Restoring the Luster?
How do you top sex with an apple pie? The question is unspoken but all-consuming as Universal Pictures Chairman Stacey Snider sits in a conference room with three young writer-producers. She’s listening to their pitch for a sequel to “American Pie,” the teen sex comedy about a group of high school guys and their quest to lose their virginity.
There’s a hint of urgency in the room. For a studio that’s only a year removed from one of the worst slumps in its history, a successful sequel to “American Pie” is a high priority. The $11-million film was one of the studio’s most profitable movies last year, making $200 million worldwide, and Snider has dreams of a franchise as lucrative as “Scream 1-3.” Even though the writers have just begun work on the script, the second “Pie” installment is slated for release in the summer of 2001.
Adam Herz, who wrote the original film and is supervising “Pie 2” screenwriter David H. Steinberg, sketches a scenario that would reunite the “Pie” guys the summer after their freshman year in college. To an outsider, few of the ideas inspire confidence. But if Snider is underwhelmed, she doesn’t show it. Her job, she explains later, is to keep the “architecture of the film intact. It’s up to the screenwriters to decorate the room.” Rather than dwell on plot issues, the 38-year-old studio chief reminds the writers of what gave the original film its cross-generational charm:
“There’s something about proms, whether you’re 40 or 14, that you can relate to. I’m not saying we shouldn’t try for something edgier, but the movie’s power came from [the audience saying], ‘Oh my God, that could’ve been me. I did that or I would’ve done that.’ ”
At one point, Steinberg suggests a possible plot twist in which one of the leads would bed both of his fantasy women. Snider knowingly wags her head. “See,” she says dryly. “It’s a man’s world.”
In truth, the boys’ club atmosphere in Hollywood is changing. Snider is one of three women who head major movie studios (Sherry Lansing is at Paramount Pictures; Amy Pascal is at Columbia Pictures). But Snider is the only one raising two small children at the same time.
Her corner office on the eighth floor of Universal’s Carl Laemmle Building has rows of Dr. Seuss books, a wicker basket full of toddler toys and crayon drawings by 31/2-year-old daughter Katie taped on the office door. The conference room next door has a high chair for 12-month-old Natalie, who visits mom once a week with Katie for a two-hour playtime lunch. After the toddlers and their nanny leave, Snider picks wads of mushed banana out of her blouse as she takes a call from studio owner Edgar Bronfman Jr.
“Stacey has two important jobs,” says Snider’s friend, producer Laura Ziskin, “running a studio and being a mother.”
of course one of those jobs has a considerably higher profile than the other. When Snider arrived at Universal at the end of 1996 as co-president of production, the Seagram-owned studio was viewed as a Hollywood laggard, its glory days long past. By the end of 1998, when Snider was named president (she became chairman last November), it had hit rock bottom, having staggered through a prolonged drought that continued until the release last May of “The Mummy.” Even as recently as last summer, the studio was held in such low regard that Hollywood agents were saying they no longer took A-list material there.
It’s too early to predict whether Snider will succeed in restoring the studio’s luster. Since “The Mummy,” Universal has had its ups and downs, with $100-million hits like “Notting Hill” and “American Pie” undercut by such expensive flops as “Mystery Men,” “For Love of the Game” and “Man on the Moon.” The studio is expected to have another hit with “Erin Brockovich,” with Julia Roberts; industry observers also predict big box-office for “Nutty 2: The Klumps,” due in July. But they are less enthusiastic about two other summer comedies, “The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas” and “Rocky and Bullwinkle.”
Snider’s critics complain that she has sold off the foreign rights for too many successful and potentially successful films, most notably “American Pie” and “Erin Brockovich.” They also complain that Snider, who is famous for giving voluminous notes to directors, spends too much time taking credit for her hits while distancing herself from her failures. But even her detractors acknowledge that she is decisive, trustworthy and has brought a much-needed dose of optimism to the once gloomy Universal lot. She also is credited with assembling a staff that includes a number of highly regarded executives, led by production president Kevin Misher, her closest confidant.
“Stacey is smart, has quality taste and has put together a great team,” says producer Brian Grazer, whose Imagine Entertainment is the studio’s top movie supplier. “I have such a high regard for her brain that without her asking, I invited her into the ‘Nutty 2’ editing room to see early footage. You involve her because you know she’ll have something smart to contribute.”
