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There is that age old adage in the film business, “How do you know when an agent is lying? When his lips are moving”.

Just a year after Digital Domain was founded, I started to get some interesting inquiries about the company and my future. DD had entered the film industry with a bang. In our first year we were nominated for an Oscar for best visual effects (TRUE LIES); a Cannes Gold Lion Award (Jeep); an MTV Music Video of the Year Award (The Rolling Stones, LOVE IS STRONG); several Clios and we were considered by many to be the baddest VFX company around.

I had set out to make sure that we were the antithesis of corporate Sony Pictures Imageworks (SPI) and much looser and cooler than Industrial Light and Magic (ILM). We had kick ass parties, brandished tattoos and flew a pirate flag over our headquarters in Venice CA. That bad ass image and the fact that we were doing some really breakthrough and incredible work, helped build a culture of comraderie and panache. To this day, eighteen years later, there are weekly Friday evening dinner parties thrown at a local Venice restaurant where dozens of ex DD employees show up to hang out with their pals from over a decade ago.

Digital Domain is still considered to be one of the big five VFX companies in the world, but back in the day it was the Led Zep to ILM’s Beatles. We were a rag tag bunch of Pirates that just happened to win Academy Awards.

The company was sold back in 2006 and I’ve heard that things are different there now. New management from ILM has taken over and changed the culture significantly but I still get a thrill when I drive by the Venice HQ and recall one of DD’s employees saying that I built the only Rock n Roll VFX company in the world.

I had tee shirts printed in 1994 that had the DD logo and the phrase “Start Up” on the front, but on the back it said “Upstart”. And that’s what we were…

In 1995, I received a phone call from the then CAA’s Sandy Climan to inquire whether I might be interested in having an informal lunch with he and his boss, super agent and founder of Creative Artists Agency, Michael Ovitz. At the time, Mr Ovitz was arguably the most powerful person in the entertainment business. CAA is often cited as the world’s leading talent agency and its clients include George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Brad Pitt, Lebron James, Sandra Bullock, Oprah Winfrey, Julia Roberts, Steven Spielberg, Will Smith, and Reese Witherspoon.

Climan said that Ovitz was involved in a really big deal that he wanted to talk to me about. I couldn’t imagine that Ovitz knew who I was, let alone wanting to have a meeting with me. I ran a VFX company, yes we were cool, but by geek standards only, not A list Hollywood movie star standards. Climan went on, explaining that Ovitz would like to meet with the principals of DD but mostly he was interested in spending some time with me.

My head slowly started to expand.

The date was set. Cameron could make it but Winston could not. I called Climan back, left a message and explained the situation. Climan returned my call and left a message, “Cameron and you would be fine”. I called Sandy and confirmed, leaving yet another message.

Jim picked me up at DD in his Calloway, a twin turbo sledgehammer of a Corvette. In a very short period of time, we pulled up in front of CAA’s I.M. Pei designed headquarters in Beverly Hills. The valet grabbed the keys and smiled that knowing look. The one that said, “I’m taking your $250,000 American car for a joy ride”.

This, clearly, was a different scene then Venice. Men wore suits ( albeit $5000 ones with strange designs from Italy and Japan), women wore fashion and it all seemed like it was a photo shoot for Vanity Fair. I was a Venice duck out of water. I smoothed my tee shirt and entered the marble and glass palace of the king of deals.

We were immediately met by two stunningly beautiful women, suited up in the hippest fashion. We followed them into an elevator, that seemed to be only for us, and went upstairs to meet with Michael Ovitz.

The elevator doors slowly opened, revealing Sandy Climan’s smiling face and outstretched hand. In an instant the women had disappeared only to return seconds later with beverages and the ubiquitous LA greeting ” Would you like something to drink ?” I personally believe we could put a major dent in water shortages around the world if people in the entertainment business did not accept the mandatory bottled water upon the start of every meeting.

Sandy explained that Michael was running a bit late, “but please, help yourself to the Sushi” that had been prepared for us. Sandy did not give us any more info than he did on the phone several days earlier. It was as if he wanted Ovitz to deliver the news. After about fifteen minutes, Ovitz entered the room and headed directly to me. He gushed for several minutes about how he had been following my career since LucasFilm and that it was such a pleasure to meet me. At this point I was starting to blush, I glanced over at Cameron who is standing alone without any of the adulation he usually receives.

Finally, we sit down and the “meeting” begins. Ovitz says that he can’t really tell us the whole story as we are not under NDA ( Non Disclosure Agreements) but that he has been asked by the Baby Bells ( the regional bell operating companies after the ATT divestiture) to help put together a new digital distribution entity. Sort of the new version of a major motion picture studio. And, he has chosen the guy to run it… me.

