The Power Of The Green Light

I just read Mike Medavoy's memoir You're Only as Good as Your Next One: 100 Great Films, 100 Good Films, and 100 for Which I Should Be Shot.  I think that title is longer than any movie he made.

For decades Medavoy has been one of the top executives in Hollywood, and one often associated with "class" projects. He started as an agent and, in the 70s, became a "suit." We're so used to hearing from the people who work on the set that it's interesting to see what the other side has to say, the people who have to balance the artistic with the commercial.

He was there in the final days of the Arthur Krim-led United Artists, an organization that made deals with top producers, directors and actors and gave them a lot of freedom.  This led to a bunch of great movies, including, under Medavoy, Rocky, Annie Hall and Apocalypse Now.

The UA people were forced out by new management and formed another creative group, Orion Pictures.  They also released a lot of films they were proud of--Platoon, Amadeus, Robocop, Terminator, Dances With Wolves and many others. (This is another thing about a memoir from an executive.  A star or director can only work on so many films, but Medavoy had his hand in hundreds.) But with the industry changing it was frustrating to be working with less money and executives who were watching every dime, so Medavoy decided to move to a major studio.

Medavoy ran TriStar pictures, working under Columbia head Peter Guber. Now there was money to do huge projects, but Medavoy still felt stifled.  If there's any villain in the book, it's Guber, whose passive-aggressive management style undermined Medavoy, even as he was setting up Terminator 2, Philadelphia and Sleepless In Seattle.   So he left (or was forced to leave) and founded Phoenix Pictures, where he worked on films like The People Vs. Larry Flynt and The Thin Red Line.

The book was published in  2002 and thus misses his more recent work as a producer on films such as Black Swan and Shutter Island.  Medavoy is clearly a man who loves movies and cares about their quality. There are a lot of good anecdotes and a clear view of what it means to be in charge of a slate of films--including what turned a profit and what didn't.  The book is also a chance to settle some scores and clear up some points--for instance, Medavoy wanted Schwarzenegger in Terminator, he never insisted on O.J. Simpson, and no one tried to force Sylvester Stallone off Rocky.  If the book has a flaw, it's that, as an executive, he's worked on so many titles that he rarely spends more than a few pages on any single project.