Snider has shown grace under pressure. Last fall, just before the release of “For Love of the Game,” star Kevin Costner publicly criticized the film, saying the studio had damaged it by trimming several scenes to get a PG-13 rating. In a rare show of backbone by a studio chief, Snider fired back at Costner publicly, saying, “Kevin’s not the director and it’s not fair for him to hijack a $50-million asset.” The movie was a flop, and Costner hasn’t spoken to Snider since, but she says that she received congratulatory phone calls for weeks afterward.
Snider is so petite that when you see her standing beside Arnold Schwarzenegger in a photo in her office, you imagine him casually hefting her over his head like a barbell. Slender and stylish, she wears black designer threads, does yoga at 6:45 three mornings a week, tries on new shoes while haggling over star salary deals and doesn’t take offense when producer Dino De Laurentiis calls her honey.
As someone who worked her way up from mail-room errand girl to studio chief, Snider has an unsentimental grasp of the bottom line of Hollywood. “We’re not in the venture capital business,” she says, sitting at her desk, feet tucked under her knees, sending e-mail and returning phone calls. “The truth is I don’t want to make a lot of risky movies. You want some predictability that can carry you through a few Hail Mary pictures. We’re excited about working with young filmmakers, but the mandate is: get as many people as possible to see the films.”
Although rumors continue to swirl that Seagrams eventually will sell the studio, Snider has quieted some of the naysayers by green-lighting a promising slate for 2001: “Corelli’s Mandolin” with Nicolas Cage; a Mike Myers comedy called “Sprockets,” plus “The Mummy 2” and “Jurassic Park 3.”
Snider defends her strategy of selling foreign rights to films as a way of shoring up the studio’s bottom line after years of box-office failure. “We did things we’d never do again, like selling off [foreign rights to] ‘American Pie.’ We’d lost buckets of money and people were losing their jobs, and in that context--in the most dire circumstances I’d ever worked in--we felt an obligation to do what was required so we could live to fight another day.”
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it wasn’t easy for Snider to win respect. in the early years of her tenure at Universal, it was not uncommon for top producers and agents to deal directly with studio president Ron Meyer, believing he was the true decision-maker. Snider acknowledges that initially she had a rocky time with Beacon Pictures, which produced “The Hurricane” and “For Love of the Game” at Universal. “But after we went shoulder-to-shoulder through the wars,” she says, “they treat me a different way. I earned my respect.”
She says she also has come “a long way” with Grazer, who often bombards her with lengthy faxes about how the studio is handling various Imagine projects. When a fax arrives one day, she immediately looks to the bottom, where Grazer has signed “Love, Brian.” “If I see ‘love’ at the bottom, that’s always good,” she quips. On another day, when she tells one of her executives to touch base with Brian about a project update, he asks: “[CAA agent] Bryan Lourd?”
“Brian Grazer,” Snider answers with a laugh. “The only Brian.”
Snider is expert at the art of gentle persuasion, stroking prickly egos and soothing delicate feelings. One day she phones a producer who has a valuable project that has been stalled, largely because of her reservations about the director attached to it. Instead of focusing on the director’s flaws, she praises the script, telling the producer he is underestimating its potential.
“After all the good that’s happened to you this year, you should follow it up with something superlative,” Snider says. “If we were talking about ‘Deuce Bigalow,’ that’s one thing. But this could really be a wonderful movie. We have to all link arms and say, ‘We can do better.’ ”
She rarely loses her sense of humor. After a testy phone call with a troublesome agent, she jokes: “He’s probably sticking pins into a doll shaped like me right now.” During the “American Pie” sequel meeting, there is much discussion of a running gag where one of the guys only meets older women, never anyone his own age. “That’s my problem, too,” Snider jokes. “Dustin Hoffman loves me. But why can’t I get Brad Pitt to love me?”
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Producer Mark Canton--whose ex-wife, producer Wendy Finerman, was Snider’s college roommate--recalls that when Snider first came to Los Angeles, all she wanted to do was open a bookstore. “That tells you a lot about her,” says Canton, who was Snider’s boss when she was at Tri-Star Pictures. “The rest of us guys are probably a little stunted compared to her--she knows she can always go back and open that bookstore and be happy.”
Snider grew up in Philadelphia, attended the University of Pennsylvania and moved to Los Angeles for law school at UCLA. She credits her parents with grounding her in both culture and business. Snider earned her law degree in 1985 but was eager to work in film. Unable to get a job at a studio, she went to work in the mail room at the Triad talent agency. “It was horrible,” she recalls. “I had a Thomas Guide and would deliver packages. They finally limited me to Beverly Hills and Century City because I’d get lost and never come back.” One day, after she delivered $50,000 in gold chains to Mr. T, she called her dad and told him she’d hit the big time.
