Laporte Nicole - The men who would be king: an almost epic tale of moguls, movies, and a company called Dreamworks

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HAROCURT
BOSTON NEW YORK
2010

Copyright 2010 by Nicole LaPorte

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,
write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company,
215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

www.hmhbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
LaPorte, Nicole.
The men who would be king : an almost epic tale of moguls,
movies, and a company called DreamWorks / Nicole LaPorte.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-547-13470-3
1. DreamWorks Pictures History. 2. Spielberg, Steven, 1946
3. Katzenberg, Jeffrey, 1950 4. Geffen, David. I. Title.
PN 1999. D 74 L 37 2010
384'.80979494dc22 2009042488

Book design by Melissa Lotfy

Printed in the United States of America

DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Richard

A Note to Readers xi

I. STARTING UP

1. The Emperor in August 3

2. The End of Magic 9

3. Mr. Spielberg Will See You Now 14

4. Geffen Slept Here 21

5. The Announcement 28

6. E.T., Phone Home 36

7. Animated Characters 44

8. Live Action 60

9. Show Me the Money 69

10. Culture Clash 85

11. The Unthinkable Occurs 101

12. George in Slovakia; Jeffrey in Extremis 108

13. The Not So Long Goodbye 123

II. ROLLING

14. Of Men and Mice 133

15. Slaves to the Rhythm 148

16. Saving Spielberg 159

17. Bug Wars 180

18. Harvey Baby 196

III. ROCKIN'

19. Unexpected Beauty 217

20. The Battle for Oscar 232

21. Nobody's Bitch 247

22. Sword Fights 262

23. Shreked 276

24. Rock and Roll 293

25. Golden Glow 303

IV. CLOSE-UP

26. The Motorcycle Diaries 321

27. Harvey II 335

28. What Sinbad Wrought 349

29. Naked in Public 362

30. In a Snicket 375

31. No White Suits! 382

32. The Geffen Express 401

Epilogue: Three-Way Split 432

Bibliography 447

Notes on Sources 449

Acknowledgments 475

Index 478

The dream is a lie, but the dreaming is true.

ROBERT PENN WARREN

How do you tell the DreamWorks story? Few corporate figures, politicians, or celebrities are more determined to control what's written about them than blockbuster movie director Steven Spielberg, inexhaustible studio executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, and billionaire music mogul David Geffen. These are the men who, in 1994, founded DreamWorks, the much-touted movie studio (the first created in sixty years), where they labored, in varying degrees of togetherness, until recently. Despite the fact that their products depend on publicity and exposure, and that their carefully tended reputations have been created, to a degree, in partnership with the press, all three rejected my entreaties to interview them for this book. These are not peacocks who drop their plumage for Oprah or Barbara, or nearly anyone, particularly when the story doesn't end with them smiling triumphantly as the credits roll.

As the DreamWorks partners know all too well, journalism in Hollywood is a tricky business. It is often a tool to be enlisted "on background," when there is an ax to grind or an agenda to advance. Media relations in Hollywood often involve unspoken trade-offs. If the powerful get buffed and polished, they give: beneficial "friendships," exclusive scoops, trips on the private jet or yacht. But just as easily as VIPs can bestow favors, so can they take them away. When Claudia Eller, a business reporter for the Los Angeles Times, wrote that DreamWorks was in less than stunning shape, Katzenberg and DreamWorks marketing head Terry Press met with the Times' editor in chief and managing editor, complaining that she treated their company more harshly than others. The point was clear: DreamWorks was not going to take things lying down. To make the point all the more clear, Katzenberg and Pressthe latter, at that point, had a close, personal friendship with Ellerstopped speaking to her for several years. DreamWorks' relationship with the press wasn't just convenient, it was necessary. The company, after all, was built on buckets of hype, beginning with its first press conference at the posh Peninsula hotel in Beverly Hills, upon which hordes of media descended to catch the first glimpse of the self-proclaimed Dream Team. As a private company (the animation division went public in 2004), DreamWorks never owed anyone numbers, in the form of balance sheets or quarterly earnings. Its inner workings were always a mystery. So it relied on the press to spin its usually self-glorifying view of its ventures.

Self-aggrandizement was, of course, what one expected from three of the greatest showmen in Hollywood, and if DreamWorks excelled at anything, it was putting on a performance. In its early days, the new venture became famous for its inches-thick press releases and extravagant press conferencessuch as the one held in an airplane hangar to announce plans for a state-of-the-art studio (a vision that never came to pass). Spielberg was always front and center as the poster child and a symbol of affability and goodwill. Katzenberg was on hand to explain the brass tacks. And Geffen was a soothingand intimidatingreminder that an especially demanding billionaire was overseeing the whole operation.

But as the DreamWorks story turned out to be much less than its founders envisioned, all that hype took its toll. By setting the expectations so high, on so many levelsthe plan was to be a sprawling, multimedia venture that made better product (movies, TV shows, music) than the rest of Hollywoodit was all but impossible to live up to its promise. Tom Hanks once joked that the inevitable reaction to DreamWorks' first film, given who was behind it, would be: "Is that it?" By the time DreamWorks' live-action studio was sold to Paramount in 2005, the same question could be asked of the entire studio.

There was, certainly, an inspiring nobility in DreamWorks' desire to rewrite the rules. The company's stated mission was to put art first; it was proclaimed the new United Artists, the prototypical inmates-running-the-asylum studio formed in 1919 by Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith. But too often the attempt to do more, do better, smacked of hubris and egos that had long ago lost touch with reality as mere mortals know it.

***

The power that Spielberg, Katzenberg, and Geffen wield in Hollywoodand their effective demonstrations of itbreeds extreme fear and trembling in a town that thrives on hyperbole and drama. "There's a very strong fear element," confided one insider who has a long history with DreamWorks. Both Geffen and Katzenberg are known to have long memories when it comes to keeping score, and when an enemy is declared, the war is no mere skirmish. Years before onetime superagent Michael Ovitz was toppled from his perch atop the Creative Artists Agency, Geffen told friends he was going to "destroy" Ovitz, with whom he had a tempestuous past. "Watch me," he said.

Ovitz undoubtedly had a hand in his own fall, but Geffen fueled the process, trashing Ovitz for years and creating the perception that he was very damaged goods; the result of these effective theatrics was estimable. As Ovitz himself loved to say of Hollywood: "Perception is everything." Similarly, when Geffen turned on Bill and Hillary Clinton, after years of serving as the former president's biggest Hollywood donor and champion, it was not pretty. Or private. "Everybody in politics lies, but they do it with such ease, it's troubling," Geffen told New York Times