IF THERE WAS A FILM that was going to be a statement, that was going to be "special," and that DreamWorks was counting on to define, once and for all, what exactly it was all about, and what it meant, exactly, to have Steven Spielberg as your star pitcher, well, in 1997 that film was on its way. Amistad was to hit theaters before the end of the year. Because the movie was envisioned as his follow-up to the serious achievement of Schindler's List, Spielberg was putting not just his imagination, but his heart and soul, into this one—the true story of a slave uprising aboard a Spanish slave ship, and the Supreme Court case that ensued when the Africans were tried for murder.
Spielberg was even dedicating the film to his and Capshaw's two adopted African American children, Theo and Mikaela (the latter of whom was born while Spielberg was in the early stages of Amistad). "I felt very strongly that this is a story they should know about," Spielberg said. "And my other children should know about it, too. It was a very emotional story to tell. My hair started standing up on the back of my neck during the first week of shooting, and it got a little tired of standing by the end of it." It was another epic kvell on the heels of The Lost World, which Spielberg had neatly tossed off almost as soon as he'd started it (shooting had begun in September of 1996 and wrapped a week before Christmas). Hundred-million-dollar productions Spielberg took in stride.
But Amistad was something else.
Spielberg was truly invested in the film. This one mattered to the director, perhaps too much. He had started working on the script with screenwriter David Franzoni, Parkes, MacDonald, and producer Debbie Allen (the former choreographer and Fame starlet). Allen had been trying to make the project—based on the 1974 book Black Mutiny, by William Owens—for years. When she'd brought it up to Parkes and MacDonald, whose kids carpooled with hers, their interest was piqued. As was Spielberg's; during script meetings, he was like an eager schoolboy, lapping up history lessons.
"The nice thing about Steven is, there's what Plato, or somebody, described as 'truth given' and 'truth discovered.' Religions have truth given. In other words, there's no discovery, they just know it all," said Franzoni, who'd originally been hired to write a screenplay about the Amistad story for Warner Bros. (When Spielberg expressed an interest in making the movie, Warner Bros., which was not very far along in development, backed off, and DreamWorks hired Franzoni.) "That's how I characterize most studios, and how I expected Steven to be. But Steven was very much truth-discovered. We would all sit there and try to figure out how to do it. I remember it was one of the finest experiences ... We'd talk about the civil rights movement, we'd look at old pictures. We'd try to make it real."
Spielberg would scribble notes in the margins of Franzoni's screenplay: "Take me here!" "Take me there!" "Take me here!"
He became particularly excited about a reference to the fact that when the Marquis de Lafayette returned home to France after fighting with the Americans in the Revolutionary War, he brought with him a case of dirt. The reason? Even if he was buried in France, Lafayette wanted his casket to be laid in American soil.
"Steven wanted to know all about that," Franzoni said. "He wrote in the script—'Find out about this! What's the story? Is this true?'"
But, say people who witnessed the production, cutting through Spielberg's enthusiasm was a growing nervousness as Amistad became more of a reality. He had the politically correct rhetoric down pat. "Comparisons between black slavery and the Holocaust are essential," he told a reporter who visited the set. "You can't look at history selfishly. To paint an honest picture of man's inhumanity to man you also have to look at the American internment of Japanese during the Second World War, the Armenian slaughter, gay-bashing, the entire Native American—you know—tragedy. You have to look at every aspect of intolerance."
Perhaps Spielberg was too wrapped up in the weighty burden of his responsibility as history teacher. And, unlike Schindler's List, Amistad wasn't his history, and he had experienced less than satisfactory results tackling this material before. A decade earlier, The Color Purple had been attacked by some critics, who felt that Spielberg had romanticized the Old South, reinforcing Pap and Jim stereotypes, and making an ugly part of American history feel a little too good. "Gone with the Wind of 1985," they'd called it. These memories came back to Spielberg, making him appear, to some, cautious with Amistad, a movie that "definitely represents some competing forces in Spielberg's brain," said one source. "I saw him fall in love with the Africans, the African story, during the shoot. But he had been burned by The Color Purple, so he very much pushed to describe [Amistad] as an American story, not a black story." Said another DreamWorks source: "I don't think Steven was ever comfortable making Amistad. He seemed out of his element."