In 1986, Snider got her first break--a job as a secretary for a young producer working for Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. Soon afterward, Peter Guber hired her as a development executive at his Guber-Peters production company. Snider ended up running the company: When Guber went to Sony, he made her head of production at Sony’s Tri-Star Pictures. “She had fire in her belly and a twinkle in her eye,” he recalls. “She was ambitious and tenacious but she always did her job with style and elegance. She’s very self-critical. She’s harder on herself than anyone else.”
It’s difficult to imagine laboring for a more difficult array of male egos than Guber, Peters, Bruckheimer and the now-deceased Simpson, whose demanding, often maniacal behavior is legend in Hollywood. But Snider has nothing but praise for all of them, even Simpson, whom she describes as “always the smartest guy in the room.” She says she never felt uncomfortable with the boys’ club atmosphere. “I’ve always worked with strong men. Maybe I put them on a pedestal because they were so passionate [about movies]. If there was mishegoss, and I’m sure there was, it was easy to ignore.”
Guber’s reign at Sony was marked by so many box-office calamities that the studio eventually was forced to take a staggering $3.2-billion write-off on its losses in 1995. Snider says the experience came in handy when Universal went through a similar down cycle: “I learned to keep my head down while the bullets were flying.”
In 1996, pregnant with her first daughter, she left Tri-Star. After the baby was born, she came to work at Universal. She has made good use of relationships forged at Tri-Star. Director Jonathan Demme, who made “Philadelphia” while Snider was there, is working with Universal on an updated version of “Charade,” with Will Smith mentioned as a likely star possibility. “Erin Brockovich” producer Stacey Sher, who became friendly with Snider while both were based at Sony, credits Snider with getting “Brockovich” made after Sony had passed on the original script.
Snider admits that the rigors of the job sometimes get her down. “I feel very isolated because so many people feel they have to play a game with me,” she says late one night, putting on makeup before a business dinner at Mr Chow. “So I’m always trying to be a person, not just the suit that’s in the chair right now.” She also works hard to make time for her kids and her husband, Gary Jones, a soundtrack producer. Saturday night is their date night; the rest of the weekend is devoted to their daughters. “I try to take the kids places, probably to overcompensate for not seeing them enough during the week. There are times when I’m just beyond fatigue and I don’t have the energy to chase them around and play. But I’m good at lazier activities, like doing puzzles and reading to them and snuggling.”
Most studio chiefs end up so insulated from reality that they lose touch with everyday moviegoers. Snider insists she’ll be an exception. (“If I was going to turn into a superficial jerk, it would’ve happened already.”) The survivor of two failed marriages, she says she’s more in touch with herself than she was a decade ago, when she put more of a premium on being in with the in-crowd. “I did what I thought you were supposed to do in this job--hang out with the cool people,” she recalls. “Hugo’s for breakfast, Le Dome for lunch and Spago for dinner. I wasn’t true to myself. I didn’t have an epiphany, I had a divorce. And it really changed my social circle. It changed me.”
After a movie fails, or when she is faced with a difficult executive decision, Snider often convenes her staff for a round of soul-searching. “We say, ‘Are we making the right choice? Are we being bamboozled? Are we believing in our own hype?’ ” Snider did a similar personal post-mortem after her last marriage failed. “I thought, as I always do: What did I do wrong? Am I going to continue to make these judgment errors, romantic or otherwise? Am I going to get a grip on myself?”
It is 6:45 p.m., late by Snider’s working mom standards, and she wants to go home and see her kids. But the phone is still ringing and her computer keeps pinging with e-mail. Even though her day hasn’t gone badly, she seems more concerned with the problem areas than the bright spots. “I’m always a little pessimistic,” she admits. “I can be optimistic or celebrate, but it’s always for other people, not myself. I gird myself for bad news. I just don’t feel the good stuff as much as I should.”
She stares out the window, down at the studio lot, full of twinkling lights in the darkness. “The Monday after ‘American Pie’ had its big opening weekend, I came in early with my assistant and we decorated the conference room with real pies. I wanted everyone to feel like we could celebrate.”
She sighs. “Of course, I didn’t feel like celebrating. I just felt relieved.”
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Patrick Goldstein is a staff writer for The Times’ Calendar section. His last story for the magazine was on Bob Shaye of New Line Cinema.