KIM MASTERS TAKES ON PARAMOUNT (LA)

By Tom Tapp

The town has been buzzing with word of Kim Masters exploration of Paramount for Los Angeles magazine. Some, like The Hollywood Reporter's Anne Thompson, loved it. Some like Deadline Hollywood Daily's Nikki Finke are calling it "a waste of trees."

It's a debate that's hard to settle because the piece has been so hard to find. Why? a.) No one actually subscribes to Los Angeles Magazine. b.) The article is not yet online. In the interest of debate, then, we've taken a tour through the piece and appended some excerpts below.

First few pages are standard intro stuff for people who don't read The Trades. The buried bombs start dropping around page 2. Masters gleans perspective from one agent about studio president Gail Berman:

Berman overestimated her clout with the type of established talent that was essential to success...she was doing too much talking and not enough listening. "She thought she could act like a network head," he says. "Being a network head, your voice is the only voice that matters. But in the movie world, it takes experience and relationships for your voice to be heard. If you're working with Oliver Stone, Ridley Scott or Bob Zemeckis - they're not going to care what your point of view is at all just because you're sitting in that chair."

Masters goes on to relate Berman's recent affinity for "Dreamgirls," a passion project of DreamWorks co-founder David Geffen. One Par veteran explains her interest may be unhealthy, as visiting a set is "exactly what the president of a studio that needs a release schedule isn't supposed to do." Berman counters with the effervescent, "it's one of my favorite things ever, ever , ever."

Meanwhile, Jeffrey Katzenberg has "made his presence felt" since the studio's acqusition of DreamWorks (studio will distribute the films of the separately-held DreamWorks Animation, which Katzenberg runs).

...shortly after the acquisition, he met with every Paramount marketing and distribution executive individually. Some at the studio wondered what his agenda might be. "Maybe he wanted to get to know the people who are going to be distributing his animated movies," says one former Paramount executive, "or maybe he's going to be running the joint."

Katzenberg tells Masters he's "not comfortable speculating" about that scenario. He then goes on to add, "DreamWorks is my dream come true, and it's what I want to do for the rest of my career."

One Paramount producer is much clearer with his take:

"If you're going to bet, and you've got Stacey Snider and David Geffen and Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, or you've for Gail Berman, what do you think?"

As for what Brad Grey thinks, Masters notes his underwhelming endorsement of Berman to the New York Times in February hardly stopped the gossip - "She's working hard, and it's early." It's a sentence that seems constructed to keep Berman at arm's distance. And it may be so, according to Masters.

Grey would like nothing more than to hover slightly above it all, following the model of Ron Meyer, the long-lived president of Universal Studios. Meyer has withstood an astonishing number of ownership changes, from Seagram to Vivendi to GE. But Grey lacks a critical aspect if Meyer's personality - his unrelenting charm, as well as his ability to relinquish control to an experienced staff (Masters also notes Berman does not have greenlight power).