Yablans

"But, deluded by his own self-image of grandeur, Yablans simply couldn’t take this hit to his reputation… and he quit. Cold. Just like that. I didn’t hear it from him. His lawyer called. Sidney Korshak. In his deep, intimidating voice, Korshak said, “This isn’t working. He’s out, and we have to settle it.” I replied, “There isn’t anything to settle. I’m perfectly happy for him to stay if he wants. If he quits, which is what you’re telling me, then there’s no settlement, he just goes home.” Korshak said, in that low and menacing voice, “You seem like a nice kid, but you’re a little naive. I’ll deal with your boss,” and he hung up. Sidney went to Charlie, and fearless though Charlie usually was, he was a little scared of Korshak. Charlie then called to tell me, “Sidney thinks you’re being a hard-ass and we have to pay him something or things will deteriorate. *Unpredictably.*” Charlie hadn’t liked hearing that word, “unpredictably.” He’d told Sidney that I would be reasonable and to go back and work it out. But he said to me, “Don’t be *too* reasonable.”"

"I told him, “You wouldn’t let me fire Frank because of the money, and now it’s my job to save the money! Besides, Yablans is a thief; he’s been getting bribes from Sumner Redstone for years.” We had recently discovered that $100,000 worth of diamond jewelry was sent to a certain address every Christmas from a certain Boston jeweler. Boston was where the theater-owning Redstone lived; it wasn’t hard to trace it."

"I’m fairly certain Charlie really thought that hiring me was a good comeuppance for Yablans’s arrogance and insubordination, but that after a while somehow Yablans and I would find common ground. Charlie and everyone else in the business thought Yablans was a genius distributor, and after he suffered a little humiliation, this would go the way most Hollywood relationships cynically went: the money would talk and no one would walk."

"At the time, there was no such thing as “media.” Movie studios dominated entertainment, and the five majors (Paramount/Warners/Columbia/Fox/Universal) had worldwide importance. If you ran one of these film companies, you were a prominent figure wherever you went. In those early years, though, I wasn’t swanning anywhere; I was just trying to figure out this weird and dysfunctional studio I was now in charge of. Because I’d offed Yablans in such a public and brutal way, everyone was now afraid of me. And I was petrified that they would find out just how unqualified I actually was. Only if I slowed everything down could I begin to understand all the parts and then try to rearrange them into something coherent. I tend to make things worse in the beginning as I fumble around trying to get to base truths. Instinct, which I prize almost above all else, doesn’t work very well for me in abstruse matters. I have to get to the core DNA on any matter, its logical essence, before I can add anything of value. For me this takes a lot of time, often to the irritation of faster thinkers. But when it does crystallize, I can’t be deterred."

"Out of total frustration, I got a copy of the Yablans contract and read it word for word. Several times. Usually in employment contracts at senior levels, there’s a detailed description of the duties. I discovered that there was no description of actual duties for the president: no definition of his authority, and no defined responsibilities. *I had found my way to kick Yablans out of his cool.* I composed a simple one-sentence memo to *all* the staff of Paramount worldwide. It said FROM THIS DAY FORWARD, ALL EXECUTIVES WHO PREVIOUSLY REPORTED TO MR. YABLANS NOW REPORT DIRECTLY TO ME. And I signed my name. Literally ten minutes after I’d had it hand-delivered to Yablans, my office door swung open so hard on the hinges that it actually cracked, and a fuming Yablans came roaring in. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing with that idiot memo?” I responded calmly and quietly. “Frank, I have every legal right to do exactly that, and it’s done. You have an employment agreement that I’m fully respecting. So go back to your office and figure out what you’re going to do for the rest of the day, since I don’t need anything from you right now,” and swiveled my chair to the window."

"Charlie yelled at me to come into the room and put me on the phone with Lew, who was also rather startled at the news about the new statehood of his daughter’s childhood friend. I was hardly someone he took seriously, but like everyone else in Hollywood, he didn’t much like Yablans, so he congratulated me heartily. The ever-charming Wasserman told me he always knew I’d go places when, as a twelve-year-old, I’d beaten his wife at gin rummy at their Palm Springs house."

"All through that summer of 1974, there was a Shakespearean plot developing around this triangle of outsized personalities. Neither Charlie nor Yablans/Evans ever knew that I was surreptitiously talking to Andy Tobias. When I heard from Andy how vicious Yablans was in characterizing Bluhdorn, my motivation was to do as much as I could to make certain Charlie wouldn’t be unfairly or negatively portrayed. Hard going given the delectable tidbits Yablans was throwing out. Andy told me Charlie wouldn’t agree to be interviewed, so it was up to me to be his defender. It never once occurred to me that I was helping to open a door I would soon be walking through. And, anyway, I was awfully busy just trying to save my ABC schedule from disaster."

"Broadcasters had, at that time, a sense of responsibility for what they did, and were, to a degree, programming in the public interest. Guardrails of any kind didn’t seem to exist in the movie business. For all Yablans’s bluster he was a master at distribution and marketing. And Evans was far from a slouch at running the production side. He had great theatrical instincts, and he made pictures better because of his intense involvement. The problem was, their enormous successes were done and gone."