Word: mid-1980s
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That was a vintage De Laurentiis performance from the mid-1980s, when bankers and investors were enthralled with the gruff-talking miniature (5-ft. 4-in.) movie mogul. De Laurentiis proceeded to lose nearly $200 million of their money in a grandiose and allegedly fraudulent attempt to build an entertainment empire. By 1988, after producing two dozen money-losing pictures in two years, De Laurentiis Entertainment Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy...
...Laurentiis now faces enough doubters to populate a biblical epic. Most of the independent film companies that a bullish Wall Street took public in the mid-1980s -- Cannon, Vestron, New World, Kings Road -- have either passed into bankruptcy or deep financial trouble. But none have burned through as much money in so short a time -- without even a near hit -- as De Laurentiis. Worse still, few if any ventures contained such a web of insider-enriching transactions. Stockholders of DEG, who saw their shares plummet from a peak of $19 to less than 40 cents, have responded with fiery class...
Popularized in France in the mid-1980s, the indoor version of the sport is catching on in the U.S., both on campus and off. Climbing walls at health clubs in Atlanta and Fort Collins, Colo., are doing landslide business. Seattle's Vertical Club, the U.S.'s first rock gym, built in 1987, now has some 400 members who pay $225 a year to scale its heights. The reason for success, according to Chris Grover, president of Entre Prises, the U.S. affiliate of a French wall manufacturer, is the result of removing real climbing's dangers. "Indoor cliffs appeal...
Many of the Government's properties are white elephants of the most unwanted breed. One such mammoth is the 24,000-acre Banning-Lewis Ranch, situated just outside vastly overbuilt Colorado Springs. A developer paid $200 million for the parcel in the mid-1980s as the future site of several planned communities, but now the land is virtually useless because the city has de-annexed it. As a result, anyone who wishes to develop the former ranch can no longer count on municipally priced water...
...abandoned the Marxist-Leninist credo that his Frelimo Party has embraced since it came to power in 1975. Transformed from "a vanguard of the worker and peasant alliance" to "a party of all the Mozambican people," the ruling group has stepped up market reforms that it initiated in the mid-1980s. Last January Chissano introduced a draft constitution that embraces universal suffrage, a secret ballot, direct election of both the President and the parliament and the reintroduction of private ownership of land. The new plan is expected to be adopted by the People's Assembly before the middle of this...