Originally appeared in Los Angeles Magazine December, 2009

BY: Amy Wallace

He has been nominated for an Oscar (for the 2007 mystery Eastern Promises) and was declared a bona fide sex symbol (after his turn in the 2005 crime drama A History of Violence). He’s starred in three of the biggest-grossing movies of all time (The Lord of the Rings trilogy in 2001, 2002, and 2003). But Viggo Mortensen has always been motivated more by collaboration than celebrity. His new film, The Road, is an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about survival in a postapocalyptic world of cannibalism and other unimaginable horrors. As “The Man,” Mortensen navigates this devastated landscape with his son (played by 11-year-old newcomer Kodi Smit-McPhee). We exchanged e-mails with the actor, poet, publisher (of the L.A.-based Perceval Press), and polyglot (he speaks Danish and Spanish, among other languages) on the subjects of hope, endurance, and human nature.

Hi Viggo,

The Road is true to McCarthy’s novel in that the nature of the cataclysmic event that has ruined the planet is never explained. As you constructed your character of “The Man,” though, you must have filled in that blank for yourself. Was it a comet, or did humankind bring the end of the world upon itself?

It does not really matter, because the character cannot do anything about it. I think that numerous things happened—fires, floods, drought, earthquakes (which the book and movie refer to) as well as fighting that led to the destruction of the power grids. Once things went wrong, there was no more Internet, phone, TV, radio, so it was not possible to know what really had happened and was continuing to happen all over the place. As when we have had blackouts, big snowstorms, fires, floods like those following Hurricane Katrina, or even as a reaction to events like those of 11 September, 2001, in New York and Washington, D.C., many people tend to isolate. General ignorance and wild, paranoid speculation tend to take over.

You’ve had a lot of physically demanding roles, from sword fighting in the LOTR trilogy to horseback riding in Hidalgo to wrestling naked in Eastern Promises. But The Road seems to be in a class by itself. How much weight did you lose to play a man starving to death?

I am not exactly sure. Enough to be credible as the character. Maybe 30 pounds or so. It was a basic requirement of the story that I not look well fed, so I simply ate less. That was not the hardest part, though. Nor was the hardest part the physical endurance test Kodi and I took part in by working in the cold, wet environments. The hardest part for both of us was the emotional journey, being exposed on the inside.

How did you prepare yourself emotionally to imagine the end of the world?

I’ve always thought that the end of the world, the end of me, of anything, can happen at any time, just as the sun always goes down at some point each day. It is natural, and not something to fear so much as be aware of and, when possible and appropriate, struggle against.

This may sound odd, but The Road had unexpected echoes of WALL-E, last year’s animated movie about an Earth used up and left behind by humans. Though WALL-E was clearly aimed at a different audience, both movies highlight the tenacity of love and the importance of even small gestures of kindness. Did you see WALL-E?

Yes, I did. I get your point. Had not thought of that. Thanks!

Were there any other movies you thought about as you prepared for this role?

For inspiration with regard to my understanding of Kodi’s character and regarding the environment, I looked at some of Tarkovsky’s work—Ivan’s Childhood and Stalker, for example. I also had another look at Sokurov’s Mother and Son and Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc for the emotional truth of the performances and cinematography. I listened to certain music, looked at photographs, read certain kinds of poems. I also spoke with people who live in the street in different cities, when they were willing to speak with me.

How did the scam of the century reach all the way across the country and into the pockets of the showbiz elite? It wasn’t hard at all.

Originally appeared in Condé Nast Portfolio March, 2009

BY: Amy Wallace

To hear him talk about the economic challenges facing the entertainment industry, you’d think that Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation SKG, would be worried. Still, sitting in a meeting room on the DreamWorks campus, surrounded by plush toys commemorating his company’s biggest hits, Katzenberg speaks in a tone that borders on serenity.

“I tell people, ‘Wherever you are today, this is the new great,’ ” he says, a Kung Fu Panda doll looming over his shoulder. “The sooner you forget what you had, the better off you’ll be.”

Katzenberg’s Zen-like calm is especially surprising, given that just weeks before, he’d learned that he was among the Hollywood victims of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. Both Katzenberg and his DreamWorks co-founder, Steven Spielberg, had millions tied up with Madoff, most of it money they’d set aside for charity and all of it probably gone. As Katzenberg speaks of the belt-tightening that is happening in Hollywood, it’s hard not to wonder about his own belt.

“If you look at where you were last summer, and that’s your measure of how you’re doing, it’s hopeless,” he says. His words could also apply to life after Madoff, I suggest. Katzenberg nods. His loss was humiliating, he admits. “It’s gone. It’s finished,” he says. He refuses to reveal how much “it” is, though public tax filings show his and his wife’s foundation had assets of more than $22 million in 2007. “I’m as lucky and as blessed as I can be,” he says. “Let’s move on.”

