The Mouse that Roamed

On the January Friday after he quit as head of the Walt Disney Studios, Joe Roth drove his black Range Rover to the Lantana Center office complex in Santa Monica looking for space to house his new movie production company.

There was a deja vu feeling to the drive. Seven years before, he had made the same trip for the same reason, after quitting the same kind of prestigious studio job as head of 20th Century Fox to start Caravan Pictures. As luck would have it on this day, the eight-building complex had one empty office--3,000 square feet on the ground floor that a prospective tenant was to lease the next day. Roth immediately signed, getting the identical office he had leased seven years earlier.

But that same office now sits squarely in a brave new world. Before, the Lantana Center buzzed with filmmakers. Grabbing a sandwich meant running into directors such as James Cameron, working on “True Lies,” Robert Zemeckis and Tom Hanks, doing post-production work on “Forrest Gump,” or Robert Redford, editing “Quiz Show.” Today, Roth’s neighbors include computer wizards who were in college, maybe even high school, seven years ago. Next door is IAM.com, a fledging online talent show for actors, musicians, models and dancers. At least half of his neighbors have a dot.com in their title.

Roth has never had a personal computer on his desk, doesn’t have an Internet access account and, when he does surf the Web, relies on his 15-year-old son or 11-year-old daughter for help. His expertise is in putting together movies with established stars such as Bruce Willis and Julia Roberts. He left Disney three months ago with a clear picture of what he wanted: a simple boutique film company that would make, and possibly distribute, five to seven movies a year. But the kind of changes Roth found at the transformed Lantana Center mirror the very ones he has faced since leaving the insulated world of a movie studio chief for a street-level view of the convergence of technology and entertainment. The same week Roth announced his intention to set up his own production company, media giant Time Warner Inc. announced it was merging with Internet powerhouse America Online. Moguls such as Disney’s Michael Eisner and Seagram Co.’s Edgar Bronfman Jr. are betting fortunes that the Internet will become a major venue for their entertainment. Like scores of established Hollywood players, Roth has recognized the dizzying speed at which the Internet is becoming part of entertainment--and the huge potential jackpot it represents. Like digital-age Magellans, they are venturing into unfamiliar terrain, where a toehold in the world of technotainment is becoming less an option than a necessity.

Although making movies remains Roth’s goal, 75% of his time since leaving Disney has been spent meeting with Internet executives half his age forming companies that have been around about as long as Disney’s “Mulan” has been out on video.

Roth’s first hire at his new company was John Hegeman, who signed on as a consultant. He’s the wizard behind the hugely successful Internet marketing campaign for “The Blair Witch Project,” last summer’s phenomenon that got the attention of every studio executive. This week, Roth and Hegeman are launching a horror and science fiction fantasy Web site called DistantCorners.com as an offshoot of Roth’s new company. Roth also is buying control of another entertainment Web site, MediaTrip.com.

“The idea for my company has completely changed,” Roth says. “When I left Disney, my primary idea was to focus only on movies, and I was going to be a domestic distributor. Now, if you can project 10 years out, the company will have 75 film negatives as the core business and will incubate and develop content ideas for six to eight different Internet sites.”

As he talks, Roth sounds like a kid who’s just discovered something he never knew existed.

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Boyish at 51 but with hair that is now more gray than brown, Roth works at an obsessively neat desk beneath a giant framed poster for Raoul Walsh’s 1940 film “They Drive By Night.” His last address was a cavernous corner office on the sixth floor of the Michael Graves-designed Team Disney building in Burbank, where he oversaw 10,000 workers and an $8- billion-a-year studio operation. At the moment, his office, freshly painted in subdued earth colors, houses Roth and two assistants. It’s eerily quiet except for the sound of rain outside.

“I like the fact that Joe’s so casual, and his lack of any and all pretensions,” says Michael Mann, who directed and co-wrote the Oscar-nominated “The Insider.” “He’s the most unpretentious guy I know.” > Roth’s relationship with major stars is one of his most valuable assets. Shortly after he formed his new company, Julia Roberts agreed to star in three of his films over five years. He and Roberts, who now makes $20 million a film, go back nearly a decade. The two have made such movies as “Dying Young” and “Sleeping With The Enemy.” “I think given that she has all the choices in the world, for her to make a commitment to a yet-to-be-named, not-yet-financed company was, for me, important,” Roth says. The move is good for Roberts as well, in that it puts her into the hands one of the best star handlers in Hollywood. Actors, directors and producers like Roth. He enjoys a reputation for being decisive and fast on his feet and for having a keen sense of what it takes to get movie audiences into a theater. He also is one of Hollywood’s quickest minds. Before price scanners, Roth would race supermarket checkers to see who could tally his grocery bill first. Despite having no formal business training, he not only can crunch the numbers of his own films but often can project how well or poorly a competitor’s movie will do.

