NEGOTIATIONS REACH IMPASSE IN ‘BRAZIL’ SALE

Producer Arnon Milchan’s attempts to buy back Terry Gilliam’s critically acclaimed “Brazil” from Universal Pictures reached an impasse Wednesday when MCA Inc. President Sidney J. Sheinberg wrote him a letter naming terms that Milchan says rules out any chance of his selling the film elsewhere.

Milchan says it also dashes any hope that the film will be released in Los Angeles by the end of the year in order to qualify for 1985 Academy Awards.

“What he wrote makes it absolutely impossible to make a deal,” an angry Milchan said, as he was preparing to return to his apartment in Paris. “First, he makes it difficult by commenting to people that no one wants to see the movie; then, he names a price that no one will touch.”

Sheinberg’s letter, a copy of which was sent to The Times, was in response to an offer Milchan set forth in a letter to him. In it, Milchan offered to pay Universal 50% of the $9 million to $10 million the studio has spent on “Brazil,” plus 50% of any profit that Milchan might receive from its subsequent release by another distributor.

Sheinberg said Wednesday that he had nothing to add to what was in his letter, except that Milchan’s public comments weren’t going to force him into a decision that further jeopardizes the studio’s investment in “Brazil.”

“They’re not going to wear me down,” he said.

Milchan said he was basing his offer on a comment attributed to Sheinberg in The Times on Nov. 5. In that article, Sheinberg said he had become so angry over an ad that Terry Gilliam had placed in Daily Variety that he felt like running an ad of his own offering to sell the film for half-price.

Pressed at that time to name a specific price for “Brazil,” Sheinberg said only that he was willing to take a loss. Milchan said he read it to be a half-price offer and wants Sheinberg to honor it.

Sheinberg’s strongly worded reply Wednesday said he will not sell “Brazil” for 50% of the studio’s investment, which he places at $10 million. But the studio might be willing, he said, to accept $5 million in cash, plus 30% of the rental income from the film’s theatrical release and 30% of “earnings above advances” for such things as pay cable and videocassette sales.

Milchan said that before receiving Sheinberg’s letter, he had three companies--Tri-Star Pictures, the Samuel Goldwyn Co. and Jerry Weintraub’s in utero United Artists--ready to take over “Brazil’s” distribution. But with Universal tacked on as a 30% participant in rentals, he said those deals won’t happen.

“This has become very personal,” Milchan said. “Sid wants to make sure that I don’t make any money on this movie. I think he’s afraid that if Terry Gilliam’s version of the film is released now, he’s (Sheinberg) going to be embarrassed.”

Sheinberg said in his letter to Milchan that Universal will consider releasing Gilliam’s cut of “Brazil” if Milchan agreed to contribute $2 million--the amount that Milchan and Gilliam earned in fees--to the distribution budget (covering the costs of prints and launch advertising). Sheinberg said that in that case, the studio might let Milchan recoup that money from the first dollars of rental income.

“In Texas, we have a saying, Arnon,” Sheinberg wrote. “ ‘Put your money where your mouth is, or shut up.’ ”

“I don’t think of Sid Sheinberg as a Texas cowboy,” Milchan said, “and I don’t think the chairman of a company should be using language like that. But, as a matter of fact, I did put my money where my mouth is.”

Milchan said he won’t take Sheinberg up on the offer. “What kind of marketing push could we expect from a studio when the guy who runs it doesn’t like the movie?” he said.

Also, Milchan figures to make a lot more money away from Universal.

With Universal, Milchan does not stand to make any further money until the film breaks even. (The break-even point, if Universal were to spend a normal amount on marketing, would be around $30 million.) After that, Milchan said he would get about 40% of the profits.

With one of the other companies distributing, Milchan said he would have to put up $1 million to $1.5 million for releasing costs, but he would recoup that from immediate box-office receipts and would receive half of any profits beyond that.

“It’s blackmail to be told to return your fees when all you can possibly do is get that money back,” Milchan said.

Where does all this leave “Brazil,” a movie that several New York critics who saw the film early this year say is easily one of the year’s best movies?

Sheinberg said his plans are unchanged. Unless Milchan comes up with a better offer to buy the movie back, Universal will complete and test its own version, then decide which one to release. That is not likely to happen this year.

