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I've finally got my hands on the preliminary speakers schedule for Camp Allen, the nickname given Allen & Co.'s annual summer investment conference for the macho mogul set in bucolic Sun Valley, Idaho. The dates for this sleepaway for plutocrats are July 11th-16th. Highlight (or is it lowlight?): the idea of Barry Diller, Rupert Murdoch and Sir Howard Stringer interviewed by Michael Eisner. Oh, to be a fly on the wall for that. But I'm sure everyone will be uber-polite. My prediction is that no one but Eisner will get a word in edgewise. Interesting that it's Eisner, too, since he's tried to avoid attending the conference ever since he had his heart episode there. Read my secrets of Camp Allen column which ran 6/29/99 in New York magazine for a fuller understanding of this confab occurring since 1982. The Allen & Co. invitation used to be what separated the adolescents from the boys in Hollywood, a stamp of approval from Wall Street, confirmation that making feature films and sitcoms was an enviable enterprise. For so many years Camp Allen was a secretive gathering of the privileged white men who sat atop America's entertainment conglomerates and their families, a wilderness confab replete with river-rafting, picnic-table power-lunching, and (the whole purpose of the exercise) hush-hush deal-making. Its apex came back in 1994 as a full-page Vanity Fair spread complete with pedigree-enhancing headline -- "THE NEW ESTABLISHMENT" --to describe these Leaders of the Information Age. But then NYC investment banker Herbert Allen Jr.'s retreat changed subtlely in both style (there used be dildos jokingly given out as awards) and substance (its glitzy showbiz element downsized in favor of high-tech and Internet) in 1999. As a result, it's been far less interesting ever since. Still, 50 corporate jets line the tarmac at nearby Friedman Memorial Airport year after year (see actual photo below from there during conference week 2005):
Wednesday, July 12th -- 7:30 AM: THE TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR BUSINESS FAILURE BY DON KEOUGH (ex-chairman Coca-Cola, current chairman Allen & Co); 8:45 AM: eBAY INC.
Thursday, July 13th -- 7:30 AM: AMGEN INC.; 8:45 AM: PANEL DISCUSSION/CAN WE END OUR OIL ADDICTION?; 10:25 AM: PANEL DISCUSSION/SEEKING TO UNDERSTAND LATIN AMERICA
Friday, July 14th -- 7:30 AM: THE IED CHALLENGE AND HOW WE ARE COUNTERING IT BY GENERAL (RET) MONTGOMERY C. MEIGS; 8:45 AM: BARRY DILLER, RUPERT MURDOCH AND SIR HOWARD STRINGER INTERVIEWED BY MICHAEL ... Read More »
Wow, so much misinformation and omission in recent newspaper articles, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal, about Walt Disney Co.'s incoming chairman John Pepper Jr, the ex-CEO of Procter and Gamble. Granted, he looks like he just got cast by ABC Family for an Americanized remake of Mr. Chips, fretting over whether his brood of preppies will horribly haze the new kid. (On second thought, maybe he's planning to do just that to still new Disney prez Bob Iger.) But The New York Times quoted experts claiming he lacks media experience and doesn't bring much to Disney's party. Huh? As if hiring former Senator George Mitchell was a stroke of genius by FrankenEisner and his board of flunkies. Look how well George didn't turn out. If you ask me, this new guy has Mitchell beat by a mile. Obviously, none of the following was in any of the official press releases: 1) The most obvious, first: as one of the largest consumer product advertisers on the planet, his ex-company's brands like Bounty, Crest and Pampers live or die on the basis of the success of its TV commercials and other media outlets. 2) P&G has long owned and operated TV soap operas; in fact P&G literally helped put the soap in soap operas. P&G produced and sponsored the first radio soap operas in the 1930s and became dominant when the soaps switched onto TV. P&G's past soaps have included Another World, The Edge of Night, Search for Tomorrow, Somerset and Texas. Two veteran soaps are still distributed by Proctor and Gamble, As the World Turns and Guiding Light. P&G also produced and sponsored a prime-time show, Shirley, starring Shirley Jones, produced TBS' first original comedy series, Down to Earth (successful enough to air 110 episodes), and distributed the syndicated comedy series Throb. And, most interestingly, Procter & Gamble Productions co-produced the global hit Dawson's Creek with Columbia Pictures Television that made Katie Holmes into a big enough celebrity to qualify her to become Tom Cruise's paramour and bearer of his child. 3) Pepper's extensive consumer products experience will help Disney's extensive line of consumer products. 4) P&G's anti-counterfeiting campaigns more or less mirror those set in motion by Disney against piracy and knockoffs. 5) P&G wrestles with a product boycott because of the company's animal testing claims, not unlike Disney's battle against a product boycott because of sweatshop claims. And, finally, 6) P&G is an expert at controlling bad press. (The company had to ... 
