What Just Happened? by Art Linson Page B

major studios.
    One can only imagine Murdoch receiving the good news, baseball bat resting quietly in his hand, putting on his best Capone/De Niro/Mamet rhythms: ‘What!? What, am I alone in this world or are we a team … blah blah blah,’ before restraining himself from turning someone’s head into grapefruit.
    These kinds of mistakes, particularly when they are in the press, always give the executives at any studio a jolt of insecurity, reconfirming their deeply hidden fears that maybe they don’t have a fucking clue. Before they can regain their confidence (and it doesn’t take them long), the next bunch of salesmen through the door get the benefit of the doubt. When a studio is weak, opportunities are created. When agents and producers start marching up and down the hallways saying, ‘Don’t worry, I’m a doctor, stand aside, I know what I’m doing,’ for a brief period they will be endorsed.
    Good timing was veering in my direction. I had two scripts ready to be made:
Great Expectations
, a meat-cleaving experience that I will get into later, and
Bookworm
, the newly completed Mamet script. I was searching for a director and a cast for each movie, and more important, I was trying to convince the powers that be at Fox to spend money. A lot of money. ‘C’mon, gentlemen, “two guys and a bear,” lust, violence, courage under fire, can’t miss with this one, let’s make it!’
    The second boost for me was that
Heat
was about to be premiered at the Steven J. Ross theater on the Warners lot. The buzz for the movie was soaring. De Niro and Pacino facing each other off in a movie for the first time (you can’t count
Godfather II
because they were never together in the same scene) was having an enormous impact. After a year and a half and more than a few battles, Michael Mann had finally made the movie that he’d always wanted to make out of this material. Unwittingly, I couldn’t help but feel that my stock was rising. My step was lighter. I was acting like
them
. I would attend meetings at Fox and the look on my face said it all: ‘You’re all a bunch of dumb fucks, listen ta me and I’ll lead you outta this horrible mess you all got yourselves into.’
    A producer bursting with confidence can be a truly ugly sight.
    The only hitch (and at this point a minor hitch) was that Tom Jacobson, the guy who had heard the pitch from Mamet months before, had ‘stepped down’ from his position at Fox to return to a more ‘hands-on moviemaking role.’ At least that’s what the announcement in
Variety
declared. This is Hollywood-speak that means hegot ceremoniously dumped by his superiors and was forced to forge onward as a movie producer. No one wants that. I guess someone had to fall for past disappointments, and it sure wasn’t going to be Chernin or Mechanic, at least, not yet. Frankly, I was disappointed. After that wacky pitch meeting, Jacobson and I had found a reasonable way to work with each other. Since you never knew whom they were going to bring out of the dugout, the abrupt change in command meant I would have to start the inconvenient executive-bonding dance all over again. You remember what Stephen Stills said: ‘If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.’
    Tom Jacobson was replaced by a gangly lawyer, Tom Rothman, who had previously been running the Fox Searchlight division for about six months. Before becoming an executive he had had a short and rather empty stint as a movie producer. He couldn’t make a go of it. Our first encounter was chilly. He talked, I listened. He conducted the entire meeting with his back to me while he was organizing some papers behind his computer. I suppose he was either showing me that he could do more than one thing at a time or else he was saying, ‘Since I couldn’t make a go of it as a producer, fuck you for