Lights... Camera... ACTION!!: A Hollywood Quest

Mike and Mary (and Brandon too) play Maths.



Mary Frances O'Brien was Mike Eisner's favourite O'Brien.

She was quiet, friendly, always willing to help, had a big smile, was almost unbearably cute, rarely caused all sorts of weird and wonderful problems for Lucasfilm and was an utter math genius.

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Mike had always liked Mary in an abstract sort of way. Mike had been one of the people who turned up at the hospital for her birth. More to support Bruce, his business partner, but he was there nonetheless and felt some sort of propriety feelings toward her and her future.

Those feelings only developed into a specific preference for Mary over the rest of her family one Thursday afternoon when she toddled into his office, followed by Brandon Lee, looking for something to do while her father was busy. She briefly looked around his public office and immediately dismissed its expensive furnishings and pieces of art as uninteresting. She then found the discreet door to a smaller, less impressive office with comfortable furnishings, overstuffed filing cabinets, and, to her delight. "Maffs stuff", or to Mike the final draft copy of the accounting records for Lucasfilm that Quarter.



On spotting numbers to play with she dumped her Kermit doll, pull out her crayons and then, like most toddlers, given a pile of paper and no adult to stop her, proceeded to add her own "unique" additions to the work. Brandon Lee, the teenager who was supposed to be watching Her, did nothing except grin and move a chair so she could have easier access to the precious files.



As Mike entered his private office more than an hour later, he couldn't help but notice Bruce's kids' encroachment of his personal space and the unrequested additions to the documents. His initial reaction was one of controlled fury, which only grew stronger when Brandon blew off their blatant invasion with a seemingly nonchalant attitude and an insane confidence that a toddler was not only capable of but actively outdoing Lucasfilm's team of accountants.

Mike found himself beyond annoyed but saw an opportunity in Brandon's seeming overconfidence to educate Lucasfilm's next generation and offered Brandon a bet. If Brandon was so confident in Mary's capacity, then Mike would make him an offer. Mary could have a tenth of a per cent of the Lucasfilm stock Mike owned for every issue she found in the finances that his best team had sworn was perfect. In return, if Mary found nothing or just left things messy, Brandon would be the one to sign an unbreakable 10-picture deal with Lucasfilm, essentially signing over all rights to his image and future until he had completed, to Mikes satisfaction any course or training requested in the name of avoiding bring broke and kicked out onto the streets. Brandon agreed readily. Too readily.



There was a brief nagging feeling at the back of Mikes's mind when he wrote the document up with Brandon. Bruce had been bragging about his daughter and her maths skills, but she wasn't that good, was she? This bet should result in Bruce owing him a favour for getting Brandon on the hook for any further education the kid needed and ensuring he had a safe studio to look after his interests. Either way, it's not like any of this would be legally binding as Brendon and especially Mary were both underage. So, feeling a bit vindictive but willing to do a backhanded good deal for the new generation of Lucasfilm, Mike Eisner, on a scrap of paper, wrote what would become the most embarrassing contract of his carer at Lucasfilm, legal or not. The smile on Brandon's face, as Mary giggled behind him after signing the contract, suggested that Mike had just been outsmarted by a 14-year-old.



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A big part of Mike's job heading the group of film maniacs calling themselves artists at Lucasfilm was ensuring the numbers were balanced.
Those crazies and dreamers who made the movies were notoriously blind at sorting out the little details, like expenses, in the face of following their "vision". That meant someone like Mike was needed to follow up on supplies for everything from modelling foam to camera parts and arrange for them to be delivered to the right places and times. Other things like Ensuring camera operator #3 was paid on time and according to an appropriately negotiated contract were also useful so staff remained around to help them complete their Vision.



Other valuable activities that Mike sorted included certain financial moves that needed to happen under the table. Mike ensured the right palms were greased and the right politicians and inspectors kept happy with donations to the right causes. It also meant Mike had to keep up with certain exclusive clubs' membership so the right people could be Wine'd and Dine'd, and the right elbows rubbed. The artists certainly wouldn't want to do it. George's idea of a good meal was burgers where nobody knew who he was. Bruce would rather start a fight than talk politely to someone who had insulted him, regardless of risk. Just ask Mohamid Ali.



In other words, Money had to be moved and budgets balanced. Who was owed what, who would be owed what, who owed Lucasfilm what, and who would do it all for the right price was a complex dance that took a small legion of accountants and managers, lawyers and Media liaisons working at Mike's direction to sort out that intricate dance at Lucasfilm



Lucasfilm's accounting department was still primarily dependent on paper. To an outside observer this might seem strange. Lucasfilm was one of the highest-tech movie Studios, and was becoming famous for their innovative use of computers. They also had those lunatics over at Pixar who kept stealing his computers or adjusting the programming to run: "Just this one lot of renderings, it will be done in an hour, I swear". It was an absolute pain to see his digital spreadsheet program somehow be turned into a basic flight simulator every time he turned around, wasting hours of work. Paper was more reliable, less prone to being "borrowed" or modified without permission and likely to still agree that one plus 1 equaled two and not eleven after one of those programmer chaps waked past it. So things were kept on paper in Mike Eisner's office.



That did not eliminate all of mikes woes. Accounting work was primarily carried out by humans, who, prone to human error, would often misplace important files, just add things up wrong causing delays when they had to start again and sometimes even miss deadlines. Furthermore, their focus was limited to a specific set of inputs, which often resulted in them failing to recognise when they were overpaying for unreliable and costly services as they lacked experience with alternative suppliers. In addition to these unintentional mishaps, there were also cases of deliberate bad actors who would embezzle funds or even steal confidential information to sell to competitors such as Sid Steinberg from Universal. Mike found great satisfaction in catching and punishing these individuals. He was also beginning to agree with Bruce's theory that one of these individuals was responsible for the lack of producers that Lucasfilm had been able to hire in recent years.



