FALL FESTIVAL STILL UNCERTAIN : FILMEX: WHERE IS IT GOING--AND WHEN?

Flash! Here’s the latest news about the announced merger of the Los Angeles International Film Exposition (Filmex) with American Cinematheque:

The merger could be completed within weeks, or months, or not at all.

Here’s an update on the 1986 Filmex itself, which was postponed this spring after the Filmex board voted to merge with American Cinematheque:

The festival will be held in late October and early November, or not at all.

And finally, this bulletin about the status of the Pan Pacific redevelopment, an announced $22-million project that would have as its centerpiece the American Cinematheque, a film and video center fashioned after the famous Cinematheque Francais in Paris:

Ground breaking, originally scheduled for the summer of 1985, is now almost sure to begin this fall. Then again, maybe not.

Filmex has been a Los Angeles cultural fixture since 1971, presenting as many as 200 films during its annual two-week expositions. Its history has been laced with financial problems and personality conflicts, and in January, its board--unable to meet its payroll or pay its payroll taxes--voted to merge with the newly formed American Cinematheque.

Why did the board vote for merger? How serious was the debt? And what does it all mean to the public and private funding sources upon whom Filmex and American Cinematheque must depend?

With so few of the principals willing to talk, it’s hard to get a fix on all these issues.

The only person who can explain why Jerry Weintraub failed to eliminate Filmex’s $350,000 debt and launch a newly designed mainstream spring Filmex festival--as promised when he took over as board chairman last summer--is Jerry Weintraub. He said he won’t discuss it.

The only person who may be able to say how Filmex will get its debt wiped out and be able to put on a festival this fall is Filmex President William Magee. He said he won’t discuss that.

And the only person who can provide a status report on the Pan Pacific Center, which is nearly a year behind schedule and reportedly having trouble getting financing, is Dan Zerfas of the Somerset Group, which won the development contract from the city, county and state agencies controlling the property on Beverly Boulevard near Farmer’s Market.

Zerfas, who had earlier refused to discuss the project at all, said Wednesday that Somerset will have permanent financing in place by the first week of May, with the start of construction possible as early as October.

There were others who refused to be interviewed, and some who would talk only with guaranteed anonymity. Cinematheque co-chairman Kenneth Kleinberg agreed to an interview, then balked until a reporter agreed to turn off his tape recorder.

If this were a movie, most of the cast would be wearing masks.

“Everyone has been asked to close ranks on Filmex because the board is afraid negative publicity will drive Weintraub out,” one Filmex veteran said. “And don’t quote me.”

There are ironies in the Filmex/Cinematheque engagement, and some anger.

There is irony in Filmex being brought back under the wing of Gary Essert, who was Filmex director from its inception in 1971 until his firing by the Filmex board in 1983. It may be even more ironic that the debt that has Filmex foundering includes a $45,000 settlement made to Essert after he was fired.

Essert threatened to sue Filmex after his ouster, if certain conditions weren’t agreed to. The agreement, a copy of which has been obtained by The Times, included demands that Filmex recognize Essert “forever” as its founder and to pay him $45,130. Sources said the board refused to go along with the “founder forever” clause, but did agree to pay the money.

“We paid him what we felt we owed him,” Magee said.

There is also irony in Weintraub taking over as chairman of Filmex, then favoring a merger with another group because his new job as chief executive of United Artists left him with no time to work on the Filmex debt. There is further irony in Weintraub being let go by United Artists less than three months after the merger vote was taken.

Some people are angry over Weintraub’s performance as head of Filmex. They say that he not only failed to eliminate the debt, but by urging the board to forgo a fall fund-raiser, by urging a postponement of the spring festival and by urging a merger with a group that, by its own account, is $8.5 million shy of its $10-million funding needs, he has given the organization away.

“The decision to put off the biggest film show on the North American continent was so deeply and profoundly stupid that I can’t begin to understand it,” is how board member and Filmex co-founder Philip Chamberlain put it. “Filmex now has very little credibility and damn few options.”

Chamberlain says the scaled-down Filmex that artistic director Ken Wlaschin had put together for this spring would have netted Filmex from $40,000 to $100,000. How can an organization that owes both back taxes and back salaries pass up such an opportunity, Chamberlain asks.

“I didn’t think we were ready organizationally or financially (to put on the festival),” said Filmex President Magee, an Arco vice president. “There was talk of people promising money . . . but you don’t go out and make commitments based on promises. Not when you’re $300,000 in debt.

“Also, our projections showed that we would break even or make a modest profit. Nothing like $100,000.”

