Word: mca
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When Spielberg formed DreamWorks with Geffen and former Disney movie czar Jeffrey Katzenberg, he realized both his value to MCA (he had kept Universal profitable with such hits as E.T., Back to the Future and Jurassic Park) and his personal debt to Sheinberg, whom he calls a mentor. So DreamWorks said some of its products could be distributed by MCA-in a deal that could be worth $1 billion over the next decade-if Matsushita would keep Sheinberg and chairman Lew Wasserman aboard. The Japanese never responded to the offer...
...rash of rumors now suggests that Bronfman, if he buys MCA, would ask one of his friends, Ovitz or at-large media mogul Barry Diller, to run it. But either of them would surely insist on substantial equity, and last week both were denying any interest in the job. It is more logical that Bronfman would urge Sheinberg to stay on-not least because that would assure MCA of a Spielberg-DreamWorks connection-but that Edgar Jr. would run the show...
...Friday. "And one reason, I guess, is that I don't know." But clearly he wants to put Matsushita behind him. "It means I'll be able to freely go about buying whatever brand of television I want to. There's something to be said for free choice." (Some MCA-ers may not agree: last week there was a run on the company store, as employees scurried to buy Matsushita hardware at discount before it was shipped back to Osaka...
Freedom is exhilarating, and the movie business is intoxicating. Another whiskey merchant, Joseph P. Kennedy, thought so in 1928 when he briefly took over Patha pictures. Back then, Jules Stein, MCA's founder, was booking singers into speakeasies; and Sam Bronfman, the new owner of Seagram, was bootlegging spirits across the Canadian border into Prohibition-era America. Wall Street is hoping that for Seagram's sake, Sam's grandson Edgar Jr. does not forget the first rule of a speakeasy: the bartender is supposed to stay sober...
...stars, of course, have always drawn from the blues. Last year MCA released a terrific CD of blues songs titled Blues recorded between 1966 and 1970 by guitar genius Jimi Hendrix. Today's young, fringier musicians are remaking the blues yet again. Its attraction is not hard to understand: rock is good for rage, lust and protest, but for angst, yearning and existential misery, nothing beats the blues. One of the last songs Kurt Cobain recorded before he committed suicide was Lead Belly's Where Did You Sleep Last Night...