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.