Magee, whose calm corporate style seems out of place in the churning Hollywood waters, acknowledges that he and other veteran Filmex board members are getting “burned out.” He says some of the organization’s support groups have weakened in the post-Essert years, fund-raising has become more difficult and the media are unduly interested.

“If I had it to do over again,” Magee said recently, “I would never get involved in a Hollywood-related nonprofit organization. The press laps it up. There are a lot of nonprofit organizations the same size in this city and a number of them have problems. But the press ignores them.”

Magee said it became clear to him three years ago that it would take a white knight to rescue Filmex. With Weintraub and MCA President Sidney Sheinberg, Magee first approached the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences about a merger. But, he said, the academy wasn’t interested.

With one white knight down, Magee began looking around for another. He saw Weintraub.

“Last summer, it was Jerry or broke,” Magee said. “We had our backs to the wall.”

Weintraub told a Times reporter last summer that he planned to rally the industry around Filmex and referred to the debt as a nickels- and-dimes thing. Few people doubt that he could have raised that money. But Weintraub had two movies to finish producing (“Happy New Year” and “The Karate Kid II”), then got busy with the UA job.

Six months later, the Filmex board may not have been praying for a white knight as much as a little black magic.

The math in January was pretty simple, said Magee. Filmex has always been able to cover the costs of the festival itself. It was the annual overhead--the payroll and administrative costs of having a full-time staff--that was feeding the deficit.

Although the debt was reduced during the two-year tenure of Suzanne McCormick, who was brought in as Filmex executive director after Essert left, there was little hope of retiring the debt altogether.

McCormick, who declined to be interviewed (“I am looking for a job,” she said), left a good post as director of the prestigious Chicago Film Festival to sign a three-year contract with Filmex. According to one Filmex staffer who worked with her in Chicago, McCormick inherited a deficit that was nearly twice as much as she was told and that she was instantly shackled by the debt.

“She has pumped her own money into Filmex just to get things moving when the board wouldn’t move,” said the former Filmex staff member. “If her husband hadn’t loaned the organization $30,000 for deposits on theaters, there would have been no Filmex in 1984 at all.”

Others close to the Filmex staff said McCormick was virtually shut out of Weintraub’s inner circle after Weintraub became board chairman. When the merger vote was approved, she and other staffers were given notice. Magee acknowledged that Filmex still owes McCormick and Wlaschin back pay. The amount for McCormick, sources said, may be as much as $40,000.

(Explanations about Filmex’s debt history differ. Essert said that the Filmex got off to a $40,000 debt the first year and that the figure just grew straight through to 1983. Other sources, with access to the Filmex books, said a deficit of more than $200,000 was eliminated with a 1977 matching fund-raising campaign launched by former board member Franklin D. Murphy. Six years later, there was another deficit of nearly $400,000.)

A merger had obvious appeal for the Filmex board. By joining either the American Film Institute or American Cinematheque, both of which had expressed interest, Filmex could cut its operating budget in half. As Essert said, the festival activities and their adminstration could be folded into the workload of the Cinematheque’s year-round staff.

But, why would either of those organizations want Filmex?

For the AFI, it would have been a reasonable extension of its ongoing relationship with McCormick and Wlaschin, who performed programming chores for the institute in exchange for Filmex office space.

For American Cinematheque, it represents a prepackaged attraction, a cinematic event with a history.

“If we just let it die and go into bankruptcy, there would have been opportunities lost,” said Robert Shrage, Cinematheque’s managing director. “There is something to be said for building constituencies rather than separating them.”

With Essert handling the programming for Cinematheque, it has been assumed from the beginning that the film center would eventually end up with a festival of some sort. Why not the very one Essert guided for 12 years?

Essert and Filmex, together again. You might wonder how that idea sets with Magee, who had successfully urged the board to fire Essert--over organizational disputes, Magee said--in 1983.

“We are merging with the American Cinematheque, not Gary Essert,” Magee said. “We have been assured that the board of Cinematheque is running the organization, not any one individual.”

Everyone agrees that the main advantage of a merger is to consolidate fund-raising activities. Both groups are working the same philanthropic waters and Shrage acknowledged that Cinematheque was interested in utilizing some of Filmex’s fund-raising talents.

Notably, Jerry Weintraub’s.

“If he could be brought along, nothing could be better,” Shrage said. “If you’re starting a baseball team, you’d like to have Mickey Mantle batting cleanup.”

Some Filmex people privately grumble about the way Filmex hooked up with Cinematheque. It was lost on no one that Kenneth Kleinberg, Weintraub’s lawyer and a top executive at United Artists, was also co-chairman of Cinematheque and that Weintraub seemed to favor a merger with that group.

