Clockwise: Stan Winston, Scott Ross, James Cameron, Kathleen Earley (IBM)

With Jim and Stan in place as partners, it seemed that it might be easier to secure financing for our new company. I was tasked with finding the investor or investors. Jim Cameron wasn’t the household name he is today, but even in 1992 he was, as far as directors go, pretty much a star. He wasn’t yet the self proclaimed “king of the world” of TITANIC proportions but he was at least a duke, or maybe even a prince. With films like TERMINATOR, ALIENS, THE ABYSS and TERMINATOR 2, he was an ascendant to the throne. Additionally, two of his films won Oscars for Best Visual Effects. He did have a bit of a reputation, but his films won Oscars, and a few made some big money. All in all, while the vision for DD was mine, Jim was the bait.

Armed with bait, I started to chum. There was the ill fated Electronic Arts effort but there were also others… Intel, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, Carlton Communications, Phillips, Virgin, Nintendo, SEGA, SGI, Viacom, Turner, TCI, Comcast, the Baby Bells, Autodesk, NTT, AT&T, Apple, Next and so on. You get the picture. There were hundreds of phone calls, letters and airplane trips. The meetings and discussions of 20 years ago seem like a blur today, but one stands out for several reasons.

The first reason was that Jim and Stan were actually in attendance that evening, a rare occurrence. It was a dinner meeting at the Ivy at the Shore. Our dinner was with the then President and COO of Motorola, Chris Galvin ( whose papa was Chairman of Motorola and whose grandpa was Motorola’s founder). I was prepared for a rather stodgy old dude…but it turned out that Chris was just a year older than me, and was very loose and personable. Interestingly enough, at the time of this meeting, there was a lot of hoopla about the possibility of cell phone radiation causing brain cancer. Being the 60’s counter culture person that I am, I decided to, unbeknownst to Jim and Stan, pull a little prank. At this point, I had been turned down by dozens of folks and I started to get a little cynical about this whole entrepreneurial crap. As dinner progressed, I was getting the vibe that Mr. Galvin was much more interested in talking about his new global satellite cell phone coverage scheme (Iridium) and much less interested in being a part of DD. When dessert finally came, I pulled a wad of aluminum foil from my briefcase, fashioned it into a helmet, pulled out my Motorola Star Tac cell phone and started dialing. I turned to Chris and said ” One can never be too safe”. Stan waved at our waiter and yelled ” Check!”

Some have said that Digital Domain was the brainchild of Jim Cameron and that he and his partner, Stan Winston birthed DD ( in fact, Jim Cameron seems to say this often). There is no doubt about the fact that Jim was instrumental in the company, attracting investment and artists. There is no question that Mr. Cameron gave the company instant credibility because of his stature or that Mr. Cameron gave DD its first big project, TRUE LIES ( which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, AND was severely discounted). Jim Cameron was an important component in the launching of DD. But one of the most important things that Jim did for DD was to allow me the use of the incredible mind of Rae Sanchini.

Rae Sanchini was a force of nature, one of the most gifted and strategic attorneys I’ve ever met. I first met Sanchini at Carolco Pictures. Rae was the head of business affairs. I had spoken to Rae’s assistant, Kim, a number of times and she had arranged for me to meet her boss just after Cameron had shown interest in joining me and my ILM cronies in forming this new VFX company. Cameron and Carolco, headed up by Andy Vajna and Mario Kassar, had in movie speak, “a deep and meaningful relationship” (TERMINATOR 2… i.e. they made lots of money) and I guess Cameron had tried to convince Andy and Mario that Carolco should fund DD.

I flew to Burbank, rented a car and drove to Carolco’s offices on Sunset just across from Tower Records. I took the elevator up to the top floor of this swanky Sunset Strip building. I was very impressed by the digs…. my ILM strip mall office palled in comparison. The elevator doors opened, I walked to the receptionists desk and there to greet me was a 30 something, stunningly beautiful blond women attired in a black skin tight skirt with a white semi see through business blouse… wow!

I was not in NorCal anymore!

