Field Ready for a More Active Role in Movies

If it’s hard to picture Ted Field schmoozing it up with a Hollywood agent over dinner at Mortons, look again. The normally press-shy, once-elusive music and film impresario says he’s now “emerging from the shadows and into the forefront” of his 14-year-old movie company, Interscope Communications, to try to make it as “hip and cool” as his successful record business.

Two months ago, Field and his 10-year producing partner, Robert Cort--with whom he has made nearly 40 movies--amicably parted ways. Cort felt that under PolyGram’s 51% ownership of Interscope, his role had become too corporate. He and another longtime Interscope executive, David Madden, have set up a production shop at Paramount.

To fill the vacuum, Field promoted his 10-year production executive Scott Kroopf head of production and Michael Helfant head of business operations and acquisitions, and has committed himself to a more active role at the company he founded in 1982.

The 43-year-old heir to the Marshall Field fortune says he wants to be “back on the front lines” as he was when he began in the movie business 15 years ago making such films as “Revenge of the Nerds” and “Turk 182.”

“People have always had this improper image of me as this businessman who is sort of an investor in Interscope,” says Field, whose personal worth is estimated at more than $750 million, according to the 1995 Forbes 400 issue.

“I’ve proven I can start a record company from scratch and run it day to day; now I want to prove I can run a movie company day to day,” adds Field, who now owns 49% of Interscope after acquiring Cort’s 12% stake. Field says he wants to bring the movie company more in sync with the risk-taking, cutting-edge character of his 5-year-old rock and rap label, Interscope Records, which distributes for such acts as Death Row’s Snoop Doggy Dogg and Dr. Dre and Nothing TVT’s Nine Inch Nails.

The label’s music is so controversial that Time Warner Inc. recently severed ties with the company after a political uproar. Field and his partner, Jimmy Iovine, bought back Warner’s 50% share for an estimated $100 million and now are shopping for a new partner.

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Unlike the music label, the film company has produced middle-of-the-road movies, which have died at the box office more often than not.

In the late 1980s and early ‘90s, Interscope hit the jackpot with such high-concept comedies as “Three Men and a Baby,” “Outrageous Fortune” and “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” and its sequel. Its most profitable and last bona fide hit, “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,” came nearly four years ago, followed by a dry spell of half a dozen duds, including “Roommates,” “The Air Up There” and “Operation Dumbo Drop.”

Field says that “after watching the last six pictures we’ve done not do a lot of business, I’ve decided to bifurcate our slate into two kinds of product.” One type will be “adventuresome, filmmaker-driven” movies costing less than $12 million each, the others more expensive movie star-driven vehicles.

“The reason I decided to [divide] the movies into these two specialties,” explains Field, “is that I really believe that the middle tier of the business doesn’t work,” as Interscope found out the hard way.

On the more daring side, Field says he wants to make the kind of films that “take some chances, that are more topical and arguably less down the middle,” and are more akin to the edgy product associated with his music artists.

“I want to establish that identity for Interscope,” says Field, noting, for instance, that if Dr. Dre were to direct a movie, “I would basically give him the budget he needed--as long as it was under $12 million--and show up at the premiere.”

Just as Field is known to give his artists lots of creative freedom, he says he’s prepared to extend that same latitude to filmmakers on the lower-budget pictures.

“I really believe that when you get into business with a filmmaker, it’s kind of like donating money to a politician,” said Field, a political activist and major contributor to the Democratic Party. “One thing I’ve always done is find out what they believe in advance, and once I decide to support them, I don’t interfere.”

Field wants to package the bigger-budget films with major movie stars--also a departure for a company that has mostly made movies with less than A-list talent. An exception is the upcoming $68-million family adventure “Jumanji,” starring Robin Williams, which was 100% financed and will be released by TriStar Pictures on Friday.

The fundamental difference between the old and new Interscope, Field explains, is that “we’re now willing to pay the star prices.”

Despite Interscope’s cold streak since PolyGram acquired controlling interest in the company in 1992 for $35 million, Field says he has the continued support of PolyGram Chief Executive Alain Levy and PolyGram Filmed Entertainment President Michael Kuhn, who have “a very long view of the business.”

PolyGram, he says, is willing to bankroll the bigger movies as long as they show potential overseas.

Another new tack Field is taking is to appeal to the filmmaking community to help determine what movies Interscope should be making. “I don’t want my taste to be the only arbiter of what gets made,” he says. “The first constituency I have to sell to is filmmakers who can tell me that a piece of material is not good enough to be made into a movie . . . or ‘This is a great script.’ ”

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Field also says that for the first time since he began in the business, producing the 1984 hit “Revenge of the Nerds” and 1985’s less successful “Turk 182,” he is “enlisting the support of all the agents” to help steer talent and material to Interscope.

“I really believe agents are the fulcrum of the business around which everything turns,” says Field, noting that he now takes calls from the most junior agents and has lunches and dinners with various agents regularly.

The dramatic change in strategy and direction represents a personal about-face for Field, who has long been an enigma and a somewhat intimidating figure in Hollywood. With his slicked-back salt-and-pepper hair and cropped ponytail, Field has behaved more like an intense underground rebel than a mogul. He has long shied away from interviews and publicity.

To the contrary, Field is known to guard his privacy, and some say he is obsessed about personal security.

Even his lavish parties and charitable events populated with young, beautiful people from the music and fashion worlds are surrounded by security guards.

On Saturday night, at his ultra-hip private holiday bash at Santa Monica’s art complex, Bergamot Station, Field hosted a coming-out party of sorts for Interscope, which was attended by a number of agents, managers and studio executives.

“The movie business is something I’m deeply, deeply committed to. It’s always been and always will be my first love,” says Field, a film buff who counts among his heroes directors Martin Scorsese and Stanley Kubrick.

Asked whether it bothered him not to own the company outright, he says: “It’s no accident that all of us--the Castle Rocks, New Lines and Miramaxes--have ended up being absorbed by big corporations. . . . The little guy can’t survive. It’s a business of behemoths.”

Field, who has two years to go on his employment contract with PolyGram, says he feels comfortable being associated with an enterprise that aspires to be a global player with its own distribution network in place by early 1997.

Field says he easily relates to the lead character in Interscope’s upcoming movie “Mr. Holland’s Opus”: a man with big dreams who ultimately realizes that what he does day to day--teaching music--is fulfilling enough.

“Five or 10 years ago, I had the big dream of being Ted Turner instead of Ted Field,” concedes the producer. “But people like Turner and Rupert Murdoch . . . don’t put together movies day to day and pick songs.”

However, the cocksure Field doesn’t deny that “when I’m 55 or 60, there’s no telling what kind of bigger situation I might try to put together.”