Taxi Goose
Inside of his office, Columbia Pictures CEO Alan Hirschfield was nursing a very extensive headache over the latest shuffle in Columbia's film lineup with a fine bottle of scotch. While drinking liquor in the early afternoon was a very ill-advised move, Alan didn't give a damn about the effects on his body or what other people thought as the film executive often needed liquor or other vices to cope with the extensive bullshit that came with his position of a studio executive in a post-Strike Hollywood.
While Columbia had always been a critical part of the film establishment and in the 40's and 50's had been dominant with their comedies, the last two decades had been extremely unkind to the studio. After the death of their first and legendary President Henry Cohn, Columbia had been on a gradual and pathetic downward spiral with a major string of box office bombs and absolutely terrible business decisions, the greatest of them all being the turning down of a distribution agreement for James Bond. In 1973, Columbia had been on the verge of bankruptcy until Alan's company Allen and Co had bailed them out with a major stock purchase, and as part of the angel investment Alan got to play CEO. With an extensively large plurality of shares and a clean house that got a new board on his side, Alan performed an extensive series of both cuts and expansions in a ambitious restructuring of the studio. Like how many sports teams engaged in rebuild seasons where they performed poorly to get the perfect roster for a comeback, Alan sacrificed immediate success for structural reform so that in the long-term Columbia would be reborn and earn its rightful place as a leading member of the establishment.
It was a brilliant plan that Alan could have gotten away with if everything went according to term, and then the meddling kids of the Guilds went on strike and screwed everything up.
While Columbia didn't treat their actors like gilded age child workers like many studios, they didn't give their Writers proper working conditions and treated Producer contracts as guidelines than ironclad agreements. While often overshadowed by the greater offenders of Warner Bros and Universal, Columbia was just as much of a target. Even worse, Columbia didn't have any wonder films like Jaws in its lineup to keep the studio afloat and relevant, and when they did have some decent films any grand success was drowned out by Universal's high budget feasts, UA's artsy dining, and Lucasfilm's exotic sushi imports. Columbia had gotten to the point where as it stood right now, they were only a couple of bombs away from declaring bankruptcy. Hell, had it not been for the success of Shampoo then the studio would have been bankrupt, and even still they needed to take a number of loans and go into deep debt to keep the lights on.
As such, after the strike ended Alan and the board came together and brainstormed some ideas to save the company. They couldn't shelve any of their high risk films for tax breaks as there was nothing to get a break on. They didn't have the money to hire A-listers or bid on lucrative rights, and they had no connections abroad to pull a Lucasfilms and coast off of other nation's cinema. So, at the end of the day they decided to undergo significant rewrites or reshoots of the riskiest films of their current lineup and make movies more friendly to general audiences that could at least make a series of steady profits.
One such major change was Taxi Driver. Everytime Alan looked at the film, he couldn't help but wonder just what the fuck he was thinking giving the greenlight, even to such a talented film brat and rising star in Martin Scorcese at the helm as Director. While bleak and cynical urban dramas were still relatively popular, Some Nights launched a wave of counterattacks with films that were either more optimistic or dynamic and explored the world outside of urban America with the general sentiment being that America in such a bleak and depressing time had enough of corruptive city life and wanted to be happy or thrilled. Even if Urban dramas were still box office kings, how the fuck could Columbia make a film about a loser taxi driver who is addicted to porn, stalks women, has a friendship with a child prostitute and nearly assassinates a Jimmy Carter/Ted Kennedy stand-in appeal to America? Sure Shampoo was a weird ass film that Beatty used to bitch and rant about Nixon and sexual puritanism while lusting after teenagers and middle aged women, but hey, sex sells? Who wants to watch Taxi Driver?