She went to shake my hand and I said ” You must be Kim, I’m here to see Rae Sanchini”. And she said, ” I’m Rae Sanchini”. Up until then I thought I was going to meet Ray Sanchini… and in my mind my Ray was about 60, an Italian American from NYC, about 30 pounds overweight, that went to CCNY and talked like Jimmy Hoffa. Was I ever wrong!

Rae was exactly what I needed to further the founding of DD. A UCLA trained attorney that had been the head of business affairs of a mini major and had the ear of Jim Cameron! As an employee of Carolco, I understood her involvement since Mario and Andy were possibly interested in funding DD. But after Carolco had decided that given their financial constraints, they were not interested, I was a bit confused (yet overjoyed) why Rae was still involved. I was finally set straight. Rae had left Carolco and made a deal with Lightstorm. She would help me with DD legal issues and then she would be involved as a Producer on upcoming Cameron projects. So in effect, Cameron was lending out Sanchini to help DD ( as an aside, she was not being compensated beyond the promise of Jim attaching her as a Producer on his films) with our legal issues.

And help she did! She was organized, smart and strategic. At times she would get frustrated as Stan and Jim were rarely available and were slow in making decisions. Legally, Jim, Stan and I were known as the Founders but Rae would always refer to them as the “Flounders”.

A year or so before I decided to start DD, IBM had pulled together a group of about 10 Hollywood Industry “thought leaders” to discuss the application of story telling and creativity to this new fangled thing called the internet. For some reason, not only did they think I was a “thought leader” but they continued to contact me to see if I might be interested in heading up a “laboratory studio” in Armonk NY.

Hah! Armonk! IBM! Big Blue!

Counter culture ex hippy, Woodstock Nation Scott Ross ? …. Never!

Up against the wall! Power to the People!

A year later and after a multitude of turn downs, I agreed to visit Armonk. After all I was already in NYC giving a speech at Lincoln Center. IBM sent a car to pick me up. I almost didn’t get in… I had the Jefferson Airplane’s “Volunteers of America” playing in my head and walked away from that black sedan three or four times. Finally, I was freezing standing there in the cold NY November air…

I got in.

The drive to Armonk took forever. I was born and raised in NYC but I had lived in California for 20 years. Yet somehow the parkways, littered with orange, red and yellow leaves, the gray sky and the black trunks of the maple and oak trees comforted me. Grace Slick and Marty Balin faded away as I was found myself seated opposite the smiling faces of Lucie Fjeldstad and Kathleen Earley, IBM Vice Presidents. We talked for a few hours and it seemed that they were very interested in funding a digital production studio… in Los Angeles.

We had a funder. I informed Jim and Stan. Now we had to negotiate the damn thing. Jim told Rae to do what she does best, Stan wondered if he could finally deliver his SGI’s and move some of his “CGI staff” over to DD payroll and Rae and I started the long and arduous process of negotiating a deal with one of the biggest corporate giants on the planet.

After about two months of “negotiations”, the countless crossing of T’s and dotting of I’s, the unbelievable minutia that concern lawyers, we had a document that everyone seemed to be happy with. A final meeting with IBM’s law firm Cravath, Swaine and Moore was set to take place in NYC at the firms headquarters. Cravath is the second oldest law firm in the country, founded in 1819 and consistently ranks first among the world’s most prestigious law firms. The meeting took place at the Worldwide Plaza, on 50th Street and Eighth Avenue in Cravath’s glass enclosed conference room on the one millionth floor overlooking all of NY…

I could see for miles and miles and miles and miles, oh yeah!

I Can See For Miles

I’d never seen so many white male WASPS wearing blue suits with white shirts in my life (I’m from the South Bronx). Rae and I were ushered into this aquarium situated in the clouds. The two of us sat down at the conference table which could have comfortably seated 50. On one side was about 15 Cravath dudes, all white and pasty…. and on the other side, an ex-hippy in jeans (wearing real shoes) and a 105 pound blonde bombshell. The Cravath guys sorta smirked when they saw the two of us. They must have figured ” we can kick this hippy and dumb blondes butt”.

