Indecent Exposure (74 page)

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Authors: David McClintick

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BOOK: Indecent Exposure
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    • Hirschfield's first impulse was to issue a press release from Chicago refuting both articles. As Clive Davis spoke from the podium about Arista's latest recording plans, punctuating his talk with loud excerpts from the latest Barry Manilow album, Hirschfield and his publ
      ic-relations aide. Jean Vagnini
      tried to draft a statement. It soon became obvious, however, that it would be futile to carry on a public argument with the Columbia board of directors by issuing a press release from Chicago.
      Hirschfield
      decided he had to return to New York and confront Herbert Allen. As soon as Clive Davis had finished speaking and lunch was served. Hirschfield announced that he was adjourning the conference "to go back and deal with this intolerable situation."
    • "Go get the bastards!" somebody said, and that remark set off a round of emotional exhortations and expressions of support from the assembled executives. There were misty eyes in the room as Hirschfield, Fischer, and Adler left to catch their flight.
    • Airborne from O'Hare
      . Hirschfield began scribbling notes on a yellow legal pad for his meeting with Herbert Allen.
    • "Cut out bullshit. I've had it. Both know what's going on. Thursday board meeting an outrage . . . devious . . . unnecessary . . . lied . . . bad faith . . . sandbagged . . . company not out of control. Simply an attack on me.
    • "Been attacked for last time without fighting back.
      "What I want—call off dogs.
    • "No sense being called chief executive officer. That's not what I've been. If want war. up to you. I'll defend myself. I'm going to do what I have to do to be chief executive officer of this company no matter what.
    • "Getting board off back of AH & management.
    • "HA fucking AH . . . killing AH publicly . . . denying my role in success of company . . . saying Begelman responsible for profits.
    • "Not going to get sandbagged in board meeting.
      "No Bob Stone . . . outside firm ok.
    • "No one hired except by me.
    • "Not going to live with hostile board. Add independent people to board.
    • "Not going to have board take shots at me. "Got to call off dogs.
    • "Tired of seeing management and me beat up. "Shareholders getting killed. I'm getting killed. Management is getting killed.
      I've had it."
    • Alan and Herbert met in Herbert's office the next morning. The fury reflected in Alan's notes had subsided to controlled anger and the meeting was surprisingly calm. Alan's remarks, however, elicited little more than Herbert's usual stare of preoccupation and the body language of boredom.
    • "Herbert, this is it. It's the last chance. If you want to try and square things, if you want to have a meeting of the minds, if you want to try and put this thing back together, I'm prepared to do it. But I can't do it with you leading the charge against me. Whether you admit it or not, if you want it to work, it'll work. If you don't want it to work, it won't work. I'm saying here and now I'm prepared to try and make whatever accommodation we can come to.
    • If you're not, then say so. Stop hiding behind everyone else's skirts and just say so. Stop deferring to Matty and Irwin. You're the key to this."
    • "I don't think we have anything more to discuss at this point," Herbert replied. "I've already given you my opinion on everything you've brought up here."
    • Hirschfield got up and walked out of the office.
    • The letter to the board of directors which Hirschfield and his lawyer had dr
      afted and presented to Leo Jaffe
      two weeks earl
      ier, but which Jaffe
      had not disseminated, had been revised to include the events of recent days. Hirschfield still had sho
      wn the letter to no one but Adle
      r, who had cautioned him not to send it in its original form. On Wednesday afternoon, Hirschfield edited the letter again and had it retyped.
    • David Begelman, dressed in a gray suit and dark polka-dot tie, stood before Judge Thomas C. Murphy in the Burbank Municipal Court House.
    • The probation officer's report had been completed and the time had come for sentencing. The probation officer did not recommend jail. He had received twenty highly complimentary letters about Begelman from a variety of people including Sidney Poitier
      , Matty Rosenhaus, Dino De Laure
      ntiis, Herbert Allen, Mel Brooks, Sy Weintraub, Aaron Spelling, Gunther Schiff (Cliff Robertson's lawyer and Begelman's friend), John Tunney, Ray Stark, Frank Wells of Warner Bros., Sam Cohn of ICM, Art Murphy of
      Daily Variety,
      and Aaron Stern, a psychiatrist-turned-movie-producer who was one of
      Begelman
      's closest friends.
    • Aaron Stern in his letter portrayed Begelman as a man whose psychological problems stemmed in part from his own decency.
    • David
      Begelman
      is, in my judgment, a man who suffers from very decent feelings in essentially a very indecent business. The narcissistic supplies provided within the film industry revolve around power, excessive material rewards, and the glamour of being a media celebrity. These contribute to eroding the capacity for caring among those who work in the business. The stakes are so high that feelings for other human beings serve to undermine one's capacity to ruthlessly compete. In this regard, the motion-picture industry has been aptly compared to "thousands of people fighting each other in the open sea to get to a lifeboat that seats only ten to fifteen." Each film studio represents a lifeboat that might produce ten to fifteen pictures a year. Thousands of energetic, creative people compete with one another to be chosen as one of the few whose efforts will be rewarded by a studio's commitment to produce his or her project. Heavy lies the head that wears the crown! As president of Columbia Pictures, David had to make such choices. He had to disappoint close friends and reject countless numbers of business acquaintances in making his decisions. If he permits himself to feel for those that he must turn away, then David Begelman would be plagued by a constant stream of guilt. But feel he does, and consequently plagued by guilt he is!
    • Begelman's lawyers argued for leniency. Deputy DA Sheldon Brown argued for punishment, noting that Begelman had moved to repay the money he stole only after Cliff Robertson's inquiry attracted police attention and caused Columbia to investigate. "He did not make restitution
      ...
