Producer Hopes to ‘Rise From Ashes’ With Japanese Help

“Bull Durham,” a movie about a broken-down baseball catcher who gets a final shot at redemption, was producer Thom Mount’s biggest hit. It is also one of his favorite themes.

“ ‘Bull Durham’ was really about second chances,” Mount said over lunch recently. “And that’s the good thing about Hollywood. It’s a place where you can rise from the ashes.”

Mount should know. His own version of the Phoenix-like rise occurred earlier this month when a Japanese consortium agreed to funnel $150 million into his troubled production company.

The deal is Mount’s second chance. It makes him a significant player in Hollywood for the first time since the early 1980s when he lost his job as production president at Universal Pictures. But it also comes just two months before he is set to defend a lawsuit that explores, in punishing detail, his past business problems.

The suit, filed by a former business partner named Elsa Lambert, accuses the 41-year-old Mount of fraud and breach of contract. In depositions taken by Lambert’s lawyers, Mount’s integrity comes under repeated attack. Onetime associates say he misled clients, altered the company books and supported a mistress with company funds when it was nearly bankrupt.

Pegi Walsh, Mount’s former secretary, is quoted as saying she quit privately held Mount Co. in 1988 because Mount demanded that she “lie to people I cared about--my work mates, his wife, vendors, people that he did business with, essentially everyone.”

Mount has filed a cross-complaint for defamation, invasion of privacy and infliction of emotional distress. He calls the suit “utterly specious” and revenge-driven. But he also feels powerless to do much about it because Lambert has rebuffed repeated settlement efforts.

“I am fundamentally an honest person with a good heart,” said Mount, the latest film executive to reap the rewards of Japan’s expensive fascination with Hollywood filmmaking. “That’s not to say that I am free of warts and blemishes. But I am trying to learn and grow.”

Mount said his Japanese investors are aware of the suit. But the juxtaposition of the trial, set for May 6, and the business deal could be troubling for him. The complex funding package is the result of two years of shuttle diplomacy by Mount and his colleagues, Beverly Hills-based merchant bankers Stephen K. Bannon and Mark Bisgeier of Talbott, Bannon & Co.

It calls for a consortium headed by Nissho Iwai Corp., Japan’s sixth-largest trading company, to provide $150 million to Mount Film Group through $40 million in capital, $70 million in borrowed money and a revolving $40-million print and advertising fund. The money is supposed to pay for the production of six films.

Another Japanese consortium called Media International Corp., led by NHK Enterprises, is Mount’s partner in “The Indian Runner,” a film that recently completed production.

Universal will distribute the movies under a deal that also gives the studio creative input. Significantly, the agreement vests control of company finances with Talbott Bannon, which is partially owned by Nissho Iwai.

“We have freed Thom up to do what he should do, which is make movies,” Bannon said in a recent interview. “Thom is a very smart man. He’s just not a businessman.”

Mount, a rumpled-looking man with bloodhound eyes and an authoritative voice that serves him well at industry seminars, doesn’t argue the point. “What I needed was a mini-studio situation where the business and creative sides were divorced from one another,” he said.

Mount conducts his business from two locations these days: a squat office building in Burbank that houses Mount Film Group and an airy penthouse apartment in Century City. The apartment, lent to Mount after he finished filming “The Indian Runner” in Nebraska, is virtually empty except for an antique Brazilian desk, some bedroom furniture and box loads of books.

The only other signs of his presence are the ubiquitous location shots that line the hallway. Mount has been in the film business most of his adult life. After dabbling in left-wing political activities as a college student in his native North Carolina, where his lawyer father remains a liberal Democratic activist, Mount entered California Institute of the Arts in 1970.

By 1973, he had landed a job as a story reader for producer Daniel Selznick, and within another two years he was hired as a junior production executive at Universal Pictures.

Former co-workers say Mount slid comfortably into the workaholic culture at Universal, even though, in his signature cowboy boots and jeans, he clashed stylistically with the conservative, dark-suited executives. Mel Sattler, a former Universal vice president of worldwide business affairs for motion pictures who now serves as a Mount Film Group consultant, said Mount always possessed “the ability to measure and develop stories.”

Mount, who was also known as one of the most politically minded Universal executives at the time, was named head of production within five years of joining the company.

Movies made under Mount’s aegis included “Coal Miner’s Daughter” and “Missing.” But he is best remembered for championing a series of breakthrough black films, including “Which Way Is Up?” and “Car Wash,” and for steering the stodgy Universal toward the youth market.