Well, I was a push over, intimidated by all that Goyishe power. But Rae, on the other hand, sharpened her gaze, sat down, rolled up her sleeves and blew them away. She knew every part of the agreement and had answers for every question they had. The Opposition on the other hand, were ill prepared and because they were so segmented into various disciplines ( IP, corporate, tax, estate, etc.) , the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing.

And so, we walked out later that day, victorious. Grace and Marty Balin’s voice slowly came back into my head…

Hey now it’s time for you and me
Got a revolution got to revolution
Come on now we’re marching to the sea
got a revolution got to revolution !

We are Volunteers of America, Volunteers of America!

Gotta Revolution

Rock on! The Digital Revolution was underway…

History.

Truth.

WATCH 06:09 to 07:12

There are so many takes on these words… most of which we have all heard. Like…. “His Story”, or “there are three truths… her truth, my truth and the truth”. Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that history is written by the victors, those with the power, the money and the media reach to ensure their story is the story that everyone remembers. The story that ultimately becomes fact.

Until the internet.

Which either sheds light or creates more confusion. My hope is that these little stories shed light, amuse, and at best, help our industry understand its history, well at least my take on it!

Once Jim Cameron had heard that I was looking to start a new VFX company and that many of the ILM top people were also interested in jumping on board, he became interested in joining our motley group. As I’ve stated before, I had some serious reservations of allowing a director to be involved in the management of a VFX company. Especially, a VFX company that was being built to become a content company. In my years in the entertainment business, I have rarely met a live action film director that is collaborative by nature, though there are a few. And given my previous experience at LucasFilm, I was pretty sure that a powerful Hollywood director would not be my first choice as a partner. Interestingly enough, I have given this counsel to others ( Robin Shenfield regarding Ridley Scott), but I unfortunately did not heed my own words.

After several conversations with Mr. Cameron, I was smitten. He totally got it. He understood the shortcomings of VFX houses and the way in which they seemed to keep the director at bay and not allow him/her to be part of the process. He was well versed in all VFX techniques, was a maverick, and also had a few scripts that seemed to need a bunch of VFX, that, given his stature in Hollywood, would get greenlit. Ahhhh, a revenue stream!

I had a conversation with my then wife about the “director as owner in a VFX company” dilemma. She flatly said, “Face it Scott, artists are not going to flock to come work for you, but they sure will come for James Cameron”. She was right… at least about that! I told Jim that I would be pleased to be in business with him. Jim said, “…oh yeah, we also need Stan Winston to be a partner”. Again, I was in no position to argue, and furthermore I had only heard great things about Stan. I was excited to meet him. A meeting was set at Lightstorm, Jim Cameron’s production company. At the time, Lightstorm was located in the shadow of Burbank Airport. I flew into Burbank from Oakland on the very luxurious SouthWest Airlines….to this day, I can’t quite feel comfortable flying backwards.

The meeting was great. Jim was fully engaged, Stan was awesome. I thought to myself… “Finally, I’m sitting at the table with players… top level creative people that are interested in collaborating”. These guys were funny, hip and I thought, great partners that could possibly become close friends. We had similar interests… great film, fast cars, good wine and well, you can guess the rest. We batted around ideas for hours that day.

It also seemed that Stan was concerned about his studio, Stan Winston Studio, and the coming age of CGI. Stan had just recently completed work on JURASSIC PARK and was a bit worried that most of the accolades for the great work in the film were going to ILM for their incredible CGI. Stan, was a character creator, a self made multi millionaire that had grown up as a bit of a chubby nerd in Virginia. But that day, the Stan I met, in his early 50’s was anything but a chubby nerd. He was a stud… funny, charming, quick witted and talented. And he was apt to always buy the most expensive toys, even if they were not necessarily the best or even needed. So was the case when Stan decided to get into the CGI business before DD. Just after JURASSIC PARK and only several months before Jim asked Stan to be a founding partner in DD, Stan had purchased a truckload of SGI’s… and he bought ’em fully loaded. Big refrigerator multi processor ones that cost over a hundred thousand dollars a throw. Unfortunately these big old SGI Challenges and Onyx machines never really worked very well. But since Stan had just purchased the beasts, and that DD was this new CGI/Digital company, guess who wound up buying those boat anchors? Hey, that was easy. The price for having Stan as a one third partner was not only giving him 33% of the founders stock but DD also wrote him a hefty check to take those behemoths off his balance sheet.

