Moguls, Monsters and Madmen, page 8
I saw Garth on Saturday, September 10, forty-eight hours before he had to present himself to the court. We were both attending the annual luncheon hosted by George Christy, legendary former columnist for the Hollywood Reporter. The event was part of the festivities associated with the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. The Christy lunch was always a hard ticket. Only eighty people were invited, mostly celebrities and Toronto notables. Garth sat with George at the VIP table as usual, along with media mogul Ivan Fecan, movie magnate Robert Lantos and Christopher Plummer. He didn’t appear to have a care in the world. The champagne and the accolades flowed. Life was good if you were Garth Drabinsky.
George Christy, our host, was noted for separating spouses at these luncheons, so Garth’s second wife, Elizabeth Winford, was at my table, along with actor Geoffrey Rush. Elizabeth was glamorous and seemed happy. You’d never know the Drabinsky household was facing a crisis. That was the thing about Garth. You never knew. The only tiny sign of his loss of status in this elite gathering was in the naming of George’s main course—the one he’d served for thirty years. Once known as Chicken Pot Pie à la Drabinsky, it was now described on the menu as simply Chicken Pot Pie.
At some point in the luncheon, Garth waved to me, and I waved back—in guilt and sympathy and some residual anger for taking advantage of my generosity one too many times. Afterwards, he screened Barrymore as part of TIFF, and then hosted a dinner at the downtown restaurant, Bymark, to which I wasn’t invited.
The next day, on September 13, Garth and Myron Gottlieb lost their appeal in the Ontario Superior Court, on the grounds that the evidence against them was “overwhelming.” They did, however, have their sentences reduced by two years, to five and four, respectively. They were denied bail, both then, and later on appeal. Garth was led away in handcuffs.
I had been a close associate of Garth for ten years, but he remained a paradox to me. He produced exceptional art. He created an entertainment factory that employed thousands of talented people and attracted billions of tourist dollars. He revolutionized the movie business with his Cineplex chain, and then dramatically revitalized live theatre, not only through the depth, scope and splendour of his productions, but also by refurbishing theatres in Toronto, Vancouver, Chicago and New York.
His toughest critics consider these accomplishments irrelevant because they were based on deception. They point to the evidence amassed against him in his prolonged march through the justice system, the carnage he left in his wake, and his refusal to take responsibility for any of it. To them, jail was what Garth Drabinsky deserved, and the longer his sentence the better.
Did greed motivate Garth to build his fabulous empire on quicksand? Not in my opinion, though he revelled in the luxuries his privileged life afforded.
Was he driven by a desire for glory? Absolutely.
What role did childhood polio play in his hunger for recognition? Certainly, his pronounced limp would have set him apart from his peers from a young age. Physical deformity drove the Phantom in Garth’s greatest theatrical success. He was self-conscious enough about it to instruct cameramen at award shows to wait until he arrived on stage before framing him. Garth’s talent far eclipsed his handicap. He would have been a high achiever under any circumstances. Without it, perhaps he would have been a more balanced one.
Another recurrent motif in Garth’s theatre work was imprisonment. The characters in some of his plays chose confinement: the Phantom chose his underworld and Norma Desmond disappeared into her decaying mansion. Some had no choice, as in Kiss of the Spider Woman, his prison drama The Island and Dreamcoat after Joseph had been sold into slavery.
These works now seemed prophetic, as did the title of his 1995 autobiography, Closer to the Sun. In the Greek myth that Garth invoked, Daedalus warned his son, Icarus, not to fly too close to the sun. When Icarus ignored the warning, his feather-and-wax wings melted and he plunged to his death.
In his memoir’s Prologue, Garth inverted this tragic example of hubris with the vainglorious words, “Never be afraid to fly closer to the sun. Not just escape. But escape into something greater.”
Garth remains to my mind an enigma, a flawed genius. He was a certified bastard and betrayer, but I missed him.