I'm told Warner Bros.' Superman Returns opened Wednesday with $19 million at the U.S. box office. That's only OK -- not great, not terrible, prompting box office guru analysis that the gay whisper campaign which crescendoed into newspapers and on the Internet hurt the movie's viability as did its star Brandon Routh's anonymity. (Box Office Mojo put the opening take at $21 mil, but rival studios told me that's too high.) Predictions are that Superman Returns could muster $100 million for July 4th weekend (which in many American households will continue from Friday through Tuesday). But even that barely puts the film in the 10 top opening Wednesdays. The problem stems not only from the movie's close to 2-hour 40-minute running time, its $200 mil-$250 mil budget, its mis-marketing campaign, or its emphasis on earnestness rather than simple ol'fashioned fun, but that the movie will get swamped its second weekend out by Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean 2, which continues tracking as the biggest movie opening ever. Major film critics have been split almost down the middle reviewing this film, although Bryan Singer's direction is generally lauded. Meanwhile, Warner Bros. has been desperately re-tooling its marketing campaign for the movie in light of the studio’s failure to stem the gay buzz surrounding Superman Returns. As late as this week, new TV ads transformed Routh from doe-eyed softie to macho techno-man of steel, borrowing heavily from other comic books successes like Spiderman and X-Men in its look and feel, with special effects set to pounding rap music (cue Terminator-like eyeball suck-out) and no thumpa-thumpa Gloria Gaynor within earshot. For more Hollywood summer movie madness, read my latest LA Weekly column, 
It was as recently as April that David Geffen attended a reception for the dean of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, Nick Lemann, at the Los Angeles home of Sony Pictures Entertainment chairman and CEO Michael Lynton. I'm told Geffen uninhibitedly demonstrated in front of several guests that his interest in buying the Los Angeles Times was still very much alive and well. Right now, David doesn't want to talk publicly about what he might, or might not, do, understandably. So it's been a while since there's been any substantive word connecting Geffen to a sale of the paper. Until yesterday. His name first surfaced in a September 2005 LAT story reporting the surprising news that Geffen met with parent company Tribune Chief Executive Dennis J. FitzSimons that summer to say he was interested in buying the media outlet. FitzSimons reportedly told the Dreamworks partner it was not for sale. For months, speculation ensued (mostly in the LAT's pages). Then, yesterday's Wall Street Journal wrote that the Chandler family, which owns its Tribune shares through trusts and is at loggerheads with FitzSimons and will become the company's largest shareholder in the wake of Tribune's not-very-popular $2 billion stock buyback scheme, is preparing to meet with Geffen and other potential buyers like Ron Burkle and Eli Broad, as well as private-equity and other investors. It's all an attempt by the family that once ruled the Spring Street roost to create some drama and force a breakup or sale of all or part of Tribune Co. 
Let me relate this: One time when I went to talk to Geffen in his Dreamworks office, he was sitting behind his desk and focused on the television. Specifically, he was concentrating on a CNN report about developments in the Middle East. While I took a seat and waited for him to acknowledge me, we sat there in silence listening to the CNN reporter and then anchor for about seven-to-ten minutes. After that, I could tell that he reluctantly pulled himself away from the foreign briefing to deal with the more trivial matter of Hollywood. In this day and age when foreign news holes are becoming smaller and foreign reporting budgets leaner at media outlets across this country, a wannabe owner who cares so deeply about international events bodes well for the LAT. Slate's Jack Shafer recently coined a term, the "New Vanity Press Moguls," claiming ... 
