Indecent Exposure (26 page)
- The Begelman story was the talk of the entertainment world on Monday and Tuesday, not only in Los Angeles but in New York and London as well.
The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal,
the
Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post,
and other major newspapers carried lengthy stories, as did the AP and the UPI. Under a banner page-one headline in
Variety,
Art Murphy called the affair "a development believed to be without parallel in the film business." - Neither Art Murphy nor Rona Barrett nor any other journalist was able to learn the nature of the "unauthorized financial transactions." However, Murphy wrote, "It is understood that the matters are gray areas of personal judgment," echoing
Begelman
's statement to Barrett that the problem concerned "a difference in judgment" in dispersal of funds. - Some Columbia Pictures insiders felt that that was an awfully gentle way to refer to forgery. However, Columbia made no effort to correct any of the press reports.
- Alan Hirschfield spent most of the week attempting to reassure important people around Hollywood that the studio would continue to function well without
Begelman
. In addition to briefing Columbia's own executives, he decided to see several independent producers and other major outsiders, e.g., David Gerber, producer of Columbia's most successful television series,
Police Story
and
Police Woman;
Leonard Goldberg of Spelling-Goldberg Productions and one of David Begelman's closest friends; Dino De Laurcntiis; Lee Rich of Lorimar Productions; Michael Phillips, coproducer of
Close Encounters of the Third Kind;
J. William "Bill" Hayes, attorney and financial manager for several television producers; Marty Ransohoff; and, of course, Ray Stark.
Hirschfield
's most taxing encounter was with David
Begelman
himself, who had agreed to brief Hirschfield and Fischer on a long list of pending studio business matters—movie deals, television deals, the release plans for
Close Encounters,
and a host of other items. The three men met for lunch on Monday at La Serre, one of the most exclusive French restaurants in Los Angeles and the only elite restaurant of any kind near The Burbank Studios. They were seated off the green-and-white trellised main dining room in a small, semiprivate room with Belgian tapestries on the walls and fresh red roses on the table. - Begelman
immediately began musing about the exaggerated importance of friends, enemies, and gossip in a community as small and self-conscious as Hollywood. His troubles, he said, were certain to be exploited by his enemies in the form of gossip. "I'm concerned about the effect on Gladyce." - "Don't worry about what people say," Hirschfield advised. "Everybody has enemies, and you've got plenty of friends."
- "I know who my worst enemy is," Begelman said, and his eyes suddenly filled with tears.
- Hirschfield
and Fischer exchanged confused looks, momentarily missing the point.
"My worst enemy is sitting right here at this table," he went on. "It's me."
Now crying openly, he said,
"I'm the o
nly one I really have to fear. I
can't accept success. Right on the brink of success, something within me says that 1 don't deserve it, and I snatch it away from myself by committing crimes." - Hirschfield and Fischer were speechless, and for a few seconds the only sounds were Begelman's sobs and the hubbub of the restaurant just a few feet away.
- "I have a compulsion to destroy myself,"
Begelman
said. "I have no self-respect. That's why I committed these acts. I was trying to punish, defeat, and destroy myself." - Finally, Hirschfield said, "I'm sure your doctor will be able to help you understand why all this happened. It won't look so bleak once it's out on the table. It'll be easier to understand and control."
- Begelman composed himself and they proceeded through the checklist, with Hirschfield and Fischer unaware that
they had just heard, through Begelma
n's tears, a competent distillation of the psychiatric analysis that was to become his principal defense. - NINETEEN
- Perhaps the most acute reaction to the public announcement of Begelman's suspension was the relief that Cliff Robertson felt when Dina telephoned him Monday in London. It had been seven months since Robertson had discovered the 1099 form, three and a half months since he had discovered Begelman's forgery, three weeks since he had briefed the FBI in Washington, and two weeks since he had begun skulking around London like a fugitive, covering himself with a blanket in the back of his limousine and feeling vaguely silly. In all that time he had received no indication—formal or informal— that his initiatives had produced any result. Paranoia had become part of his daily life. Therefore, the news that Begelman had left Columbia pending an investigation of "unauthorized financial transactions" came as a great relief, primarily because it indicated that enough people now knew of
Begelman
's crime or crimes to render any attempt to silence Robertson himself futile and superfluous. He hungered for details of Columbia's internal investigation and wondered what role, if any, the law-enforcement authorities had played in spurring the company to action. Since his own name had not surfaced in the public reports, he resisted the temptation to blurt out his story to colleagues at the London studio where he was filming. Still, it was nice to ride to work Tuesday morning sitting upright, without the cover of a blanket. And it was with ea
gerness instead of trepidation t
ha
t he looked forward to meeting D
ina in Monaco that weekend for the Merv Griffin celebrity tennis tournament. - At the Begelman home on Linden Drive, the telephone rang constantly from the moment the news broke. Most of the calls were from friends in Beverly Hills expressing sympathy, support, and, in a few instances, suspicion. Was the vagueness of Columbia's announcement a hint that the investigation might be a camouflage for something not evident—a political fight within the company perhaps? Could Alan Hirschfield be seizing upon some trivial indiscretion by Begelman to run him out of the company? Such notions were inchoate at first, but they began circulating in limited Hollywood circles as early as Monday—the predictable reactions of an insular and insecure community. It is almost axiomatic that when a prominent and respected citizen of a small island nation is vilified by a powerful outsider, the defendant's fellow citizens will rally to his side first and examine the outsider's charges later.
