Ready or Not, Here comes Gatsby

• Share

(3 of 9)

One Jewel. No one markets a movie better than Paramount's own odd couple (see boxes pages 88 and 89). An industrial-diamond-in-the-rough, Yablans, 38, orders the world around like a drill sergeant and employs a primal scream as casually as most people sneeze. The slight, agile Evans, 43, given to longpoint collars and cashmere sweaters, projects a kind of artless charm and wide-eyed aestheticism. But he is as obsessive about what he wants and is credited with being the figure who has, in show-business parlance, turned Paramount around. He runs day-to-day production matters—the selection and making of films. Yablans, who is New York-based, distributes and promotes the products. He also controls the budget.

"We decided we would avoid the old Louis B. Mayer v. Irving Thalberg-style battles for power," says Evans. "We wanted to be like brothers." To post some fraternal boundaries, the men decided to split tangible rewards evenly. Both have the same amount of Paramount stock and make equal base salaries (a reported $250,000). It is hard, however, for two aggressive men not to covet the major credit for a success as gaudy as Paramount's. A recent 16-page advertising flyer—approved by Yablans —for new studio productions displays his photograph but fails to mention Evans at all. The brotherly yoke may be getting heavier.

Still, when Yablans announces that "there has never been a promotion campaign like this before," he dutifully adds that "Bob and I did it totally together, and it began the day we decided to do the film. We target one jewel a year. Once the gem is decided upon, then we work on the mounting. And we make an incredible setting." Yablans calculates that the "totally choreographed" campaign has created some 1.5 billion impressions of Gatsby in the collective moviegoing mind, a statistic as unprovable as it is absurd. More important to Yablans, who is tightfisted as well as two-fisted in his business dealings, "the price was right." Paramount has spent a mere $200,000 for publicity and promotion so far, and it dipped into its $1.5 million paid-advertising budget for the first time only two weeks ago. The rest has been free.

The first big promotional step was getting Women's Wear Daily involved in Gatsby as a fashion goal for the 1973-74 season. It is doubtful that Paramount choreographed Designer Kenzo Takada's Paris show in October 1972, but the appearance of Kenzo's V-necked, red-and-blue bordered tennis sweaters and boxy white flannel pants was deftly followed by the announcement that the film was going to be made. Women's Wear Daily promptly translated Paris' le style tennis as "the Gatsby look," and the fashion publicity fairly snowed. It was a case of perfect timing—or at least it would have been had the movie not been postponed right in the middle of it all. The fashion strategy fitted fine in the Gatsby game plan, says Evans. "The only problem was they brought it out too early."