How Much Can a Minute Cost? Got a Sec?

The 91-second Mike Tyson-Michael Spinks fight in Atlantic City, N.J., set no speed record for a heavyweight title KO. But it helped offer a reminder how expensive just a minute can be.

A crowd of 21,785 fans paid as much as $1,500 each--$989.01 a minute--to watch the fight. A good buy for suckers? Well, in Los Angeles, bigger deals come along every 60 seconds.

Superagent Irving (Swifty) Lazar recalls it took just a minute for producer Darryl Zanuck to spend $2 million in 1959 for the movie rights to “The Sound of Music,” which had just opened on Broadway.

“Zanuck was sitting next to me in the theater on opening night, and I saw him crying so profusely during ‘Climb Every Mountain’ that I asked him, ‘You want to buy the play? You got it.’ It took less than one minute.”

A minute proved pricey for KIIS-FM disc jockey Rick Dees. After writing an underwhelming ditty, “Disco Duck,” he was delighted to learn the director of “Saturday Night Fever” wanted to include it in the 1977 movie. But Dees said, “What I didn’t do was take a minute to go over the contract so that the song would also go into the album.”

The “Saturday Night Fever” album sold 28 million copies; Dees figures his lax minute cost him about $2.8 million. “If I’d just the read the fine print. . . .”

Many Stories From Angelenos

Angelenos tend to be an indulgent lot and have many stories about astounding one-minute shopping sprees.

Judith Krantz, Beverly Hills megabucks author, sheepishly recalls that after the 1984 TV miniseries of her best-seller “Mistral’s Daughter” fared well in the ratings, “I was in a state of euphoria, which is always a bad time to go shopping. I found myself in front of Tiffany’s, so I went in and within a minute I had spent $8,300 for a Paloma Picasso pendant on a gold chain featuring one large amethyst and one large citrine.”

Krantz admits that was not such a bad price for the bauble, “But I’ve only worn it twice. It’s not my color. It doesn’t go with anything. Every time I see it in my drawer, I cringe.”

The most expensive minute for The Incredible Hulk, better known as actor-body builder Lou Ferrigno, occurred by accident: He found his one-day-old Mercedes had been totalled in the blink of an eye while parked in a Los Angeles lot.

Richard Koshalek, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, knows a thing or two about the fast buck. He paid “six figures” of MOCA’s money to the Marion Goodman Gallery in Manhattan for the monumental painting “Departure From Egypt” by German Expressionist artist Anselm Kiefer.

“I decided on it in one minute,” Koshalek said. “It was a major, major painting that expressed a lot of concerns about our contemporary society.”

Some minutes are expensive because they involve life or death.

Auto racing champ Danny Sullivan’s most expensive minute occurred on the 101st lap of last month’s Indianapolis 500 when he crashed into a wall after the right front wing on his car broke. He had been leading the pack by a lap.

He figured the moment cost him $1 million “at least.” His comment at the time of the crash was, of course, unprintable.

Other minutes were costly emotionally, if not financially. Actress Ali MacGraw recalled her most expensive 60 seconds: “My third wedding.” That’s the time she exchanged “I do’s” with actor Steve McQueen.

But when it comes to dollar-for-minute suckers, Paul Mones, a lawyer who specializes in family violence homicides, has a story that’s hard to beat. It took place in a “very, very expensive” New York restaurant whose name he can’t (or won’t) remember.

“I had just ordered a king-size, 4-pound lobster with the works for $90. And just as the lobster was about to be set in front of me, the guy tripped. The lobster went up in the air and landed on a $45 bottle of wine, which immediately spilled everywhere. In less than three seconds, my dinner of $135 was ruined. And I still had to pay for it!”