Roth also is one of Hollywood’s most driven and competitive executives. He recites the record engraved on a trophy he received for coaching his son’s soccer teams: “112 wins and seven losses.” Roth believes his competitiveness stems from growing up on Long Island in the shadow of a more scholastic brother, where getting noticed meant excelling in soccer, track and basketball.

His father, now 86 and living in Santa Monica, worked for a plastics company while his late mother was a psychiatric social worker. Roth’s older brother, Dan, works today at the advertising and media-buying giant Initiative Media.

“My older brother was an academic in an academic family, and being a competitive athlete is the way in which I got attention,” Roth says. “I learned very early on how to win at games. . . . everyone adapts to his own survival mechanism.”

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Survival has been a theme in Roth’s life, be it through childhood harassment, having to juggle a half dozen jobs in his 20s, or the tragedy he and his wife, Donna--daughter of film legend Samuel Z. Arkoff--endured in 1983 when their 18-month-old daughter died from sudden infant death syndrome. That may explain why venturing alone into unknown territory doesn’t faze him the way it might others.

Roth traces that trait to his boyhood, when his parents became one of the plaintiff families in a landmark 1962 Supreme Court case that banned official prayer in public schools. Because of the lawsuit, Roth was harassed mercilessly at school. Roth was angry at his father for instigating the case. But the painful experience toughened him. “I feel pretty competent in most situations,” Roth says.

Roth studied journalism and film at Boston University, hoping to become a sportswriter. One of his early heroes and neighbors was Newsday sportswriter Stan Isaacs, who advised him to go to law school because sports was becoming more deal-oriented. Roth was accepted at the Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. It was the 1960s. He became caught up in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury scene and shunned law school. Through a contact at a sports camp where he worked, he landed a job as a production assistant for one of Francis Ford Coppola’s line producers.

During the 1970s in San Francisco, Roth worked on any movie or commercial he could. He also managed a street mime, operated lights at the Pitchell Players improvisation club and ran the midnight movies at San Francisco’s Balboa Theater. Roth later brought the Pitchell Players to Los Angeles. He leased the Ash Grove nightclub on Melrose Avenue, where the Improv is today, and showcased comics such as Chevy Chase and Laraine Newman before they starred on “Saturday Night Live.”

In 1976, Roth produced his first movie, “Tunnel Vision,” a compilation of comedy bits. He tried unsuccessfully tried to sell it first as a pay-per-view event at college bars. The $33,000 movie went on to gross $20 million but Roth’s own deal on the film wasn’t very lucrative. At the same time, his comedy business bombed. So at 28, he found himself flirting with bankruptcy while living in a Hollywood apartment complex he managed part time to make ends meet.

Again, his survival skills kept him going as he worked to ratchet up his career. Parlaying his movie experience, he became an independent producer, working on such barely noticed films as “Our Winning Season” and “The Stone Boy.” In 1984, he made “Bachelor Party,” a raunchy low-budget comedy starring Tom Hanks that became a big hit for 20th Century Fox, landing him a production deal there.

Roth persuaded mogul David Geffen to grant him the rights to a movie he wanted to direct, “Streets of Gold.” Eight days before production was to begin, the bank financing the film pulled the plug. Roth called James G. Robinson, a former Subaru distributor and movie investor in “Stone Boy,” who agreed to finance the $6.5-million film. As part of the financing, Roth took out a second mortgage on his Brentwood home. The film bombed.

“I was really traumatized by the lack of success of the picture and the fact that my house was on the line,” he recalls.

Fox executives then asked Roth to direct a sequel to the hit “Revenge of the Nerds,” for which he was paid $500,000, enough to save his house. It cost $7.5 million and grossed $30 million. When his next project fell apart, Roth called Robinson, with whom he had a standing offer to form a company. The two formed Morgan Creek Productions, which made movies for less than $12 million and financed them by the advance sale of film, TV and video rights. The company made 11 films in 18 months, among them “Young Guns,” “Major League” and “Dead Ringers.” Nine of those 11 films made money.

Fox chief Barry Diller then tapped Roth to become studio chairman. At 41, Roth had his first weekly paycheck. He scored with huge hits such as “Home Alone,” “Edward Scissorhands” and “Die Hard 2,” but also had the expensive bombs “For the Boys” and “Toys.”

Roth left Fox because he felt he was underpaid by Fox owner Rupert Murdoch. He quit to form his own company, Caravan Pictures, which Disney bankrolled. In 1994, Disney studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg left in a falling- out with chairman Michael Eisner, and Eisner offered the job to Roth.