Others, however, denied this. Franzoni said Spielberg was "completely charmed" while making the film, and that he was so committed to portraying the story's harsh history that he didn't flinch when it came to the violent and bloody scenes aboard the slave ship.
Still, in rewrites of Franzoni's script by Steven Zaillian (who'd written Schindler's List), the film broadened its focus from Joseph Cinque, the leader of the slave rebellion, to include the plight of Roger Sherman Baldwin, the young white attorney who represents the slaves.
Casting had also been a less effortless process than Spielberg was accustomed to. To play John Quincy Adams, who initially argued the case before the Supreme Court, he wanted Anthony Hopkins. But Hopkins was busy with The Mask of Zorro, an Amblin project that Parkes and MacDonald were producing. Spielberg's next choice was Paul Scofield, but Scofield passed on the role. As for Baldwin, Spielberg's choices included Sean Penn and Daniel Day-Lewis. When they demurred, the role went to Matthew McConaughey, who accepted.
During casting sessions, Spielberg appeared "vexed," according to one insider. "He was insecure about not being able to get great actors. He had done Schindler's List, but he was still considered the blockbuster guy."
Determined to land Hopkins, Parkes flew down to the Mask of Zorro set in Mexico and showed the actor the Amistad script, offering to shorten his Zorro schedule so that he could do both films. Hopkins accepted.
Spielberg had more luck casting Cinque, which went to a thirty-three-year-old African man who'd gone from sleeping on the streets of Paris to modeling for Herb Ritts, and who now was looking to break into movies. Spielberg welcomed Djimon Hounsou to Hollywood.
Meanwhile, others at DreamWorks were also worried, for different reasons. DreamWorks marketers were concerned about the commercial prospects of a historical courtroom drama with no big stars other than its director. The marketing department was already calling Amistad "the spinach movie." As in: good for you, but not exactly mouthwatering fare. And surveys were proving them right—even African Americans (the film's target demo) were failing to ignite over the "wig drama," regardless of whose story it was or who was directing it. But Spielberg didn't want to know, according to sources. When Terry Press, Jeffrey's truth-serum girl, laid the less-than-cheerful facts in front of him, he wouldn't listen. He didn't want to hear that Amistad just might not make the kind of history—at the box office and on the awards circuit—that he had in mind.
Like Katzenberg, her mentor, Press was more concerned with the end result than how pretty the process was, or whose egos were bruised along the way. At Disney, she had taken on Warren Beatty—insisting he do TV interviews for Dick Tracy, even when he refused—and won.
Press did not do nicey-nice. For her, the desired end always justified the means, even if that meant throwing cold water on Steven Spielberg's outsize expectations. Because she was so often right, she was highly respected; her loyal cadre of subordinates—including Mike Gottberg, Mitch Kreindel, Diana Loomis, Chip Sullivan, and Michael Vollman (known as Press's "out box")—thought of working for Press as being enrolled in a kind of killer graduate school in movie marketing. This was a woman, after all, who could name every Best Picture-winning film since 1928. But she could be a brutal instructor.
In one publicity meeting, when someone referred to something as being "ironic" in a way that Press felt was rather moronic, she laid in.
"That is not ironic. Do you even know what irony is?" she snapped.
She then proceeded to go around the table, asking each executive, "Do you know what 'irony' is?"
Each answer was derided as incorrect, as Press grew visibly more irritated. "I don't think she was disgusted as much as disappointed," said one person, who was not amused by the exercise.
Another executive's first introduction to Press was when she called and announced herself by saying: "Who do I have to fuck to get a script around here?"
