Joseph E. Levine was already seated in the corner booth, a glass in front of him that he'd barely touched. He was staring at the tablecloth with an unfocused gaze.
Duke saw him before Levine saw him, they had agrreed to meet up for lunch.
Joseph Levine was sixty-five years old. He'd been born in Boston, the youngest of six children in a Russian-Jewish immigrant family.
He'd dropped out of school in the eighth grade, sold newspapers, run a dress shop, and eventually stumbled into the movie business through the simple expedient of buying the American distribution rights to a cheap Italian Hercules movie and promoting it so aggressively that it grossed $20 million. That was 1959.
By 1965, Levine had turned Embassy Pictures into one of the most successful independent film companies in the world, and he had given a twenty year-old kid from Texas named Duke, $800,000 to make his first film, 'Love Story'.
"Joe," Duke said, sliding into the booth.
Levine looked up, and the unfocused gaze sharpened. "There he is. The Boy Wonder. The kid who turned my money into a career."
"The kid who turned your money into a fortune," Duke corrected gently. "For both of us."
"Sit, sit. Eat. The steak here is very good." Levine gestured at the untouched bread basket. "I ordered for us both. I hope you don't mind."
They talked about nothing for a while, the weather, the Dodgers pitching rotation, the outrageous price of real estate on the Upper East Side.
The steak arrived, and it was, as Levine had promised, was amazing. The wine flowed. The bread was replenished.
And then, between the beef and the wine, Levine's expression changed.
"You saw Carnal Knowledge?" he asked.
"I saw it. Nicholson is so talented. The whole cast is."
"It's a hit. Not amazing, but it's profitable. The reviews are strong. Nichols is happy." Levine paused, and something flickered behind his eyes. "Nichols is always happy. Nichols gets to be happy. He directs the picture, collects his fee, goes home. He doesn't have to worry about the company."
"But you do."
Levine set down his fork. He looked at Duke across the table.
"Embassy is slipping, Duke."
The words hung in the amber light.
"The Avco deal was supposed to save us," Levine continued. "When I sold to Avco Embassy in 1968, the idea was that corporate money would fuel the creative engine. I'd keep running the show, they'd keep the checkbook open, everybody's happy. That's not what happened."
"What happened?"
"What always happens when money men buy an artist's company. They started managing. Every picture I wanted to make, there was a meeting. Every meeting had a spreadsheet. Every spreadsheet had a number that was smaller than the number I needed!"
He took a breath, a few heads at neighboring tables turned briefly before deciding that whatever was happening in the corner booth was none of their business.
"So here I am," Levine said, more quietly now. "I built Embassy from nothing. And now I'm a founder who doesn't own his own ompany. I'm a glorified employee in the house I built."
Duke said nothing for a moment. He picked up his wineand took a small sip, letting the drink settle on his tongue.
"I have an idea," Levine said. "A new venture. Independent production. No corporate overlords, no Avco board meetings. Just me, a few good directors, and the kind of deal-making I was born to do."
"All I need is a partner. Someone with distribution muscle and the good sense to leave me alone."
He looked at Duke, and his eyes were bright.
"Im not asking for a favor but i could use some help, kid."
Duke set down his cup. He folded his hands on the table and looked at Joe Levine with an expression of genuine respect, genuine affection, and genuine clarity.
"Joe, you took a chance on me when nobody else would, and I will remember that for the rest of my life."
Levine nodded, sensing a "but" approaching and bracing for it.
"But here's what I've learned in the three years since you wrote that check. The difference between the people who survive in this business and the people who don't isn't talent."
"It isn't even luck. It's ownership. You know this better than anyone. You built Embassy. You were the owner. And then you sold, and you became an employee."
Levine was very still.
"Mike Nichols is brilliant," Duke continued. "One of the most gifted directors alive. But Mike chose to be a director. He chose to make pictures and collect his fee and go home. That's a good life."
"You think i gave it away," Levine said.
"You made a deal that seemed right at the time. I'm not judging you for it. You want me to give you the infrastructure of Paramount so you can rebuild what you lost, and I can't do that."
"Paramount's infrastructure exists to serve Paramount's vision. And I built it that way on purpose, because I learned from watching what happens when the owner loses control."
Duke had realized for some time now that almost all of Hollywood Old Moguls were falling, the Warner Brothers, all dead and the only one alive just wants to throw parties.
Walt Disney dead, and Disney has been on a slump. Fox and Columbia are both mess. Lew Wasserman is the only one standing still.
The minimum to invest on a Production-distribution company was at least 10 million, money that Duke didnt really have lying around.
Levine picked up his cup. He took a long, slow sip. He set it down.
"You're a bastard, Duke."
"I know."
Levine laughed. A real one this time.