If only it were so easy. The names of Madoff’s other Hollywood victims are still gradually and grudgingly coming to light. Condé Nast Portfolio has learned that Arnon Milchan, the billionaire producer of such films as Fight Club and Pretty Woman, lost at least $18 million in the scam.

(Milchan declined to comment.) Actors Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, who are married, have acknowledged that they too were taken.

How did so many smart people get so suckered? By Katzenberg’s own account, he had never met Madoff, never even heard his name. Katzenberg is not a member of the Jewish country clubs in Palm Beach and Minneapolis where Madoff and his agents trolled for investors. He doesn’t move in the social circles of New York’s Upper East Side to which many of the scheme’s patsies belong.

The answer, it turns out, lies closer to home. Katzenberg and Spielberg, like many people on the top rungs of the entertainment business, relied on the services of a personal business manager. Madoff had apparently figured out what industry insiders have known for years: More than agents, more than lawyers, business managers are the financial gatekeepers to Hollywood’s elite.

Since Madoff confessed to spinning a web of deceit that bilked thousands of people, universities, and philanthropic organizations out of an alleged $50 billion, two West Coast business managers have been embroiled in the scam. One is Katzenberg and Spielberg’s adviser Gerald Breslauer, who at 80 years old is widely revered as the dean of his profession. The other is Stanley Chais, 82, who has been helping prominent Angelenos invest their money for decades.

In addition to steering their clients to Madoff, both Breslauer and Chais reportedly have incurred huge personal losses themselves. But in Chais’ case, at least, that shared misfortune hasn’t prevented clients from suing. A magician and entertainer named Michael Chaleff was the first to file, accusing Chais, in a $250 million federal action, of “false, misleading, unlawful, unfair, and fraudulent acts and practices.” (Chais would not comment for this story.)

Then, on Christmas Eve, screenwriter Eric Roth—who won an Oscar for Forrest Gump—sued Chais in Los Angeles County Superior Court. In a classic good news-bad news scenario, the 65-year-old scribe had learned on the same day he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a drama in which Brad Pitt ages backward, that his retirement nest egg was gone.

Fox hits up Hollywood A-listers to make a sequel to Oliver Stone’s Wall Street.

Originally appeared in Condé Nast Portfolio February, 2009

BY: Amy Wallace

Gordon Gekko is an ex-con, fresh out of prison. The year is 2009. The place: New York. In Money Never Sleeps, a script floating around Hollywood, Gekko, the corporate raider from Wall Street, is back. Now barred from trading, Gekko ­instead reads to poor kids in Harlem by day and hosts charity galas by night. He is an avid art collector whose cell-phone ringtone plays the crashing chords from Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.

In a sign of how things have changed since 1987, the year that Wall Street was released, Gekko is now adept at manipulating Russian oligarchs, Emirati sheiks, and Macanese gambling barons. He recruits a brainy hedge fund analyst to travel the globe and do deals in his stead, and he tutors his young protégé in the ways of the rich. “Get your suits made at Gieves & Hawkes. Shirts at Turnbull & Asser. And go to Trumper’s. Get a haircut,” he says in one key scene.

In this imagined future, Gekko—played so memorably by Michael Douglas in Oliver Stone’s original—wants to gain control of the world’s richest oil field. Will he use it for good or for evil? Even if 20th Century Fox delivers on its plan to put a Wall Street sequel into production, moviegoers will never get the chance to find out.

That’s because, hewing to a tradition as old as Hollywood itself, Fox has ordered a rewrite. In mid-October, as real-world events seemed destined to disprove Gekko’s “Greed is good” mantra once and for all, Fox replaced the writer of Money Never Sleeps, Stephen Schiff, with a former stockbroker, Allan Loeb—and he got the job only after more than one A-lister said no (including Aaron Sorkin, the creator of The West Wing).

The studios love sequels, especially to movies that have struck the chord that Wall Street did. Released during the recession of 1987, the film perfectly captured a moment in American history, won Douglas an Oscar, and made Fox a boatload of cash. But delivering a sequel that lives up to a much-loved original is always a challenge, and a Wall Street sequel faces an even greater one now that a real financial crisis threatens to eclipse even the most dramatic fiction.

Two years ago, when the economy was still in overdrive, the timing seemed right to Stanley Weiser, co-writer of Wall Street. With Stone’s blessing, Weiser took an initial stab, picking up where the first film left off. It had always irked him that many viewers didn’t grasp what he had intended to be implicit: that Gekko was headed to jail. So his treatment begins outside a federal penitentiary on the day when Gekko is released. Then Weiser filled in the gaps.

