Appearing at the Savannah Film Festival to speak to students and members of the public at the Savannah College of Art & Design, special guest Meyer -- founder of CAA, President/COO of Universal Studios, and the longest-running studio head of his generation -- spoke openly about his fortuitous rise through Hollywood's ranks and the many well-publicized moves Universal has made under his tenure, for better and for worse.
"There was no nepotism," Meyer told a group of assembled SCAD students and filmmaking hopefuls, recalling his beginnings. The son of Jewish immigrants who fled Nazi Germany, Meyer dropped out of high school at 15, joined the Marines at 17, and decided it might be nice to work as a Hollywood agent after reading Stephen Longstreet's The Flesh Peddlers: A Novel About a Talent Agency while locked up in military quarantine with the measles.
"It was about a guy who worked at an agency, drove a fast car, and went out with beautiful women," Meyer recalled. "I thought, why shouldn't I be that guy?... So when I got out, I went looking for a job in the agency business."
From there, Meyer moved to Hollywood, worked odd jobs, and landed his big break as a messenger for talent agent Paul Kohner; six years later he was working at William Morris; five years later he and four colleagues left to start their own agency, Creative Artists Agency. The rise of CAA would make industry history alone ("I was the Henry Kissinger to Richard Nixon. Mike Ovitz was Nixon, of course. He was never as bad as he was made out to be, and I was never as good as I was made out to be, but we were a good combination"), but then Meyer took the gig heading Universal Pictures, a position he's now held for 16 years.
Below, read selected highlights from Meyer's hour-long chat.
On the failed Tower Heist VOD experiment, which he's not given up on just yet:
Meyer's seen a lot change through his nearly five decades in Hollywood. Recent efforts to advance Universal towards what he sees as the future of film distribution -- through the studio's Tower Heist VOD experiment, cancelled due to the loud objection of theater owners -- seem to be minor hiccups in an inevitable process.
"If someone's going to get our movies two weeks after they're released, then they have to pay a premium for that... We still think that's a valid model. Obviously the theater owners didn't want us to do it; we were led to believe that might work, but I think eventually we will get it to work in conjunction with theater owners."
Meyer is hopeful that the narrow VOD/theatrical release window is still a possibility: "I think there are a lot of people who won't go to the theater and are happy to pay a premium price -- whether $66 is the right price, or it's more or less. I think there are people that would be willing to pay that price to not have to leave their house and be able to watch that first-run movie while it's still in theaters, on whatever size screen you have at home. I think we have to be better about it, the studios, and the theater exhibitors have to probably be a little more accepting of what we want to do. We'll have to find a way to do it together."
Awards contenders and critically-lauded films are, unfortunately, not his top priority.
"[A critical hit is] great when it happens. But we did A Beautiful Mind, and I don't know that we'd do A Beautiful Mind again. That's the sad part. It's great to win awards and make films that you're proud of and make money, but your first obligation is to make money and then worry about being proud of what you do."
Building more Harry Potter-themed amusement parks, like The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando, which falls under Meyer's jurisdiction, may be a priority.
Asked if there were plans to build additional Harry Potter amusement parks built outside of Orlando, Meyer would only respond, "Yes." The tight-lipped mogul couldn't reveal further details.
3-D is a seductive gimmick that audiences and studios should resist carefully.
"I'm not a believer that every film should be 3-D," said Meyer, acknowledging his own fiscal concern over Universal's expensive upcoming 3-D film 47 Ronin, led by Keanu Reeves. "I think there's a place for it; I think certain films lend themselves to it. Warner Bros. did Journey to the Center of the Earth; that movie would have never worked had it not been 3-D. The only thing that made that film palatable at all was the 3-D aspect."
"None of us would be able to do, or afford, what Jim Cameron was able to do with Avatar," Meyer continued. "Avatar was everything money could buy, and we can't afford to be in that business. He spent a lot of money, he did a brilliant job... you were inside that movie, and that's what made it work. You were surrounded by that film. I think 3-D has a limited capacity, but a capacity. I don't think all films should be 3-D and we should be careful about falling for that."
Universal's biggest recent disappointment? The Wolfman.
"We make a lot of shitty movies," Meyer admitted. "Every one of them breaks my heart."
"We set out to make good ones. One of the worst movies we ever made was Wolfman [produced, coincidentally, by local Savannah resident Stratton Leopold.] Wolfman and Babe 2 are two of the shittiest movies we put out, but by the same token we made movies we believe in. We did United 93, which is one of the movies I'm most proud of. It wasn't a big moneymaker, but it's a film I believe every American should see and it showed you what people can do in the worst of times and how great the human spirit is and all that, so there are moments that can make up for all the junk that you make."
What happened, then, with well-publicized financial disappointments Scott Pilgrim, Land of the Lost, and Cowboys & Aliens?
