Authors: Barney Rosenzweig
At first, I was somewhat relieved by the article, as I feared—and predicted—a hatchet job. From the perspective of fearing the worst, it was not so bad. Rereading the article today reinforces that and even introduces the thought that the piece was (is) fairly benign, but that was not Sharon’s view—not then. The day the article came out, so did the word that Ms. Gless was not even speaking to me.
That
was a first, and it cast sort of a pall over the entire company. I had no idea how long this would continue, and I began to wonder if I had lived by the sword of publicity too long. Maybe this would be the very thing that would do me in. Tyne was pissed, too, but I was used to that (and it’s a very different kind of thing anyway).
“Too bad,” I remember saying to no one in particular, “until now, the last two weeks had been pretty terrific.”
The incident put me in a more responsive mode to my attorney, Stu Glickman, and my longtime friend and sometime agent, Lee Rosenberg. They were pushing the Herman Rush offer for Columbia; they felt it would work out and that it would be an extremely lucrative deal. If I was successful, and prudent, I could make a major bundle of money. If not, I still would do pretty well. Of prime importance was the fact that it was a benchmark.
The lexiphanic Lee Rosenberg said, I had “reached the apogee of phase one” of my career. It was now time to move on.
The unreconciled fight with Gless had made this decision easier. I was now moving on to other (multiple) stuff. The hands-on phase of my career was, I thought, drawing to a close. I was sad about the Gless thing. Normally it might be patched up, but, when she discovered that I was “leaving” the series (or at least handing a great deal of it over to other parties), she would add this “betrayal” to the
TV Guide
thing, and that would be that.
It was ironic that this unpleasantness had motivated me—for once in my life—to make the “sensible” business decision that my advisors had been promoting for so long.
I felt as though I had been forced to leave the nest and test my wings as a more mature being than I was before. This new phase had potential, but it would not be the same for me ever again. This was, I believed, close to a closing chapter for
Cagney & Lacey
and me. Although I would be involved in some aspect of the show for a long time to come (and fairly heavily so for the remainder of the episodes we were currently filming), it would, I reasoned,
never
be the same.
It was “good” for me. It was the “right thing”, but it was sad, too. The show had brought me so much—virtually everything I could have hoped for—but it was not smart, not economically or emotionally, for me to stay any longer. What else could be expected? Should I remain on the show at 25 percent of my fees and a smaller fraction of my deserved ownership position until the very end—declining lucrative, multiple opportunities—only later to attempt my next project, phoenix-like, from the ashes of a canceled series?
Who said yes?
I think many had come to expect that. Maybe I had, too. This was all going to require a readjustment on my part.
I might appear to be a daddy to a lot of my cohorts, but this was really gonna demand my growing up—and fast. I had miles to go. I wondered what happened to all that talk of early retirement. It was on hold for at least two years while I tried my hand at moguldom.
I expected at least two series, and quite possibly a lot more would come out of this new phase. If they were good, and/or smartly produced, there was no telling what the next move might be. It would all surely be bigger and richer, but probably not so personally satisfying as what I had just come through. How could it be?
The phenomenon of
Cagney & Lacey
was one of those all-too-rare occurrences. Many things were now possible for me, but I would never be young again.
Cagney & Lacey
was my first bona fide hit. There might be others, but there would never be another first.
How would the women respond? How would I tell them? I didn’t know. It was complicated by the current tenseness in our relationship. They might want to keep on as if to spite me, to show me what a minor role I played in their success. That would be to my advantage.
They might use this as an excuse to break up (as noted before, they could be slightly self-destructive). Or they might just say thanks and go on, continuing to strive for “deeper, richer, fuller, better” without me. If so, I would be on the sidelines rooting them on. It was conceivable that they had been expecting me to do something like this all along.
Chapter 38
NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED
My first decision as president of The Rosenzweig Company would have to be where I would office. I would try to remain at Lacy Street until pre-production started on project number one, then move to new headquarters. The key would be how the cast and staff of
Cagney & Lacey
would handle my being there but not really being theirs.
Project number one was the Carl Weathers commitment Lee Rosenberg had spoken to me about some time before; it was the one I had, when first asked, declined the opportunity to produce, and now it had found a home at Columbia Pictures Television. In the intervening time since what I thought was our final meeting, Weathers had interviewed several writers under contract to the studio and selected the guy I had recommended, my old pal from
American Dream
, Ronald M. Cohen .
The teaming of Cohen and Weathers lacked an element, as far as ABC was concerned. They wanted an experienced executive producer to be over Ronald. He, in turn, announced that there were only two who were acceptable to him: Eddie Milkis or Barney Rosenzweig. He did not know when he made that remark that I just might be dealing with his studio employers for the formation of The Rosenzweig Company.
TRC (The Rosenzweig Company) was largely the creation of Herman Rush’s fertile mind. It was controlled by me and co-owned by Columbia Pictures Corporation, which acted as bank and distributor. The new company would function as its own entity, subject to only the slightest of economic restraints by Columbia. Naturally, all creative controls resided with me.