Milchan said time is running out, and that by not giving “Brazil” a chance to qualify for critics’ awards and Oscars, Sheinberg is blowing an opportunity to give the film a good box-office send-off.

“I’m appealing to him to at least release it in one theater to qualify (for awards),” Milchan said. “If it works, great. If not, he’ll be proven right and Terry and I will be proven wrong.”

Things were moving fast for Nick Vanoff last year. Too fast.

Vanoff, the Emmy-winning TV producer who co-owns the old Columbia Studios at Sunset and Gower, had just taken over the Aquarius Theatre a few blocks away and was converting it into a television studio. He was coming off a benefit he did for the American Ballet Theatre, he was producing “Onstage America,” a two-hour weekly TV show, and he was in pre-production on “Eleni,” a film dealing with one of the most agonizing periods in the modern history of his native Greece.

Those pressures, plus the tug of “five or six related businesses that seemed to need attention at the same time,” came together--like so many appliances overloading one circuit--and stopped him in his tracks.

“I was at a ballet at the Music Center, coming back for the second act,” Vanoff recalls, “and I just went down.”

When he landed on the carpeted floor, his heart was not beating. He was given CPR immediately, but it was the electric shocks given him by paramedics that got his heart going again. In the hospital, the scenario was repeated twice in the next three days.

“It was a rhythm problem,” says Vanoff, who started his career as a stage dancer in the late 1940s. “I’m in great shape now.”

Vanoff credits Nicholas Gage, the former New York Times reporter who wrote the best-selling book upon which “Eleni” is based, with keeping the movie moving ahead while he was in the hospital. Gage had negotiated an associate producer credit in his deal and ended up doing much of the producing.

“I always knew he (Gage) had a great feel for this business and that he would do well in it,” Vanoff says. “He’s a bright guy, and very talented.”

Vanoff says he met Gage several years ago when he optioned the movie rights for Gage’s novel, “The Bourlotas Fortune.” Later, he offered to subsidize Gage’s research for “Eleni” in return for an opportunity to match the highest bid that the book would receive for movie rights.

Vanoff (nee: Daikopoulus) and Gage (nee: Gatsoyannis) were both born in Greece and brought to America as young children by their fathers who had emigrated ahead of them. Gage’s mother was executed during the Greek civil war. His search for understanding how and why she was killed is the subject of both his book and the movie.

Gage might have taken Vanoff up on the salary offer, Vanoff says, but about that time, his newspaper conveniently transferred him to its Athens bureau, which allowed him to do the research during his off-hours.

Even so, Gage agreed to the other half of Vanoff’s deal, and even though the auction brought in bids higher than anyone could have imagined, Vanoff matched the highest one and got the rights.

“I’m glad it worked out the way it did,” Vanoff says. “It was one of the most expensive books of the year, and if I’d made the deal going in, I probably could have bought it for 20% of what I eventually paid. But I would have felt guilty for the rest of my life.”

If Vanoff had had his way, “Eleni” would have had a third Greek emigre involved. His first choice of directors was Elia Kazan (nee: Kazanjoglou), one of the most celebrated film directors of the ‘50s (“On the Waterfront,” “East of Eden”) and ‘60s (“Splendor in the Grass”).

Kazan, now 75 and living in Connecticut, has not made a film since “The Last Tycoon” in 1976. Out of sight, out of mind.

“I just couldn’t raise any interest (among financial backers) in him,” Vanoff says.

He ended up with English director Peter Yates, fresh from an Oscar nomination as best director for “The Dresser.” (How short are memories in Hollywood? Only months before “The Dresser” was released, Yates’ name had the stain of “Krull,” one of 1983’s summer flops, all over it.)

Vanoff, his heart again beating a steady rhythm, says he’s now eager to direct a film himself--probably Gage’s “The Bourlotas Fortune,” with Gage producing--but he acknowledges having mixed feelings about moving from TV into motion pictures.

“There is a lot less bull in television,” he says. “There is no time for backbiting or game-playing. You have to go out and do the job or we just say, ‘Thank you very much but we don’t have time for you.’

“With movies, everybody’s got a better idea.”