When it came to dealing with Spielberg, Press didn't dial it back or tiptoe, as most people did in their encounters with the man whose last three movies alone had grossed nearly $2 billion. Amistad, she told the director, was not lining up to be Schindler's List 2. Press's comments were perceived to reflect not just her own opinion, but that of Katzenberg, who would never dare challenge or confront Spielberg, particularly on a creative issue. "Terry was Jeffrey's mouthpiece," said one observer. "She did Jeffrey's dirty work, so he could look like the good guy." (When Press talked to reporters, as she was famous for doing, she also represented Katzenberg's views, as she had for so long at Disney.) On Amistad, Katzenberg remained silent. His protégée did not.
According to several sources, Spielberg was particularly upset when Press informed him that she didn't think Amistad was a strong Oscar contender. Crushed, the director told Press that she wasn't working hard enough, that marketing wasn't doing its job. He made it clear that he didn't want to hear reality; he just wanted to be told that everything would be fine.
A chill set in between Spielberg and Press, whose reputation as Jeffrey's Girl was firmly cemented within the halls of Amblin.
But Press's opinion was the least of Spielberg's problems when it came to Amistad, which became the center of a very public, and nasty, controversy two months before its release, when author Barbara Chase-Riboud slapped DreamWorks with a $10 million copyright-infringement suit, claiming that Amistad had "shocking similarities" to her 1989 historical novel Echo of Lions.
Studios, and the people who make their movies, are routinely sued for "stealing" ideas, never more so than when the movies are made by high-profile filmmakers and likely to result in a jackpot of riches. Spielberg had been no stranger to such lawsuits, and not long before had been slapped with one over Twister (which he subsequently lost). His vulnerability to these sorts of legal actions is one reason why the script departments at his companies are so highly guarded and why he registers every idea, every pitch, with the Writers Guild, sometimes several a day.
Most of the legal threats never make it very far, but this was not the case with Amistad, which immediately made headlines. It called to mind the famous Hollywood plagiarism case between humorist Art Buchwald and Paramount over the origins of the Eddie Murphy hit movie Coming to America, which evolved from a pitch that Buchwald had made to none other than Jeffrey Katzenberg. Buchwald won the suit, which had also involved Helene Hahn, who'd testified on behalf of Paramount in the case. Bringing it all full circle, Chase-Riboud had hired Pierce O'Donnell, who'd represented Buchwald and written a book about the case, as her lawyer.
But DreamWorks had its own, bigger gun: Bert Fields, Katzenberg's lawyer in the lawsuit against Disney and the attorney considered the most aggressive and clever in Hollywood. Fields fought back with characteristic flair, not only denying Chase-Riboud's claims by saying that she'd written a novel, not history, which was open for all to interpret. Fields contended that she had committed plagiarism, by lifting from Black Mutiny while writing her book.
As the barbs flew back and forth, the contretemps seemed destined to continue. Ultimately, Spielberg was forced to give a deposition, in which he said he'd never read Echo of Lions, even though, he admitted, it had been submitted to Amblin, in 1988, by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, a friend of Chase-Riboud's. (Amblin passed, at that time, on the project.) David Franzoni also claimed he'd never read the book. According to a detailed motion filed by O'Donnell, which was summarized in Variety, the Amistad project that Franzoni had been working on for Warner Bros. was called Echo of Lions and was based on Chase-Riboud's book. According to Franzoni, he'd only been told about the book after he was hired to write the script, when a Warner Bros. executive asked him if he was interested in reading it. Hearing that the book was fiction, he declined. Even so, the coincidence made some DreamWorks executives nervous.
Spielberg just wanted it all to go away. Here he was, having come to the end of a project he'd gone into with such noble intentions—to make it for the kids, for history —and it was all blowing up in his face. Suddenly he was seen as the evil Hollywood potentate taking advantage of an innocent African American woman, all in the name of cinematic glory. (The language used in the suit conjured images of slave owners exploiting slaves—Chase-Riboud wanted "reparations" from DreamWorks.) Because this was Spielberg drama, the press was all over it. Every day brought a new story, op-ed piece (in the New York Times, USA Today), or headline. Time referred to "Steven Stealberg," which deeply distressed the director. "Steven was in tears this morning," Geffen told The New Yorker on the day that the Time article ran. "It's awful. Disgusting. The film is forever tainted by this lawsuit."