Before turning himself in, Gekko travels the world as a rogue trader, à la Marc Rich, the fugitive financier controversially pardoned by President Bill Clinton. Gekko sets his sights on wringing riches out of Asia and setting up a hedge fund in China.

But the treatment was tabled when Stone had a falling out with Wall Street’s producer. Not long after, Schiff pitched Fox on an even more global approach. In his version, Gekko’s acolyte wins credibility with an oligarch named Oleg by traveling to London and buying him a Damien Hirst painting with $6 million of Gekko’s money.

Schiff’s script, which he delivered on July 22, contained some prescient details, considering he wrote most of it in 2007. It blamed the credit crunch and subprime mortgages for, in Gekko’s words, making “the gods fall off the mountain.” It even had Gekko spitballing about what might happen “if Lehman Brothers hits a rough patch.” Sources close to the project say Stephen Frears, whose 2006 movie The Queen earned an Academy Award nomination for best picture, expressed interest in directing. (Schiff declined to comment for this story.)

Yet as the financial picture worsened in late summer and early fall, Schiff’s script “suddenly felt out of touch,” says Alex Young, co-president of production for 20th Century Fox. “Stephen tried to shoehorn some things in there. But it was sort of like an ‘Oh, by the way.’ That’s no knock on Stephen: Wall Street is one of the seminal movies of all time. You don’t just casually wade back into those waters. You have to have a script that you love.”

Originally appeared in Portfolio, October 2007

BY: Amy Wallace

In May 2002, Richard Parsons, then co-chief operating officer of AOL Time Warner, received a scathing letter from the widow of Jerome Siegel, the man who invented Superman.

  “Dear Dick,” wrote Joanne Siegel. “Have you been aware that your representatives have gone too far?”

In the mid-1930s, when she was in her late teens, Siegel had been the sketch model for Lois Lane. Now she was accusing Parsons’ company of trying to fleece her and her daughter of their share of Superman revenues. She called AOL Time Warner “greedy” and alleged a “heartless attempt” to rewrite history. “Just like the Gestapo, your company wants to strip us naked of our legal rights…. Is that the reputation you want?”

In the five years since Parsons received that three-page screed, Siegel’s outrage has found a more formal outlet: two lawsuits, both championed by a controversial Malibu litigator named Marc Toberoff. The 52-year-old attorney has made a career of taking on big entertainment companies on behalf of creators and their heirs. He has been especially successful against what is now Time Warner.

His most publicized victory came in 2005, when he persuaded a judge to enjoin Warner Bros. from releasing the movie The Dukes of Hazzard because it was based in part on an earlier film, Moonrunners. Six weeks before the Dukes premiere, the studio settled with the Moonrunners producers for $17.5 million.

In the pending cases, Toberoff is taking a different tack, asserting that the Siegel family has terminated the grants to the Superman and Superboy copyrights that Jerry Siegel had bestowed in 1938 and 1948, respectively. The Siegels have exercised a clause in U.S. copyright law that gives creators or their heirs a five-year window to reclaim rights to their works 56 years after the copyright was issued. Toberoff says this entitles the Siegels to half of all Superman-related profits earned since the copyright termination took effect in 1999—a sum he estimates tops $50 million—as well as any future profits. He also asserts that Time Warner has infringed the Siegels’ Superboy copyright with its Smallville TV series and thus owes unspecified damages.

Time Warner’s lawyers dispute these claims, saying, among other things, that the Siegel heirs have reneged on a settlement hammered out before Toberoff entered the picture. The attorneys also question whether the termination papers were filed correctly and say that, even if they were, the Siegel family has vastly overstated how much it is owed.

At stake is not just money but, potentially, the very future of the franchise. If the Siegel heirs prevail in winning back their copyrights, the result could be a similar challenge by the heirs of Superman’s co-creator, artist Joe Shuster. And if that challenge were successful, then Time Warner—which is currently developing a follow-up to last year’s film Superman Returns—could eventually find itself out of the Superman business altogether. How big is that business? Only Time Warner knows for sure (and it isn’t saying), but counting the Superman- and Superboy-related movies, TV shows, DVDs, books, comics, and merchandise, the conservative estimate is in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Toberoff says it’s $1 billion.

As the first suit moves toward a January trial, Time Warner has retained three law firms to keep the Man of Steel in the fold. Overkill? Not considering how much the company stands to lose—and the fact that it has lost to Toberoff before.

Reviled by some as the Hollywood equivalent of an ambulance chaser, Toberoff specializes in helping aging writers and artists (or their heirs) reassert their claims to decades-old properties. Then, in exchange for an ownership stake in the recovered rights, Toberoff tries to get new projects produced that are based on those properties, sometimes at the very same media company with which he just did battle.

