A MATTER OF PARAMOUNT IMPORTANCE

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, David Kirkpatrick, executive vice president of production at Paramount Pictures, boarded a plane to Maui for a one-week vacation. He never returned to the studio but opted instead to go to work for a competitor.

That move didn’t sit well with Paramount.

Earlier this month, the studio, in a highly unusual move, sued Kirkpatrick, who now is president of the motion picture division at Weintraub Entertainment Group, in an effort to force him back to work. If Paramount wins, the case could have broad implications for those caught up in the revolving-door world of executive ranks at the major studios.

Filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, Case No. C631748 charges Kirkpatrick with breach of contract and also charges his new employer, the Weintraub company, with “tortious interference with contractual relations.” Further, the suit asks for undisclosed damages and wants to restrain Kirkpatrick from working with a Paramount competitor.

Hollywood executives above the VP level are like star athletes and A-list actors: They are highly paid for high-pressure jobs that often end in burnout or failure. Lately the stakes have been pushed even higher because executive salaries have been soaring, while management teams at most studios have rarely stayed in place for more than two or three years.

It is particularly surprising that a suit of this kind should emanate from the Paramount lot. With megahits like “Top Gun” ($170.1 million to date) and “Crocodile Dundee” ($116.1 million), 1986 was a banner year for the studio. Paramount garnered an incredible 22.2% share of the total box-office take, twice the amount of its closest competitor, Warner Bros. Five of the top 10 movies of the year bore the Paramount logo.

Those kinds of numbers--more impressive than even those of the highly publicized previous administration of Barry Diller and Michael Eisner--would seem to suggest a picture of management harmony unequaled by any of the other majors. Yet interviews with more than a dozen producers, studio staffers and agents on and off the Paramount lot indicate that despite the enormous success of the last year, there was tension brewing inside the upper echelons of management. Neither Paramount (“The complaint speaks for itself,” a studio spokesperson said) nor Kirkpatrick would comment on the case.

In the suit, Paramount says that Kirkpatrick signed a two-year deal in March of 1985 with a one-year option that would keep him at the studio through 1988. The studio exercised the option in September of 1986. Total compensation for the three years would come to $750,000 plus bonuses, expenses and benefits.

Ironically, while relations between Kirkpatrick and his superiors at the studio remain chilled, the complaint--which amounts to a classic left-handed compliment--maintains that Kirkpatrick, who oversaw development and production of hits like “Top Gun” and “Star Trek IV,” was invaluable and irreplaceable. (The Kirpatrick case is not without precedent, however. In 1983, Fox prevented marketing executive Irv Ivers from going to work for rival MGM for five months by means of a similar suit.)

The current suit states that because of Kirkpatrick’s departure, the studio “has been and will be severely and irreparably injured. Kirkpatrick’s services . . . are of a special, unique, unusual, extraordinary and intellectual character, which gives them a particular value, loss of which cannot be readily ascertained or compensated for in damages.”

In the last two years, Kirkpatrick had become a key executive at Paramount. The 35-year-old former story analyst and screenwriter (“The Great Texas Dynamite Chase”) had worked his way up through the studio ranks. One of the few holdovers from the Diller-Eisner regime, he almost left to join Eisner, who had departed to head up the Disney studio, but according to insiders, Paramount Chairman Frank Mancuso talked Kirkpatrick into staying.

As a point man on the new Paramount team, Kirkpatrick has overseen some of the studio’s most important other projects as well, including “The Golden Child” and “Godfather III.” He became the studio intermediary for powerful producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer and had the closest working relationship with the studio’s crown jewel Eddie Murphy. “It is true the relationship was an exceedingly close one,” says Bob Wachs, Murphy’s manager and co-producer of “The Golden Child.” “He was very valued and well liked. It’s a shame, because a great deal of effort goes into the building of that kind of relationship.”

But, studio sources say, increased tension developed between Kirkpatrick and Dawn Steel, named president of production in April, 1985. The two reportedly disagreed frequently on movie-making philosophy, and at staff meetings, according to one staffer, “You couldn’t have cut the tension with a chain saw.”

“From the beginning David was upset that Dawn got the president’s job,” says a producer who frequently does business with the studio. “David clearly felt that he should have gotten it.”

Once Steel landed the presidency, Kirkptarick’s prospects for moving to the top seemed severely crimped. “These jobs are 18 hours of trouble and though they are called creative jobs, these people don’t have much chance to be creative,” says producer Simpson, who once headed production for Paramount. “They are defensive players, not offensive players, and when you play defense, you don’t get a chance to score very often. It’s a no-win situation unless you are the No. 1 person.”

Tensions in the executive suite were exacerbated last summer when, according to several sources, Paramount secretly attempted to bring in a veteran agent with the powerful Creative Artists Agency to come in above both Steel and Kirkpatrick but below Ned Tanen, president of Paramount’s Motion Picture Group. The deal eventually collapsed when the parties could not come to terms, but observers say that may have been the final straw for Kirkpatrick.

Why then would Paramount fight so hard to keep an apparently disenchanted employee? Customarily in the movie business, disgruntled management types are often let out of their contracts because they are thought to be a negative drag on morale.

On the Paramount lot, two theories on the Kirkpatrick case are currently offered. One is that Paramount was eager to send out a firm message: Executive contracts, especially those with lucrative six-figure salaries and all of the accompanying trappings, must be honored by both sides. “Suppose others wanted to leave; they couldn’t let David out and force the others to stay. It would establish a dangerous precedent,” says one producer on the lot.

The other theory is that Kirkpatrick’s value could not be underestimated. Almost from the day of his arrival on the lot, there has been speculation that Tanen, a respected producer and former head of production at Universal Pictures, would soon leave to return to independent production. In addition, Steel is expecting her first child in March. Insiders say she may not return as an executive but as an independent producer. (Steel, widely regarded as the most powerful woman in Hollywood, has told some friends she will be back at her office as president four weeks after delivery.)

“Right now, Paramount is on top of the world, but what if Ned does not renew and Dawn leaves to have her baby?” asks a rival studio executive. “With David gone, what happens to the team? Who do they have to fill those jobs?”

Meanwhile, Paramount remains the No. 1 studio in town. Says Murphy manager Wachs: “This (suit)has about as much to do with the mood on the lot as the rosebud I’m looking at through my window. The studio has nothing but top movies.”

Producer Simpson concurs. “It’s as tranquil as I’ve seen it in the decade and a half I’ve been here,” he says. “People on the inside are basking in what they have accomplished. They have won the Super Bowl and this is not like the Chicago Bears, who are bickering. They’re all enjoying being on this all-star team.”

Meanwhile, one of Paramount’s former starters is warming up on the sidelines for a new expansion team. It remains to be seen whether Paramount will press this case all the way, preventing Kirkpatrick from getting back into the game until 1989. The other possibility--and it is one that a number of observers are predicting--is that the entire matter will be settled out of court in an effort to prevent more details from leaking.

No matter what the outcome, however, it is clear that the final scene in the matter of David Kirkpatrick has yet to be played out.