Chapter Eight
SURROUNDED BY MADMEN AND A FEW MONSTERS
My career within advertising brought me into contact—and sometimes into a fruitful continuing relationship—with a number of brilliant, creative and enterprising people, some of whom changed the world in meaningful ways. Some were on the rise of a meteoric career; others on a downward slide. My lust for their wisdom and success drove me to stay close and learn their secrets, emulate their style in some cases and hopefully avoid their mistakes.
AN ENDURING ALLIANCE
Though Garth had sucked up much of my energy at Echo, I also had other stimulating clients.
One was Alliance, a film distribution/production company owned by Robert Lantos and Victor Loewy. Victor was an ill-tempered Romanian who preferred to stay out of the limelight while Lantos was a charming, dashing Hungarian romantic, and a very successful producer. It was Lantos who saw the big picture: he eventually took Alliance into the home-video field, and then created specialty television channels including Showcase and History.
Loewy and Lantos began their partnership in 1972 in Montreal when they formed Viva Films. They then purchased the rights to the best of the NY Erotic Film Festival to show at McGill University. Lantos also produced successful Canadian films, such as In Praise of Older Women (1978) and Joshua Then and Now (1985). After the partners moved their company to Toronto, they approached Echo for film-marketing expertise. My media director, Marilyn Sherman, and I went to see what they had to promote. The answer was not very much, just a few horror films, such as Friday the 13th, and a film about a teenager who ran a pirate radio station, Pump Up the Volume, whose main virtue, when it was released in 1990, was that it launched the career of Christian Slater.
Alliance did have one prestigious property: Black Robe, scripted by Irish-Canadian Brian Moore from his novel. Set in 1634, and shot entirely in Quebec, it told the tragic story of a young Jesuit priest’s attempts to convert Native American tribes to Christianity. For this and the other Alliance properties, our main job at Echo was to cut radio and television commercials and a trailer for the film. My Alliance contact was Mary Pat Gleeson, a veteran marketer, who saw me as a protege. This was happening simultaneously with my early work with Garth and I still had much to learn.
I remember taking my Black Robe trailers to the Alliance offices. Lantos had visions of the film as a potential Oscar winner, so from his point of view, there was a lot riding on it. To keep expectations in perspective, we underlings jokingly called it Black Bathrobe.
Lantos was famous for making people wait and I sat in reception for two and a half hours. This was before the age of the BlackBerry so there was nothing to distract me. Occasionally, Lantos’s long-suffering assistant, Cherri Campbell, would appear to apologize, “I’m really very sorry. Robert will be with you in a minute.” Meaning another half hour.
Finally, I was ushered into Lantos’s office, which was in the grand Hollywood tradition—spacious, elegant and comfortable. I showed him several Black Robe trailers and then waited for his verdict. In his slightly accented, deep basso, he said, “I hate to be the voice of gloom and doom, but I hate these trailers.”
I was mortified. “Tell me what you hate about them.”
Fortunately, everything Lantos disliked could be easily fixed. Though he and I never became close friends, we developed a respectful working relationship, and he remained loyal to me as he built his film and television empire. Since I had caught Alliance’s coattails at the right time, this translated into a massive account for Echo.
At Alliance, we had the opportunity to work on hundreds of film releases as they grew steadily, picking up output deals with mega U.S. studios like Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax and New Line Cinema. One of my favourite films to work on was David Cronenberg’s creepy film Crash in 1996. Frank Mendicino, one of Gleeson’s young proteges, gave us free rein to design the key art (the poster), trailers and TV spots. The film, starring James Spader and Holly Hunter, was Cronenberg at his best and my young and talented account executive Steph Sebbag had a ball developing iconic creative for the film. Steph was a fellow Montrealer who was filled with the same kind of passion for show business that I had. Years later, he moved to Hollywood and opened up his own ad agency and I hired him to work on the campaign for The Last Mogul.
To Victor Loewy, I remained an ad-agency commodity. He was constantly applying pressure. “Maybe it’s time to get someone new to do something new.”