One of the first tasks at hand was to come up with a name for our new company. I started with Phoenix Effects but that didn’t seem to suit Jim or Stan for that matter. We struggled for a bit. I thought of Prestidigital… you know, magic/digital….Not. Then, in walked one of Jim’s techs, a fellow named Van Ling ( who later joined with some ILM folks, Casey Cannon for one, to form Banned From The Ranch). Van overheard what we were doing and chimed in with “How about Digital Domain”! We all looked at each other and quickly nodded our heads… that was it, we were to be called Digital Domain.

Our get together ended. Jim went back to his Lightstorm duties, Stan headed back to Stan Winston Studio and I got a ride from Van to Burbank Airport where I was to catch my flight back to the Bay Area. Of course my flight was delayed so I headed over to Lou’s Bar, the little joint that used to be located in the airport. I ordered a Heineken and sat down to go over, in my mind, the days events, but I couldn’t concentrate because of the racket eminating from the bar. There were three very loud dudes whooping it up, clinking their beer mugs and slapping each other on their backs. I put my glasses on to see who these rabble rousers were. And to my surprise it was three guys from Pixar. To the best of my recollection it was John Lassiter, Ralph Guggenheim and Ed Catmull, and damn were they excited. They just signed a three picture deal with Katzenberg. They were gonna make animated features for Disney. I knew there and then, that this new Digital Domain was going to make history. The door was opening for effects and animation services companies to become content owners.

About a week or so later, I was with my family up on the North Shore of Lake Tahoe. I was an avid mountain biker and had taken a week to explore the backroads of the Sierra. On Sunday evening I get a call from Cameron saying that he wants to have a meeting with Tom Pollock, then head of Universal Pictures, to pitch him on the idea of Universal becoming a founding partner in our new VFX company. I tried once again to explain to Jim that Universal should not be a partner in DD, and neither should Fox, nor Paramount nor Disney for that matter. Motion picture studios are notorious control freaks, over reaching, difficult, xenophobic and most importantly, our clients not our partners. Jim would have nothing of it. The meeting was already set. Monday morning at 11 AM in the black tower, Pollock’s office. I explained to Jim that I was in Tahoe, that I wasn’t sure if I could get a flight into Burbank, and frankly… I thought it a bad idea. Jim still would have nothing of it. Jim said ” the meeting is at 11, I’ll have a car meet you at Burbank Airport, don’t be late”. The phone went dead.

I arranged a flight that would get me to Burbank by 10:00 AM, by way of Las Vegas. I awoke at some ungodly hour, the coyotes were still asleep. I figured I would fly back that evening so I needn’t pack anything but my laptop and a few business plans. It was summertime and so I put on a pair of jeans, the nicest short sleeve shirt I could find ( I had only one, the rest were tee shirts), a pair of black socks ( at least I thought they were black, it was, after all, 4 AM, and I could barely see). I threw on a pair of sneakers ( I didn’t have any proper shoes with me) jumped in my car and headed off to the Reno Airport. An hour later, I arrived at the airport, parked the Toyota in the parking structure and headed to the Southwest gate. I sat at my gate thinking about how I might “pitch DD” to the Chairman of Universal Pictures in such a way that he thought DD could be an incredible company but in a way that he wouldn’t be interested in being a partner. I started to get nervous. I hadn’t met Tom Pollock before, but I had heard nice things. Nonetheless, he was the chairman of a major motion picture company, and I was meeting him in the BLACK TOWER with James Cameron. I started to sweat. What could I say? DD is going to be the next ILM but it’s a really bad business and you shouldn’t invest in it? Damn…. my feet started to sweat too. I checked my watch, we would be boarding in 15 minutes. My feet started to itch. I bent down to loosen my shoelaces and I was stunned! I hadn’t put my tennis shoes on, I had put my biking shoes on! There they were, my Nike mountain biking shoes in all their technicolor day glo glory! Orange, red, green, yellow suede day glo sneakers! Damn, I can’t be in the executive offices of the Black Tower wearing Day Glo!