“Ok, okay, ok…. get a hold of yourself, Scott”, I say to myself, “you’re some Jewish, Bayside, blue collar, ex messenger boy, drug runner, wanna be soul singer and the most powerful man in show biz just offered you a job to start and head up the new iteration of Warner Brothers”. I sat up like there was a rod up my ass and the rod was pumping pure ecstacy throughout my body.
Everything in the room took on a purple glow, I turned to Cameron with a shit eating grin on my face and said “Jim, let’s go”.

As we started to leave, Ovitz stopped us and said, “There are a few things we have to take care of first. We’ll need the signed NDA’s and one more thing… Jim, you can’t have Jeff Berg as your agent.” Jeff Berg was the head of ICM, International Creative Management, Cameron’s long time agent. Ovitz went on “… Berg is a fake, he takes everything I do and copies it, I just can’t be in business with someone that has Jeff Berg as an agent”.

We got into the Callaway, Jim flipped the valet safe switch ( the one that only allows partial turbo power, making sure that the Valet couldn’t red line it), put the keys in the ignition and said ” Funny, but I fired Jeff yesterday, it will be all over the trades tomorrow”. The engine fired and my head slammed back against the seat and we were off.

At about the same time, I received a call from Jeffrey Katzenberg’s office. Mr. Katzenberg wanted to have a meeting with me. Katzenberg’s assistant wanted to schedule a 7 o’clock meeting during the week. I asked my assistant if we might be able to move it up by say an hour or so because I wanted to get home by a reasonable hour. Both assistants worked their magic and compromised a bit. The time had been agreed upon, 6:30. Looked like I might be home by 8 PM or so, a typical night.

A few weeks passed and the Katzenberg meeting was on for the next day. At close of business that day, my assistant handed me my end of day “to do’s list” and reminded me of the meeting set with Jeffrey Katzenberg for tomorrow.

Got it.

She said ” you should probably leave your house at about 5 AM just to be sure”.

“WHAT?… 5 AM? What?”, I stammered.

“Yes, Jeffrey gets in very early and wants to meet with you first thing”, she said.

I drove to the old Amblin offices on the Universal lot. Nothing much had seemingly changed at the Amblin compound since the announcement of this new studio, Dreamworks SKG. Katzenberg had relocated from Disney and David Geffen seemed not to be there. I arrived not so bright and stupidly early. There was once again, the perfunctory, “Can I get you something to drink?” from someone. I was met by Jeffrey and escorted down the hall. We met several people on the way to the outdoor breakfast area… Mo Ostin, the legendary WB record exec was there to greet me as well.

Breakfast with Jeffrey was interesting. He spoke about the hollowness of legacy, his recent run in with a male lion and eventually we got around to why he asked me to come by. He offered me a job to run DreamWorks Interactive. Duly flattered, I turned him down. I had an employment contract and had started DD just a few years before. I was looking to build DD into a great company, a content producer and a media powerhouse.

He asked me what it was I wanted to do with my life. I told him that after my mother had passed, I realized that her “essence” lived on inside of me but that after a generation or so, her life impact would be lost. I didn’t want that to happen to my life. I told him that I needn’t be famous, that people don’t need to know my name… but, that my time here on this planet needed to make a difference for generations to come. That my life indeed contributed to our collective consciousness.

Katzenberg stopped and looked deeply into my soul… I felt him. He said, … legacy is an awful burden, look at Disney.” He went on, ” Last night, I saw an amazing film that summed it up rather well, it was when Captain Picard and Captain Kirk talked about whether they made a difference”. “You see, it’s the journey, not the destination”.

kirk picard

Heavy.

I was hoping for Camus or Sartre but i got STAR TREK : GENERATIONS.
I passed on the gig but recommended EA’s Glenn Entis, who got the job.

When, Ovitz had heard the news that Cameron had fired ICM and Berg, my phone rang. Several messages back and forth and finally a second meeting was had. In my mind I had already spent my “signing bonus”, had picked out a name for my Gulfstream and saw myself as the new CEO of this new Baby Bell venture. I was rockin’!

This Ovitz meeting was more of the same. My ego was stroked so hard, it began to chaff. Michael told us a bit more. Michael suggested that maybe we fold DD into the new venture, and that our facility could act as the content creation engine for this new digital distribution channel. Michael ended the meeting.

Then Ovitz turned to Cameron and said ” I’m glad to see you got rid of Berg”.

Jim said ” yeah, I don’t really need an agent”.

Ovitz frowned and said, “Jim… everyone needs an agent”.

Jim said, “I don’t”.

Ovitz got red in the face. “Yes you do Jim”.

Cameron started towards the door. ” No, Mike, I don’t”.

“Spielberg needs an agent, Lucas needs an agent… everyone needs an agent Jim”, Ovitz was agitated.

“Not”, said Cameron.

