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By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Monday, November 8th, 2004 - 3 Comments »
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More On The Lansing/Ransohoff Suit

In an MCN headline, the focus on Martin Ransohoff’s suit against Sherry Lansing and Paramount for an alleged oral agreement to make a movie and then reneging was on Ransohoff being, essentially, out of the business for the last seven years.  A bit simplistic…

Because almost everything about Ransohoff’s lawsuit seems to be iffy…

Oral contracts in Hollywood are worth the paper they are written on.   

This is a bit of an overstatement, but it is also true.  Lots of what happens happens before the signature line is filled.  There are pre-production landmarks that legitimize the binding nature of oral contracts in Hollywood. But there is no sign of that here. 

It sounds like Sherry said in a meeting, “Get Morgan Freeman to do it, sweetie, and you have a green light.”  Ransohoff got, I guess, Freeman, but it sounds like by the time he did, Paramount was out of the expensive-thriller-with-Morgan-Freeman business and there were no green lights. 

This is the nature of the business.  Every time there is a turnover in the top exec ranks at a studio, all the “verbal contracts” go out the window, as do many written contracts, which are bought out of or shelved. Even completed or in production films have major changes in the expectations surrounding them. 

Sony always comes to mind in this regard.  When David Putnam was run out of town on a rail, Dawn Steel was so anxious to bury his corpse that when exhibitors wanted more prints of Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen for the holiday season, she wouldn’t make the prints.  The flip side is John Calley’s embrace of Peter Guber’s slate of films, including Godzilla and My Best Friend’s Wedding, which the studio rode the coattails of for a while.

Ransohoff, who had an amazing 30 year career, but is now more than 40 years in, had no place else to make his deal… or he’d be making a movie and not suing anyone.  And at 77 and mostly out of the game, he had nothing to lose. 

I have no way of knowing whether he wanted a little something for his troubles from Paramount and is pissed that he didn’t get it, even after leveraging a lawsuit or if there is something personal between he and Ms. Lansing.  But at this point, it sure looks like he is trying to hurt Ms. Lansing directly and using the already much speculated about tendency for her company to make movies with her husband as a cudgel. 

In any case, it may make it through the first rounds of litigation, but it is a silly lawsuit.  It is possible that Ms. Lansing somehow brought it on herself… that may turn out to be part of things as it unfolds.  But even if she did, this is the kind of lawsuit you never see filed in the business unless someone is truly desperate, insane or an outsider.  Which best describes Mr. Ransohoff, we will find out in time.

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3 Comments »

3 Responses to “More On The Lansing/Ransohoff Suit”

  1. Mark says:
    November 8, 2004 at 3:36 pm

    David, the real question is what does William Friedken do now?

  2. mike2 says:
    November 8, 2004 at 5:16 pm

    Oh, there’s plenty for Friedkin to do: ALFIE 2, STEPFORD WIVES 2, SKY CAPTAIN 2, LARA CROFT 3…

  3. Arash says:
    November 8, 2004 at 6:22 pm

    The real question is why was paramount the slowest studio to embarce the DVD format? Why do they continue to remake movies that no one wants to see starring actors no one cares about? Sherry should of been canned 4 years ago.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon