Word: mel
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...might buy slapstick from this man, but would you buy stock? Funnyman Mel Brooks, 63, said last week that his production company, Brooksfilms, plans a public offering to raise cash for movie and TV projects. The company earned a mere $323,000 in fiscal 1989 and may lose money in 1990. Comedy is hot today, but Brooks may be running out of gas. He has had no major hit since Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein in 1974, which reaped a total of more than $86 million in North America alone...
...make any film he wants ((with a top studio))," says the president of a major film studio. To date, most of the independent film companies that went public in the mid-'80s have been stock-market duds. Will Brooks beat the odds? Some Wall Streeters are cautiously optimistic: "Mel has the ability and contacts to make a success of this," says analyst Harold Vogel of Merrill Lynch. Even so, the title of Brooks' next film, Life Stinks, is not exactly bullish...
Paramount declined to say how much it had paid for the acquisition, but Carlton's 1988 annual report put revenues for the production company at $95 million. "The Zenith acquisition represents our most significant entry into the international market," said Mel Harris, president of Paramount's Television Group. "By aligning ourselves with the United Kingdom's major independent producer, we are positioning ourselves for the 1990s and 1992, when Europe's trade barriers fall...
...Hall likes to point out, but Carson's audience's children. "The Tonight show is an institution," says Steve Allen, who started it all back in 1954. "But with each tick of the clock, its advantage disappears. The Tonight show audience is dying every day." No need to convince Mel Harris, president of Paramount Television, the company that syndicates The Arsenio Hall Show. "In the 1960s, Johnny Carson started with a young audience that stuck with him for 20 years," he says. "Arsenio's is the new generation...
Some people collect Victorian hatpins. Others accumulate matchbooks. Mel Poretz, 60, is a compulsive collector of useless information. He knows exactly how many steps there are in his Merrick, N.Y., split-level home (21). As a child he knew how many stars surrounded the mountain peak in the Paramount Pictures logo (26 originally, now just 22). And like many people who are happy in their jobs, he has found a way to put his obsession to work...