High-tech demi-billionaire Roger Marino, co-founder of giant EMC Corp (Disc Data Storage), who lost $40 million on the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team, and produced "Ciao America", on which he spent $5 million, that is still seeking distribution, is a different type of Film Producer that Hollywood has been used to in the past, coming from totally disassociated fields, WITH their OWN money.
Some bear the name
of their illustrious Forbes 400 families, such as Pritzker, Sturm and Pohlad.
Others range from sports mogul Phil Anschutz, who has two separate movie
companies, to Federal Express founder Fred Smith, EBay co-founder Jeff
Skoll, Internet tycoons Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban (who also owns the Dallas
Mavericks), Gateway computer co-founder Norm Waitt, Money Store entrepreneur
Marc Turtletaub, Pollinex heir and theatrical producer Jim Stern, and real
estate developer Bob Yari.
Marino has a slate
of five upcoming promising pictures.
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BIG-MONEY
DREAMERS
These multimillionaires are Hollywood outsiders hoping to be insiders. Are they here for the long haul?
Los Angeles Times
By Rachel Abramowitz
Staff Writer
April 13, 2003
When high-tech demi-billionaire Roger Marino sold his beloved Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team in 1999 -- after losing more than $40 million -- he jokingly told the press that he was thinking about going into the movie business, "because I hear you can lose a lot of money doing that."
Four years later, he is ensconced in a cavernous warehouse space in New York's Chelsea district, which houses a raft of independent film companies, including his own Revere Pictures, named after his Massachusetts hometown.
He looks like a benevolent grandfather in this beehive of trendy twentysomethings. The blunt-talking entrepreneur, who counts Vittorio De Sica's neorealist masterpiece "The Bicycle Thief" as his favorite movie, is amused to find himself as a producer -- along with partner and indie director Michael Corrente -- of an upcoming slate of five promising pictures, including an adaptation of John Irving's book "A Widow for One Year," starring Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger.
In just two years, the co-founder of high-tech giant EMC Corp. has already spent close to what he spent on the Penguins. "We're in the ballpark," he says, but at least, as the movies have not yet debuted, he has a chance of getting his money back. Money is not entirely his motivating force. Like many less-solvent Hollywood wannabes, his fantasy is to direct. "I'm learning, I'm learning," he says in his blue-collar Boston accent. "Right now, I don't know anything, but I think I can do it. Maybe tomorrow."
Marino just happens to be one of the more forthright of a new wave of multimillionaires flooding into Hollywood. Unlike investors in the recent past -- the French, the Japanese, the Germans, many of whom have lost vast sums of marks and yen in Hollywood's whirlpools -- this is home-grown talent, armed with their daddies' fortunes or megabucks made in the stock-market boom of the 1990s. Some bear the name of their illustrious Forbes 400 families, such as Pritzker, Sturm and Pohlad. Others range from sports mogul Phil Anschutz, who has two separate movie companies, to Federal Express founder Fred Smith, EBay co-founder Jeff Skoll, Internet tycoons Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban (who also owns the Dallas Mavericks), Gateway computer co-founder Norm Waitt, Money Store entrepreneur Marc Turtletaub, Pollinex heir and theatrical producer Jim Stern, and real estate developer Bob Yari.
"There are a lot of financiers floating around whose principals have never made a movie in their life," notes William Morris Independent co-head Rena Ronson, who keeps a rolling list of potential equity investors in her office.
For every rich guy with a million in his pocket, there's a different plan for storming Hollywood, from longtime movie buffs dabbling in their dream profession, to entrepreneurs still hunting for the ever-elusive synergy between hardware and content, to strict bottom-liners hoping to exploit weaknesses in the cash-strapped studio system. With the stock market in the doldrums, investing in Hollywood seems comparatively less risky than it did five years ago, and certainly more fun.
The question is, do dilettantes, or at least neophytes, have the sharp elbows and obsessive focus necessary for playing in Hollywood's sandbox? Will they kill or be killed?....
...mogul Ted Turner was paid $636 for his one-day cameo in "Gods and Generals," a small rebate for the $90 million he shelled out to produce the Civil War flop. Turner is hardly the only savvy player who's gambled big and stumbled.
When a casting dispute led Paramount to drop out as a domestic partner on a new version of Jules Verne's classic "Around the World in 80 Days," billionaire Anschutz was left holding the bag on the $100-million-plus production. What's more, his company, Walden Media, was already obliged to give Jackie Chan $18 million in a pay-or-play contract. Even Disney, where Anschutz has a deal, doesn't want the film, but the movie started shooting anyway, with hopes of finding studio distribution when it's completed. If worst comes to worst, there's always a fallback position: Anschutz owns 6,000 movie theaters in the U.S. and could theoretically self-distribute.
Although the studios miscalculate on a daily basis, Hollywood seems to expect outsiders to fail. The industry does its best to validate its own perception, historically treating multimillionaires as fatted calves there only to be fleeced, or worse.
"If you come to Hollywood and you have a big fat checkbook, you're going to get a lot of attention. It's a big vacuum for capital," says Yari, who's just started three film companies. Unlike some equity investors, the low-key Yari, who worked as a Hollywood assistant and movie director before bailing out to make a fortune in real estate, sounds as if he could give a dissertation on film finance. "If you don't know what you're doing, they'll dry you out and throw you out."...
Marino is well aware of the pitfalls of the business, having started out by investing $5 million in the independent "Ciao America," which hasn't been able to find distribution. He did rent out a theater in Revere to show it to his 250 closest friends, and says, "We're going to pay people to put it on the screen because I don't want to give up on it.
"Our goal is to hit singles and doubles, break even and make a little money," Marino says. "You know a lot of people love movies. I try to put them in my position. If you love movies and you have enough money to do what you want to do, why not be in the movie business?"
Big-money
dreamers
http://www.latimes.com/business/custom/cotown/la-ca-abram13apr13003140,1,6887051.story