The Studio Shuffle : JOE ROTH

Then: Chairman of 20th Century Fox, 1989-1992.

Now: After heading up his own Caravan Pictures, was appointed chairman of Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, September, 1994.

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Before accepting the job of chairman of Fox, Roth had never received a weekly paycheck. For a maverick producer with a deep distrust of the system, the job was a turning point in more ways than one.

“Part of me felt like I was in a straitjacket,” Roth, 46, recalls. “I was more reactive than active. Half of each week was spent in preordained meetings. My time wasn’t my own. When I accepted the job, I figured I could do it on my terms--which turned out to be half true. Though the job doesn’t have to define you, a lot of people depend on you to get pictures made, so it’s very hard to draw lines. It was much, much, much more of an adjustment than I deluded myself into thinking it would be.”

There was a flip side, though. Having a desk job, however consuming, gave him stability and stronger family ties--at least in his mind. (“ I thought I had a life . . . my wife disagreed.”) It also fostered a sense of community he’d been missing in his life as a producer. “For the first time, I felt like the leader of a team,” he recalls. “I made new friends which, in your 40s, are very hard to come by.”

The success of “Home Alone,” “Sleeping With the Enemy” and “Die Hard 2” propelled Fox’s market share from No. 6 to No. 1 for 40 weeks, however, and complications set in. “People treated me with such elevated respect that I ended up trusting no one,” Roth admits. “Surrounded by ‘yes’ people, I found it difficult to take counsel. And I didn’t allow myself to enjoy the good times, which I was naive enough to think would never end. I have tremendous regret about that.”

Life after Fox, Roth says, required little adjustment. Putting together 12 Caravan movies in 18 months kept him busy. Agents, excited at the prospect of another buyer in town, kept his call sheet full. And since he says he has always gone to “maybe one party a year,” there was no visible change on the social front.

Still, something somehow had changed. “Making movies lost some of its magic,” he says. “Memories of locations proved to be better than the reality. To my surprise, I missed a lot of what comes with being studio chief--the broader palette, the strategic planning, the challenge, the power.”

Wearing his studio chief cap feels different this time. Roth is operating less defensively, trying to live in the moment. “If ‘The Santa Clause’ takes off, I’ll go through the roof,” he said before the release of Disney’s smash film. “If the movie falls short, I’d crash a bit. I tease (former Disney studio chief) Jeffrey Katzenberg and (MCA motion picture chairman) Tom Pollock about protecting themselves so well from the swings in the business that they’ve lost the highs and the lows. If you can shrug off success and failure so easily, it’s hard to be passionate enough to make movies.

“Taking on this job is a lot like having kids,” Roth concludes. “It’s all about extremes. The investment is huge but the payoff is there. Unfortunately, the corporate aspect gives things an edge.”