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?)

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.