Exit stadium, enter studio
When New York Met third baseman Todd Zeile was in town recently, he did more than hit a big home run against the Dodgers. He spent a couple of days moonlighting as an actor in a teen comedy called “Dirty Deeds” that recently finished shooting around town. When I met him on the film set one morning, he was dressed as a homeless vagabond, playing a scene in which someone in a passing car hits him in the head with a flying bottle. Helped to his feet by Milo Ventimiglia, the bad-boy heartthrob from “Gilmore Girls,” Zeile, perhaps drawing on the experience of being conked in the coconut with a Roger Clemens knockdown pitch, said woozily, “Yeah, I’m OK, but somebody’s gotta teach that [jerk] a lesson.”
Although Zeile is retiring this fall after playing 16 seasons in the majors, the 38-year-old UCLA graduate isn’t crazy enough to give up baseball for an acting career. He’s even crazier: He financed “Dirty Deeds.” A longtime movie lover, Zeile has teamed up with Bill Civitella, a talent manager who used to be his neighbor in Westlake Village, to form Green Diamond Entertainment, a production company that will focus on making mainstream films and TV shows. The company is in the process of raising $50 million as operating capital. Its principal investors aren’t bankers. They’re baseball players, including Zeile’s former teammate New York Yankee slugger Jason Giambi, as well as New York Met stars Mike Piazza, Tom Glavine, Al Leiter and Cliff Floyd.
“I’ve always been fascinated with the film business, and this seemed like a good way to make a start,” says Zeile, who raised roughly $2.5 million for “Dirty Deeds.” “We’re in the midst of raising a big enough line of credit so that, if need be, we could have two films in production at the same time. I talked to some of my friends in baseball, and everyone was really enthusiastic about being involved.”
Baseball players have come a long way from the days when they’d lend their names to saloons and steak joints after they retired. Many keep a close eye on financial issues and operate independent investments outside of the game. Zeile, for example, has had considerable success as a partner in a real estate development company and a company that leases private jets. As Dan Kaplow, who just joined Green Diamond as head of production, says, “Put it this way: Todd makes more money outside of baseball than in it.”
When Zeile was at spring training and on the road early in the season, he’d phone Civitella each day for progress reports, checking to see if the film was on schedule and on budget. “Film is probably as tenuous an occupation as the one I have now,” he says. “We’re definitely trying to not get in over our heads.” One reason they chose a teen comedy as their company’s first production, Zeile says, “is that it’s a genre where you can make a film for a modest budget but still have an opportunity of reaching a broad target audience.”
Civitella, who began his career as a drummer and road manager for singer Gloria Gaynor before becoming a personal manager, says they are choosy about projects. “We don’t want to dive into the pool and hit concrete. But we have passion and common sense, so if we can find great talent and stories, we think we’ll go far.”
How far they go will depend as much on luck as on good judgment about scripts or talent. Hollywood has led as many wealthy outsiders to ruin as the mermaids and sirens who lured sailors to their death in innumerable folk tales. In recent decades, money poured into the business from Japan, France and Germany, leaving a trail of bad movies, broken dreams and bankruptcies. But even after foreign investors began backing off, a new generation of deep-pocketed entrepreneurs has stepped in to take their place, with varying degrees of success.
Real estate heir Steve Bing lost a bundle bankrolling “The Big Bounce” this year; he’s now invested $80 million in “The Polar Express,” starring Tom Hanks, due this November. Gateway co-founder Norm Waitt Jr. has backed a host of losers but also hit it big with “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” FedEx chairman Fred Smith’s Alcon Entertainment has had hits and misses, among them “Insomnia” and “The Affair of the Necklace.” After losing $40 million owning the Pittsburgh Penguin hockey team, high-tech tycoon Roger Marino has spent nearly that much funding a slate of art-house films, including the upcoming “Door in the Floor” and “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead.” Phil Anschutz, who owns the Los Angeles Kings as well as Regal Cinemas, the country’s largest theater chain, has been bankrolling inspirational, family-oriented entertainment, leading him to spend $100 million on the Jackie Chan-starring remake of “Around the World in 80 Days” that’s due out next week.
At a time when traditional investment money has dried up, Hollywood has welcomed these new millionaires with open arms. With film studios now owned by giant, risk-averse media conglomerates, they have become increasingly reliant on other people’s money. In the raft of stories about the phenomenal success of “The Lord of the Rings,” it was rarely noted that the Oscar-winning trilogy might never have happened without an influx of nearly $200 million in tax money from Germany and New Zealand. This outside investment gave New Line downside protection in case the first installment had flopped.
Most studios today operate on fixed income from their parent companies. A key reason for Paramount’s recent run of failures -- and the ouster of studio chief Jonathan Dolgen -- was that Viacom simply didn’t give it enough money to make high-risk/high-reward movies, forcing the studio to subsist on modestly budgeted comedies and thrillers. In an era when the average film costs $95 million to produce and market, few studios have the resources to make more than 10 or so films without the help of outside investors.
“Every studio is using someone else’s money to stretch the nine or 10 movies they fully finance into the 18 or 20 films that make up a true diversified slate,” says Ken Kamins, who manages Peter Jackson and played a pivotal role in assembling the “Lord of the Rings” financing package. “So they’re always looking for an outside entrepreneur with the capital wherewithal and the emotional commitment to help bankroll some of those additional films.”
Having a diversified slate gives the studio a huge advantage over an individual entrepreneur. “The act of making a movie is extremely risky, but the act of making 25 movies is almost entirely predictable,” explains Bob Yari, a real estate developer who has financed perhaps the largest slate of films of any outside investor. “There’s a huge amount of historical data that shows that if you invest in just one picture, you’re in trouble, whereas if you have a slate of films, it’s likely that the hits will make up for the ones that don’t perform.”
To give himself the best odds for survival, Yari has created several independently run film companies, each with a different management philosophy. Yari has a fascinating theory about why showbiz neophytes crash and burn so often, one that Zeile and his baseball teammates would be wise to absorb. Conventional wisdom holds that newcomers don’t grasp Hollywood’s insular, often cutthroat culture. But Yari believes that what makes Hollywood different from other businesses is that the entrepreneurs who really drive the industry -- the producers, agents and managers -- are salesmen geared toward attracting investors, not toward ensuring that they turn a profit.
“They have a completely different mind-set,” he says. “They’re driven more by making a good film than whether the movie makes money or not. The money most people make in Hollywood is built into the film’s budget, via actor and producer’s fees or the agent’s percentage. But it’s not that way for the investor. For us to make money, the movie has to make money.”
Zeile has one thing going for him: His personal taste in films is diverse, ranging from star-driven hits such as “Forrest Gump” to horror (“The Silence of the Lambs”) to art-house favorites like “In America” and “Monster.”
His favorite baseball movie -- how could we not ask -- is “The Natural,” though he admits that “if you surveyed 20 players, you’d probably get a lot of fans of ‘Field of Dreams’ and ‘Bull Durham.’ ”
Baseball players do have one thing in common with filmmakers and studio chiefs: They know that today’s hit streak will be followed by tomorrow’s slump. Zeile seems prepared to handle the inevitable ups and downs. “Everybody knows this is a speculative business, especially for first-timers,” he says. “That’s why we’re not putting all our eggs in one basket. Luckily I’m working with people who know a lot more than I do about the movie business. But I’m eager to learn.”
The Big Picture runs Tuesday in Calendar. E-mail questions, ideas or criticism to patrick.goldstein@latimes.com.