Mary Pat Gleeson always countered, “No. Barry and Echo are great.”
When she left Alliance, I figured my days were numbered but we stayed onside until 1998. That’s when Lantos sold his share of Alliance to Michael MacMillan, who turned it into Alliance Atlantis. Ultimately the great brand and company that Lantos had built was split and sold several times and finally folded into eOne Entertainment. After that, Lantos founded Serendipity Point Films, for which I created the branding and the logo. Although Lantos and Loewy had started out together, it was Robert’s vision that created an empire and I believe Loewy resented the breakup of their partnership.
With Robert gone, the upside for Loewy was in getting rid of me.
CREDIT WHERE IT’S DUE
One lesson I had learned early on was that there were endless ways to make a dollar. For me, this often meant bringing together my entertainment and corporate clients for their mutual benefit. Seeing that both American Express and Livent were among my Echo accounts, we worked out a Front of the Line program that gave Amex card members an opportunity to buy advance tickets for his productions. To add sizzle to our 1990 launch, I contracted Céline Dion to host our press conference. She was already a rising Canadian star at the time, but had not yet attained international celebrity. That would happen the following year with the release of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, for which Céline sang the title song.
For the backdrop to the Toronto press conference, we manufactured the world’s largest American Express Card. At the last minute, some of us grew apprehensive: Would Céline think this too crass for her burgeoning reputation?
As Céline walked on stage, she glanced at the card, smiled and ad libbed, “Now that’s the card I’d like to take shopping with me. It looks like it has no limit!”
Céline was 100 per cent sincere: she was then and remained the unspoiled little girl from Quebec—genuinely appreciative of her fans and of her success. My colleagues used to joke that any time we went hunting for music for a commercial, I would bring up her hit, “My Heart Will Go On.” Their reply was just as predictable, “Oh my God, not that song again!” I’m still a fan.
I had an opportunity to confirm my first impression of Céline nearly a decade later when as a founding board member of Canada’s Walk of Fame, we presented Céline, now indisputably an international celebrity, with an inaugural star.
CROONERS
While earning my Ph.D. in Show Business, I occasionally worked on events for Michael Cohl, Echo’s other big client. That’s how I came to be backstage at Maple Leaf Gardens for Frank Sinatra’s November 1991, sold-out final tour. Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme were his warm-up act, and it was terrible for them. Even while they were singing, the audience was yelling, “Frank! Frank!”
My contact with Sinatra was sad rather than cool. When we shook hands backstage after I was introduced by Michael’s cousin, Dusty Cohl, he stared at me with those famous ice-blue eyes, looking as if he would just as soon snap my neck. He smelled strongly of old guy cologne. He was obviously wearing a toupée but his self-assurance—or was it arrogance?—remained intact. When I asked him for something about himself that few people knew, he replied, “I do the crossword in pen.” Then he barked, “I’m thirsty.”
“What are you drinking?”
“Chivas Regal.” He pronounced the first word Shivas.
I got him the drink and that’s how he went on stage, in his tux, holding his glass high. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to my friends, Mr. Shivas and Mr. Regal.” Ha ha.
His singing voice was no longer great. The drinking and smoking had taken a toll. Because the stage was circular, some of the audience could see the teleprompters carrying his lyrics and script. I was witnessing the decline of a great star. It was depressing.
By contrast, Tony Bennett, whom I’ve booked many times, continues to astonish me as the classiest, most elegant octogenarian I’ve ever met. Tony’s instrument has remained perfect, because he protects his throat as the vital organ that it is. He has preserved his style too: the Brioni suit, coiffed hair, tortoiseshell glasses, gleaming cufflinks and the pocket puff. He’s the last of his generation. He doesn’t want to step out of the spotlight, and he doesn’t have to.
