Corny? Maybe, especially when juxtaposed with the blinding wattage of three years ago, when Jeffrey Katzenberg stood flanked by Steven Spielberg and David Geffen to announce their new venture, calling themselves the ““dream team.’’ They swiftly raised nearly $3 billion amid a barrage of adoring attention.
With expectations for the company sky-high, the logo does seem a little precious. They are, after all, starting a huge corporate enterprise to pump movies, music, television shows and other entertainment products all over the globe. But the logo is important: conceived by Spielberg, it shows his romantic vision of the company as intimate and creative–a fishing hole for filmmakers.
And Spielberg’s vision, paradoxical or not, must be served, because as the most successful filmmaker in history he is the dominant partner in DreamWorks. He doesn’t run the company–Katzenberg does, with Geffen occupying his preferred place behind the scenes. And Spielberg has been away a lot, off directing three movies back to back. But now he’s home for a while, certain to get more involved. So the coming months will be crunch time. Spielberg’s power at DreamWorks has led to an ungainly corporate structure: for example, Katzenberg, oddly, is kept at arm’s length from most of the studio’s moviemaking activities, outside of animation. Management styles are clashing throughout the company. But everybody just has to adapt, because Spielberg is so quietly powerful. As ““The Peacemaker’’ opens, loyalists in the studio are defensive about how they’re being perceived. Everyone in Hollywood wants to issue the company a report card. ““Too much dream, not enough works,’’ goes one frequent criticism. The impatience is understandable. Three years is a long time to come up with the first movie. Worse, DreamWorks’ first entertainment efforts, in television, floundered. The dream team had little expertise in TV, and it showed. With several shows down, the last one standing, ““Spin City,’’ has an uncertain future. And now that ““The Peacemaker,’’ a nuclear thriller, is finally here, it’s getting mixed reviews, setting off a new round of the Hollywood chorus chanting, ““Where’s the beef?''
But condemning the studio on its first few projects is probably unfair. ““Judge us in five years!’’ Geffen pleads, and in a sense he’s right. Studios aren’t about individual productions, they’re about filling a pipe- line. ““It is impossible to review anything at DreamWorks but the people them- selves, and they’re first-rate,’’ says investment banker Herbert Allen Jr. The movie slate for the next year looks promising (Spielberg wrapped ““Saving Private Ryan,’’ a World War II film with Tom Hanks, last week in England). The music division is headed by the most-admired pair of record executives in the business, Mo Ostin and Lenny Waronker. Ostin stresses that most record companies take years to hit a hot streak, and they don’t expect instant results.
For now, what really bears watching is DreamWorks’ internal growing pains, as it tries to build a corporate structure. These challenges center on the relationship between Katzenberg and Spielberg, which is delicate, affectionate, tempestuous. They’ve had fights to the point of throwing things, say associates, but so far, they’ve always made up. If these two powerful egos can work things out, DreamWorks has a shot at making it. But it will happen only if they can synchronize their distinctly different dreams: Spielberg wants DreamWorks to be successful; Katzenberg needs it to be.
Spielberg was reluctant at first even to join DreamWorks. Katzenberg wouldn’t give up. But the famously relentless Katzenberg has had to change his style. He came from the hard-charging world of Disney, and Paramount before that, where a central tenet was ““It’s not enough that you succeed–the other guy has to die.’’ Geffen and Spielberg have coached Katzenberg to be kinder and gentler, and there are signs of mellowing: when an executive crossed him the other day, associates braced themselves for a scorched-earth reaction–but Katzenberg simply said with a shrug, ““It doesn’t matter.’’ Says Geffen, ““Jeffrey’s become much more user-friendly.''
Katzenberg is still driven, of course–especially to compete against his former boss, Disney chairman Michael Eisner. The two are engaged in bitter litigation over what Katzenberg claims is $250 million that is owed to him by Disney. Geffen and Spielberg are billionaires; Katzenberg had to mortgage his house and needs the money to add to his sweat equity. Eisner seems ready to go to court in November.