We walked out of his office, took the elevator to the lobby and walked out the front door.

I never heard from, nor saw Michael Ovitz again.

While in college, I had been working as an engineer for a sound reinforcement company named Megaphone, located at 39 Crosby Street in the now very toney section of Manhattan called SoHo. At the time, it should have been called NoGo. There were more junkies on the streets than cars.

I wasn’t a Manhattan native, even though I would always introduce myself as a New Yorker. I was from Queens, and though not quite as bad as Jersey, I was always ashamed that my “Bayside” might be showing.

Manhattan was a mysterious place to me. Having been born in the South Bronx and raised in Queens by two blue collar parents who could barely “rub two nickels together”, I was always fascinated by the pace and the diversity of Manhattan. Every time I needed a job, and I always needed one, I would hope that I could work in “the City”.

My first was for a bike messenger service located on 44th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues. I was immediately attracted to them because they were called Quicksilver Messenger Service, named after the great acid rock band from San Francisco.

I would pick up a package from somewhere and then deliver it to someone… on bike. Pretty simple. During the summer of ’68, I noticed a trend, I was delivering a lot of packages between pharmacies and Ad Agencies. I couldn’t help myself, but I started to investigate these drug store runs and peak into the little white bags that had to be delivered to specific people at specific times to specific places.

All the packages contained the same item, a pill jar filled with about 50 “Black Beauties”, methamphetamine sulfate, speed. Well, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. No one would miss one pill from each of these deliveries. The summer of ’68 flew by rather quickly.

In late August of that year, I rode my bike up to the brand new GM building on 59th and 5th to make a final delivery of the summer. I was pretty thin at this point, maybe about 120 pounds, a large portion of which was my hair, but still amped up on my daily regimen of Vitamin S. It was hot, humid and stinky in NY. I grabbed my little white bag, locked up my Schwinn and stepped into the freezing airconditioning of the lobby. My tinted John Lennon granny glasses steamed up as I half floated and stumbled my way to the bank of elevators. I got on. Pushed 36.

summer in the city

On the elevator I could sense that there was someone else standing next to me. In a few seconds my glasses cleared and there was George Harrison. A Beatle. I said nothing. I got off at 36, delivered my package and picked up another one to be sent to yet another Ad Agency on Madison. I was still shaking. Maybe it was the speed, but I think it was George. This new package looked a little different. It was in a brown paper bag and the contents were wrapped in aluminum foil. I had to open it. I knew it was weed. But, it wasn’t… it was a bunch of dried stringy plant like things that looked like mushrooms.

I had heard about this! Magic Mushrooms. I ate a few. I puked a bit.

I saw God.

As I jumped back on my bike, the streets began to undulate, the hot dog vendors looked like clowns and the strains of Steve Miller’s song rang through my head… ” doo doo de doo doo doo, living in the USA… someone gimme a cheese burger”.

Livin in the USA

During my senior year in high school, my friend, Stanley Bassell and I used to get around to most of the great music venues of the time. We practically lived at the Fillmore East. Over time, we got to meet lots of folks that were, “connected”. Stan went on to NY State College at New Paltz, where he minored in rolling joints and majored in co-eds. I believe he belonged to the fraternity Lambda Sigma Delta 25. I would often head upstate from Long Island, where I went to Hofstra University, to hang with Stan and partake in some extracurricular activities. Oftentimes we wound up playing music… Stan was a drummer and I was, well, Mick Jaggerstein. Sometimes there were long jams with some really great musicians. Two guys that really knew how to play the blues, were these two albino brothers from Beaumont Texas. They had just signed a record deal with Columbia after being showcased at Steve Paul’s Scene in NYC. They had taken a place up in Stattsburg NY and asked Stan and I to tour with them as their sound guys.

As exciting as that sounded, there was this little pesky issue called the Draft. I had a “2S” student deferment, and had I not gone to college, would have been shipped off to Saigon ( or just as bad, Toronto). So, while I couldn’t tour with them, Stan and I did get away from time to time, weekends and vacations, to tour with Johnny and Edgar Winter.

Christmas of 1969 took us on an incredible journey. We were booked to play the Miami International Pop Festival with acts like Mother Lode, Sweetwater, Canned Heat, The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Vanilla Fudge and the Amboy Dukes. The promoters four walled a motel, the Miami Airport Inn, and everyone that played, stayed there for four days. I recall one jam in Bob “the Bear” Hites’ room. The Bear was the lead singer in Canned Heat and they were doing a version of “Goin Up To The Country” with Johnny Winter and Jerry Garcia on guitars, Phil Lesh on bass, Janis singing and Butterfield playing harp.