Unable to outwrite can the film for risk of incurring the wrath of the Guilds, Alan used every legal loophole he could to have Taxi Driver nominally faithful to its original plot but a completely different movie. Instead of being a pathetic and mentally unstable veteran, Travis Bickle was just a down on his luck average joe struggling to find good relationships in the city then become a hero through vigilantism and saving a prostitute he befriended. Now all they needed to do was to find a way to somehow salvage the Palantine plot and force Jodie Foster to quit the film so they could replace her with an adult actress and they were set for a decent box office performance.
Unfortunately, Martin Scorcese found out before their plans could be finalized and not only supposedly managed to create a copy of the film for himself, but stormed into Alan's office the day before and cursed Alan out with a whole list of presumed Italian obscenities and decried him as David Zavlas Jr. and that he would come back with his lawyers to burn Columbia to the ground and made sure Warner had a partner studio to join it in the Great Auction last year. Alan actually laughed in his face, confident that his lawyers had everything cemented in ironclad contracts and that there was nothing Martin could do to stop him. Besides, who did he think he was? As talented as he was, Martin was a nobody artsy director who no one outside of LA had even heard. They may have fallen far, but Columbia Pictures was still goddamn Columbia pictures, that had to mean something!
Groaning as his telephone rang, Alan picked it up sluggishly and felt a migraine coming on, "What?" Alan said in a slurred manner.
"Mr. Hirschfield, there's some sort of delivery truck outside, they say it's a direct gift for you." His secretary said.
"A deliver truck? Just have them drop it off, I'll see it later." Alan complained, close to hanging it up.
"I tried to do so but they say apparently that it's too much to be delivered at once." Groaning at the explanation, Alan slammed the phone and decided to go out for fresh air and get it over with.
He was met with an overweight man in navy blue overalls who presented him with a clipboard. "Could you sign here sir?"
"What the hell is this a piano?" Alan said, then squinted as he read the paper to understand just what the hell he was being gifted.
"Uh....no sir, it's...um....do you have kids or something?"
"Yeah, what does that have to do with-" Alan's speech stopped and he stared at the clipboard with a rising rush of dread and panic, heart rate elevated and eyes bulging out as he saw that the delivery came from one Lucasfilms Unlimited.
The door to the moving truck then opened, and out flooded hundreds of stuffed goose animals of various sizes. The calling card of an Irish boxer who reportedly pressed the button on Warner Bros' nuclear implosion just because they called Debbie Reynolds ugly, Bruce O'Brian.
"WHAT THE FUCK?!" Alan shrieked in panic, stumbling back and tripping down on himself as the rush of stuffed geese came forward and threatened to swallow him.
Later that day, Alan called LAPD and demanded that charges be pressed against Lucasfilms for terroristic threats, intimidation or harassment. Unfortunately his inquiry was handled by a Black Sargent who gave him a deadpan stare and told him that when Columbia had burning crosses in their studio parking lot instead of a pile of stuffed geese with no attached message as gifts then they would take action.
Before he left the office, Alan got a call from the second most infamous man in Hollywood, Mike Eisner, humbly requesting his presence at Lucasfilms in two days for some important talks about the fate of Taxi Driver.
Two days later, Mike leaned back, lounging at his seat in the table while Martin and Paul went on the warpath against Alan and his lackeys across the table, backed up by members of Lucasfilms legal who supported their insults of Columbia's intelligence and artistic integrity with cold facts and logic of grand legal repercussions should Columbia not follow through with the contract, with Lucasfilms being all too happy to help create a new precedent of writer and director's rights being carried out in the post-Strike Hollywood. So far Mike was mostly silent save for the occasional snarky comment and reigning in Martin and Paul at their most viscious. It was a rare moment of fun where Mike got to play the Good Cop when most of the time he was the corporate devil acting as opposite to Bruce the Boy Scout.