- Telegrams of sympathy arrived, too, and one of them was signed "Jo and Gunther Schiff." How ironic, Begelman thought, that Gunther Schiff, a lawyer who for years had represented Cliff Robertson, the man who started all this, would send a telegram of sympathy. Begelman was not bitter, just amused. He and Schiff had been friends for a long time and he assumed that Gunther had had nothing to do with Ro
bertson's report to the police.
Begelman telephoned Schiff and arranged to see him on Tuesday at his Wilshire Boulevard office. After giving Gunther the details leading up to the investigation, David said he wanted Cliff Robertson to know that Columbia was "handling the matter in the most appropriate manner possible." It would serve no purpose for Cliff to take any further action, e.g., speaking publicly. The matter was in good hands. - Gunther offered to fly to London to confer with Cliff but first, he told David, it seemed appropriate to get confirmation of David's story from a top officer of Columbia Pictures Industries. David telephoned Leo Jaffe and asked him to call Gunther. Leo confirmed to Gunther everything that David had said, and extended an invitation through Gunther to Robertson to visit Columbia's offices in New York when he returned from Europe and receive a full briefing on the investigation from Hirschfield or Jaffe. Jaffe also urged that Robertson refrain from any public statements. Schiff got to Robertson on the phone in London that evening and relayed Columbia's concern. Cliff said there was no need for Gunther to fly over. He was perfectly willing to leave the issue in Columbia's hands for the time being and assured Gunther that he did not intend to air it in the media or on the cocktail circuit.
- * *
* - Another of Alan Hirschfield's delicate tasks that week in Los Angeles was a meeting Tuesday with a group of visiting executives from IBM, which was developing the laser-based video disc system for which Columbia wanted to supply the programming. IBM's work on the system remained such a closely held secret that there was a signed secrecy agreement between the two companies. Hirschfield even withheld the visitors' identity from the Columbia studio staff people who were presenting programming ideas to them. In view of the fresh Begelman new
s, and knowing what a straitlace
d company IBM was,
Hirschfield
invited the group to breakfast at his bungalow that morning and did his best to convince them that the Begelman problem was isolated and did not reflect high-level immorality at Columbia Pictures. A dinner for the IBM people, which had been scheduled for that evening at Begelman's house, was shifted to Ray Stark's home. Stark screened his new film,
Casey's Shadow,
which had not yet been released publicly, and everyone seemed to have a good time. Hirschfield felt that Columbia's incipient alliance with IBM had been advanced another step. - Late Wednesday afternoon at the Todd-AO building, a shabby two-story structure in a decrepit stretch of central Hollywood, the top ten executives of Columbia Pictures Industries, in strictest privacy and for the first time, saw a complete rough cut of
Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Hirschfield
,
Melnick
, Fischer, and the others had never been more nervous. The studio already had proclaimed to the world that
Close Encounters
would be "the most beautiful, frightening, and significant motion-picture adventure of all time," and none of the executives had ever before been associated with so expensive a film—a film in which they had invested not only an unprecedented amount of money but an extraordinary amount of emotional energy as well. - Their discomfort was compounded by the presence in the projection room of David
Begelman
, who had been invited to the screening at Dan
Melnick
's insistence and over Alan
Hirschfield
's objections. Under the circumstances—Peter Gruenberger's team of lawyers and CPAs that very afternoon was establishing an Investigative command center in
Begelman
's own office—his appearing at the
Close Encounters
screening made it seem to many of those present as if they had been joined in the projection room by a large elephant which no one could acknowledge was in fact an elephant.
Hirschfield
, in particular, felt it was wrong for a man who had embezzled thousands of dollars from the company to be present at such an occasion. But
Melnick
, who was less concerned about appearances than about
Begelman
's mental state, had overcome Hirschfield's remonstrations. And no one, after all, could discount David Begelman's crucial role in bringing
Close Encounters
along a tortuous path to the brink of completion. - When David
Begelman
joined Columbia Pictures in the summer of 1973, the first deal he made was for two pictures to be produced by Michael and Julia Phillips, who had just produced
The Sting,
the highly successful suspense comedy with Robert Redford and Paul Newman which went on to win the Academy Award for "best picture" of that year. The first film the Phillipscs arranged to make for Columbia was
Taxi Driver,
which was to be directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader. The second film, also to be written by Schrader, was then titled
Watch the Skies,
a story about unidentified flying objects. The story had been suggested to Schrader by Steven Spielberg, a young director whose first major film,
The Sugarland Express,
was about to be released. - Begelman had been Spielberg's agent before becoming head of the Columbia studio and, in conjunction with the Phillipscs, named Spielberg to direct
Watch the Skies,
whose budget was set at $2.8 million. Before beginning
Watch the Skies,
however, Spielberg was loaned by Columbia to Universal Pictures to direct a film about a great white shark terrorizing a beach community. The result,
Jaws,
came out in 1975 and became the biggest box-office hit of all time (until it was eclipsed two years later by
Star Wars).
During the latter stages of the
Jaws
project, Spielberg rewrote Paul Schrader's script of
Watch the Skies
and retitled it
Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
(The new title was a reference, in UFO parlance, to actual contact with extraterrestrial beings. The "first and second kinds of encounter" were the sighting of the beings and physical evidence of their presence.)
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