Canned Heat

Later that day, I was holding the elevator for the Winter Brothers, when a very diminutive fellow and a Giant entered the Otis. The little dude was ornery, demanding I let the lift go up. I explained that my musicians had some trouble seeing, as they were albino. The little guy took a swipe at me, and me being from NYC, punched back. A scuffle ensued until the Giant easily separated us. Later I was to find out that the tough was non other than Augustus Owsley Stanley, the Dead’s chemist and brilliant and eclectic crafts-person who eventually became best-known under the name of ‘Owsley’- the paradigmatic LSD “cook”, a magician-like figure.

And the Giant…. Ken Kesey, best known for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962), and as a counter-cultural figure who considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s.

Later that day, I found myself hanging out in the lounge and got into a conversation with a strange dude, a guitar player and leader of the band The Amboy Dukes, Ted Nugent. Ted tried to convince me to leave school and come on the road with him and the Dukes. The “Motor City Madman” truly was, and I was having none of it.

Now, firmly ensconced in academia, “2S” deferment in hand, living on campus in Hempstead Long Island and having started the Hofstra Concert Committee, I was ready to venture back into the mystery and adventures that could only lie in the cavernous streets of “the city”. In other words, I needed a job. Given my “resume” ( bike messenger, drug runner, sound mixer, bad lead singer), I found gainful employ at Megaphone Company, a sound reinforcement firm that toured with rock bands. I started as a “roadie” but quickly moved up the ranks to monitor mixer and then to mixer. I worked for bands like Tony Williams Lifetime ( w John McLaughlin and Jack Bruce), Spirit, Dreams, Black Sabbath, Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, The Allman Brothers Band, The Grateful Dead, Poco.

But there was one tour that confounded me. I considered myself musically adept and well versed. But when this band went on stage, I had no idea what they were going to play. Oftentimes the show would consist of one tune, an hour of, what sounded to me, like cacophony. We traveled in a Greyhound like bus throughout the Northeast and as far south as Washington DC. The bus carried six musicians, lots of gear and two sound mixers. We played small clubs as well as Auditoriums.

One such date was in DC at the DAR Constitution Hall ( the DAR stands for the Daughters of the American Revolution, a lineage-based membership organization for women who are descended from a person involved in United States’ independence). The DAR was considered by many to be the kinder, gentler, female version of the KKK. There was the famous incident where the DAR refused to allow the famous African American contralto, Marion Anderson to perform. Needless to say, in 1971, the situation was rather tense.

We pulled into our hotel. Out of the bus stepped Gary Bartz (alto), Jack DeJohnette (drums), Michael Henderson (bass), Airto Moreira (percussion), Keith Jarret (piano), Whitey Davis (sound), me and the Prince of Darkness, Miles Davis (trumpet/wah wah). Miles was dressed in leather pants, leather jacket and a pair of purple bug eyed sunglasses. On his feet, he wore a pair of yellow leather platform boots with lucite heels.

He and Whitey strolled up to the hotel desk and in Miles low, throaty, raspy cackle ( he had supposedly argued with someone after having a polyps removed and his voice was never quite the same) said. ” The shitty room is for Whitey Davis and the Presidential Suite is for Blacky Davis”.

I had the pleasure of being the guardian of Miles’ two trumpets, one green lacquer and one orange. That eve, just before we were set to play, several DAR board members wanted to meet “this Miles Davis”. I wondered, given the DAR’s reputation, if they knew anything about Miles. I followed Miles to a room in Constitution Hall and there were these three blue haired WASPy septuagenarians with faces that looked like Mt. Rushmore. And there was Miles in all his peacock glory, sleek, beautiful and black. The meeting was brief. One woman made a remark that pissed Miles off. We left.

During the show that night, Miles kept calling me on to the stage to “talk” to me. It was hard enough to hear a normal voice over the din of the band, but with Miles rasp, almost impossible. Finally, I got what he was saying, “My Wah Wah is busted”. I finally replaced the pedal and assumed all was cool. I settled into my, “What the hell are they playing” mode. But within a few minutes, Miles was signaling me once again.

I snuck out onto the stage, and Miles grabbed my head and put his lips to my ear and said ” I’m hungry”.

“What ?”, I screamed back.

“I’m hungry”, he croaked.

This went on for a bit. Finally, I figured out what he was saying.

“What do you want ?”, I yelled.

” Spaghetti….. no meat”, Davis rasped.

And then, he grabbed my head again. Yet this time, I could hear him perfectly as he softly whispered into my ear…. ” but mushrooms is cool”.

I had to agree.

Call it Forrest Gump or Chauncey Gardner disease, but there has been something strange in my life where I just happen to be in the right place at the right time.

One such time happened back in April 1968. I was a junior at Francis Lewis High School in Queens, New York.

It was a strange time, the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King and the NYC teachers strike. Yet, there was hope and love and comraderie amongst those of us that flashed peace signs to total strangers, because we knew that they too were against an unjust war.

