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Deconstructing the Redstone/Cruise/Paramount food fight
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 Years in the film industry taught me that whenever someone in the media - whether trades like Variety or the Reporter, or newspapers like the New your or LA versions of the Times - dove into an issue, they had about a one in four chance of getting it right.
The LA Times did it twice in two days ...
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Yesterday, Meg James and Sallie Hofmeister correctly pegged the incident to money - more specifically, the astronomical costs of having an a-list actor/producer on your lot in an era when sure-fire blockbusters don't fire as surely as they used to. Keep in mind, the negotiations between Paramount & Cruise/Wagner were going on several months ago, well after the couch-jumping and ritalin-denouncing incidents that are part of the behavior Mr. Redstone claimed to be so eager to denounce. So clearly there was an economic deal to be reached at which Mr. Cruise's behavior would have been tolerable.
Today, Patrick Goldstein focused on Redstone and saw none other than New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner - the man who Billy Martin famously referred to as the "convicted" liar - someone whose ego inserted itself into a situation and undercut those who worked for him - bad enough once, but Goldstein spots the pattern of a studio that is stuck in neutral, afraid to make a mistake. He specifically compared Paramount, where I worked long ago, to Fox, where I worked not so long ago - praising Fox's entrepreneurial spirit and criticizing Paramount's lack of same. He takes an anecdote from yesterday's James/Hofmeister piece - where Dominick Dunne calls Redstone and compares him to Samuel Goldwyn - to paint Redstone as out of touch and, ultimately, unable foster long-term success at his studio because of his temperament.
Redstone is a headstrong 83 year old man who cheated death 27 years ago by hanging on to a third-floor hotel window with one severely burned hand. It's clear he doesn't care what very many people think, especially if he was gleeful at a $0.19 bump in Viacom's stock price after this whole imbroglio. But if he thinks starting a public feud with Tom Cruise is really helping his company, then he's sorely mistaken.
There are five issues that surround this imbroglio. Redstone is on the right side of number five, as far as I can tell, and that's it.
The first is grace. Maybe people at Paramount were upset at Tom Cruise's behavior (I'm sure many were). But there's a way to say to talent - studios do it all the time, although not enough, probably - that as much as you like and respect them, you can't pay them their quote in this case. [Ironically, Brad Grey at Paramount did just that on MI3, and kept that film from losing money for the studio when, under Cruise's normal deal, they would have.] It has the virtue of being true, and it doesn't directly attack an actor's personal value, which is, in Hollywood, measured almost solely by what they earn. Also, over the years, Cruise's movies have made Paramount some serious money. A little gratitude for that wouldn't have hurt.
The second is relationships. Yeah, it's a nice fantasy to tell someone off, but it doesn't make any sense strategically. Because if you keep it on a business level - remember The Godfather, everyone, it's strictly business - then when the business changes, you can adjust. Remember: once a name, always a threat. I wouldn't say Tom Cruise's career is over by a long shot, but it is at Paramount as long as Redstone is in charge. Redstone just kissed any part of Cruise's future success good-bye.
The third is hypocrisy. Virtually every studio in town has kept a talent relationship going even in the face of evidence that the behavior of the talent was, um, less than stellar. Don Simpson did horrendous things - largely to himself, but to others as well - and yet it was his own death that separated him from the Walt Disney company. Why? Dangerous Minds, Crimson Tide - Disney was making money with him. Had MI3 done $400 million in Domestic Box Office, Sumner Redstone would be booking travel to Chicago to jump on Oprah's couch himself. Executive outrage at bad talent behavior is inversely proportional to said talent's box office appeal. So let's not kid ourselves that this was a brave man standing up for what he thought was right.
The fourth is failure. Everyone fails in Hollywood. It's how often they do, and what they do afterwards, that counts. Smart executives understand that they need to allow those underneath them to swing and miss. It's being ok with taking a big swing and missing that allows you to do it again and hit it one of the park. Places where you are afraid to fail - and Goldstein convincingly paints Paramount as one of those - are not places where you're likely to succeed. Risk and reward go up in tandem, and the risk-averse are, in the long run, losers. You risk and lose with Redstone, you lose. So a brave executive gets fired, or goes elsewhere. And someone else benefits from his or her wisdom.
The last is money. It really should be the first, because it drives everything. What happened to Tom Cruise had everything to do with money. His deal - both as a producer and as an actor - didn't make economic sense, so Paramount was right to bid him farewell. It wasn't ok for the man at the top to claim some sort of moral high ground . It's like the gold-digger who realizes all her husband's faults after he is disinherited. She may say she's leaving him because he was mean, or let himself go, or was sleeping with the chamber-maid, but really, it all comes back to the cash.
The Times had it right, twice. Good for them. Redstone, sadly, got it wrong, but is too busy wallowing in sycophantic congratulation calls to realize it.
Too bad for him, and the studio he owns.
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| Posted by: JAmussen on Friday, August 25, 2006 - 08:57 PM
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