"Alright," Levine said. "You won't partner with me. Fine. But you'll let me buy you dinner."
"You already did."
"Then I'll buy you dessert."
"I'll take a cannoli."
They ate dessert. They drank more wine. They talked about the old days,about the Hercules gamble, about The Graduate.
___
Duke arrived at eight-fifteen for dinner and found Mel Brooks already sitting at a booth near the back.
He was not alone.
Sitting across from Brooks was a man who looked like God had designed him as a practical joke.
Marty Feldman was forty-seven years old, British, and in possession of the most extraordinary face in show business.
His eyes were bulging, protuberant eyes, since childhood and looked in two different directions simultaneously.
"Duke!" Brooks bellowed, rising from the booth and spreading his arms as he welcome him. "You came! I was starting to think you were one of those studio guys who promises dinner and then sends a fruit basket instead."
"I would never send a fruit basket, Mel."
"Hello, a pleasure to meet you," Feldman observed, in an british accent.
"Marty Feldman," Brooks said, gesturing grandly. "The funniest man in England, and therefore the funniest man in any room, he has collaborated with the guys from Monty Python."
Duke shook Feldman's hand. "I loved 'At Last the 1948 Show'. Your sketch about the Four Yorkshiremen is one of the funniest things I've ever seen."
(Look it up, its great)
Feldman's extraordinary eyes swiveled toward Duke with an expression of genuine surprise. "You've seen that? Nobody in America has seen that."
"I make it my business to know what's happening in entertainment, Mr. Feldman."
"Well, that already makes you more qualified than ninety percent of the executives in this town."
They sat. A waiter materialized, took their order without writing anything down, and vanished.
The conversation that followed was the most fun Duke had had in months.
Brooks and Feldman together were a comedy engine, a perpetual motion machine of setups, punchlines, and callbacks that built on each other.
They talked about the Oscars, about the state of comedy in Hollywood, about Universal's latest horror movies.
Duke kept pace. He didn't try to be funnier than Brooks but he held his own, throwing in observations and references that made both comedians lean forward with surprise.
Brooks grinned and got to the point. Then he reached into the battered leather bag he'd brought and pulled out a manuscript.
The title read, TEX-X*.
Duke picked it up and looked at the cover page.
"What's this?" he asked, keeping his voice casual.
"It's a Western," Brooks said. "But not really. It's a comedy about race, violence, and the stupidity of the American frontier myth, disguised as a Western. A Black sheriff in an all-white town. The whole town goes insane. Farting cowboys. A villain named Hedley Lamarr. A scene where the characters literally break through the fourth wall and end up on the Paramount lot."
"The Warner Bros. lot," Feldman corrected.
"Whatever lot. The point is, they leave the movie. They escape their own film."
Duke opened the manuscript and read it. It was 'Blazing Saddles'.
"This is brilliant," Duke said.
"I know it's brilliant. The question is whether anyone will let me make it." Brooks's tone shifted. "Here's my problems. My lead, the Black sheriff. I want Richard Pryor."
"Pryor's great."
"The problem is that every studio in town thinks he's unbondable. The drugs. The unpredictability. Richard is a complicated man. He's brilliant and he's self-destructive, and some people are terrified that he'll show up to set one day and burn the whole thing down. Literally. The man has a complicated relationship with fire."
Duke set down the manuscript. "Mel, let me tell you something about how I run my studio."
Brooks leaned forward. Feldman, who had been quietly eating his soup, also leaned forward.
"I give you the money, I give you the support, and I give you the freedom to make the film you see in your head. In return, you give me the best work of your life."
He paused. "Now, regarding Pryor. If you believe he's the right soul for this role, then I trust your judgment. Paramount will provide the coverage, the insurance, the contingency plans, whatever the production needs to manage the risk. But I want you to take your time. Don't rush the casting. There are other actors. There's only one Mel Brooks."
"And the material?" Brooks asked. "Because I'm going to tell you right now, this script is going to make a lot of people very uncomfortable. The N-word is in there. The racism is explicit."
"That's the whole point, you can't satirize racism by being polite about it. You have to shove the audience's face in it and then make them laugh so hard they can't breathe."
"Mel, outrageous is exactly what we want to sell. I'm in the business of making profitable movies. This is great."
Brooks looked at Feldman. Feldman looked at Brooks.
"So we have a deal?" Duke asked.
Brooks extended his hand across the table, over the remains of a pastrami and the empty soup bowl and the crumpled napkins. "We have a deal. Paramount. Tex-X. Mel Brooks directs. Creative control. And you buy dinner every time we have a production meeting."
Duke shook his hand. "Done."
The waiter appeared with three slices of cheesecake that nobody had ordered. "On the house.".
"See?" Brooks said, picking up his fork. "This is a sign of a historic moment."
