Banner Graphic, Volume 10, Number 91, Greencastle, Putnam County, 19 December 1979 — Page 7
Hope Capt. Kirk is behind me now: Shatner
(c) 1979 Chicago Sun-Times ! I insist you order something from room service." says William Shatner as he ! the reporter by the elbow and pulls her into his suite at the Drake Hotel in ! Chicago • "Now what will it be 0 Breakfast? Lun- ■. ch° How about some nice sish 0 You really ought to take advantage of this." he says in the hushed tones of a confidant is going to make a bundle on » this movie." J THE MOVIE IS. OF course. "Star j Trek." and Shatner, who recreates his | television role of Capt. Kirk, came to town J? to promote the movie | After deciding to see if room service can J come up with fresh strawberries in : December. Shatner settles down and. in a ; weary’ monotone, starts to dispute rumors about big problems with the special effects j; in "Star Trek." ; "There's no problem with ‘Star Trek’ ex-
Even with success of 'Star Wars/ Fox still on merry-go-round / BY PAMELA G. HOLLIE c. 1979 N'.Y. Times News Service BEVERLY HILLS movie industry, stars, producers, directors, even the executives, live on a merry-go-round. Switching jobs is so common that people here joke about the chances of keeping one until the paint dries on the curbside parking stall that goes with it. But this year at the Twentieth Centurv-Fox Film Corp. the tur- . nover rate has been exceptional. Since August. Fox has lost nine executives in two waves that nearly obliterated the company’s film division. In July Alan Ladd Jr., who brought to Fox the highly successful “Star Wars,” resigned as president of the pictures division to form his own company with two other Fox executives. Then Alan Hirschfield, one-time head of Columbia Pictures, was named to replace him though under different titles unleashing the second wave, as a half-dozen more Fox people departed amid the maneuvering and speculation over the . division’s reorganization. The appointment reinforced a controversial trend at Fox and in the industry toward diversified _ entertainment corporations and professional’ management, j. “Film making is big business.” said Dennis C. Stanfil, Fox’s chairman and chief executive officer. “Every successful company in this industry, and there have been more failures than successes, has had to shape up. ” Before Stanfill joined Fox in 1969 in the newly created position of executive vice president, finance, the company was on the brink of collapse, staggering under heavy losses on the picture "Cleopatra” and other financial problems. Stanfill, a softspoken Tennesseean, turned Fox around and elevated Ladd to president of the pictures division in August 1976. Stanfill, a trim, cordial executive, represented the new breed * of managers in major studios. A graduate of the United States - Naval Academy and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, he brought Fox, one of the last of the independent companies founded by Hollywood’s movie moguls, to a new era. He diversified its activities into resorts and entertainment, and with the tremendous _ profits from “Star Wars” he intends to expand this development along a non-film business course. “ ‘Star Wars’ gave us five years of growth in maybe a year and a half,” said the 52-year- - old executive. But after two years of earnings swollen by the space fantasy’s ’ success. Fox’s nine-month earnings this year dipped to $46.5 million from $51.4 million in the 1978 period, while 1979 revenues rose to $4%.3 from $469.1 million a year earlier. “It is impossible to match a ‘Star Wars’ success every year,” Stanfill said. The departures had little to do with the financial downturn and are not expected to have any measurable on Fox in the short run. Dennis I. Forst, vice president, research, at Bateman, Eichler, Hill Richards in Los Angeles is predicting that despite earnings that he estimates will be about $6.25 a share this year, down from $6.75 in 1978, Fox in 1980 could earn as much as $7.50 based on the anticipated success of Fox’s “Star Wars” sequel. The impact of the management changes may not show up for some time, Forst said. Ladd was known for his “hot hand” in picking winners and his ability to woo disenchanted artists to Fox. Half Fox’s top 20 money-making films were distributed during Ladd’s leadership. As Forst said, “It will take some time before we will know whether the new management has the same skill.” Although Ladd’s departure to form his own film company was unexpected, it was not surprising. Lately, because of industry growing pains and the struggle between creative expression and business judgment, the industry has seen the establishment of • dozens of companies, some of which operate as creative sub- ■ contactors for the major studios. Disney Productions this year lost most of its animators, who left to form their own company. And when the Transamerica Corp. feuded with its United Artists subsidiary, the top film management resigned en masse to form Orion Pictures. The development of this tier of film subcontractors, according to Stanfill, is part of an evolution that has been going on for decades. “The difference in the last two years has been that a significant amount of outside money has been trying to get into the business. So, we have many more of these independent film companies,” he said. This shift has pushed Fox toward a role as film distributor for some of these companies. A recent arrangement with Melvin Simon, a shopping-center developer, calls for the distribution of all of the Melvin Simon Production films for 1979 and 1980. A similar agreement with Time-Life Films is expected to be announced soon. With more products coming from outside, Fox management needs only to have the “essential judgment,” Stanfill said.“ George Lucas created ‘Star Wars,’ not Fox,” he noted. Lucas is one of the talents on whom Fox is depending for the next few year’s film profits. In May, Fox will release “The Empire Strikes Back: Star Wars II.” In light of the shift toward professional management, it did not surprise the industry that Stanfill chose a financial man like Alan J. Hirschfield for the newly created job of vice chairman and chief operating officer, filling the No. 2 slot at Fox, which has been vacant since 1974 Hirschfield, who was most recently a consultant to Warner Communications Inc., had been president of Columbia Pictures before he was ousted in June 1978 after a prolonged power struggle with Herbert A. Allen, a powerful Columbia director and president of the investment banking firm of Allen & Co., controls about 7 percent of Columbia’s stock.