Under Roth’s tenure, Disney finished at the top in studio market share for five consecutive years. The studio had such live-action hits as “Armageddon,” “The Rock,” “Water Boy” and “The Sixth Sense,” as well as hits such as “Toy Story” and “Tarzan,” made by Disney’s prolific animation group. Still, Roth felt pressure from Eisner after expensive box-office failures such as “Beloved,” “The Insider” and “Mighty Joe Young,” as well as the pressure of working for a public company where his performance was scrutinized every three months when quarterly earnings were published. Ultimately, the man who shuns suits and ties never got comfortable as a corporate executive.

“It’s never been a clean fit,” Roth says. “I’ve spent many unhappy hours trying to figure out how to fit in.”

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On this day at his lantana office, Roth is huddled with Randall Wallace, a polite Tennessee native and one of Hollywood’s top screenwriters, best known for his Oscar-nominated “Braveheart” script. Wallace and Roth worked together at Disney on the big-budget project “Pearl Harbor” that the studio is expected to shoot this spring. At the moment, they’re trying to come up with a title for a film based on the book “We Were Soldiers, and Young.” It’s about the 1965 battle of Ia Drang, involving the Army’s 7th Cavalry in what was the first major fight between U.S. and North Vietnamese forces. Both agree the book title won’t work for their movie.

Wallace has brought Roth 50 or so titles to choose from. He mentions “No Retreat, No Surrender” from a Bruce Springsteen lyric, “The 7th Cav,” “First On, Last Off” and “Circle of Fire.” Roth says none grab him.

Roth explains that movie titles must get to the point, as did “Saving Private Ryan,” about a wartime rescue. He quickly zeros in on “The Lost Patrol.” One part of the story involves soldiers who get lost and their commander vowing to stay until they are found.

“If we were in a marketing meeting and you had already made the movie, I would simply call it ‘The Lost Patrol’ and wouldn’t even think about anything else,” Roth tells Wallace. “What I like about ‘Lost Patrol’ is it’s so specific and indicates something terrible with bravery attached. It’s not ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ but it’s pretty damn close.”

Roth’s perceptiveness at what will work in a film or what title is best in a marketing campaign endears him to filmmakers. “He makes quick decisions and he’ll green-light a movie based on an idea,” says producer Jerry Bruckheimer, whose “Armageddon” Roth approved.

Choosing “The Lost Patrol” as the title of Wallace’s project takes less than 45 minutes. It’s the kind of decision that, at a big studio, could have taken months.

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Roth hopes to raise, initially, between $750 million and $1 billion for his new venture. He plans to maintain a low-overhead operation with 10 or so executives, paying himself a nominal salary and being the majority owner. Potential investors include foreign and domestic television and cable channels. Roth will supplement whatever money he raises from investors with loans from Chase Manhattan Bank and advances from TV channels and others who buy his film rights. Advising him are lawyer Skip Brittenham and his former top business executive at Disney, Rob Moore, whom Roth hopes to bring in to run the company.

Hegeman’s role shows how Roth’s company is evolving almost daily. Hegeman had tried for six years to get his Internet venture financed but met resistance from technology and entertainment experts alike. His idea didn’t meet their preconceived notions about what would make a successful entertainment Web venture. It took a technology neophyte such as Roth to see the potential of marketing films on the Internet. “The more entrenched that people were in entertainment and technology, the less responsive they were,” Hegeman says. “Joe has a creative gut that understands the consumer and commercial value.”

Roth has all but scrapped his plan to distribute his movies himself and most likely will rely on either DreamWorks SKG or Sony Pictures. Roth also hopes to use the DistantCorners.com Web site as a springboard to launch future horror films and TV shows. Veteran director and writer Clive Barker is a minority partner and will create programs for the site’s horror and sci-fi fans.

Describing Roth as “kind of a hybrid entertainment executive,” director Mann says “he’s the best of the old school and a visionary in the sense that he’s leaving behind what doesn’t make sense, and he’s taking what’s valuable from the traditional studio paradigm and putting it together with new forms and new technologies. He bridges both worlds.”

“I don’t understand the technology part of the Internet and never will,” Roth concedes. “But I realize the content part of it is exactly the same as what I’ve been doing for the past 25 years--identifying ideas and talent and managing those ideas.”

As a result, Roth’s still-unnamed company may be perfect for Lantana Center. It’s a mixture of the traditional Hollywood of seven years ago and the new Internet-driven entertainment of today. “So much has changed here,” Roth says. “I come home at night and I’m buzzing. I wake up at 3:30 in the morning and can’t go back to sleep. On the one hand, I feel 10 years younger, and on the other hand, I feel 20 years older.”

An assistant interrupts with news that Roth’s son’s soccer game has been canceled due to the rain, which has picked up through the morning. The downpour echoes in the office, amplified by the drainpipe next to Roth’s window. Roth excuses himself; he’s off to the kind of high-level meeting he often had in Hollywood: lunch with a top executive from HBO. Tomorrow, who knows?