In truth, Mike wasn't exactly super excited to be here and go to war with Columbia, mostly acting at the insistence of Bruce as his boss. While Mike was happy to have Martin join his pool of Directors for Lucasfilms, he didn't really have much faith in taxi cab. Oh sure intellectually it was a good film and it was sure to make some profit. But the grittiness and graphic maturity of the plot made it a massive turn off for general audiences and too niche to even be a favorite of urban drama enthusiasts. At least Carrie with its intensity was being adapted from a bestseller and would be consumed enthusiastically by the growing demographic of horror fans.
In short, Taxi Driver was not going to be a massive blockbuster like Star Wars or Rocky and its maturity made for a messy component of Mike's vision of Lucasflims as a studio that created optimistic and inspiring blockbusters. Still, there were reasons why Mike went along with this bold venture. Even if Taxi Driver would only give the same profits as a Japanese import, it was still an undeniably intelligent film and if Martin's words were to be backed up, a bold and beautiful urban story of insomnia and loneliness. Such a format fit with the high quality art and works of passion motif that George believed his company to be. More importantly, it was the type of stuff critics and the Academy ate up, and if Taxi Driver was a critical masterpiece and his friends in the other studios sharing word of all non-Universal films being duds for '76, then there was a serious chance that Mike could score for a Lucasfilms sweep of Oscars nominations, a very bold and powerful debut for the studio.
Thus, Mike went along with this crazy quest, and while Bruce was busy making Carrie's romance movie, Mike kind of used his nickname as a calling card to unofficially declare war with Columbia studios, and now Mike was going to create a Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo without firing a single shot.
With Martin and Paul having fulfilled their roles, Mike got them to cool off in the halls, leaving the room with just him and Alan.
"What the fuck do you think you are doing Eisner?" Alan demanded, spouting his last name with venom. Although as angry as Alan might have been, the shakes along with a climb of sweat and nervous twitches showed to Mike that any feelings of rage were tempered with equal amounts of fear.
Mike grinned fiendishly, happy that without releasing a single film he had already managed to become a boogeyman to the establishment. "What I want, is for us to walk out of this room with a nice deal where everyone's happy. We at Lucasfilms have no interest in creating an enemy out of Columbia Pictures. There's more than enough room in this town for the both of us, and plenty of opportunities to cooperate in a spirit of friendship. All we want to do is write a wrong and help a friend." Mike said in a faux sweet tone, one that he knew would push all of Alan's buttons.
"Bullshit, you lunatics kill studios, the only people you give a damn about are those Japanese studios. Why should I trust a goddamned word you say?"
Mike shrugged his shoulders, "You don't necessarily have any reason to, but you don't have any reason not to, and you got a whole lot of reasons to listen to what I have to say. After all, if we come to an accord, we get a nice film, you get a decent cash flow, everyone wins. But if you choose to reject our offer of good faiths, we will have to settle our unfortunate conflict in the courts."
"You can't treat us like Warner Bros! We pay taxes, we're playing by the rules!" Alan protested, veins popping as he stared down Mike in defiance.
Mike as usual kept his cool. "Perhaps you follow the letter of the law, but I know you sure as hell don't hold to the spirit. Now I can respect rule sharking and pushing contracts to the fine print to get good deals, but there's a difference between altering the deal and replacing it entirely. We've got solid ground to open up a lawsuit." Alan opened his mouth to speak but Mike interjected and continued, "Sure it might not be an instant and assured win, but we've got enough evidence to have our day in court, a day that can turn into weeks, months. Can you really afford such a length battle with such empty pockets."
"We're not that broke." Alan countered, then froze as he realized the meaning of his words, that he inadvertently admitted to being in such a poor state of finances.
Mike smiled, knowing that he had Alan in check and just needed to move the final pieces of mate. "Oh yes not that broke, but we take this to court, and you will become that broke. Even if let's say we end up in front of a judge who loves Three Stooges and is biased in your favor from the start, you really think the media's gonna keep quiet on another major studio fucking over their film production, just months after Josey Wales? You think the Guild is going to let this go, and even if they got no grounds for strike or legal, aren't going to make new rules or retaliate to make sure you are punished and can never repeat?"
