CANNES 87 : WEINTRAUB SAILS INTO CANNES

CANNES, France —  The instructions from the publicist were to take a cab to Port Canto and look for the biggest yacht there. Its name: the Galu.

No problem. You could walk the two or three miles from the center of Cannes to Port Canto and never take your eyes off the Galu. The 176-foot-long, blue-and-white ship decked out as a four-star floating charter hotel is as much a part of this year’s Cannes Film Festival as the swollen, salmon-covered Palais across the bay.

This week, the Galu--which rents for $12,000 a day (the 14 crew members, fuel and food are extra) is home and headquarters to Jerry Weintraub and the top executives of Weintraub Entertainment Group.

WEG, a film, television and recording company, was formed 10 months ago, just four months after Weintraub was ousted as president of United Artists Corp. by UA majority stockholder Kirk Kerkorian. Among the rumors about Weintraub’s split with Kerkorian was that Weintraub had been a big spender.

“I’m not a big spender,” Weintraub said Wednesday morning as he relaxed in one of the overstuffed couches in the Galu’s living room. “I’m a very wealthy guy and I live well in my personal life. But I don’t charge it to the business.”

Weintraub said that he chartered the Galu because it’s easier to do business on board than in crowded restaurants and hotels, where he would be easily spotted and distracted.

“If you and I tried to have this conversation at the Majestic (hotel), we couldn’t do it,” he said. “There are 7,000 people there who want to see me. I don’t blame them. They’re selling and I’m buying . . . but I would be suffocated.”

Weintraub doesn’t like the feeling of being closed in, of not being in control. That, he said, is the real reason Kerkorian fired him at UA.

“When I did the deal with Kirk, (I was) to come and run the company. I put up $30 million for $30 million worth of stock. What I didn’t realize at the time is that when a guy owns 70% of the stock and you own 11%, it’s his store.”

Weintraub said that he didn’t respond well to summonses from Kerkorian to go to the boss’s office.

“I don’t work for people,” Weintraub said. “I’m No. 1. That’s where I’ve always been; that’s where I’ll always be. I don’t know how to sit in my office and be called down into somebody else’s office.

“There is nothing wrong with that. I just don’t know how to do it. . . . I’m wealthy enough that I don’t have to do it. So I’ve built my own company. Mine is as big as (UA) now.”

Weintraub said that letting the film world know that WEG is a major player is the main reason he leased the Galu and cruised into Cannes from San Remo, Italy.

Weintraub’s Galu guests include WEG execs Kenneth Kleinberg and Guy McElwaine and film star Mel Gibson, whose production company recently signed a development deal with Weintraub.

WEG, formed with a reported $461 million from private investors, made a major move last year when it bought the Thorn/EMI film library from the Cannon Group for $85 million.

“A library is the cornerstone of a major (film) company,” Weintraub said. “I don’t think many people thought we would have one that soon.”

Weintraub said that rumors of an impending purchase of England’s Elstree Studios--where the “Star Wars” movies were shot--are premature.

“We’re considering it,” he said. “I won’t buy it to develop houses there. I’m not in the real estate business. But if I can be convinced it will be a profit center for us as a studio, I will buy it.”

As for the philosophy of WEG’s film division, Weintraub said that the formula is simple: “Basically, I make commercial motion pictures for mass consumption. I don’t make art films. I’m not interested in making films that play in only one theater.”

Weintraub hopes to be releasing 10 to 12 films a year by the early 1990s. They are being released through Columbia Pictures, but Weintraub said that Columbia is merely serving as a “collection agency” for those films.

WEG, he said, will finance the movies, control their marketing, even book theaters for them. For the use of Columbia’s distribution network, WEG will pay the studio 12.5% of its films’ box-office grosses.

Right now, WEG is flush, according to Weintraub.

“We have a balance sheet of $250 million,” he said. “I’ve got $150 million in cash for production. . . . I’m in better shape probably than most motion picture companies.”

Things do look rosy aboard the Galu this week. But last year was one of both great highs and low lows for the man who made his first fortune promoting Elvis Presley concerts in the ‘50s, then went on to become manager of such performers as Neil Diamond, John Denver and Bob Dylan.

The peaks included the formation of WEG and the box-office success of Weintraub’s hit, “The Karate Kid, Part II.”

But those events were preceded first by angry accusations that he had let down supporters of Filmex by failing, as chairman, on his promise to retire the organization’s debt. (Weintraub said Wednesday that he had personally contributed nearly $100,000 to help bail Filmex out and that he became disillusioned himself by the political dissension on the board.)

Then, he was fired by Kerkorian at UA, which spawned rumors not only of reckless spending, but of moral lapses that offended Kerkorian.

“When you have a situation like that (his firing), people are going to say what they feel like saying,” Weintraub said. “Hollywood is that kind of community.

“Envy and jealousy are the worst things that successful people live with. . . . It comes with the territory. I can handle it. I don’t like to read nasty things about myself. It hurts me when I do.

“But the bottom line is that I’m a nice guy. I care about the business. I don’t hurt people. And I don’t spend the company’s money frivolously.”