      or seek psychiatric care . . . until after he could see the consequences coming," Brown declared.
    • Judge Murphy called the case "bizarre." "It almost looks like a death-wish," the judge said to Begelman. "You are neither violence-prone nor case-hardened." Judge Murphy sentenced Begelman to a $5,000 fine and three years probation, and instructed him to continue his psychiatric care and perform community service as ordered by the probation department. The community service consisted of producing a film on the drug PCP, or "angel dust."
    • Outside the courthouse, Begelman told a crowd of reporters, "I have been subjected to the judicial system and I found it fair."
    • Alan Hirschfield took his younger son, Scott, to La Guardia Airport early Thursday morning and put him on a plane for Maine, where he was to spend several weeks at camp. After arriving at the office, Hirschfield sent his revised letter, accusing the board of breaching his contract, to Leo Jaffe with specific instructions that copies be forwarded to each member of the board of directors. The existence of the letter still was known only to attorney Haines, and to Allen Adler, who had seen it only in a previous version. Hirschfield had not shown any version of the letter
      to Joe Fischer, Todd Lang, Clive
      Davis, or any of the other people whose advice he normally sought.
    • In the letter,
      Hirschfield
      accused the board of a "deliberate, reckless effort to take yet another step in a campaign to discredit me as chief executive officer of this company."
    • To authorize negotiation of a contract with me and follow that with prearranged resolutions, which can only be based on a claim that I am an incompetent executive, is so inconsistent as to defy rational explanation, except if it is based on the premise that I should be continued as chief executive officer for appearance's sake, but that I should not be allowed to function as chief executive officer.
    • This has been true ever since
      1
      committed the unforgivable sin of being right on the impossibility of retaining David
      Begelman
      after the story of his embezzlement broke. You and I know under what enormous pressure
      I
      finally and reluctantly agreed to his reinstatement, loyally, as I thought, putting the best public face on it I could. You and I know that the board rejected our advice, the admonitions of our counsel, and ignored public or SEC reactions, only to precipitate the worst possible publicity for Columbia, with adverse consequences not yet fully felt.
    • . . . There has been a studied program of harassment by Mr. Kramer and a pattern of interference with my functioning as chief executive officer, and of usurpation of my authority. It is not the company but the board which is "out of control."
    • ...
      All my efforts have been devoted to maintaining some stability in the company and preserving its public image, despite the vexatious and obstruent actions of the directors. I hope that the attacks on mc will cease, but I will not be alone in respecting the
      contract between Columbia and me
      . If they do not, and if good-faith negotiations are not undertaken, I shall take such action as may seem advisable to preserve my position as chief executive officer of this company and to meet my responsibilities in this regard to our management, our stockholders, and the public.
    • After taking a few calls on Friday, Hirschfield went home, picked up
      Berte
      and their daughter, Laura (Marc was at camp in Wyoming), and drove to East Hampton where they were to spend the long Fourth of July weekend at the summer home of their close f
      riends, bank president Mark Mage
      d* and his wife, Marion, a fashion designer.
    • *Rhymes with
      ragged.
    • FIFTY-EIGHT
    • Behind all his neutral stares, indifferent shrugs, and cocksure remarks, Herbert Allen was struggling. His decision to fire Hirschfield did not come easily. Apart from anger, Herbert felt deep sadness at the collapse of their relationship. Rosenhaus and Kramer and Wilmot would have dumped Hirschfield weeks earlier, but they deferred to Herbert, and Herbert hesitated.
    • Although he and Alan had never been "best" friends, as Herbert kept telling everyone who would listen, they had been
      friends—
      genuine, warm friends—through all their adult lives. Herbert enjoyed Alan. Alan could make him laugh. In their early days at Columbia Pictures, with the company still fragile financially, Herbert had referred to himself and Alan as "the Hardy boys"—breezing through difficult situations and laughing all the way. He could not think of Alan's eleventh-floor office without thinking of the laughter they had shared there, usually with their feet up in the early evening after others had left for the day. There had been good times, too, in Palm Springs and Beverly Hills and Southampton and Scarsdale. And the families. Charlie and Norman back to 1925. Since Herbert's childhood, he had always liked and respected Norman Hirschfield, and Herbert's children had developed the same kind of affection for Norman. Herbert mourned the potential destruction of that relationship, and rued the estrangement between him and Norman, and between
      Norman and Charlie, who had rejected repeated pleas by Norman over the past few months to intervene in the dispute between Alan and Herbert.
    • In his office, in his apartment, on his deck in Southampton staring out to sea, Herbert brooded about Alan. Alan had betrayed him. He had betrayed him not just once but several times, Herbert felt. How could a guy this smart, Herbert asked himself, be so
      disloyal
      to the people who
      made him
      and so
      stupid
      as to go up against the people who
      own this company!
      Herbert had no answer, but Alan most definitely had committed those sins.
    • He had been disloyal.
      He had been stupid.
    • He had been wrong on both the merits and the handling of the Begelman affair.
    • He had tried to sell control of Columbia Pictures behind Herbert's back.
    • He had taken four months to staff the studio. He had pooh-poohed the significance of the Audrey Lisner embezzlements. He had sabotaged Sy Weintraub. He had been stubborn about Bob Stone.
    • And again the main theme—the ultimate sin—kept repeating itself:
      He has been disloyal to the people who made him and gone up against the people who own this company.
    • Despite all that, Alan still might have found a way to retreat and survive, Herbert felt. Instead, he now has the astounding effrontery to write a formal letter accusing the board of directors of breaching his contract in a "deliberate, reckless" effort to discredit him.

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