So today a rumor swept Hollywood about recent gunplay in a crowded lobby of a top talent agency. Here's the reality: I've been told about an accidental gun discharge incident at Creative Artists Agency in Beverly Hills on January 28th at 1:50 p.m. You first need to know that no one was hurt: it was a Saturday and the lobby was empty, and only three people were in the entire building, not including the security guards. And the security guard was employed by Gavin de Becker & Associates, which protects CAA and William Morris and about 1,400 other companies and is widely regarded as one of the leading firms in the field of public figure protection and threat assessment. De Becker (pictured left) told me tonight: “Even though accidental discharges are frequent occurrences in law enforcement, the military, and the private sector, we are grateful to have the lowest rate of accidental discharges I know of: two incidents in 31 years. The former employee involved in this accidental discharge was trained by the U.S. Marines, passed the state training requirements, and completed our academy – and we are grateful that the incident never posed any danger to anyone.”
I've learned what happened: the guard was working the 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. shift and at his security post when he followed standard procedure and checked the "417" which is security codespeak for taking the firearm out of its locked lockbox and examining it. He looked inside the chamber and noticed there was a round of ammo. And then in attempting to clear the chamber, he reported the gun went off accidentally. The shot left a small round chip in the building's lobby floor. Sources told me the guard appeared before a board of review with de Becker's firm and was subsequently terminated. As for the incident itself, it was reported immediately to the guard's de Becker supervisor, who reported it to a de Becker partner. That next workday, January 30th, the president and co-partner of the de Becker company, Michael LaFever, personally went to CAA to inform the agency about what had happened. That same day, De Becker personally emailed a notice about the accidental discharge to the director of the California Bureau of Security and Investigative Services including the guard's own report. I have confirmed that no report was made to the Beverly Hills police ... 
I'm told Sony's Da Vinci Code passed $700 million worldwide gross today. Adding $4 mil domestically and $9 mil internationally this weekend put the total take at $701.3 million. The movie is now the 22nd best earner globally (and 12th best internationally). The breakdown of the total haul is $205.5 for U.S. and $495.8 mil overseas (which was down only 37% despite the huge World Cup weekend). Initially, Sony hoped the movie would take in $500 mil worldwide by summer's end. And here it is not even July. 
UPDATED: *Adam Sandler is looking like American moviegoers' favorite comedian as his latest Click scored his fifth $40 million+ opening weekend today to become the nation's No. 1 film. The Sony comedy about a man whose TV remote turns into a life remote debuted with $40 mil at the box office. Right now in Hollywood there are very few actors working today that can generate that kind of audience drawing power. The studio's exit polling showed Sandler's audience was 51% female and 49% male, while 50% were under age 25. Sony and Sandler, which have been a profitable box office pairing for some time now (Big Daddy, 50 First Dates, Mr. Deeds, Anger Management), had their best ever opening in Austrailia so Click may be their broadest film with international moviegoers. (Usually, U.S.-made comedies don't translate to big box office overseas.) Click is Sony's seventh #1 film of 2006, unlike 2005 when much of the studio's fare bombed with moviegoers.
In other movie news this weekend, Disney/Pixar's Cars finished its third weekend out with $23 mil, and a total $156 mil gross. Paramount's Jack Black comedy Nacho Libre was third with $12 mil (total $52.4 mil), and Universal's The Fast and The Furious 3 was fourth with $9.5 mil (total $42.7 mil). But continuing as the biggest box office surprise was Focus/Rogue Pictures's Waist Deep, the other movie opening this weekend: playing in only 1,004 theaters, the urban drama pulled in $9.5 mil to tie for 4th place.*
CAN SPELLING CAST HIS SPELL AGAIN?VETERAN PRODUCER IS SEARCHING FOR THE MAGIC TOUCH IN A NEW ERATwo years ago, Aaron Spelling had an idea for a dramatic and, he thought, different television series about a divorced family as told through the eyes of a little boy. Besides voiceovers (later used by The Wonder Years), its main innovation was its format -- two back-to-back half-hour shows, one about the boy's weekdays with his mother, the other about his weekends with his father. "I got to tell you," ... 
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