At the Jan. 21 Filmex board meeting, when the merger vote was taken, only nine of the more than 60 members showed up. What may have been the most important meeting in Filmex history could have been held in a Dodge Caravan.

During that meeting, Weintraub reportedly made a pitch for merging with either the AFI or Cinematheque, then became upset with the board’s lingering debate and threatened to resign. Eventually, the merger was approved, unanimously.

Filmex board member Chamberlain, who was there, said he personally favored a merger with the AFI, but the board was swayed in favor of the Cinematheque because Cinematheque offered to share 20% to 25% of its profits from a fund-raiser honoring Eddie Murphy.

“We needed cash badly,” Chamberlain said. “The AFI couldn’t offer us any money, so that’s the direction we went.”

Chamberlain said Cinematheque also offered to share profits--in even larger portions--from other fund-raisers this year, with the goal of retiring the Filmex debt. The two groups could not merge, it was agreed, until the debt was gone.

The Eddie Murphy evening netted about $140,000, according to Kleinberg, but Filmex has received nothing from it, and won’t until the groups have merged. The merger can’t occur until Filmex can refinance or otherwise satisfy its creditors. Catch-22.

“There were always pre-conditions to the merger,” Shrage said. “One is that they resolve their debt problem so the Cinematheque does not assume any responsibility for it.”

In fact, said Shrage, there is no written agreement for a merger, merely an understanding between the two boards. The two executive committees are meeting regularly, he said, with a co-produced summer fund-raiser still on the agenda.

In the meantime, Filmex is exactly where it was four months ago, except that it has only one staff member, Wlaschin, and is obviously depending on the Cinematheque apparatus for some guidance.

Essert said that between Cinematheque meetings during next month’s Cannes Film Festival, he will be assisting Wlaschin in picking out movies for the fall Filmex. Even if the merger falls through, Essert said Filmex will be conducted in concert with the 50th anniversary tribute that the American Cinematheque plans to hold for its French model. Locations have not been determined for either event.

Cinematheque would seem to have enough problems of its own without assuming those of Filmex. When the organization was announced 15 months ago, along with the Pan Pacific Center redevelopment, it was reported that Cinematheque would have to raise $10 million--$5 million in cash for construction and a $5-million endowment for operating expenses.

At that time, Cinematheque’s principals said they had raised $1 million. Shrage said the collection plate now has $1.5 million in it, and most of that is in pledges that won’t convert to cash unless the Pan Pacific Center becomes a reality. Shrage now says Cinematheque is under no obligation to raise the money before construction begins.

“We look at it as a tenant situation,” Shrage said. “We will have the option either to pay it off now or stretch it over 30 years.”

Curt Robertson of the Los Angeles Parks and Recreation Department said the project was partly delayed because of clearances needed from the state Historic Preservation Office. The old Pan Pacific Auditorium, whose shell and Streamline Moderne design are being restored as part of the development, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

If the Pan Pacific deal doesn’t materialize, Shrage said Cinematheque has selected two potential alternate sites, facilities that are already in place and eager to house the Cinematheque.

In the meantime, Essert said, the film arts center will operate like a “traveling Temporary Contemporary,” programming three or four events a year, wherever they are appropriate.

It is not easy to raise small or large amounts of money for film in this, the film capital. Commercial Hollywood views Filmex and Cinematheque as provinces of art. The art community views film as pop commercial entertainment.

All three of these entities--Filmex, American Cinematheque and Pan Pacific Center--are dependent to some extent on tax concessions, public funds and the largesse of arts patrons. But convincing philanthropists that film is art is like convincing Vladimir Horowitz that heavy metal is music.

“That (getting film recognized as art) is the major problem,” Essert said. “What you hear is, ‘Hollywood has all the money, go get it from them.’ They don’t say that in theater--’Go get it from David Merrick or the Shuberts.’ Nobody tells painters to, ‘Go get it from Sherwin-Williams.’

“Hollywood creates the art. It’s the people, the civilization, who use it. They should pay for it.”

It’s what Magee calls “the fund-raising nightmare.” If you’re not a disease, and if you’re not a charity, and if you’re not a museum, why should anyone give you money?

“My hope is that what will grow out of the course we’re on will be a music-center kind of structure for these film entities,” Magee said, “an umbrella organization that will handle the fund-raising for all of them.”

Before Filmex ever gets to that point, it must solve its debt problem, and the board is still hanging its hopes on the same white knight.

“I think Jerry’s still going to pull this thing off,” Magee said. “He just needs a bit more time.”

“No one would be happier than me to see him do just that,” said Chamberlain, Filmex’s first chairman and a board member through its entire history. “If he doesn’t, I doubt that Filmex can survive. We’re at the life-or-death point.”