Movieline put the question to Meyer: Why did the aforementioned Universal event films fail?
"Cowboys & Aliens wasn't good enough. Forget all the smart people involved in it, it wasn't good enough," Meyer said, without pause. "All those little creatures bouncing around were crappy. I think it was a mediocre movie, and we all did a mediocre job with it."
"Land of the Lost was just crap," he continued. "I mean, there was no excuse for it. The best intentions all went wrong."
"Scott Pilgrim, I think, was actually kind of a good movie. [Addressing a small section of the audience, cheering.] But none of you guys went! And you didn't tell your friends to go! But, you know, it happens."
"Cowboys & Aliens didn't deserve better. Land of the Lost didn't deserve better. Scott Pilgrim did deserve better, but it just didn't capture enough of the imaginations of people, and it was one of those things where it didn't cost a lot so it wasn't a big loss. Cowboys & Aliens was a big loss, and Land of the Lost was a huge loss. We misfired. We were wrong. We did it badly, and I think we're all guilty of it. I have to take first responsibility because I'm part of it, but we all did a mediocre job and we paid the price for it. It happens. They're talented people. Certainly you couldn't have more talented people involved in Cowboys & Aliens, but it took, you know, ten smart and talented people to come up with a mediocre movie. It just happens."
Next: How Meyer has lasted this long, why he passed on At the Mountains of Madness and The Dark Tower, and a surprise Savannah Film Festival confrontation
The secret to Meyer's career longevity, despite Universal's missteps and a rough few early years he calls "pretty catastrophic?" Luck. That, and channeling Crocodile Dundee.
"Probably there were times when my owners would have been happy to be rid of me. I've had six owners over 17 years, and no one owner lasted more than 3 or 4 years -- 5 mostly, my last ones. I think as they'd made the change, whether they like me or not -- and I think I'm okay at my job, I think I do just fine for them -- but everybody has some other ideas they may want to do differently. None of them were really in this business, and they needed someone to kind of be their Crocodile Dundee through these shark-infested waters. So I became that Crocodile Dundee each time a new owner came in; instead of letting me go, they made a deal with me."
"I honestly think that I'm good enough at my job, but I don't think I would have survived 17 years with one owner. And I think I survived, maybe, because now it's even fashionable to let me survive a little longer. But truthfully, I say it to my family: I'm fine, but I'm 67 years old and they're not hiring 67-year-old guys to do this job anymore. So I think the combination of my relationships, my tenure, them coming in not knowing quite what to do..."
Meyer's higher-ups live outside of L.A., he jokes, so when they visit he puts on a grand Hollywood show. "I say when they come to town, I dress the place up to look like a movie studio. I bring all the Winnebagos to the front, I have people pushing sets around, like one of those old Cecil B. Demille movies. So they come for two days every two, three months and we look like we're a bustling metropolis, and then we go back to being a regular old business."
Why he passed on making At the Mountains of Madness and The Dark Tower -- and the trickiness of saying no to old friend and former client Ron Howard.
"We looked at the economics of [At the Mountains of Madness and Dark Tower] and it just didn't make sense for us, for what we would have to put out for what we could make back," he explained. "It didn't feel secure enough for us, and that's the reason we didn't do it."
"They're both good projects, they just were more expensive than made sense for us to spend. If I thought that we could get a better return and everybody was willing to cut their gross, I wasn't afraid of the price -- I was just afraid of the return. I didn't want to invest, you know, $200 million to not make enough to show that that was worth investing that money."
On turning down Howard's Dark Tower project, which now may be made at HBO: "No one wants to hear the word 'No,' so it's never simple to just say it. My first responsibility is to do what's right for the studio, so I can't worry about what's right for Ron. He has the right to take it elsewhere and I hope he gets it set up."
And finally, a fitting end to all the real talk: Stepping in to ask the last question, Wolfman producer Stratton Leopold emerged from his family-run ice cream shop across the street to confab with Meyer about the film's legendary failings.
Leopold, amiably introducing himself: "I'm Stratton Leopold..."
Meyer, good naturedly: "It's one of those movies, the moment I saw it I thought, 'What have we all done here?' That movie was crappy."
Leopold: "I said the same thing before the reshoot. I said, 'Why are we spending all of this? Let's shoot two scenes to create some sympathy for the [hero] and that's it,' but..."
Meyer: "We all went wrong. It was one of those things... like I said, we make a lot of bad movies. That's one we should have smelled out a long time ago. It was wrong. The script never got right..."
Leopold: "The cast -"
Meyer: "--was awful. The director was wrong. Benicio [del Toro] stunk. It all stunk."
Meanwhile, Universal's upcoming slate hinges on this week's Tower Heist, followed by next year's spring event films The Lorax and American Reunion. Stay tuned for more from the 2011 Savannah Film Festival.
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[Top photo: WireImage]