Unfortunately, it was so early that there were no stores open in the Reno Airport. I got on the 737 and flew backwards to Las Vegas all the while freaking out that I was wearing clown shoes to a very important meeting. Landing in Las Vegas and having a really tight connection, I didn’t have enough time to leave the airport, so I ran around like a Tazmanian Devil looking for a shoe store. Nada. You can buy tee shirts with stupid sayings, miniature slot machines, sno globes, every imaginable type of junk food, sterling silver Native American jewelry and flip flops, but no shoes. For a brief moment I thought of letting my inner surfer shine and wearing flip flops to hang with Tom. Yo Dude!

My flight was boarding to Burbank and I still looked like Clarabelle. I landed at Burbank and there was my driver, patiently waiting for me, courtesy of Lighstorm and Jim Cameron. The driver introduced himself, his name was Leroy, a 50 something African American gentleman. We hopped into the white stretch limo. A white stretch limo, early Monday morning, Burbank, a 50 year old black dude in a suit, a 40 year old white guy wearing clown shoes…. classy.

I explained my predicament to Leroy. Leroy was a problem solver and he felt that we could easily pick up a pair of shoes and make it to Universal in time for the meeting. After the third Florsheim, and me not being able to find anything that I liked or even in my budget range, Leroy was feeling the pressure. My feet were getting really itchy and sweaty and in the bright morning light of LA, my shoes were starting to glow. I told Leroy to forget it… let’s head to the Black Tower and face the music.

On our way, I spotted a Nordstroms… I yelled to pull into the parking lot. I ran like OJ through the lot and headed up to the second floor mens shoe department. Out of breath, I grabbed a sales associate and asked where the Bass Weejuns were. She told me that I was in luck, it seems that they were on sale. Breathlessly I said, ” Size 9 and a half, in Oxblood?” What seemed like hours later, she came back and said ” Sorry, sir, but we are out of nine and a halves…”. Damn. I thought about suffering in a pair of nines when she continued, ” … and nines and tens, but we do have a display pair of nine and a halves in black”. ” I”ll take ’em”, I said.

I paid my $59.95 plus tax, grabbed my shoebox and hightailed it back to my waiting chariot, stretch white, of course. Leroy, gave me that knowing smile, put the pedal to the metal and I did the quick shoe change, carefully stuffing my flourescent Nike’s in the Bass Weejun’s shoe box. We arrived at the Tower with just minutes to spare. I thanked Leroy and headed towards reception.

Now, when someone is to visit with the Chairman of a major motion picture company, the security guards, the assistants, the gardeners, the cafeteria staff, in fact, everyone on the lot seems to be on standby. When I arrived I was greeted by several people that walked me through what seemed to be Ft Knox ( In fairness, the Black Tower had been fired upon by some crazed rifleman in the recent past) security measures. I arrived on the executive floor to be greeted by Tom’s personal assistant (maybe one of several?) who asked the perfunctory LA question ” Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Water? Diet Coke?” I was sorta hoping for a martini. This nice woman explained that I was the first to arrive, but that Tom would join me in a bit. I looked at my watch, it was 11:05 AM. I sat in Mr. Pollacks office for what seemed the better part of a half hour… no Tom… no Jim. Finally, Tom entered and introduced himself. I’d never met him before. He was charming. He was self effacing. He was funny. He had Marty Feldman eyes. No matter how I looked at him, I always felt that he was looking at someone else, unfortunately there was no one else in the room.

At about 11:45 AM, Jim was ushered into the room and our meeting started. I relaxed a little now that my partner was with me. I crossed my legs, as I am wont to do. As I looked down, I noticed a large day glo green sticker on the bottom of my new black penny loafers. It said ” SALE 59.95 plus tax”.