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Now more than ever, risk-averse Hollywood loves remakes, which are seen as easier to market. That trend has created opportunities for Toberoff, who, despite what one executive has called “pushy and aggressive” tactics, has a knack for attaching himself to projects that studios want to make. For example, back in the mid-1990s, it occurred to Toberoff that the 1978 TV series Fantasy Island could be the basis for a feature film. He tracked down Gene Levitt, the series’ creator, and convinced him that it would be worth his while to dig his original contract out of the basement. Toberoff then proved that Levitt (who died in 1999) owned the show’s movie rights. Sony Pictures is now developing the series into a film to star Eddie Murphy. If it is made, Toberoff will collect a producing fee. (He won’t say how much.)

Originally appeared in Los Angeles Magazine March 1, 2003

BY: Amy Wallace

Robert Newman knows every movie theater in Los Angeles — where it is, what kind of seating it has, how many trailers it shows. Six of those theaters are on his speed dial. The numbers link him not to a recording but to a person who can tell him how big the screens are, which shows are most crowded. He loves crowds. He has never understood private screening rooms. He won’t watch a movie with just ten people if he can help it. He tries to see everything, preferably on opening weekend. If he hates a movie and walks out, at least he got a feeling for the audience, what the vibe was. “You walk in,” he says. “You have a point of view. The trailers go on. Okay. Done. Count me in.”

Most people think agents like Newman are soulless hucksters, chameleons, shape-shifters, Sammy Glicks. Insincerity of the “love ya, baby” variety is commonplace in Hollywood, and agents — conduits who connect actors, directors, and writers to movie studios and television networks — are usually masters of the art. For them, phoniness can be a skill, a way of manipulating whomever they’re addressing.

No wonder agent jokes never go out of style. There are jokes about aggressiveness (What’s the difference between a pit bull and an agent? Jewelry) and about disloyalty (What’s the difference between a bantam rooster and an agent? A rooster clucks defiance. An agent fucks da clients). There are jokes that cast agents as unctuous (Two agents meet at a dinner where Sophia Loren is receiving an award. First agent: “Why Sophia Loren? She’s so over.” Second agent: “She’s my client.” First agent, without missing a beat: “Let me finish”). The most biting jokes skewer agents for ignoring their clients (A screenwriter comes home to find a pile of smoldering rubble where his house used to be. “Your agent came to your house,” a policeman tells him, “slaughtered your family, burned your home to the ground, and then danced on the rubble in hobnailed boots.” The screenwriter looks dazed. Then his face brightens: “My agent came to my house?”).

Newman, who is 44, is head of International Creative Management’s motion picture literary department, which means he leads a 25-agent team that shepherds the careers of about 250 directors and screenwriters in exchange for 10 percent of their earnings. Newman’s list includes actors Lucy Liu and Jet Li and the Oscar-nominated screenwriter John Hodge. But he is best known for representing directors, many of whom are widely considered the Industry’s most vibrant and original. Among them: Robert Rodriguez (Spy Kids), Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge), Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas), Danny Boyle (Trainspotting), Jonathan Demme (Philadelphia), Lee Tamahori (Once Were Warriors),Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amelie), Peter Cattaneo (The Full Monty), Wayne Wang (Smoke), Sofia Coppola (The Virgin Suicides), Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter), Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast), Scott McGehee and David Siegel (The Deep End), Alex Proyas (The Crow), Iain Softley (The Wings of the Dove), and Todd Solondz (Happiness).

“If Robert Newman opened a movie studio with just his clients, it’d be a kick-ass studio,” says Mike De Luca, the production chief of DreamWorks SKG. Still, neither his clientele nor his job title fully conveys the singular place Newman occupies in the Hollywood firmament. It’s not that Newman is more intimidating than other agents. The guys at Endeavor Agency, for example, who give out Louisville sluggers as agency Christmas gifts, cultivate a tougher image than the wiry Newman could ever hope to pull off. It’s not that he’s the next hot young player at Creative Artists Agency or William Morris or United Talent. Last year, when Details magazine listed 12 “Special Agents” 35 and younger who “have made the town forget Mike Ovitz,” Newman was too old to be included. What sets Newman apart is this: Of the hundreds of agent jokes, not one applies to him.

ROBERT NEWMAN’S HANDSHAKE SWOOPS TOWARD YOU, HIS thumb rigidly perpendicular to his fingers, and it culminates in a single tug, firm but brief, as if he’s ringing a bell. The effect is assertive and a bit playful. “Newman here!” he says by way of greeting. His good-bye is simply “Later!”