Marvin

"In the oil industry, Marvin was known as the guy who had invented the “100 percent for three-fourths” formula, meaning that he got people to invest 100 percent of the cash but own only three-fourths of the company. Marvin got the other 25 percent, plus management fees."

"With the nerve of a cat burglar, I told Marvin, “Since I don’t know you very well, you would have to agree never to speak to a single person in the company other than me. And while I’ll surely be in touch with you informally about the state of the company, I will formally agree to meet with you once a year.” I had been so scarred by Martin Davis’s behavior that I wanted these extreme protections, particularly with someone who had already interfered willy-nilly with the people at Fox. He wasn’t happy about such distancing, but he did agree."

"I arranged for Michael and his wife, Jane, to come to Marvin’s house for get-to-know-each-other drinks. It was an awful meeting. Marvin didn’t exactly jibe with the Eisners. First, there was Marvin’s *Beverly Hillbillies*–ridiculous house—an eleven-acre, forty-five-thousand-square-foot mansion with eleven bedrooms and seventeen bathrooms, a huge granite pile that had originally been built for Lucy Doheny Battson and was as formal and proper as the dumpy Davis was ill-suited to be inside it. As drinks were served, out came about three pounds of caviar, two pounds of which Marvin gorged on in the thirty-minute interview."