They ate cheesecake and laughed and talked about comedy.
__
The conference room on the third floor of the Paramount executive building was windowless, climate-controlled, and equipped with a slide projector, a pull-down screen, and a long mahogany table around which eight leather chairs were arranged.
Duke sat at the head of the table. To his right, Nolan Bushnell, who had drove from El Gato that morning and was nursing his third cup of coffee.
To his left, Stanley Jaffe, whose folder was already half-full of notes from a pre-meeting that had started an hour before the actual meeting.
Across from Jaffe: Frank Yablans, arms crossed, jaw set, radiating the aggressive skepticism that was his default setting in any meeting where the word "acquisition" was mentioned.
The slide projector hummed. On the screen was a corporate profile, 'AMPEX CORPORATION' Redwood City, California. Founded 1944.
"Gentlemen," Duke said. "We're here to talk about the future of home entertainment."
Bushnell straightened in his chair. Jaffe flipped to a clean page. Yablans's arms remained crossed.
"Ampex," Duke continued, clicking to the next slide, a photograph of the company's sprawling campus in Redwood City, a complex of low-slung buildings surrounded by California live oaks.
"Founded by Alexander Poniatoff, a Russian immigrant, with backing from Bing Crosby, who wanted a way to pre-record his radio broadcasts. They developed the first commercial audio tape recorder. Then the first commercial video tape recorder."
"Their technology is the foundation of every broadcast studio in the country, CBS, NBC, ABC, all of them run either Ampex machines or on machines with Ampex parts."
"I know what Ampex is," Yablans said. "What I don't know is why we're looking at them."
"Because Ampex holds the most comprehensive patent portfolio in magnetic tape recording, audio and video in the world."
"And because I believe that within ten years, the most important piece of consumer electronics in the American home won't be the television. It will be the device that sits next to the television and plays recorded content."
He clicked to the next slide, a hand-drawn diagram, Duke's own work, showing a simple box connected to a television set. The box was labeled "VHS", a term that meant nothing to anyone in the room except Duke.
"A Video Home System," Duke said. "A consumer-priced device that records television broadcasts onto a magnetic tape cassette and plays pre-recorded content, movies, concerts, educational programs. Movies you can own. Like a record album, but for your television."
Bushnell was nodding. He'd heard the pitch before, in the workshop, and the intervening weeks had only made him more convinced of its viability.
"The core technology exists," he said. "Ampex proved that in 1956 with the VRX-1000. The challenge is miniaturization and cost reduction. Getting a broadcast-quality recording system down from the size of a refrigerator to something that fits on a shelf, and from fifty thousand dollars to something a family can afford."
"And you think Ampex can do that?" Yablans asked.
"I think Ampex has the patents to do that," Duke said. "What they don't have is the consumer electronics expertise. They've spent thirty years selling to broadcast professionals."
"They don't know how to build for a mass market. They don't know how to hit a price point. They don't know how to design a product that a non-engineer can plug in and use."
"But Atari does," Bushnell said.
"Exactly. Atari knows the consumer market. We know how to build a device that costs under a hundred dollars, fits in a living room, and works the first time you turn it on. If we combine Atari's design and manufacturing capabilities with Ampex's tape technology and patent portfolio, we can create the home video market."
"And we would own the pipes," Jaffe added quietly. "Paramount makes the movies. Atari builds the machine that plays the movies. And Ampex provides the technology that makes it all possible. Vertical integration from content to hardware."
"Exactly," Duke said. "No middleman. No licensing fees to a third party. We control every link in the chain."
"I hear the vision," Yablans said. "It's a beautiful vision. It's got all the right words, 'vertical integration,' 'patent portfolio,' 'consumer electronics.' Very good. Now let me tell you what I see when I look at Ampex's actual financials."
He reached for a folder at his elbow and opened it. "Their revenue is declining. Has been for eight years cause of Japanese competition."
"Not to mention, that the professional broadcast market is saturated, there are only so many TV stations in the world, and they've all already bought their machines. The company is carrying a significant debt load from a diversification strategy that went sideways in the late 60s."
"I'm aware of all of that," Duke said.
"Then you're aware that acquiring Ampex right now would look, to our bankers, like a studio that just spent forty million on comic books deciding to buy a struggling electronics company. That's not 'visionary.' That's 'reckless.'"
"And if the bankers think we're reckless, the refinancing deal, the deal that makes everything else possible, Duke, that deal goes up in smoke."
The room was quiet. The slide projector hummed.
"Frank," Duke said. "You're right."
Yablans blinked. He had not expected agreement.
"The timing matters," Duke continued. "And the timing isn't now. We do not move on Ampex until the 1971 slate proves the studio is a cash cow."