Mount and one of his co-workers at the time, Sean Daniel, who was responsible for “Animal House” and “The Blues Brothers,” answered their phones by saying, “Comedy central.”

Mount was one of a handful of counterculture alumni branded Hollywood’s baby moguls. But his meteoric rise ended abruptly in 1983 when he was ousted during an upper management shake-up. Industry executives who knew Mount then say he had developed a controversial reputation.

“He said yes to everything, even projects he had no intention of making,” one talent agent recalled. Another said Mount “burned a lot of bridges” with Hollywood’s power brokers.

Mount said he was guilty of “stirring things up” and “challenging the status quo” at worst. Within a year of his firing he had re-emerged as president of Mount Co., an independent production group launched with nearly $1 million in personal funds and a slate of ambitious projects. But, like many ex-studio executives, Mount had a rocky transition into independent production.

His first project, Roman Polanski’s “Pirates,” was a critical and commercial flop. Subsequent films such as “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “Frantic” and “Bull Durham,” did better, but Mount was perennially short of cash. Daniel, an independent producer based at Universal, said Mount’s tenaciousness has been his best weapon.

“He survives by his wits, and he’s certainly got them,” Daniel said. “He’s a smart, complicated guy. He’s also a survivor.”

Survival was apparently on Mount’s mind when he asked Elsa Lambert for a $1-million business loan in 1988. Lambert’s attorney contends that the loan was made on the condition that Mount would help Lambert market and distribute a calendar called “To Thine Own Self Be True.”

The calendar was never published. Lambert later alleged in the suit, which was first reported by Fox Entertainment News, that Mount reneged on the agreement and that he misrepresented the economic condition of his company.

Mount’s attorneys have called Lambert an “arm-chair New Age practitioner” who is obsessed with their client. They maintain that Mount made timely payments on the loan and devoted considerable effort to marketing the calendar. But Lambert’s lawyers, in their effort to demonstrate that Mount is guilty of “fiscal irresponsibility,” have collected a series of potentially damaging depositions from former associates.

Gregory J. Groom, who worked for Mount between 1986 and 1989, testified that the company teetered on the edge of bankruptcy throughout his tenure. “There would be days when creditor calls would overwhelm me,” Groom is quoted as saying. James W. Brubaker, a former Mount consultant, said the company was about $2 million in debt by 1989. Robert C. Campion, who was company controller, also testified that Mount was unable to meet his financial obligations.

Campion said Mount paid himself $33,000 a month, or $396,000 a year. That’s hardly outrageous by Hollywood standards. But associates testified that Mount was usually overextended. “He is a financially irresponsible human being,” said Steven Barlevi, another former Mount employee. “And he needed someone to confront him on his excesses and extravagances so that maybe he would begin to examine how he is incapable of managing his own affairs effectively.”

Several former associates testified about alleged payments made to a former girlfriend of Mount, who is separated from his wife. The most pointed testimony came from Mount’s former personal secretary, Pegi Walsh, who maintains that Mount sent more than $100,000 to the woman in the late 1980s. Walsh said Mount frequently sent the woman travelers checks paid for with a company credit card. Mount also took the woman on vacations to Jamaica and London at company expense, Walsh testified.

Walsh also alleged that Mount instructed employees to alter financial figures on company accounts. He would “say that this figure should be this, and this figure should be that, not based on any sort of reality,” Walsh said. “He created a lot of numbers.”

Dale Kinsella, Mount’s lawyer, questioned the credibility of those who have spoken against Mount. “The case is utterly meritless,” Kinsella said. “The attacks on Thom’s integrity, which have been made by various witnesses, are outrageous, unprovable and, ironically, are being made by the very people who were charged with the responsibility for managing the company. At best, the testimony reveals that Thom paid more attention to the creative end of his business than the financial. But Thom is certainly not the only creative film producer that would fall into this category.”

Mount seems essentially to view the suit as an annoyance. He said he is eager to put it behind him and begin work on the six films that he expects to make under the Nissho Iwai deal. A possible Martin Short comedy called “The Big Plunge” has been on the back burner for four months as Mount awaited financing. He’s also considering a sequel to “Car Wash.”

Those closest to him in Hollywood are confident that Mount will survive the upcoming assault on his integrity. “Look,” said one. “We’re talking about a pretty resilient guy here.”