I booked Tony when he was eighty-seven for a private Italian function for one thousand people. When we walked him backstage through the kitchen, all the chefs and dishwashers stopped to watch as he passed by. The floor had been taped to indicate the route, but he didn’t want anyone to help him. He did all the meeting and greeting that could be expected of him. Once he was on stage, however, he skipped the chit-chat to give more of what everyone really wanted: his incomparable voice. In mid-performance, he paused and said, “Okay, let’s turn off all the microphones.” He sang, a capella, without amplification, and he was fantastic. Tony has survived. Frank lost it.
Tony Bennett with Barry Avrich, private gala, 2007
© George Pimentel
Still on the subject of stars who do (or do not) age well, I can’t forget Barry Manilow.
At the end of the ’90s, I was approached by a group of New York producers who wanted to make a musical based on “Copacabana,” Barry Manilow’s nauseating song. It would star Gavin MacLeod from The Love Boat, so you knew right away this would be a winner. I was asked to film the show, with the footage to be used to cut commercials for the tour and for a possible television special media use.
Mr. Manilow didn’t know it but we already had history. My parents used to take me to Saratoga Springs, which meant passing Latham, New York. One summer, we bought tickets for a concert there featuring a then-unknown singer, who performed “I Write the Songs” and “Mandy,” and all those sugary songs that give me a cavity. My mother, unlike me, thought Manilow was a sensational talent. When I told her, so many years later, that I was working with him, she couldn’t have been prouder.
I flew to New York to meet Manilow and the team involved in Copacabana. It was being coproduced by a theatre in Pittsburgh and the head of the Pittsburgh contingent was Van Kaplan, who turned out to be a very nervous impresario. Who could blame him? How do you build a whole musical on one wretched song?
Manilow’s face was so waxy and stretched, perhaps from plastic surgery, that he looked like the guy in that Edvard Munch painting, The Scream. What he was screaming was, Too Much Work. Though his clothes were custom-made, they were anything but current: shirt collars too big, pants all wrong, everything and anything to recall his glory days.
He took an immediate dislike to me without knowing that I had beaten him to that by several decades. As I described my approach to the filming, he said, “I don’t think you understand my music.”
I replied, “My responsibility is to film the show, not to love your music. We aren’t making a Fellini or a Godard here.”
To my surprise, Manilow’s team supported me and I was hired.
I flew to Pittsburgh to shoot Copacabana, where it was premiering. I would be directing from inside a truck, using multiple cameras. Manilow kept sticking in his nose, until the crew finally put up a sign, “THERE IS ROOM IN THIS TRUCK FOR ONE BARRY ONLY.” When I wasn’t there, he returned to complain, “Barry doesn’t like me.”
We filmed the show professionally and it went on tour in 2000 as intended. The show itself was awful.
AN ANTHEM FOR AIDS
In 1993 I had the most sublime working experience with Liza Minnelli.
Garth Drabinsky’s critically acclaimed Broadway production of Kiss of the Spider Woman was based on Argentine novelist Manuel Puig’s 1976 book that told the story of the intimate bond between two cellmates, a window dresser and a political activist. Long before the novel became a musical, Puig’s book was also turned into a beautiful film starring William Hurt, Raúl Julía and Sonia Braga, that Garth distributed in Canada in 1985.
Kander and Ebb, the famed composer-and-lyricist team responsible for musicals such as Chicago and Cabaret, wrote the score for Kiss, and included a powerful anthem called “The Day After That.” The song was one of those tingle-inducing Broadway showstoppers and Liza Minnelli was instantly transfixed by its message of hope. Minnelli, like many Broadway artists, had lost many friends to AIDS and she wanted the song to become a signature track for the cause.
When she approached Garth through Hal Prince, he came up with a grander plan. Not only would Garth record the track with Liza, he would also shoot a lavish music video featuring a choir holding dozens of candles. My job was to film Minnelli during the recording session to get footage for the video. Now, being the daughter of the great director Vincente Minnelli and the iconic Judy Garland, Liza was a perfectionist and wanted to meet me and discuss details like camera framing and the overall approach to the shoot.