The Weathers project was really folded in at the eleventh hour, as I agreed to do this favor for my friend Ronald, for my new bank, for Herman Rush, as well as Corday (Rush’s president of the Columbia television division of Columbia Studios), and even agent Lee Rosenberg (who, besides representing me, had Carl Weathers for a client).
It was the late summer of 1985, and I had been led to believe we would not have to be in production until January 1986 for a March air date. I soon learned that wasn’t so and that January would be the targeted debut of the series. That necessitated a November start of production. It was the madness of the original
Cagney & Lacey
schedule all over again, only here we had a star but no M.O.W. (as I did on
C&L
), meaning there was no visual blueprint (no pilot film) to show to a new writing staff.
Fortune Dane
was Ronald Cohen’s idea (and, God forgive him, his title). He had suffered fools for most of his career, but now he had his chance—a commitment from a network, a star in Carl Weathers with whom he could communicate, and a friend for an executive producer who precluded the need of a studio and who could fend off the network in his defense.
I was cognizant that the ABC commitment came to us from Carl Weathers in the first place and that he was the star of the show. I was determined that this man would not be forced to go down in flames, flying a banner he could not endorse, or on a project to which he could not relate. This attitude led me to foolishly cave to Carl’s urgings that we film the series away from Hollywood (locating our operation nearly 500 miles to the north in Oakland, California). I also erred in believing the network’s lip service to Weathers being a crossover star.
65
When our show debuted, it was on Saturday night, following the new Redd Foxx series and
Benson
. (Hey, folks, it’s Saturday Night Noir on ABC.)
Too quickly, I tried to imbue this project with the same spirit of troika I had only recently introduced on
Cagney & Lacey
. It was a mistake. At Lacy Street, Sharon and Tyne might have been flattered, but in reality they declined the mantle of co-leaders. On
Dane
, Ronald and Carl all too readily accepted. The bottom line result: too many bosses, a show that wasn’t any good, and it was my fault. I was spending too much time on renting hammers and buying nails and not enough time on those creative, political, and leadership things I do well.
“You have approached the apogee of phase one of your career,” Lee Rosenberg has said. Too bad. I liked phase one.
I was stuck, the deal said, for years. Maybe I could negotiate out, but still I felt I was bound for at least the Weathers project. I was not miserable, simply pissed I had allowed myself to get conned into this at a time when I should have been, and could have been, having a better time of things.
My old employee, Peter Lefcourt, was living my fantasy. He was then a series “doctor” on
Our Family Honor
, and pulling down $45,000 per episode. That’s the way to be an employee; come to work when they’re desperate, charge an arm and a leg, do it your way, and, if they don’t like it, let ’em pay you off. I’d dreamed of it for years, could have had it, and passed it on for this “offer I couldn’t refuse.”
Meanwhile, the work with Ronald Cohen was not going well. Brilliant, indefatigable, and so intimidating to virtually everyone, Ronald would inadvertently and invariably distract coworkers from their real chores. To those workers, everyday tasks were mundane compared to the web Ronald spun. I had gotten used to working with lesser talents who simply did what I told them. I found that I had come to prefer that to the constant tension of this relationship with my old, very talented pal.
In the early days of
Cagney & Lacey
, I had said to Tyne and Sharon, “Give me one minute a day: one minute in dailies where I laugh, cry, or am surprised. If you do that,” I would say, “at the end of the episode, I’ll have seven good minutes. That’s all I need to make a terrific episode. Hell, it’s all America deserves.”
The women laughed, but more often than not would ask if I’d gotten my minute that day.
Director Ray Danton, in a losing argument for an extra day’s shooting on an episode, once quoted Robert Browning to me: “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”
I didn’t miss a beat as I replied, “Ah, but ’tis better to aim for San Diego and hit it, than shoot for the moon and fall on your ass.”
Danton loved it, had the two quotes framed, and presented them to me for my office.
I tried to communicate this concept to Ronald. After commercials and titles there are approximately forty-six minutes of picture in any hour-long television episode. I admonished Ronald to get that “one minute a day.” He wouldn’t listen. He would not aim for that plausible target, nor settle for a realistic and achievable seven good minutes per show. In his pursuit of his definition of excellence, he fought for all forty-six, sans priorities. He would, as a consequence, wind up with no good minutes at all. His goals might be admirable, but they were not possible—not on a television schedule—and not on a television series, where it is absolutely essential to set one’s priorities, and to give every moment relative (as opposed to absolute) value or weight.
I wanted him to listen to me, to take advantage of the hard-won lessons of my experience. I reminded him of our biggest fight on
American Dream
. It was in 1979, on an early draft of that pilot script. In our story, after the Novaks had moved to the inner city, their youngest son became the victim of a schoolyard mugging. Ronald, with his sense of verisimilitude, had the boy taken from the school yard in an ambulance. When the kid’s father came home, he was confronted by the school’s security guard, who assured the older Novak that in the future he would keep an eye on the boy; that he had some empathy for the beating the twelve year-old took, because only a year earlier his daughter was gang-raped at the same school.