But the real battle lies elsewhere. ““There was extraordinarily well-orchestrated propaganda that only Disney knew how to make animated films,’’ says Katzenberg. He’s intent on proving otherwise, and is spending most of his time working on ““Prince of Egypt,’’ the animated story of Moses that’s coming out late next year. ““Prince of Egypt’’ harks back to the sweeping, epic style of ““The Lion King,’’ the hugely successful movie that Katzenberg oversaw when he was at Disney. But if it can approach ““The Lion King’s’’ success, it will lead DreamWorks into the Promised Land. ““I’ll bet the reputation of the company on it,’’ declares Geffen. Katzenberg says, ““I’ve found my love, and it’s animation . . . and litigation.’’ He laughs.
So while Katzenberg has his own motivations, Spielberg, even in absentia, has been intent on protecting his fishing hole. The resulting irony is that Katzenberg has been essentially frozen out of the live-action movie division, a strange situation for one of Hollywood’s most experienced movie executives, albeit with a spotty track record. To Katzenberg’s surprise, Spielberg kept DreamWorks movies under the control of Amblin’ Entertainment cochiefs, writer-producer Walter Parkes and his wife, Laurie McDonald, a former middle-level studio executive. They say they consult with Katzenberg frequently, and Katzenberg agrees. But associates say he’s had to bite his tongue till it’s bleeding. Parkes and McDonald started slowly, finishing up Amblin’ projects like ““Men in Black,’’ released by Columbia. In keeping with the kitchen-table style of Amblin’, Parkes at one point took over the scriptwriting chores on ““Peacemaker’’ himself (only later to be rewritten).
Parkes and McDonald are widely reviled for arrogance in Hollywood gossip circles. They attribute the bad-mouthing to their hands-on style.
And their detractors may be jealous of their close personal friendship with Spielberg and his wife, Kate Capshaw.
Their close access to the director has made it tough for DreamWorks to hire top executives, who fear they’ll never get past the gatekeepers.
As the pace of releasing new movies steps up at DreamWorks, the cozier style will be put to the test. In December, the studio is releasing the comedy ““MouseHunt,’’ with high commercial expectations, and ““Amistad,’’ Spielberg’s historical drama about a slave-ship rebellion, with Oscar aspirations.
But Spielberg’s greatest aspiration is to build the new state-of-the-art studio campus he has designed across town, at Playa Vista by the Pacific. Despite Katzenberg’s efforts, the project still is mired in financial and environmental difficulties. With no alternative site, Katzenberg must make it happen or Spielberg’s commitment to DreamWorks is at risk, say people familiar with his thinking. (Spielberg declined to be interviewed.)
In the meantime, DreamWorks has to bivouac, exacerbating the strains of clashing corporate cultures. Spielberg’s laid-back, Santa Fe-style boutique, Amblin’, is still headquarters, and the outsiders overrunning it have had to adapt to its ““Kumbaya’’ atmosphere. The constantly growing company spills into other far-flung locations.
Some nostalgic Amblin’ veterans bemoan the fact that they hardly see Spielberg anymore. Many have ““Steven lists’’ of things to ask the Great One in case he comes through the office. Spielberg pursues what interests him. He drops in on the videogame and interactive operations, then moves on. Katzenberg has begged him to get more involved with feature animation, but he won’t, just as he refuses most entreaties to go out and promote the company–he was reluctant to attend this week’s ““Peacemaker’’ premiEre. He hates anything that smacks of the hard sell.
So Katzenberg and Spielberg continue to establish boundaries, figuring out how to coexist. For Katzenberg, it’s a balancing act. Before racing off to a tree-planting ceremony at the new animation headquarters in Glendale, Calif., the other day, he said of DreamWorks, ““We have to be big enough to be sovereign, and small enough to be personal.’’ He might just as well have been talking about himself.
