Everyone wants to put a good face on the future.
In a time when finances are tighter than a freshly jobbed face, this means that the media will be faced with He Said/She Saids between people we have all worked with and developed relationships with over years every single week, perhaps more than once in a week.
For me, there was a moment during the Brad Grey into Paramount and then the DreamWorks folding into Paramount events that pushed me to rethink how I do business. I do not want to be the Definitive Chronicler of Demise. I learned, as I stood at the crossroads of “professionally influential enough to hurt people” and “human enough to understand that everyone has to deal with the morning after,” that while some people love using the media to spin stories in their favor even before deals are complete, most non-agent/managers seem to go through all the difficulties of transition that are experienced in the real world, including taking advantage (at least in their heads) of not being called out as “being fired/laid-off” for a moment to look for the next gig.
And so, this brings us to last week’s tale of Tom Ortenberg, who was forced into sudden public response last Monday regarding his exit of Lionsgate for The Weinstein Company because Nikki Finke is desperate for attention and, it seems, Joe Drake was ready to spin the story to put himself in the best light. (“I'm told that Lionsgate's Joe Drake gave Ortenberg a 6-month test period to see if he wanted him as part of the team. Since that time Ortenberg has been shopping himself. In early December, Ortenberg was told his contract would not be extended. Drake has no plans to replace him. Now Ortenberg has landed at The Weinstein Co as president of theatrical films. I hear his salary at TWC is less than what he was making at Lionsgate.”)
Nikki has a bad habit, in her enthusiasm for bile, to expose her sources by mistake. Who else but Joe Drake (or his shady intermediary) would lead to a conversational quote like, “Drake has no plans to replace him”?
On Tuesday, Patrick Goldstein responded with a love letter to Ortenberg, slapping down Jon Feltheimer for “second-guess(ing) Ortenberg's decisions and made no secret of his disdain for his theatrical film chief.” He even dug out a 7 year old Monster’s Ball story, which though it is older than the half-way mark in Ortenberg’s history with LGF, is still a relevant tale for Oscar wannabe-winning actresses everywhere.
In the midst of her own trouble at Variety, it took Anne Thompson until Friday to, essentially, respond to Patrick and Nikki with a piece that returned to many of Nikki’s original themes… Joe Drake was responsible for Juno at Mandate… Tom was expendable… “Drake inherited a raft of disappointments at the boxoffice.” Anne goes on to do her reporterly duty and gives a reasonably full picture of what Ortenberg is walking into at The Weinstein Company. But the future is the future… and the present? Kind of a slam job.
Me? I stayed out of it.
I have all the concerns that everyone else does about the finances at The Weinstein Company. So, I wondered to myself why Ortenberg was heading there. After all, I know he has been looking to find a new berth outside of Lionsgate for years now, going back to the heated negotiations with Paramount to run what became Paramount Vantage… even earlier.
I am fascinated by the idea of all these stories that tout, for instance, Tim Palen and Sarah Greenberg, without ever mentioning that it was Tom Ortenberg that hired them and helped them grow into the roles they so successfully inhabit. Are we supposed to blame The Spirit's gross – even though Ortenberg had made his exit deal before the film even opened – on Ortenberg, his personal cross to bear, while we talk about how Lionsgate will go on with Palen and Greenberg who couldn’t sell the thing? I don’t get that.
Of course, there is the story, at another studio, of one of the year’s perceived big flops being part of the portfolio of an otherwise golden boy… and no one drills that home. And I am glad. Because that is what this business is… ups and downs… hits and flops… genius and idiocy. When someone has a great run, it gets overpraised because it is so very rare. Likewise, when a studio or exec has a bad year, they get slammed too hard, because if that valley is positioned between two mountains of success, that person/studio is just doing the job.
Anyway…
For balance, let’s take a quick peek at the short life of Mandate Pictures, which was acquired by Lionsgate in 2007 (though many stories seem to make it seem like Joe Drake was hired away from Mandate to replace Ortenberg).
Read the complete post at http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/archives/2009/02/hail_to_or_to_h.html