-lb. gorilla." And Spielberg did in fact learn something from the evening: "I realized that whoever became our equity partners, we needed to communicate in the same language...