Needless to say, Universal didn’t invest in DD.

Having “resigned” from LucasFilm, and having the news plastered all over Marin County, I found it difficult to lead a normal Marin life. The excitement of sitting in a hot tub at sunset or putting on my Birkenstocks in the morning or riding my Gary Fischer up Mt. Tam or going to see the Dead just didn’t bring me joy anymore.

I was in a quandry. I really felt that I was wronged by Norby and that Lucas, being as detached as he was, would not get involved with the very real issues at hand. I tried many times to reach GWL, but for whatever reason ( maybe because he didn’t know who I was or what I did), I could not get through the gatekeepers. I felt strongly that if GWL could hear me out and speak to the artists at LucasArts, then he would understand that Norby should be the one to go, not me.

A few weeks later, I was granted my wish. George fired Norby. “There is a God”, I thought. I immediately rang up one of the board members and explained that with Norby gone, I was the only rational choice to come in and run the show… I mean who else knew the ins and outs of THX, SkyWalker Sound, Editdroid/Soundroid, ILM, Lucas Commercial Productions, LucasArts Attractions, etc.? Well, this certain board member disagreed with me and reminded me that I had quit. Well, yes, I had quit, but only because I had to report to the Norbster, not because I didn’t love the Company!!

That seemed to make no difference. I was told in no uncertain terms, that I was not welcomed back. In fact, not only was I not welcomed back, but that I was banned from the ranch. Me, banned from the ranch….. What had this come to?

Now, the cat was out of the bag. I was unemployed, my fellow ILMers that were so keen on a management buyout… all disappeared, the phone was not ( to my surprise) ringing off the hook with folks looking to hire someone with my skills, George wouldn’t return my calls, headhunters like Korn/Ferry couldn’t quite figure out what I did, the mortgage on the Marin house and the Tahoe house were due, my kids went to private schools and my stay at home wife was trying to remain calm. I was anything but.

A year before this all unwound, Norby had come up with an idea to break LucasFilm Ltd. into two companies. LucasFilm which would be the company that produced films and TV as well as the licensing associated with LucasFilm properties and LucasArts, the new company that would be comprised of ILM, SkyWalker Sound, THX, LucasFilm Commercial Production, LucasFilm Games, Droidworks and LucasArts Attractions. This, at the time, had several purposes.  LucasFilm was a company that made money and LucasArts was a company that didn’t.  Also, according to Norby, LucasArts would be a company that could IPO.. go public… and finally offer executives and key creative people some equity. Now a lot of us naively wondered how we could take a company that was in the services business and that was not profitable, public.

DD S1 Digital Domain S1 registration to IPO May 2011

But, nonetheless, Norby pursued this vehemently. I wonder if it had anything to do with his large chunk of equity in LucasArts? In the process of setting up this new entity, LucasArts, we needed a board of directors, a new logo and various and expensive outside legal and consulting services.  I always wondered who approved these expenditures?

The effort to design a new logo was indicative of Norby’s fiscal restraint and his understanding of the capabilities of the Company. Instead of allowing any number of incredibly talented designers and artists that were presently employed at the Company to design this new logo, he hired an outside firm. An expensive one.  After several weeks of “creative exploration”, a design was agreed upon.  Norby liked the logo that had a little man standing with up-stretched arms holding his head.

Within the Executive Group, the logo became known as Headache Man….

With the logo underway, the task of finding a board for the new LucasArts was at hand.  Norby, decided on the process by which we would chose candidates, interview them and then finally approve a director.  At the time, Norby had several direct reports, his assistant Maureen, Gordon Radley ( the other Sr. VP responsible for Business Affairs, Finance, Licensing and Ranch Operations), Steve Arnold ( the VP in Charge of LucasFilm Games)  the GM of THX and me. The process Norby had decided upon was that he, Doug, would chose the candidates, that the Sr VP’s ( Gordon and myself would interview them ) and then the other VP’s would interview them and finally Doug would unilaterally make the choice as to who would sit on the board of LucasArts. Seemingly with no input from any of us!

