BYLINE BIZ

Another June Premiere byline: Tony Schwartz, Q&A-ing; producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer.

Schwartz is an interesting choice, since Simpson and Bruckheimer optioned a cover story (“Tenant Terror,” April 8, 1985) that Schwartz penned for New York magazine. He was hired by the superproducers to write the screenplay--but the deal ended prematurely when his treatment took an approach they didn’t care for, according to Schwartz.

Schwartz, once pop critic for Newsweek, a N.Y. Times TV reporter and now a contributing editor with New York mag, currently has a production deal with Barry Diller, chairman at 20th Century Fox, to develop film and TV projects from NYC. The arrangement was struck after Schwartz profiled Diller and Michael Eisner (then chairman and president at Paramount, respectively) for another New York mag cover story in 1984. Schwartz said both Diller and Eisner (now Disney chairman) approached him a year-and-a-half after the article and he opted to work with Fox.

“The projects are to be done by writers that I find and solicit, or projects that I myself write,” said Schwartz. “It’s very open in terms of exactly what I would do.”

Schwartz pooh-poohed any speculation that the deal might be some kind of payoff: “I think if you read the piece (on Diller and Eisner), you could not call it a puff piece or necessarily flattering.”

After making the Diller deal, Schwartz said, he planned to refrain from entertainment reporting to avoid any possible conflict of interest. But his wife, Deborah Pines, is an editor of Premiere, “and when they asked me to do the piece, I agreed quite frankly as a favor to them.”

Editor Lyne insisted Schwartz was not acting as a journalist when he did the interview: “The assignment was for a conversation between Tony Schwartz, new producer, and Simpson and Bruckheimer, old-hand producers. And their relationship with Tony is disclosed in the interview.”

We pointed out that Schwartz hasn’t actually produced anything.

“Yes,” explained Lyne, “but he’d like to.”