And there was music…. everywhere. The Stones, The Beatles, The Airplane, The Dead, Cream, Motown, Stax Volt, Marvin Gaye, Aretha, Dylan.

And Jimi Hendrix. There was nothing else like him, and to me, no one has even come close since. The most gifted musician on the planet with a message of peace and ascension. Beautiful, Black, hip, soulful with a sound I had never heard. He was an Avatar of God.

I had always played in bands as a kid. I was a NYC Mick Jagger wanna be;
the white kid who just knew he could sing the blues. And did I ever try. From bands named the “Ups and Downs” (slight drug reference), to “Farley Bluff” (nonsense John Lennon talk), I played at hundreds of parochial school dances ( where I routinely got my ass kicked because I was Jewish), Bar Mitzvahs (where I routinely had a sip of J&B and made out with one of the girls) and an occasional school yard hop (which routinely turned into a drunken brawl).

I continued my musician ways for many years, but at one point thought that VFX would be less stressful. Hah!

I bet High School today isn’t very different from High School back then. Kids were classified into types. There were the Stoners/Hippies, the Hitters (the kids with Elvis Presley hair, that used to pummel the Hippies). There were the Musicians, the Collegiates ( the kids who drank beer, wore penny loafers and Madras shirts), the Jocks ( the Football team). And then there were the Intellectual /Politicos. Ok, maybe we were different than todays kids.

I was classified as a Musician/Politico. Most of my friends were the same which is why I guess they call it, “clicks”. Musician/Politicos were interesting, especially back in the late 60’s as we were generally color blind. If you were a player and knew your way around a I,IV,V progression, we didn’t care if you were orange. In fact, I believe there was this one kid who was…. but he played alto like Cannonball Adderly, so we didn’t really care.

I had a friend named Larry. He was a fine bass player, African American from St. Albans. St. Albans was where the upper class Black community lived in Queens back then. His neighbors were Thelonius Monk and Louis Armstrong. I hung out quite a bit with Larry but one thing always used to piss me off about him. He always bragged about celebrities that he “knew”. Maybe he has since become a talent agent for CAA ? For several months, Larry had been saying that he was really tight with Jimi Hendrix. Hah!

On a cold early April morning, I got off the Q17a bus in front of the diner on Francis Lewis Blvd and Utopia Pkwy and started my three block sojourn to my first class, Physics. Dressed in my usual Levis, Python boots, fringed cowboy jacket, peacock feather earring and hair looking like Roger Daltrey, I ran into Larry.

“Hey man, wanna go see Hendrix record in the city today”, he said.

Larry had been pulling my chain for months about Jimi and I had just about enough of his bravado. I also had a Physics test that morning.

“Sure”, I said, “let’s go”.

We hopped on to the Q17a and rode it to the subway station on 169th street in Jamaica. We caught the F train to 42nd Street and got off. All this time I’m thinking…. “Damn, I got this little lyin’ mutha”.

At about 10 AM, we approached a non-descript building at 321 West 44th Street. Larry rang the intercom, a female voice rang out…. “Yes?” . Larry said, “Hey, it’s Larry for Jimi”. The buzzer let us in. OH MY GOD! We walked past a very lovely women that waved us into Studio A and there, was Noel Reddings rig, Mitch Mitchells drum kit and… Jimi’s Strat and his Marshall amps… Damn.

I was 16, and the biggest Hendrix fan ever, and here I was at 10AM on a Tuesday morning sitting in the same room with the instruments that recorded FOXY LADY.

By the time the clock struck 2PM, I was sorta over it. I had waited four hours to meet Hendrix and all I got, was to sit and stare at a bunch of gear. I needed to get home as my Dad would be returning from his job. He was an air brake maintenance dude for the NYC Subway System, union all the way. My Mom, another civil servant for the Tri State Transportation Commission, would be home by 6. She took the subway as she didn’t know how to drive nor could we afford more than one Rambler American junker.

I started to leave and said my goodbyes to Larry going through all the jive handshake motions that one did with a “brotha” back in ’68. Suddenly the door flew back and in walked Gary Kellgren, Mitch Mitchell, Eddie Kramer and Jimi.

Guess I wasn’t leaving.

Introductions were made and to this day, 43 years later, I remember the feel of Jimi’s gargantuan hand as we first shook. Needless to say, I was beside myself. Jimi was shy, quiet, introspective and almost beatific. I guess I expected the guy with the flaming guitar, writhing around on the stage at Monterrey like some uncaged Panther. But out of the hot white light of the Supertrooper spotlights, Hendrix was the pure white light of tranquility and joy.

I lost track of all time and space. Jimi asked what I was listening to and at the time it was a lot of blues. Muddy, Howlin Wolf, Paul Butterfield, Robert Johnson. He asked Eddie Kramer, the recording engineer to put up a track called “Red House” for me.