One of the candidates I was keenly interested in was Robert (Bob) Cohn, known for the founding of Octel Communications, the company that commercialized voice mail and was largely responsible for making it ubiquitous on cell phones, in companies and on residential phones. Bob met with Gordon and I and then went on to the next round with all the VP’s.  Bob is a unique person, bright beyond belief and he has the uncanny ability to get to the heart of the matter in three quick questions.  Which he did with all the LucasArts VP’s. After his third question, he came to a conclusion… the problem with LucasArts was its CEO, R. Douglas Norby. Needless to say, Bob was not asked to join the LucasArts Board, but several of Norby’s cronies were.

With the board and the logo in motion, an incredible amount of costly legal work was needed to be done to set up this new entity.  I can’t quite recall the name of the legal firm used ( Could it have been Dewey Phuckem and Howe?), but once all was in place it was time to buy our LucasArts options and dream about the potential IPO when we could all get rich!  We never got a look at the full option plan but rumour was that Norby got most of the options whilst people like Dennis Muren and Ken Ralston barely got any, if at all.

After an outrageous amount of money spent ( and remember, bonuses were unable to be paid because there wasn’t any money available), LucasArts was ready…. except for one small item.  It seems that Norby forgot to get GWL’s approval to take the company public.  According to Norby, it seemed that Mr. Lucas was unwilling to have the SEC nosing around in his affairs. So, though I paid for my options by going to the local ATM and withdrawing enough to do so, they would never see the light of NASDAQ.

But, I digress…. back to first quarter 1992.  So, there I was unemployed and desperately needing some income.  I sat, in my office on Greensburgh Lane and wrote the first draft of the Digital Domain Business Plan. I had a great deal of help from Bob Cohn, whom I befriended. I mean anyone that Norby thought to be useless HAD to be brilliant… and Bob sure was.  Not only did Bob help me craft a really well executed business plan but more importantly he gave me the courage to “stay the course”.  Bob’s mentoring and insight were invaluable to me and for that I am forever grateful.

Armed with a well crafted Business Plan, a rolodex and a phone… I started dialing for dollars. Bob Cohn introduced me to the folks at Electronic Arts ( though Bob was turned down by Norby, he was embraced by Larry Probst, EA’s CEO and was given a board seat).  I felt strongly that videogames at some point would need the capabilities of hi-end CGI animation and that given the trajectory of the videogame market, at some point videogame companies would be in the media business, which would also include film and TV.  Personally, I saw a great fit with EA.

I met with many of the EA board members, spent time with EA management and after a few weeks, EA was ready to make an offer.  While this was all happening, I had also received a phone call from Scott Billups, a director/DP with a great deal of experience in digital film ( unheard of back then).  Scott told me that he was having a conversation with James Cameron, the director, and had mentioned that I was starting a new VFX company and that Cameron was interested.  Jim Cameron and I had worked together back at ILM ( THE ABYSS, TERMINATOR 2 and the Miller Lite spot).  At first, I got the director as partner willies… but after thinking it over, thought that Jim would make a great partner in this new venture.  I called Jim and we spoke at length, we both seemed to be interested in building a similar company. We got together and Jim introduced me to Stan Winston, who of course, I had heard of, but never met.  Jim decided that he, Stan and I would be equal partners and that together we would look for investors.  Given the fact that I was unemployed, and that Jim was, well, is, the “King of the World”, I kept my mouth shut and agreed.

I informed my EA pals that Jim and Stan were now involved as partners, and I informed Jim and Stan that the EA folks wanted to meet with us in LA ASAP. The meeting was set. The dinner was ordered. Everyone listened to Jim. The dinner ended.

As we were walking out, EA’s CEO put his arm over my shoulders ( Larry is quite tall, I am… well, Jewish tall) and said ” Scott, EA could use an organization like the one you and your partners are building”. He continued, “And I would be thrilled to have you as its CEO”. I thought, fantastic. And then Larry said ” But as your boss, I could control you, but no one could control Jim Cameron…. so we pass”.

How prescient.