Word: geffen
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...lately been involved in its own corporate melodrama. In 1990 Matsushita bought the company in a $6.6 billion deal arranged by the movie Mephisto, Michael Ovitz, chief of Creative Artists Agency. Profits were plentiful, thanks to a flourishing music division, helped by acquiring David Geffen's record holdings, and a folio of hit films, most of them produced by Steven Spielberg. And at first, Japanese-American relations were smooth. Then some of the Matsushita executives who were on good terms with MCA president Sidney J. Sheinberg were fired. Says MCA movie chief Tom Pollock: "I believe if the Matsushita administration...
Could one of the three get sandbox envy? That seems unlikely, since they revel in one another's company--kids finally in control of a $2 billion game. For decades they have played, potently, under other men's aegises. Spielberg had Sheinberg and Ross, Geffen had Ross, Katzenberg worked under Eisner for 19 years, until their rancorous divorce last summer after Eisner refused to name Katzenberg his second in command. Now the lads must come of age--be ready to play daddy, not dutiful son, and do their own mentoring. The bet here is yes. Katzenberg was a paternal nudge...
...Hollywood, of course, "everybody is rooting for their failure,'' says Hanks impishly. Geffen, one of the few gay executives who doesn't hide his sexuality, lets the torrent of grudge and innuendo wash over him. "I hear these things," he says. "I also hear that I'm supposed to be married to Keanu Reeves, a person I've never met or laid eyes on. There was a story I bought him $15,000 worth of clothes at Barneys. I've never been in Barneys. So I hear all kinds of idiotic things. But people believe them, and there's nothing...
...dream is more alluring: surely somewhere there has to be someone who knows something. If not, why aren't we in cellular phones like all the other sensible people? This year the popular betting is that there are three such someones, that their names are Spielberg, Katzenberg and Geffen, and that what passes for a millennium--or, anyway, a damned good special-effects version of it--may be at hand...
...didn't. Bet you something else too: that the Messrs. Spielberg, Katzenberg and Geffen are just as surprised as you are. When it comes to the movies, we are all hostages to the conventional wisdom of the moment--the smart and the smarter, the dumb and the dumber...