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A rash of rumors now suggests that Bronfman, if he buys MCA, would ask one of his friends, Ovitz or at-large media mogul Barry Diller, to run it. But either of them would surely insist on substantial equity, and last week both were denying any interest in the job. It is more logical that Bronfman would urge Sheinberg to stay on-not least because that would assure MCA of a Spielberg-DreamWorks connection-but that Edgar Jr. would run the show.
"I don't want to speculate on what I'd like to have happen," Sheinberg said Friday. "And one reason, I guess, is that I don't know." But clearly he wants to put Matsushita behind him. "It means I'll be able to freely go about buying whatever brand of television I want to. There's something to be said for free choice." (Some MCA-ers may not agree: last week there was a run on the company store, as employees scurried to buy Matsushita hardware at discount before it was shipped back to Osaka.)
Freedom is exhilarating, and the movie business is intoxicating. Another whiskey merchant, Joseph P. Kennedy, thought so in 1928 when he briefly took over Patha pictures. Back then, Jules Stein, MCA's founder, was booking singers into speakeasies; and Sam Bronfman, the new owner of Seagram, was bootlegging spirits across the Canadian border into Prohibition-era America. Wall Street is hoping that for Seagram's sake, Sam's grandson Edgar Jr. does not forget the first rule of a speakeasy: the bartender is supposed to stay sober.
Maybe that doesn't matter to Bronfman: he hears his own voice sayin' it's all right. In this respect, Edgar Jr. is like the hero of one of his own movies. There is a scene in The Border where Jack Nicholson is asked why he is trying to accomplish a feat most people think is crazy. His reply: "I guess I gotta feel good about something I do." --Reported by Bernard Baumohl/New York, Patrick E. Cole and Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles and Edward W. Desmond/Tokyo