Tartikoff: A ‘Nice Guy’ Who Didn’t Finish : Movies: Paramount boss leaves amid signs things are amiss. But some say he was just starting to turn studio around despite lack of high-profile holiday films.

For weeks, Paramount Pictures has been the butt of a cruel joke circulating in Hollywood that goes like this: Coming soon to a theater near you this Christmas from Paramount . . . nothing !

As with most jokes, there is an element of truth to it. Rival studios are stockpiling heavy artillery for the lucrative holiday season. For example, 20th Century Fox is ready to unleash a potential mega-hit in “Home Alone 2” and high-profile projects in “Hoffa” starring Jack Nicholson and “Toys” featuring Robin Williams. Paramount, meanwhile, is reportedly rushing to finish a Steve Martin film called “Leap of Faith” as its lone Christmas offering.

Even last week, as Brandon Tartikoff stunned the entertainment industry with the announcement that he was stepping down as head of Paramount Pictures, studio personnel were working overtime to get the movie finished for its scheduled Dec. 18 release. For a major studio to have only one Christmas movie, it has been said, was unbelievable.

Few in Hollywood doubted that a significant reason in Tartikoff’s decision to leave after only 15 months was the health of his 9-year-old daughter, who was severely injured in a 1991 automobile crash and now requires rehabilitation therapy. But at the Paramount lot, there were undercurrents that things were amiss, that Tartikoff--for all his creative powers--was unable to get the studio to kick into gear.

A recent string of bombs such as “Bebe’s Kids,” “Whispers in the Dark,” “School Ties” and “1492” made studio morale sink, and even a week before his official announcement there were rumblings that Tartikoff would be gone before the end of the month.

Although Tartikoff’s efforts at Paramount will no doubt go down in the annals of the film industry as scattered to mixed, several sources say he was making strides to turn things around during the last months of his chairmanship. Tartikoff, who had great success transforming stodgy NBC into a hipper, more youthful hit factory, was apparently dead set on giving Paramount a similar make-over. He was working hard to attract younger talent to the studio (a development deal with Tom Cruise was in the works), and was beginning to green-light sexy, cutting-edge material such as the Sharon Stone-William Baldwin voyeurism thriller, “Sliver.”

Tartikoff was also given high marks within the studio for landing the prestige Cruise-Sydney Pollock project “The Firm,” which begins shooting later this month. Last week, he nabbed John Landis to direct the long-languishing Eddie Murphy property “Beverly Hills Cop III,” and was to receive the revised script for Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan epic “Clear and Present Danger” in two weeks, according to producer Mace Neufeld.

But for every victory there was a misstep. Despite attempts to kick-start production of “Wayne’s World II,” a much-needed cash cow for the studio, the project is still in the planning stages, say sources. Tartikoff, it is said, was never really able to establish a firm power base at the studio because of reported clashes with Stanley R. Jaffe, president of Paramount Communications, the film studio’s parent company in New York. Both men have denied this.

Some sources point toward the approved-then-unplugged film “The Substitute”--a campy thriller about a deranged teacher--as evidence of this fact. Tartikoff reportedly approved the low-budget picture, which was to be directed by “Death Becomes Her” screenwriter Martin Donovan. But after the box-office failure of “Pet Sematary II”--a film in line with Tartikoff’s low-budget, high-concept, high-return philosophy--New York Paramount powers that be flunked “The Substitute,” an action that was considered of the “egg on the face” variety.

If nothing else, the Christmas movie snafu served as a red flag that something was wrong.

Tartikoff was said to have wanted director Adrian Lyne to speed up production of “Indecent Proposal,” a comedy starring Robert Redford, Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson. Lyne said there was no way he could do it, and Tartikoff acquiesced, pushing the release date back to spring.

Then Tartikoff considered moving “The Temp” into one of Paramount’s Christmas release slots. But the material--a secretary version of “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle”--was not exactly holiday fare, and it was moved to a slot early next year.

By this time, Tartikoff was said to be frantically searching for something to put in the Christmas slot, and all he was left with was “Leap of Faith,” which didn’t begin shooting until late summer. Studio spokesmen last week said the film was scheduled for release Dec. 18, but rumors persisted that it might not make it.

Although several Paramount sources interviewed for this story offered tributes about Tartikoff’s personality (“He is a really, really nice guy” was a refrain heard over and over again), executives who worked at the studio during the Tartikoff regime were split about how effective he was as a studio head.

“Because he was from TV, he was all about high concept,” said one executive. “That’s good, to a certain degree, because that’s how we got ‘Wayne’s World.’ But films aren’t television. There’s not so much an emphasis on quality on TV. With movies, you have to aim for meticulous perfection, and that was never one of his goals.”

One executive stated that he felt Tartikoff never truly grasped the motion picture process until the last months of his reign. “He seemed very frustrated over the development process of a film, which is very slow and painstaking. He was enthusiastic, wanted to rush everything, but a $20-million film is not a made-for-TV movie. He tried to reinvent the wheel at the beginning, and look what we got--’All I Want for Christmas.’ ”

None of the executives interviewed, however, faulted Tartikoff for his energy or desire to succeed. “He tried to return every single phone call himself and, as a result, there was a tremendous lag time sometimes between information and the studio. His overall ideal was nice--he would take meetings even with lower-rung agents because he wanted to involve everyone in the process. He allowed himself to be pulled in too many directions.”

Tartikoff’s television connections and “TV-type ideas” were met with giggles and dread in some corners of the Paramount lot. Some reportedly were “stunned and horrified” at his ideas and wonder now that he is gone if some of his pet projects in development will come to fruition.

The future of Tartikoff’s “Hill Street Blues--The Movie,” said one source, “seems doomed now, and boy, are we glad.”

Tartikoff also was reportedly high on a big-screen action adventure project for NBC “Hunter” star Fred Dryer called “And Justice For One,” which one executive called “the absolute worst thing I have ever read. But Brandon apparently felt the public was just dying for a Fred Dryer movie.”

“Fire in the Sky,” a Tartikoff movie that will hit cineplexes next year, was also met with skepticism at the studio. A UFO movie in which the lead characters are said to see “scary-like monster faces in the clouds,” the project, which stars James Garner, was called by one source “something you’ve seen on made-for-TV movies 15 times.”

“I think Brandon was a little naive about the politics of a film studio,” said one entertainment attorney. “He’d meet with somebody he’d known a long time and say ‘I love it. Fabulous.’ Then he would take it to his staff and they’d hate it.”