But even with all that hassle Mike Eisner Loved working at Lucasfilm in no small part because he effectively had no shareholders to manage and no board to appease. That meant that Mike had more or less a free hand to Run it however he wished and only had to keep a few individuals happy. The problem was those specific individuals were a bit of the tricky sort.



Sure, George Lucas would regularly invent something that shook the foundations of movie making, but he also was prone to impractical fits of whimsy, such as wanting Star Wars to be the first Lucasfilm release or wishing to spend an extra year and a half with practically no income just to shoot a fantastic battle scene. Couldn't he see that releasing a theatrical trailer on time, a cut-down movie at the agreed date, and doing a director's cut two years later would be better? Not only would fans not be disappointed at the late release, but cash flow would continue, and they would get a second cut of potentially an excellent movie.



Bruce O'Brian, the other major shareholder of Lucasfilm and ironically the one who made more of the big decisions than the man with his name on the billboard, was somehow worse. When he wasn't picking fights with the media, Bruce seemed to want to only work on projects he personally found interesting, going so far as to act and direct a movie for a RIVAL STUDIO like Bruce didn't have the total resources of Lucasfilm if he wanted to make the darn thing. Incomprehensible actions for someone with a business degree, and wasn't that a surprise when Mike found out that Bruce O'Brian was better at taxes than half the trained accountants Lucasfilm had. Admittedly, Bruce did have a bit of a golden touch when it came to finding obscure film rights or charity causes that gave him huge returns on his investments. Heck, Star Wars and Lucasfilm was admittedly one of his hair-brained. How the heck did he know how to pull it off schemes. What kind of idiot got rich pulling useless directors out of the Universal Reject bin, giving them millions and letting them make whatever movie they wanted. The kind that was Bruce O'Brien with George Lucas and American graffiti.



In Mikes's mind, the final stockholder, Marsha Lucas, was the best. Marsha was both an immensely talented editor and yet still Reasonable understanding and a massive help in wangling George's more outlandish ideas to something reasonable and possible within the current limits of material science. the only problem was hr desire to have a family and for George not to work so hard which technically went against the short term prospects of the company while buffing the long term prospects so on balance even. Now, if only he could persuade her to edit just a few more of these films…



Mike had not anticipated having Mary O'Brian as a factor in the equation for a few years yet, but Brandon, the kid that Bruce had more or less acquired as his own, was expected sometime next year. So a lesson on contract negotiations and reasonable judgment for someone who, if they realized it or not, had a great deal of influence on the direction of Lucasfilm at the price of half a day's work for the accounting team was worth it in Mike's mind. If all went well, he might even get an ally to make steering the company a little easier. All he had to do was win the current bet. There was no way a toddler was that good at math. It all had to be Bruce's boasting like any good dad would.



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Half an hour later, Brandon's smirk had grown so large it barely fit onto his face. Mary's drawings and notes had claimed two more tables, and Mike had given up on doing any other work this afternoon but reviewing what Mary was producing.



Mary had so far found seven areas of interest his team of accountants had somehow overlooked, ranging from something as minor as a column out by 2 dollars to another as severe as nearly 1.8 million. The accounting team who had told him it was all sorted had been ordered back to review their work and explain the discrepancies in Great Detail. Computers and Programmers had been stolen back from Pixar to go over their work independently with a fine tooth comb. Mike could see that someone was trying to pull something clever and would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those meddling kids.



Compared to those discrepancies, the fact that Mary had also identified several companies that were overcharging and another, which was, while never technically late, always skirting the Margins while charging a premium for the rush work, was small potatoes. On another day, Mike would have been handing out bonuses and possibly drinks to the team of accountants who noticed the issues, today they barley merited more than a breif Huh before being shoved onto the growing pile of To do Later.



Then Mary started yawning and put down her crayon. Brandon dropped the smirk and immediately went to pick Mary up, only for her to grizzle and complain she wasn't done yet. In the space of a few hours She had gone through the Main Lucafilm umbrella report, Pixar and DreamWorks specific reports and was Half way through ILM's detailed departmental reports, a feat that had taken his team more than a week each.



It was hilarious watching Brandon drop the surly teenage attitude and coax Mary into coming and finishing her "maffs stuff" later. It was less funny watching Brandon wave off the bet as he scooped up the Kermit doll and left the room, saying he only agreed to the bet so Mike would take Mary seriously.



As he watched them leave, Mike found himself in a difficult situation. He held a contract requiring him to give up a substantial amount of his personal wealth and relinquish the preferred stick he used to prod the Maniacs running Lucasfilm in to going somewaht sensible directions. While the contract was not legally binding, Mike was torn between his moral values and his financial interests. On one hand, he could disregard the contract and retain his wealth and control. On the other hand, he faced the prospect of defrauding a toddler.
Brandon and Mary were disinterested in the matter, only caring that Mike had acknowledged Mary as a person and not underestimated her, a mistake that Mike would not repeat, so it was just between him and his concence. He spent a long time thinking that night.



He was still deciding on his cause of action a week later when a piece of butcher's paper with a crudely drawn picture of Ginger the cat in crayon arrived at his office. On the other side, also in crayon, was the name of the accountant who had signed off the most errors and "errors", according to Mary. A quick double-check of his records confirmed Mary's insight. Mike fought an urge to put up the child's picture and use it as a prop in his main office when he had a "chat" with the accountant. Mike smiled as he paged his secutary to send up the individual and then send for security. He was looking forward to this. Mary really was his Favorite O'Brian.