Word: spielbergism
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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...
Consider that DreamWorks, which plans to make movies, TV shows, records, 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...
Hundreds of rich suitors have wooed SKG. As Spielberg says, "It's like stacking hour over Kennedy Airport." There was, for example, the Middle Eastern businessman who wanted to fly to meet the moguls with a zillion-dollar check in hand, only to be told by his father that he was forbidden to travel because it was the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. He may yet make the trip...
...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...
...truism that Hollywood is "a relationship business" is almost a joke. But to an artist-industrialist like Spielberg, the meeting of eyes, minds and enthusiasms is crucial. Iger had tried unsuccessfully to persuade Katzenberg last year to help him run the network, and he was one of the first to call when SKG was announced. Karma came into it too. It happened that at a White House dinner in October, when the three moguls sealed their agreement to become the Dream team, Iger was sitting on one side of Spielberg, Boris Yeltsin on the other (Yeltsin...