Red House

It was and still is the greatest recorded blues solo I’ve ever experienced. After watching Jimi lay down bass lines on “Gypsy Eyes”, because Noel Redding had not shown up till later, he asked me if I wanted to play on a track. Yikes!

We took a small break and chatted about some porn film that was playing on 42nd Street, a send up of that years hit “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” called “Titty Titty Gang Bang”…. Jimi was wondering if we should go see it after the session.

When we returned to the studio, two Neumann mics were set up on stands, headphones hanging over the boom arms. Jimi handed me a cowbell, and I thought to myself, I can play this thing. Hendrix said ” Ok, I’m gonna count this down, then I’m gonna take these headphones and create feedback and when I nod at you, start hittin’ this cowbell”.

The tape rolled for a rehearsal and that was the first time I heard the track, “Stone Free” .

Stone Free

We started again, Jimi got his feedback and I smacked that cowbell. The rest became a blur. When the track was finally over, Kellgren punched a talkback and said, “Dinner!”

Dinner? What time was it? Oh no, it was 8PM. My Mom and Dad had been home for quite awhile, they must be freaking out. They probably called the cops. My Mom had Emphysema for years ( she would die only four years later from lung cancer) and I later found out, that she was so upset, she had an attack.

This time there were no high fives, I said my adieus and hi-tailed it to the F train. I jumped on the train and made it to the bus “in record flat”. It was now about 9PM and there was only one other person on the Q17a, a long haired hippy type, who, when he saw me, flashed me the peace sign. I smiled and flashed back, acknowledging our “cultural connection”. He came over and sat down next to me and said ” Hey man, what’s happenin’ ?” I proceeded to tell him my story about Jimi and “Stone Free”.

He looked at me, glassey eyed, obviously stoned and said ” Bullshit…. asshole”, and got off at 188th Street.

When I finally arrived home, there was hell to pay. I was grounded for three months and frankly I deserved it…. And, I’d do it again, gladly!

Years later, in 2009, I had been developing a script with some writers called “Voodoo Child”, a biopic of Hendrix. I had seen that Eddie Kramer, the great producer and recording engineer was showing some of his Hendrix photos at a gallery in LA. I sent my assistant to talk to him and invite him to my house so that we could chat about the script. Interestingly enough, Eddie came by and we talked for a few hours. He was now 67, charming, erudite and a strange combination of a New Yorker and a Brit. Just as he was leaving, I asked him about that session in April of ’68. I wanted to know if that was indeed my cowbell on the released track of “Stone Free”. Eddie, shook my hand firmly and said, “Scott there were a lot of tracks cut for that record and frankly I don’t recall”. I stopped him just as he got in his car and said, “But you do remember a 16 year old kid with Roger Daltrey hair at the Record Plant that day, don’t you?”

And he said, “Frankly, I don’t”.

The Whale

Juggling the IBM board members as well as the Operating Committee at DD was no easy task. The original IBM board members were Lee Dayton (Vice President, Corporate Development and Real Estate of IBM), Kathleen Earley (Director of IBM’s Multimedia Alliances/High Performance Computing division) and Jim Cannavino (Chief Executive Officer of IBM). The original DD board members and its Operating Committee was comprised of James Cameron, Stan Winston and yours truly .

At DD’s founding I was the CEO and President, but Jim, in deference to his stature in the entertainment industry, was named Chairman of the Board. The Company was structured in an interesting way. The Founders (Jim, Stan and Scott … with some serious input by Ms. Sanchini) were concerned that the new company should be managed and operated by people that understood the entertainment business. IBM, which was the sole financial investor felt that DD should have some serious oversight, at least financially, by IBM. To those ends, I hired Chris McKibbin, a 20 something IBM wunderkind that previously wore suits and blue ties but once he moved to DD in LA, dressed in jeans and tees and quickly adapted to the “lifestyle”.

The Operating Committee idea was unique to me. It had most of the powers of the board, answered to the board, would come to a decision by a 2 vote majority ( the 3rd dissenting voter was overruled and the resulting decision became unanimous if needed to go to the actual board for approval). This committee was to meet often, maybe 2 times a month. While the day to day executive oversight was left to me, I had to answer to this committee on serious issues.

Interestingly enough, given the schedules and responsibilities of the other two Operating Committee members, we rarely met. And when we did meet, a significant portion of the “meetings” were spent talking about the latest in Hollywood… what good films were playing and why etc., and IMHO, we rarely ever got to the business at hand. Oftentimes these meetings would be rescheduled, rearranged and then finally cancelled. Needless to say, it became frustrating. Additionally, when we did have meetings and issues were addressed, it only took 2 votes to pass.