Personally, I had thought the kid should have a bloody nose, a black eye and some minor scrapes—no ambulance, no security guard, and no gang-rape.
“How in hell can you justify the family staying in that Chicago neighborhood after your version?” I had asked my talented friend. He yelled at me, called me a fathead, and disparaged my humble beginnings on the Fess Parker/
Daniel Boone
series. As our argument intensified, I had seen my check, payable to him for $10,000, on his desk. I had grabbed it and moved toward the door.
“Where are you going with my money?” he hollered.
“Listen, asshole, you want to be an author,” I yelled back, “go to it. You want to be paid by me; you’re going to have to listen!”
Ronald sat back down in his chair. “Tell me again what you want,” he said.
“I want a father-son scene in the kid’s room,” I began. “He’s in bed with a black eye, a large bandage across his nose, and a nasty scrape on his forehead. No ambulance or security guard. Our hero learns that his son was robbed of his lunch money and that was what the fight was about. Danny Novak tells his son, ‘You fight for your life. You fight for your sister, but not for money, not ever!’ It’s a warm scene, a
Daniel Boone
scene, and it ends with the kid asking his dad for boxing lessons.”
I followed Ronald’s instructions that I return in an hour and that I return the check to his desk. When I came back, Ronald was lying on his couch, one arm draped across his eyes. With the other he pointed toward his typewriter. I crossed to it and leaned over it to read the new scene.
“Do you remember what I did then?” I asked the author who, now more than six years later, sat in the den of my Hancock Park home.
“Yeah,” he said, looking at his shoes. “You walked across the room, leaned over, and kissed me on the mouth. First time I’ve ever been kissed by anyone with a beard.”
I smiled at my friend, the owner of this extraordinary talent, and said, “Ronald, I’m too old and too rich—too spoiled by the past few years. The fights used to be fun. Not now. I can’t do it anymore.”
Ronald looked up at me. “You want me to change my behavior,” he said.
I nodded.
His glance now went to my mantle and the statuary that was there. “What the hell,” he said. “You’re the one with the fucking
Emmys
. You deserve it.”
We embraced. I believe he was sincere. Ronald wanted to cooperate. He wanted to change. He just couldn’t do it.
Of course there was also the matter of my own miscalculations. I had been locked in combat for so long with
Cagney & Lacey
that I was unaware of an industry-wide freeze that had been imposed by all three networks on the amount of money they would pay for any new program. (The freezing of these license fees had amounted to a major rollback, since costs of labor, materials, and rent continued to escalate on almost a daily basis.)
Then, within a short time of the signing of this deal, came the first indicators of the economic collapse of the syndication market—especially impacting my specialty, the hour-long dramas. “Too difficult to program,” they said, “too quickly dated,” and “too expensive.”
In terms of efficiency, I must add that, on top of all this, I had also minimized the very real contributions of the loyal and professional help and advice I had received on
Cagney & Lacey
from Mick McAfee, Stan Neufeld, and Dick Rosenbloom. These talented men would not be available to me on
Fortune Dane
.
As if that wasn’t enough, Lee Rosenberg’s agency, Triad , was to receive a packaging commission of over $20,000 per one-hour episode in up-front commissions alone (a cost we didn’t have on
Cagney & Lacey
). Finally, I had to start up from scratch, rent office space that would expand or contract depending on a fluid production schedule, and I had to do so in a highly inflated California real estate market.
All my calculations were a joke. I was angry at my advisors for not being more help, for not bringing me up-to-date or keeping me current. I was also angry at myself, for it was all my responsibility.
There was also the discovery, which involved a friend and, relatively new-to-me at the time business manager, costing me hundreds of thousands in a real estate venture he had put together that went sour. And as if that wasn’t enough, while attempting to save that sinking ship, he would turn over my account to an underling who misfiled the governmental form for the investment tax credit application on
Fortune Dane
, making it forever null and void and costing me over $500,000 in after-tax dollars. This clerical error would bring my losses to over a million dollars and, with it, the realization that I would be working all those sixteen- to eighteen-hour days on
Fortune Dane
for nothing. (Did I hear someone say, “Easy come, easy go”?)
There is something very disquieting about being twenty-five pounds overweight and forty-eight years old at 2:30 in the morning, when you lie in bed wondering if that minor chest pain you feel is only gas. I was not holding up well. The pressure of the past few months, of simultaneously producing two television series in two different cities, plus the genuine dissatisfaction with the results of my labors (coupled with a true loss of touch with the reward system), had me buckling.
I was exhausted, discouraged, and disillusioned. I loved my house; I was rarely ever in it any more. I now was taking less and less advantage of its tennis court and pool, and I found myself thinking of selling it—beginning to equate it with a money pit. My God, it was one: nearly $30,000 a month of mortgage, taxes, insurance, and maintenance. Thirty thousand... and 1986 dollars at that!