Mike smiled in a cheshire grin as he had Alan dead to rights, who was frozen in horror with the scenarios most likely flashing in his eyes. Now for the bombshell, "And just imagine what would happen to your stock prices if we go to battle? Perhaps you might not become as cheap as Disney stock, but it's not impossible. And let's just say that you only lose like a nickel or dime's worth. That's still a loss of value. And in such market instability, who else will stock owners turn to for a secure return and then some in interest than our old pals at Universal?"
Alan's skin seemed to turn white at the comment, "I have friends on Wall Street Alan. I know all about the attempted takeovers. I must say, I'm impressed at all the stops you pulled to remain independent, but you can't hold off Sidney forever. Unless you got the second coming of Some Nights, then I have a feeling that Allen & Co are going to find Universal's checks very welcoming."
"Fuck you." Alan snarled, to which Mike simply laughed.
As much as Lucasfilms had become the boogeymen of Hollywood by scaring the Old Guard that the end times was near for them; even the crustiest dinosaurs and highest elites of the establishment could not deny that for all the trouble Lucasfilms caused, at this time they were but annoyances compared to the growing empire that was Universal. Sure most studios had their days of glory, but the entire decade was an undeniable Universal Win with the company now worth billions and having such fat check books that not only could they give most of their employees a raise after the strike, but they wrote Stanley Kubrick a $100 million dollar check and acted like it was pocket change.
Currently there was ongoing talks across town for the Big Six (Columbia, Disney, MGM, Paramount, Fox and United Artists) to form a coalition against Universal who they saw as the Napoleon of cinema, tearing down the old in fiery revolution and replacing it with a grand empire. Clashing egos and bitter feuds kept the coalition from forming, and instead of being fearful at isolation, Universal laughed and went on the hunt like Bruce the Jaws shark, fighting back with a war of stocks and cash. The Disney family had just barely been able to hold off a buyout. Now Columbia along with MGM and Fox were the targets of hostile takeovers. Even if by some miracle Universal got absolutely nothing out of the Warner Auction, there was a high chance that by the end of the decade they'd have assimilated half of Hollywood into their corporate chimera.
It was a fate that Alan dared not to entertain. For if he folded, he would be blacklisted out of Hollywood as a failure and likely wouldn't be trusted on Wall Street as anything more than a penny broker. Perhaps he could fight a war against Lucasfilms, but not Universal and Lucasfilms.
But then, what the hell did Lucasfilms see in Taxi Driver that he didn't? Was Scorcese some sort of film genius like Coppola and Spielberg? Was Taxi Driver actually something that America was secretly yearning for and the next highest grossing film? Was assassinations and child prostitution suddenly socially acceptable and nobody told him? The earnest faith that Mike had in the film scared Alan and made him consider letting Martin release his film. But even if a major success, he already burned his bridges with Scorcese and Schrader and most of the board was already dead set in writing off Taxi Driver.
As if seeing the gears turn in his head, Mike decided to end his fun and get straight to business, "Look, while we don't approve of the treatment of Taxi Driver, we are still at an early stage where amends can be made and peace resume. After all, you didn't call Debbie Reynolds an ugly hag, right?" Mike egged on with the subtle threat of bringing Bruce into negotiations.
Alan staid stoically silent. It was not as if he held such thoughts of Debbie Reynolds, but if he answered wrong then he was fearful that the Goose would come and seek revenge for his mother-in-law. "You need money, we want to support our friend, let us compromise and end this unfortunate affair with a satisfactory resolution. We're willing to purchase Taxi Driver off your hands, deliver a considerable sum in exchange to cover lost investments, and perhaps other agreements can be conducted as part of our merry entente against the Universal Empire. You get money and push a colorful film out of association, we uphold the obligations and remain a happy family. I apologize if we have directed any unnecessary hostility towards your esteemed studio. We just want you to know we're serious about negotiations, geese are very territorial and defensive of the flock after all."