"Shaft opens in July. The French Connection opens in October. If those two films perform the way I believe they will, and I believe they will then our revenue position transforms. The bankers see a studio that is making prestigious and profitable films. At that point, the conversation changes."
"How does it change?"
"It changes because we would no longer asking the banks to fund a gamble. We're asking them to fund an expansion of a proven model. We show them the film revenue. We show them the Atari revenue."
"And then we say, 'Here is the next logical step. We are adding magnetic tape technology to our consumer electronics division, giving us ownership of the home video distribution channel.' At that point, acquiring Ampex isn't reckless."
Yablans stared at Duke for a long moment, before smiling.
"You had me scared for a minute there," Yablans said.
The meeting shifted. Jaffe reached for a second folder, thicker than the first, bound with a rubber band, and set it on the table.
"While we're on the subject of Atari," Jaffe said, "I have some news."
He opened the folder and slid two documents across the table. One was a contract, dense with legal language.
The other was a purchase order, equally dense but with numbers that made Bushnell sit up straight in his chair.
"Two deals," Jaffe said. "Both closed by me and Diller this week."
He pointed to the first document. "Marriott International. Two thousand Atari machines. Deployed across their hotel properties, their Great America theme parks, and their Hot Shoppes restaurant chain. Exclusive placement, no competitor machines in any Marriott venue for three years."
"Two thousand?" Bushnell leaned forward, his coffee forgotten.
"Two thousand. The contract includes a revenue-sharing component, Marriott gets sixty percent of the coin-op take, we get forty. They handle the floor space, we handle the hardware. Maintenance is on us, which is fine, because our machines don't break."
He pointed to the second document. "Pizza Hut. Twelve hundred machines. Deployed across their national franchise network. Same revenue split. Same exclusivity."
"Twelve hundred," Bushnell repeated.
"Three thousand two hundred machines total," Jaffe said. "Placed in three of the highest-traffic consumer environments in America, hotels, theme parks, and family restaurants. And here's the strategic insight that drove both deals."
He stood and walked to the whiteboard. In neat, precise strokes, he drew a timeline, a family arrives at Pizza Hut, orders food, waits fifteen to twenty minutes for the pizza to arrive.
"The 'Wait-to-Eat' window that Duke wanted to exploit," Jaffe said. "Fifteen to twenty minutes of dead time where the family is sitting at a table with nothing to do and then they see the Atari machine."
He drew a dollar sign next to the timeline. "In that fifteen-to-twenty-minute window, the average family will spend between one and two dollars in quarters on the Atari machine. Not because they planned to. Not because they budgeted for it. Because the machine is 'there', and the pizza isn't 'ready', and the kids are 'bored'."
"Multiply that by twelve hundred locations," Duke said.
"Multiply that by twelve hundred locations, operating seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year," Jaffe confirmed. "The annualized revenue from the Pizza Hut deal alone is projected at fourteen million dollars. The Marriott deal is projected at twenty-two million. Combined, these two contracts will generate more revenue than the entire Atari arcade division produced in 1970."
The room was silent. Even Yablans, who had spent the first half of the meeting in skeptic mode, was staring at the whiteboard on awe.
Duke looked at Jaffe. He'd watched his CFO over the past months. Steve Ross's move into manufacturing had lit a fire under Stanley Jaffe that made him start taking the videogame market seriously.
"Stanley," Duke said. "When did you did this?"
Jaffe looked at him with an expression of mild surprise. "I've always been working behind the scenes on these kind of stuff, Duke. I just used to not take the market size or share seriously. Now I know how big it is."
Bushnell was on his feet, leaning over, writing something in his paper. "Duke, these numbers, the Marriott deal, the Pizza Hut deal, this is the proof of concept we've been waiting for."
"How so?"
"Because it means the demand it's contractual. We have signed, binding agreements for thirty-two hundred machines that we haven't built yet and non binding agreements for six-thousand eight hundred machines."
"That's a production backlog that demands, a massive expansion of our manufacturing capacity. New factory space. New assembly lines. A second shift, maybe a third."
"And the timing?" Duke asked, glancing at Yablans.
Bushnell caught the glance and understood its meaning. "The moment the refinancing is inked. The moment the banks give us the capital. We double our factory footprint. We go from two hundred forty units a week to five hundred. Then a thousand."
"Stay ahead of Ross," Duke said.
"Ross is chasing us." Bushnell said.
"Gentlemen," Duke said. "We have work to do."
Yablans stood. Jaffe gathered his folders. Bushnell was already halfway to the door, his mind clearly racing ahead to production schedules and factory layouts and the relentless challenge of building things faster than the world could use them up.
___
Levine probably won't appear more in the story, Mike Nichols will tho
Any Monty Python enjoyers?