Hit and Run by Nancy Griffin & Kim Masters

Author:Nancy Griffin & Kim Masters [Griffin, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2016-01-11T16:00:00+00:00

21

WHINE AND ROSES

HAVING REACHED the mountaintop, Jon Peters attacked his biggest decorating project ever: the renovation of the old MGM. He and Guber set about pouring hundreds of millions of Sony’s dollars into making Columbia Pictures’ new home in Culver City as grand as possible, despite its unglamorous West Washington Boulevard location.

In February 1990, a COLUMBIA STUDIOS sign in big blue letters had been mounted over the main Madison Avenue gate. The new studio chiefs made much of the dilapidated condition in which they found their new digs. “Rats! There were rats everywhere!” Jon Peters exclaimed.

The forty-four-acre lot was indeed a faded beauty. Many classic films, including The Wizard of Oz, had been shot there in MGM’s heyday. Now, it was a collection of shabby soundstages and bungalows. Its most elegant structure was the four-story Art Deco Thalberg Building, just inside the main gate, built in 1937 to honor Louis B. Mayer’s brilliant head of production, Irving Thalberg. In fact, Peters and Guber had sat together on the Thalberg Building steps one Sunday afternoon in 1988, commiserating over the dissolution of their short-lived bid to buy MGM.

In recent years the lot had changed hands several times. The Turner Broadcasting System acquired it from Kirk Kerkorian in 1986 but sold it later that year to Lorimar Pictures. Warner picked it up in 1989 when it acquired Lorimar.

Peters and Guber’s tiny principality could never rival Steve Ross’s 144-acre fiefdom at Warner. But if they couldn’t have the biggest lot, they could try to have the best. Jon Peters vowed to “turn an empty shell into a jewel box.”

Culver City officials were known for their restrictive attitude toward development; there were many zoning regulations on the books intended to preserve the city’s historic nature. No structure could be taller than four stories. Any plans for renovation or new construction on the lot had to be approved by the Planning Commission and the City Council. Some studio buildings on the property had been earmarked for preservation. When Sony arrived, the local citizens were suspicious of any changes the Japanese company wanted to make.

Peters, impatient about getting the studio’s facelift underway, put the renovation plans into high gear. Amid jokes that Columbia soon would be transformed into a land of koi ponds and mini-amusement parks, Jon recruited Anton Furst, Batman’s production designer, to help him redesign the lot. Furst was in New York early in 1990 working for Penny Marshall on Awakenings. In April he would win an Academy Award for his art direction on Batman.

Jon had big plans for Furst, whom he recognized as an uncommonly charismatic talent. He wanted the designer to relocate from London to Los Angeles, help him spiff up the lot—and then make his debut as a film director.

Furst moved to Los Angeles in the summer. He established the Furst Company in a decrepit freestanding Spanish bungalow on the lot called the Joan Crawford Building. With his long hair and jeans tucked into knee-high motorcycle boots, Furst didn’t strike corporate types like Alan Levine as an appropriate custodian of the massive lot renovation.

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