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In the executive suites of Hollywood, however, the candy is covered with gold. A lot of smart people have worked hard, not just to produce hits but to insulate their companies from the big movie bust. Since the late '50s they have supplied the bulk of network TV series. Now they have bought into cable companies, publishing houses, satellite technology, the record industry. They have also partnered with one another to distribute films, and with the commercial TV networks and Home Box Office to create pay cable operations. The result is an informal cartel that could control the entertainment business well into the 21st century.
For the conservative movie mogul, diversification is a timid dream come true. Like a card shark with an ace up one sleeve and a derringer up the other, he can approach the gambling table with confidence. Win or lose, he has done everything possible to take the risk out of the game—because movies are no longer the only game in town. At Warner Communications, theatrical films accounted for about 14% of the company's 1981 income; Atari video games and other consumer electronics generated 65%. The Disney people would love TRON to be a hit, but they have much more money riding on Epcot Center and Tokyo Disneyland, their newfangled playgrounds soon opening in Florida and Japan. Only MGM/UA is unprotected by either a conglomerate owner or significant nonmovie holdings. Coincidence or not, that is the one studio in financial trouble these days.
This has not been a happy year for the MGM/UA studio or for its boss, David Begelman, 60. A flurry of flops has left the company so deep in debt ($550 million) that even the substantial profits from Rocky III and Poltergeist will not cover this year's interest payments. Rumors of Begelman's imminent removal were spreading even before the galleys of Indecent Exposure turned up on the marble coffee tables of Bel Air last month. David McClintick's book, to be published next month, is a 550-page reconstruction of the meetings, phone calls and private anguish surrounding Begelman's departure from a similar job at Columbia Pictures in 1978—after he had admitted to embezzling some $84,000 from the studio, including $40,000 in forged checks.
Indecent Exposure is an absorbing movieland saga, but would it play on the screen? Today's young movie consumers want quick thrills and fast gags. Every one of the 20 top-grossing films of 1981 was either a comedy or an action-adventure. The young movie audience has always demanded escape. But escape into what? Into the child's first thrill at the movies: to be astonished by a great image glowing in the dark—a dream or nightmare come true in two dimensions.
And what about the adult audience, for whom the most special effect comes from the interplay of complex thoughts and contradictory feelings? Is there a place at the movies for them? Yes, the industry replies—if only they would come to the theaters. Most of the time, they don't. In the last six months of 1981, more than a dozen "adult" films were released, including The French Lieutenant's Woman, Body Heat, Reds and Ragtime. Only two of them raised much more than a sigh at the box office: On Golden Pond and Chariots of Fire, with astonishing grosses of $108.6 million and $58 million.