Jim and Stan go way back, they were dear close friends (at least it seemed so to me, but this was Hollywood after all), and Stan really got his big break on TERMINATOR and owed Jim a lot.

Oftentimes I was the dissenting vote. Yet when we got back to the board, I delivered the message that the Operating Committee wanted delivered. As I reported to the Operating Committee, the Operating Committee had the power to determine the executive structure of the Company. For example, at about the same time TITANIC was supposed to be in its final stages of delivery (TITANIC was to be a Summer release, July 2 1997, and was not going to meet its date as the VFX could not be completed on time because JC was not finished shooting plates), the Operating Committee decided that I should no longer be the CEO of the company but rather, as Jim put it ” I will be the “C”, Stan will be the “E” and you (Scott) will be the “O”. And then he went on ” and we need to hire a new President that will run the company on a day to day basis… that person will report to the Operating Committee”.

The vote was, of course, 2 to 1 to hire a new President. I then went on an international search, by the behest of JIM/stan . I interviewed about a half dozen candidates. But more on that later.

The IBM board members had gone through several changes as IBM tried to figure out just what benefit Digital Domain was to “Big Blue”. Additionally, I don’t think IBM had much experience with entertainment industry folk. For example, after a rather large press conference announcing the joint venture, an initial board meeting was set. Everyone had great expectations.

The date of our initial board meeting arrived. At this point DD already was ensconsed in the Chiat/Day headquarters in Venice CA. Jay Chiat, the Chairman of the famed Chiat/Day advertising agency ( Apple Mac Big Brother 1984 as well as hundreds of award winning creative awards for TV Commercials) and I struck a deal. C/D would move out of their 120,000 sq ft facility over a period of several months and as DD grew, we would take the new space. Needless to say, one of the most creative and successful Ad Agencies had some pretty spectacular interior design elements, albeit in the cavernous interior of an old Levolor Blind factory.

The famous architect Frank Gehry, had been a friend of Chiat’s and Gehry was called upon to design C/D’s new building (now occupied by Google) just across the street from their (now DD’s) vast warehouse space. I assumed as part of the deal, that Frank Gehry had also designed some pretty fabulous structures and interiors in the Warehouse. Some of these included the famous “Whale” conference room as well as specially designed cubicles made of very expensive multi laminated wood. Another C/D conference room was a cardboard box built inside of the actual structure where multiple cardboard chairs and loungers gathered around a surfboard light fixture hung from the ceiling as Lee Clow, C/D’s Chief Creative Officer (currently the Chairman and Global Director of TBWA\Worldwide. Advertising Age referred to him as “advertising’s art director guru”) was/is an avid surfer.

Well, when DD moved in, things needed to change. The Whale conference room remained, but Jay Chiat wanted his 40 foot conference table back, or a princely sum of about $50,000 for us to buy it. It, like most of the interior was designed by Gehry. Additionally, I needed to get rid of the second “Surfer Cardboard” conference room and equip it as a screening room.

I grew up in the South Bronx and Queens and my concept of art, which was hammered into my head in the fourth grade by my teacher, Mrs. Lawrence, was primarily centered around impressionist paintings of the late nineteenth century, French, mais oui. At the time, I had no idea who Frank Gehry was.

I proceeded to tell my group of carpenters and stage guys ( yes, there used to be the need for these skills at a VFX studio) to use the laminated cubicles to build apple boxes, to dismantle the Surfer Cardboard room and throw out all those corrugated cardboard chairs ( I mean, who wants to sit on cardboard?)

Cardboard Chairs

They were instructed to copy the 40 foot conference table and send the original back to Jay. At that moment, I believe I single handedly ordered the destruction of priceless art (?) yet, I did get a $50k conference table for about $5k. And, DD might have the most exclusive compliment of Frank Gehry apple boxes in the world.

Well, the day of DD’s first board meeting had arrived. This inaugural meeting had been carefully planned by my assistant, Joanna Capitano. The IBM jet was due to arrive at Santa Monica airport sometime around noon. The 4 special parking spots were cleared for Mssrs. Winston and Cameron’s two HumVee’s (they were so huge they needed 2 spots a piece). A van was scheduled to pick up our IBM board members and I was, nervous.

At about 10AM or so, Joanna got a phone call from Lisa Dennis, Cameron’s assistant, explaining that Jim was unable to make it to the board meeting, that something had come up. I freaked. The Citation was somewhere over Colorado at this point and I had no way of informing the IBM’ers that Jim and now Stan, would be unable to join us.

I met the jet at Santa Monica Airport, shook a few hands, and explained that items on today’s agenda might have to change. After informing the group that there would be no Board meeting, I toured them around the new facilities, explaining our choice of SGI computers over IBM mainframes, and then we sat down to a wonderful lunch, gathered around a $5000 Frank Gehry “inspired” conference table.

