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What dreams may come >> Mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg refutes the rumour mill by MATTHEW HAYS
But when one considers who the three were, it doesn't seem like out-and-outright madness. It was four years ago that Hollywood's most successful filmmaker Steven Spielberg, music mogul David Geffen and former Disney exec and animation guru Jeffrey Katzenberg held a packed press conference to announce they were doing just that. DreamWorks would be a brand new break from the old-school studios, an effort to give artists more freedom and create something truly unconventional and independent. Thus far, the fledgling studio has had a mixed track record. Their first feature, the George Clooney-Nicole Kidman action vehicle The Peacemaker, met with dismal reviews and weak box office. Amistad, Spielberg's effort to do for slavery what Schindler's List did for the Holocaust, also met with lukewarm reviews and disappointing audience numbers. With the past few months have come some breakthroughs: the disaster movie Deep Impact; Spielberg's anti-war epic Saving Private Ryan, virtually every critic's fave for Oscar time; and Antz, the computer-animated musical comedy voiced by Woody Allen, Sharon Stone and Gene Hackman. DreamWorks has also faced intense media scrutiny. The three corralled a collective two billion dollars to bankroll the studio, making the stakes pretty darn high. Entertainment media love this sort of risk; the gamble makes for great press. Last year, Vanity Fair printed a much-quoted story slamming the studio, titled "Stop dreaming, start working." Disney CEO Michael Eisner wrote a tell-all book about his time heading the company, including details about the power struggles he'd had with Katzenberg (none of which were particularly flattering to the DreamWorks co-founder). And this December's issue of Premiere magazine includes a speculative piece about the woes of the Dreamers and cites figures about the money the company has already spent. Prince to the rescue Thus DreamWorks--and especially Katzenberg--has a lot banking on their latest animated feature, The Prince of Egypt, the highly ambitious retelling of the biblical story of Moses. The film is a glitzy, big-budget showpiece, featuring an all-star cast of voiceovers including Val Kilmer, Steve Martin and Sandra Bullock. Katzenberg ventured to Toronto last week to pump up the movie's prospects. He was flanked by an entourage of DreamWorks staff, all of whom enthused endlessly about the experience of making the film. Katzenberg spent as much time refuting tales that had made their way into the press as he did discussing The Prince of Egypt. "We've never said what the budget of this film was," he says, contesting various figures that have been reported. "Yes, this movie's expensive, but movies like these are generally expensive to make. DreamWorks is one of the few places in Hollywood where the money does not sit on top of the enterprise every day. There's isn't a decision the film's producer doesn't know about, but if you were to ask her the budget of the film, she wouldn't know. She wouldn't be constrained by the budget whatsoever." The Premiere article also printed allegations that all has not been so dreamy between the three partners. The article cites rumours that Spielberg had a disagreement with Katzenberg and Geffen over how much money the filmmaker should take home for his next feature. Also hogwash, reports Katzenberg: "In four years, Steven, David and I have had not one single genuine disagreement about anything. Sure, we have disagreements. I've been married 25 years and there are things you're passionate about, and that's a healthy catharsis that goes on in a relationship. But we haven't had the need to do that. We each have our areas of expertise which we tend to." Jerry Falwell, critic Katzenberg says there was more media distortion after the filmmakers extensively researched the biblical myth of Moses. DreamWorks consulted with almost 700 scholars, teachers, religious leaders, educators and theologians in an effort to make the story conclusive. After one religious leader was flown in to screen the film and make comments, he attended a media event in Los Angeles. A reporter asked why he was there, and he responded that he had just seen one of the greatest family films ever made. The leader turned out to be none other than the Reverend Jerry Falwell. The media went to town: the far-right-wing Falwell was praising DreamWorks, the decidedly Democrat company with major lib-left-cause-supporting founders like Spielberg and the openly gay Geffen. "Every time I hear about Jerry, my back goes up," Katzenberg says now. "Not because he wasn't valuable or intelligent or articulate, because he was all of those things. But because out of the almost 700 people we spoke to, about five per cent were religious leaders. 95 per cent of them were skilled in other ways. We also went to Harvard Divinity School, where we spoke to respected scholars from all denominations." For all the hype surrounding DreamWorks, studio employees do report a significant difference from the major studios in terms of a work environment. The big question surrounding DreamWorks is, if it grows, can it stay cool? "I hope we can maintain that as we mature. I want people to have that sense of security--that DreamWorks is going to be around forever and that we're going to be able to stretch those creative ideas. A sense that even if Prince of Egypt does go down the tubes, which could happen, that it's not going to take the company down. That David, Steven and I are committed to this Big Idea, of changing the way animation is perceived. If this one isn't the breakthrough then the next one will be. "It's a big challenge." The Prince of Egypt opens December 18
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It almost sounds insane: in the era of corporate mergers, bigger-is-better, megabuck movie productions, put three independent heads together and create an independent studio based in Hollywood.