In the face of disaster, the DreamWorks partners were called from their corners into united action, and each assumed their respective duties. Geffen was in his agent role, at Spielberg's side, counseling him and offering reassurance. Katzenberg had been dispensed to clean the whole mess up (through Fields), though Spielberg would have liked him to have done it more quickly. (A federal court in L.A. denied an injunction motion that would have prevented the film's release pending trial, and Amistad opened nationally on December 12.) And Spielberg tried to keep his head held high and the name of DreamWorks unsullied.
But the movie also brought out tensions between the partners. Geffen had never understood why such a downer of a film was being re-leased over the holidays. And while he might be by Spielberg's side when it mattered, for occasions he felt were less momentous, he opted to retreat back into billionaire mode. Instead of attending the film's Washington, D.C., premiere, he went to Acapulco; he reluctantly attended the L.A. opening, even though he would have preferred to "go home, watch a movie, and go to bed." When Terry Press needled him for being willing to fly to D.C. to attend a dinner with Chinese diplomats, Geffen said, "There's a big fucking difference between going to the premiere of a movie" and a dinner with dignitaries.
"What the hell do I have to be in Washington for? You don't need me," he said. "Let Jeffrey be there with Steven. I was there with Jeffrey last time."
When Amistad was released, it garnered only so-so reviews, and grossed just $44 million. It cost $70 million to produce and market. Not only was Spielberg depressed, DreamWorks' backers were nervous. According to one source, Geffen and Katzenberg were frustrated over what was a "vanity project" for Spielberg. Amistad wrought "tension on all levels, because, the truth of the matter is, if Steven Spielberg hadn't directed Amistad, it'd be an after-school special," said one source.
But no one was more upset than Spielberg, who took responsibility for the film's fate by declining to accept his director's fee on the movie. Even Spielberg's kids couldn't muster enthusiasm for the film. "They walked out of Amistad," Spielberg said—a confession he could only bring himself to make many years later, to Roger Ebert. "I lost my whole family. All my young kids, you know. I wouldn't ever show them the middle passage and I didn't let them see the very beginning, and they were bored by the legal stuff. They left."
As the Christmas holidays arrived, DreamWorks wasn't a jolly place, and not just because there wouldn't be any imported snow that year. On December 19 Mousehunt opened, along with the not-so-little Titanic, which would become, and remain for a dozen years, the highest-grossing film of all time, bringing in $1.8 billion in worldwide ticket sales. DreamWorks did its best to make light of the fact that it was completely capsized (subsequent posters for Mousehunt featured a sinking ship in the background and a mouse rowing away, with the tagline: "It was the mouse"), but there was nothing amusing about Mousehunt's opening weekend. When producer Alan Riche, in Micronesia on a scuba-diving trip with his wife, got the news that Mousehunt grossed just $6 million its first weekend, "I was sitting there, four thousand miles away, ready to slit my throat," he said.
Through word of mouth, the film picked up in subsequent weeks and went on to gross $61 million. It was hardly the kind of showing DreamWorks had hoped to make as its first year as an operational film studio came to a close. The final nail in the Amistad coffin came in February, the same month Chase-Riboud and DreamWorks settled their differences out of court for an undisclosed sum (a little too late; by now, Amistad was declared dead). When the Academy announced its Oscar nominations, as Terry Press had predicted, Amistad was shut out of the major categories, receiving just four nominations. (Not even Hounsou, whom DreamWorks made a strong push for in the Best Actor category, was recognized.) Once again, Titanic triumphed, garnering fourteen nods, more than any film in nearly half a century (tying with 1950's All About Eve).