It had been nine months since I left LucasFilm. I had just turned 41. I had a 12 year old, a 6 year old and a 2 year old, as well as a wife that hadn’t worked in years, and I was close to running out of money. IBM had agreed to fund the new company and we were almost at closing. I could see the finish line. I didn’t realize we had only just begun.

We signed all documents in the opening weeks of the new year, 1993. The decision had been made several months ago (especially after the ILM braintrust had decided not to be involved), that DD would be located in LA, “where movies were made”, as my partners said…. not in the Bay Area where there was only George and Francis Coppola. My then wife decided that our family would not move to LA until the end of the school year. But I needed to be in LA asap, so I found a small place in Santa Monica and commuted for almost six months, flying backwards on Southwest Airlines every Monday morning and returning to Marin every Friday evening.

Cameron was nice enough to let me use a small office in Lightstorm’s three story office building. Every morning I would rise at about 6 AM, drink my coffee and head over to the office. I needed to find a location, start to hire staff, make decisions about and negotiate capital equipment purchases, figure out power needs, technical infrastructure, set up business affairs and thousands of other details needed to start a major digital VFX studio. Of course I had help…. Diane (my assistant from ILM) was invaluable and literally drove me like a dog. Her 14 year old daughter moved into my house in Marin and she moved in with me in Santa Monica. You can imagine the rumors. Diane was a great friend, a task master, an organizing machine, but that’s where the relationship ended. Interestingly enough that is not what several staff members thought.

I had hired an overweight African American woman to be DD’s Director of Human Resources. She came highly qualified, I think she worked for LA Metro beforehand. I guess the rumor mill had started that Diane and I were more than just living together.

In the beginning months of DD’s start up, Diane was focused and on point and didn’t suffer fools gladly. Some people started to complain about her “bedside manner” (not that I knew anything about that). Of course they went directly to the HR person. After a few complaints, this HR women allegedly said to one of our VP’s ” That must be some fine (expletive deleted) for Scott Ross to put up with that kinda shit!” This certain VP came and told me what she said and I headed to her office to check it out. Once our HR Director saw me, she squeezed herself out of her chair and started packing her office and was gone in 15 minutes. I never really had to say a word. She knew what she did, and she was gone, gone gone.

Every morning showing up at Lightstorm was a bit strange. There were rarely any people there. Albeit, I did arrive early. Generally it was me and the office manager and sometimes a tech or two. My office was down the hall from Cameron’s. Mine was a loaner office, about 6 feet x 8 feet. Jim’s office on the other hand took up about half the entire floor, it was awesome. Complete with a living room with couches, a big screen TV, a fully equipped kitchen, an office area with a huge desk and a conference table. The furnishings were expensive and ecclectic, replete with a samurai sword and the articulated arm and hand of a Terminator T 800 that Stan Winston had given Jim as a present. The T 800 armature stood on the corner of Camerons’ 10 foot or so desk.

Cameron’s office door was never locked, yet this was the dude that a few years before, sent an assistant with the T2 script locked in a briefcase to allow me and a few other ILM’ers the chance to read it.

At Lightstorm however, I could walk into Cameron’s office and hang out there by myself without anyone knowing. Every once in awhile the early warning system would go off and the Lightstorm team would scramble…. “JIM IS 15 MINUTES OUT!!!!”, the office manager would shout. Battle Stations, Battle Stations, defcon 5… vacuum the carpets, sweep the floors, stock the kitchen with tuna fish and peas, make sure the bathrooms are spotless.

During these drills, I would, at times, sneak into JC’s office and, well, organize the fingers on the T800 armature in such a way, that the middle intiger stood proudly at attention while the other digits were clenched in a fist. Childish, I know, but somehow oddly comforting. I am after all a prankster.

At this point, we needed our own space as DD started to collect personnel. Along with the IBM investment came three IBM board members and three IBM team members. It seemed that IBM techies, Brian and Joe wrote the plan that IBM was considering when they first thought about a digital studio. They joined up. And I felt that IBM would feel much more comfortable if I was to hire a CFO that wore IBM blue. A young twenty-something Chris McKibbin fit the bill nicely. I also needed an Exec Producer for Features and one for Commercials as I was going to organize DD in the same way I had organized ILM. At first two separate product offerings, feature film effects and expensive hi end commercials. Once we got these two running, we would add other products like video games, new media and ultimately feature production. That being the ultimate goal… producing our own content and moving away from the services for hire business.

But while the fledgling DD was still housed in Cameron’s office building and after the early warning system was sounded, I would as I said, “arrange” the T800 . Jim would walk in and see the T800’s clenched fist with outstanding middle finger and demand to know who did this. I never “fessed up”…Call it childish and petty, which it mos def was…. but for some strange reason, it made not being with my family a little bit more palatable.