cept time. The studio executives overambitiously made the decision to release the movie at Christmastime, and it’s just not ready yet because of the intricacy of the special effects Doug Trumbull and John Dvkstra. who worked on ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind,’ are doing the special effects and they’re very complex. They have to be if we expect people to get out of their houses and pay $5 or whatever it costs nowadays to see the thing." BY THIS TIME Shatner’s eyes, halfhidden by brown-tinted aviator glasses, have started to glaze over, and his voice has begun to sound as if his batteries are wearing down. "I’m told I have great energy." he says after a pause "But you don’t seem overwhelmed with it so I guess it’s not evident. Actually I’m incapable of doing anything elswight now. I just flew in from Toronto where I finished making a picture
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with Hal Holbrook called ‘The Kidnapping of the President.’ It should be a good movie, but it’s still not the quality of work I want. I’m hoping now that Capt. Kirk is behind me I can raise my sights and do better roles. "Not that I’m ashamed of the TV series Star Trek. It certainly paid the bills. It wasn’t some rinky-dink series where I came out and said, ‘Which way did they go?’ Many of the shows were good - not all of them, but some. It’s shown in 67 countries right now, so I must have done something right. I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what ever since." TIME OUT WHILE ROOM service delivers a mini-mountain of strawberries and a bag of groceries that Shatner had requested earlier. He starts to spread the contents out on the coffee table: Organic carrot juice, both regular and goat’s milk yogurt, stone-ground whole-wheat bread and a cracked-wheat salad.
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“As a result of getting info shape for the ‘Star Trek’ movie,” says Shatner, “my wife and I began to educate ourselves on nutrition." Then he’s off and running, with more animation than a Disney cartoon, delivering the usual health-food fan’s lecture. “I've started doing a health program that’s shown in many schools. It’s called ‘Know Your Body,’ and I really wish you’d mention it because it’s much more important than any of this other stuff." He waves his hand at imaginary Vulcans and captain's logs. “The only other thing I’m really interested in now is politics because I think the country’s in a great stage of transition, but I won’t go on," he adds with a touch of regret, "because I can tell you won’t write it all down. And even if you did, probably no one would be interested. "I DON’T CONSIDER myself a success,” he continues. “To the outside world I have the credentials of success, but the
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quality of work I want is still missing. Now I’m going to break my pattern of working steadily at anything that comes along. I’ll wait it out for a while now. “Still, I don’t regret having been in ‘Star Trek’ - the series or the movie. In the final analysis, it has been a great credit to me, and I have nothing but gratitude. No,” he corrects himself, “gratitude mixed with wistfullness, a wistfulness for what might have been. And who ever really knows what might have been? Those paths are closed; we can only go forward. “LISTEN.” SAYS SHATNER. his hand on her elbow again. His voice takes on such urgency that expectations build A lastminute confession that the movie is a shambles or that he and Leonard Nimoy have been at each other’s throats all these years? “Don’t base your opinion of tabbouleh on what you ate today. Go out and find the real thing. You won’t regret it.”
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December 19,1979, The Putnam County Banner Graphic
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WILLIAM SHATNER Raising his film sights
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