Some Former Hollywood Executives Are Finding It Lonely at the Bottom

Hollywood can be a lonely place if you’re unemployed. Especially if you were a top-level executive at one of the six major studios and were used to all the perks, clout, attention and big bucks that go with such a highly coveted position.

For one thing, your phone sheet goes from 80 to 90 calls a day to 10 to 20, sometimes fewer. And golf, teaching and charity work take on new meaning.

“It’s a real violent change to your system--both physically and mentally,” says one former studio head.

At the moment, there are no less than a dozen formerly high-paid senior executives from Hollywood’s biggest entertainment companies out on the street--so to speak. It is a particularly vulnerable time for executives because of ownership and regime changes at several of the industry’s major players.

Because of a purging of its former top management, Sony Pictures is littered with casualties, among them President Alan Levine, movie Chairman Mark Canton, movie President Fred Bernstein, Executive Vice President Dennis Miller, television head Mel Harris and Sony Corp. of America chief Michael P. Schulhof.

Ownership and regime changes at Universal Studios put several of that company’s top executives out of work, including motion picture Chairman Tom Pollock, theme parks head Ron Bension and TV group chief Tom Wertheimer. Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer, also under new ownership, replaced its president, Mike Marcus.

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Time Warner ousted Michael Fuchs, its head of HBO and music, and Disney showed the door to Dennis Hightower, its TV and Telecommunications president--though neither displacement had anything to do with a change in higher management.

Then, of course, there’s Hollywood’s most notorious out-of-work executive, Michael Ovitz, who didn’t work out as Michael Eisner’s No. 2 at Disney.

You needn’t feel badly for most of these down-and-out individuals; most walked away with multimillion-dollar severance packages. In the case of Ovitz, it’s tens of millions.

These folks (the ones from the West Coast anyway) still live in Malibu or Brentwood (or Montecito, in the case of Pollock), still drive Range Rovers or Mercedeses, still eat at Chinois and Ivy and still vacation in St. Bart’s and Aspen.

Yet life for them changed radically in a nanosecond. Most are driven to lives of success and accomplishment and had little or no warning of their sudden transitions to civilian life.

Instantaneously, a top executive can go from having serious clout to having none.

Leaving a supercharged job where one is responsible for the corporate operations of multibillion-dollar companies, for managing thousands of employees, for making daily decisions with immediate impact, to sit at home or in a quiet office where that faithful assistant hands you a phone sheet with a tenth the calls you used to get has to be major shock.

“Initially, it was painful and I felt disenfranchised--I felt anxious and lost,” says a former top studio executive.

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It’s particularly difficult for those who’ve worked in such high-pressure jobs for years or decades, moving at 100 mph, to downshift to a slower pace.

“You’re always running. Never walking,” says one, who actually found the slower pace a welcome change after suffering a major “shock to the system” at first.

Friends of Canton say he now plays golf three times a week, which is not exactly easy to visualize for a man who hasn’t sat still for 25 years.

One former studio executive said: “Frankly, it’s a bore. I’m an action junkie.”

Although it’s never fun to be unemployed, this is a particularly bad time to be out of a top studio post, because there are no immediate vacancies at that level and don’t appear to be any on the horizon--though in this town, one never knows.

Many former corporate executives--including Ovitz, 50, Schulhof, 54 and Fuchs, 51--are exploring entrepreneurial ventures and talking to potential investors.

All three are dodging the public spotlight they came to loathe. Reached in his New York office, Fuchs refused to discuss anything having to do with business options he is weighing, but said, “I’ll talk about anything else--politics, my recent trip to China. . . .”

The only news that’s surfaced about Fuchs, who has been out of work since November 1995, is that he became a major investor in Auto-By-Tel, an online Internet car-search company headed by Southern California auto dealer Pete Ellis. Fuchs also sits on the boards of Marvel Entertainment, which recently filed for bankruptcy, and entertainment technology company Imax Corp.

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A rumor circulating in New York a few weeks ago said Fuchs was contemplating making an investment in October Films--the company behind such Oscar-nominated movies as “Secrets and Lies” and “Breaking the Waves”--but changed his mind. Fuchs denied it.

A brief news item recently in the back pages of Daily Variety said Schulhof had invested in Jfax, a New York-based technology company. He is also in the process of exploring various other investments both inside and outside the entertainment business. Wall Street investment banker Lisbeth Barron told The Times she is working with Schulhof to try to build a base of assets for him.

Schulhof invested in Sportsline, an Internet sports information service. He introduced the service to CBS, which bought a 22% stake in the company for $100 million.

Meanwhile, few in Hollywood seem to know what exactly Ovitz is up to, other than that he’s traveling a lot.

Last month, Ovitz received some attention when he pledged $25 million to help rebuild the earthquake-damaged UCLA Medical Center. Some industry skeptics thought it suspicious that the announcement came only days before Disney’s annual shareholder meeting, where, as expected, the subject of Ovitz’s mega-size “golden parachute” caused sparks to fly.

Other former studio executives--Canton and Marcus, in particular--are said to be weighing options of striking out on their own. Each is looking at the possibility of forming his own production company.

Even in Hollywood, true friends will stand by you. But there’s no question that being in a position of power helps win those friends and that not being in one doesn’t exactly attract new ones.

“You get forgotten quickly,” said a onetime studio head. “That’s why I know to show up and be in places--to be out there. I’m trying to keep visible.”

If all were to be honest, they’d tell you that what they sorely miss is being in a position of power.

“You’re a king and you become the court jester,” said one former studio executive. “You live like no one lives.”

And despite the relentless pressure and news media scrutiny--which most of them hate--if asked to take another top executive post tomorrow, few would turn it down. “I’d probably put the tie on. I don’t know any of us who would resist.”