It was not a time of plenty or happiness. Most eerily, also in February, Spielberg was accompanied by bodyguards to the Santa Monica courthouse to testify against a stalker who'd been caught trying to enter the director's Pacific Palisades home the previous summer, armed with a "rape kit," including razor blades, duct tape, and handcuffs. It was the nightmare Spielberg was always preparing for—the horror scenario that was too awful to even be put in any of his films, and the reason he chose to live in lockdown mode, even at Amblin. The thing that not even David Geffen, or any number of highly paid handlers, could protect him from. Testifying before a jury, months after he'd first learned that he was the target of a very warped, and dangerous, mind, Spielberg was apparently still badly shaken.
As reported in the Chicago Sun-Times, he testified: "The razor could have been used for ... you know. The threat was very real to me. It is still real to me," he said. "No one before has come into my life to do me or my family harm. I really felt, I still to this day feel, I am prey to this individual."
In the wake of the scare, Amblin became even more impenetrable. Spielberg "trusted his team and that was about it," said Jill Overdorf, who at the time was a chef at DreamWorks' animation studio. Spielberg "was very closed-door and wary about who was allowed on campus at Amblin. There was a significant amount of security on-site ... If you wore a chef's coat, and you were not a face that was seen all the time, you had to be escorted in from the gate. There was a certain level of paranoia."
Spielberg could be forgiven if he began to question the course he'd steered for himself with DreamWorks. Amistad had revealed risks to the director both professional and creative. And now this uncharted territory was posing personal risks as well.
On another legal front, Katzenberg's suit against Disney was also heating up over the summer of 1997. In June, L.A. Superior Court Judge John Ouderkirk ordered Disney to turn over key profit records so that Katzenberg's claimed bonus could be calculated. In September, two mock juries voted in favor of Katzenberg; a key factor in their decision, the smoking-gun memo written by Wells, which stated that Katzenberg had a stake in 2 percent of Disney revenues even after he left the company.
Katzenberg and Eisner's war also raged on other fronts. For thirty years, Disney had been content to rent the land in Glendale where Disney Imagineering was based. But in June, the studio announced that it was buying up the ninety-six acres known as the Grand Central Business Center near Katzenberg's planned animation campus. Indeed, although Disney preached "expansion" as its motivating force, the move was interpreted by DreamWorks as a means of preventing Katzenberg from geographically expanding his animation empire and ensuring that Disney was still, at least physically, the domineering presence in the area.
Another salvo was launched from the Magic Kingdom in DreamWorks' direction when Eisner announced that Disney was planning a theatrical rerelease of Beauty and the Beast for November of 1998—the same month Katzenberg's pet project, Prince of Egypt, DreamWorks' debut animation release, would hit theaters. To Katzenberg, the move was personal, and he called up his former boss to plead his case—a story he recounted to animators at DreamWorks. "Look," Katzenberg said, "I know we have our differences, but Prince of Egypt is an important film. Please don't kill it just because you can"
Katzenberg wasn't just going to take a hit, however. He had a counterattack of his own in mind. Immediately, he put in a call to Dylan Kohler, who was attending a meeting in San Jose with Sun Micro-systems along with his fellow technology coheads Bill Villarreal and Rob Hummel. Kohler excused himself to take Katzenberg's call, which lasted all of thirty seconds.
"If you know anyone at Pixar, go after them!" Katzenberg barked. "We need to get those guys, we need to hurt them"
Kohler did know people at Pixar whom he'd worked with at Disney on the CAPS project, but they refused to budge. Unlike potential recruits at other companies, they weren't even interested in using DreamWorks to up their salaries.
For a few weeks, raiding Pixar became a priority at DreamWorks. In the end, the effort was fruitless. Pixar was on the rise in a major way, and not even Jeffrey Katzenberg could offer enough money or incentives to convince Lasseter's disciples to defect. Pixar, it was clear, was no Disney.
But Katzenberg kept trumping Disney on the legal front. In November, Disney—amazingly, given Eisner's stubbornness—agreed to settle with Katzenberg for $117 million. The concession might be a coup for Katzenberg, but it wasn't enough. He said he was owed more money. Disney refused to pay another penny, and so it was determined that the case would go to trial.
Katzenberg wasn't thrilled about the idea of his life at Disney being put on public display, but he realized that a trial was necessary in order for justice, as he saw it, to be served.