Vanity Fair Writes the Book on Puttnam

For months, people close to the David Puttnam and Ray Stark camps have been looking ahead to the April, 1988, issue of Vanity Fair as if it were a crucial opinion being written by the Supreme Court.

Would the scheduled article by writer-editor Tina Brown rule in favor of Puttnam, as most others in the media have already done? Or would it reveal the former Columbia Pictures chairman as an arrogant executive transient, who rode into town on a British steed and attempted to Anglicize the town that bred Andy Hardy?

And how would Stark, the 72-year-old son-in-law of the late Fanny Brice, come out? As a behind-the-scenes bully, as Puttnam often portrayed him, or as a crusty hometown hero who bravely drove the interloper off?

Well, the court has convened--we have a Xerox advance copy of the Vanity Fair decision right here in our hands--and the ruling is . . . David Puttnam was a hero! Ray Stark was a bully! The sun will come up tomorrow!

Brown’s article, which may be more easily measured in acres rather than in inches, is an extremely detailed account--told from Puttnam’s point of view--of the producer’s 18-month reign at Columbia. It contains no major revelations, no smoking ego, and its near biblical portrayal of Puttnam will give his detractors an easy reason to dismiss the whole thing.

But in giving Puttnam his definitive say about his ill-fated attempt to rescue Hollywood from the moral abyss, Brown would seem to have prepared the final document on the subject. If there is a book coming, we won’t need to read it.

Brown, who is also English and a longtime acquaintance of Puttnam’s, describes Puttnam as a man torn between his competing quests for personal glory and moral purity. She reports that Puttnam was so conscience-stricken by having produced “Midnight Express” in 1978 that he required the attention of a Jesuit priest.

According to Brown, the priest essentially advised Puttnam to go forth and do unto movies what he would have movies do unto him.

Brown says Puttnam felt that he had betrayed himself before, by giving in to pressures to cast Dustin Hoffman in “Agatha” and to turn “Foxes” into a “troubled co-ed movie.” He managed to redeem himself after “Midnight Express” with his Oscar-winning “Chariots of Fire,” a movie that Brown seems to believe projects the dualism of Puttnam’s personality.

Indeed, she writes, “Chariot’s” two main characters--Olympic sprinters Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell--represent the two sides of David Puttnam.

Throughout the article, Brown explains Puttnam’s behavior and his relationships in terms of the tug of war between his Puttnam-Abrahams and Puttnam-Liddell sides. It is a psychological stretch and a literary conceit that both confuse and discredit much of the story’s content.

The chewable sections of Brown’s article--the morsels that will keep Hollywood jaws grinding for the next couple of weeks--are those detailing the behavior of such people as actors Warren Beatty and Bill Cosby, super-agent Michael Ovitz and Coca-Cola powers Herbert Allen, Roberto Goizueta and Don Keough. But the bulk of the detail is devoted to Stark, who when crossed, Brown writes, becomes “the hound of hell.”

As Brown and Puttnam tell it, Stark became offended early on, when Fay Vincent, the head of Coca-Cola’s entertainment-business sector, sought out and convinced Puttnam to take the job at Columbia in mid-1986.

Stark reportedly hosted a cordial meeting with Puttnam when he arrived in Hollywood, and even helped Puttnam gain some control over the international marketing of Columbia’s pictures. But their relationship quickly soured when Puttnam rejected a pair of scripts that Stark submitted to him.

Puttnam had committed the unpardonable Hollywood sin of failing to hold up his end of a quid pro quo, Brown writes, and compounded it later by suggesting that he’d be interested in buying one of Stark’s projects for a couple of other film makers whose work he admired.

From then on, Brown said, Stark was driven by the same power that was the subject and title of that second rejected script: “Revenge.”

If Stark needed help in driving Puttnam out, he didn’t have far to look.

Herbert Allen, a powerful member of the Coca-Cola board and a close friend of Stark’s, was outraged over Puttnam’s stance against Creative Artists Agency, a company whose ability to package major stars and directors had resulted in “Ghostbusters,” Columbia’s biggest moneymaker.

A sequel to “Ghostbusters,” for which Columbia had the rights, was the major asset that Puttnam inherited at the studio, and on principle alone, he seemed willing to jeopardize it.

CAA chief Michael Ovitz wasn’t too pleased with Puttnam, either. The publicity-shy agent couldn’t have helped identifying with the unreasonable people that the publicity-minded Puttnam constantly referred to in interviews.

Soon after taking over at Columbia, Puttnam challenged Ovitz, as he had promised, by replacing Dan Aykroyd in “Vibes” rather than accede to Aykroyd’s and Ovitz’s demand that Cyndi Lauper be dropped from the cast.

Then there was the celebrated Bill Murray “incident.” It was reported in a New York Post gossip column that during a British American Chamber of Commerce luncheon, Puttnam mentioned Murray as the sort of person who takes from the industry without putting anything back in.

Puttnam denied making that comment, which further alienated Stark, Ovitz and Allen, and Brown has obviously accepted his denial. She reports that Puttnam received seven letters from people who were at that luncheon, each of them expressing shock over the “fabricated” Post blurb.

Brown named the seven letter-writers. One of them acknowledged to The Times Tuesday that Puttnam had asked for the letter and said the Post’s version of Puttnam’s comments at that luncheon were “misconstrued” rather than fabricated.

Puttnam’s run-ins with Beatty, who resented Puttnam’s standoffish approach to “Ishtar,” and Cosby, who was reportedly offended by the actions of the studio-assigned British producer and Puttnam associate Alan Marshall on “Leonard Part 6,” have been reported elsewhere. The only news in the Cosby affair is that Cosby himself asked for a British director (the job went to Paul Weiland) because Cosby admires British humor.

For one who watched the Puttnam saga closely, and supported Puttnam’s views strongly, the most eye-popping information in Brown’s article is the evident naivete that Puttnam brought to this executive soap opera. Here is a man who brought his wife to his contract negotiations just so she could see that he wasn’t being seduced.

Coca-Cola and Hollywood aren’t back-room poker games where stubble-jawed gunsels tip off their bluffs by scratching their ears. It seems inconceivable that an experienced film producer could be gullible enough to accept as Scripture the vows of support from the heads of a conglomerate where billions of dollars are at stake.

But it is clear--from Brown’s account, at least--that Puttnam did believe he would have his full three years to whip Columbia and Hollywood into shape, that he could weaken the grips of the film industry’s most powerful brokers and that Coke could take the inevitable heat from his attempt.

Being naive and on a moral mission in Hollywood. . . . Somehow, the image comes to mind of a Christian standing alone on the floor of the Colosseum, yelling “Open the gates!”