Jonathan Taplin
Encyclopedia
Jonathan Trumbull Taplin (born July 18, 1947) is an American
writer, film producer
and scholar. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio
and has lived in Los Angeles
, California
since 1973. Taplin graduated from Princeton University
in 1969 and is currently a Professor at the University of Southern California
Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Taplin is married to the photographer Maggie Smith and has three children: Daniela Lundberg, a film producer; Nicholas Taplin, a recording engineer
and Blythe Taplin, a human rights
lawyer.
Taplin's early production work included producing concerts for Bob Dylan
and The Band
. In 1973 he produced Martin Scorsese
's first major feature film, Mean Streets
which was selected for the Cannes Film Festival
. Between 1974 and 1996, Taplin produced 26 hours of television documentaries (including The Prize and Cadillac Desert for the Public Broadcasting Service
) and 12 feature film
s including The Last Waltz
, Until the End of the World
, Under Fire
and To Die For
. His films were nominated for Academy Awards and Golden Globe Award
s and chosen for the Cannes Film Festival
six times.
Management in the summer of 1965. Grossman was a manager of folk and rock musicians in the 1960s, with clients including Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary
, Janis Joplin
and The Band. Taplin began work for the Jim Kweskin
Jug Band while still a student at Princeton. In 1967 he managed tours for Judy Collins
and helped Collins's manager Harold Leventhal
produce the 1968 Tribute to Woody Guthrie
at Carnegie Hall
, which featured Bob Dylan and The Band, Judy Collins, Pete Seeger
and Arlo Guthrie
. In 1969, after graduating from Princeton, Taplin moved to Woodstock, New York
to manage tours for The Band. In early August of that year, The Band played at the Woodstock Festival
, and in late August Taplin managed Bob Dylan and The Band's appearance at the Isle of Wight Festival
in England
, Dylan's first public concert in three years.
asked Taplin to help him and Ravi Shankar
stage a benefit concert
at Madison Square Garden
for the newly created state of Bangladesh
, which was undergoing extreme famine
conditions. The resulting Concert for Bangladesh, with appearances by Harrison, Bob Dylan
, Ringo Starr
, Eric Clapton and others was the first benefit concert of this magnitude in world history. The concert, record and film have raised millions of dollars for UNICEF. In a documentary about the concert, Taplin tells the famous story of trying to get Eric Clapton (undergoing heroin withdrawal
) on stage.
documentary, Martin Scorsese
. Scorsese, who had just finished shooting his first feature, Boxcar Bertha
, for Roger Corman
, showed Taplin his script named Season of the Witch (co-written with Mardik Martin
). Changing the title to Mean Streets
at the suggestion of their mutual friend Jay Cocks
, Taplin later told Peter Biskind
that "I was naive enough to think that if I could have produced 150 concerts, I could produce a movie." Taplin raised US$
500,000 independently and Scorsese cast Harvey Keitel
and Robert DeNiro. Shot in 34 days, the film was eventually sold to Warner Bros.
for distribution. The film was hailed by many critics as one of the most original American films of the 1970s and The New Yorker
s Pauline Kael
said it was "a true original, and a triumph of personal filmmaking" and "dizzyingly sensual". In 1997, Mean Streets was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry
by the Library of Congress
as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
After Mean Streets Taplin produced or executive produced The Last Waltz
, Under Fire
, Until the End of the World
, To Die For
and three long form documentary series The Prize (Public Broadcasting Service), Native Americans (TBS
), and Cadillac Desert (PBS). He was also instrumental in the distribution of Shine
when he ran the American division of Pandora (a Paris-based film distributor that controlled the distribution rights to Shine) and had a legendary confrontation with Harvey Weinstein
at the Sundance Film Festival
.
, Taplin worked with Richard Rainwater
and Sid Bass
of Fort Worth
, Texas
to help Disney fend off a corporate raid
by Saul Steinberg
. Taplin then joined Merrill Lynch
Investment Banking as a Vice President for Media Mergers and Acquisitions. He was involved with various transactions with companies such as Viacom
and Vestron. In 1996 Taplin founded the first Internet Video On Demand service, Intertainer, with Richard Baskin and Jeremiah Chechik. Investors included Intel, Comcast
, Microsoft
, NBC
, Qwest
and Sony
. By 2000 the service had licensed more than 7000 films from Sony
, Warner Bros.
, Universal Studios
, Lions Gate Entertainment
, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
and others. In 2002, Intertainer's shareholder, Sony, launched a similar service MovieLink in a joint-venture with Warner Bros., Universal, MGM and Paramount Pictures
. Soon after that, the major studios stopped licensing films to Intertainer and the service was forced to close down. In September 2002, Intertainer filed an anti-trust
suit against three major entertainment companies, AOL Time Warner, Vivendi Universal and Sony and their wholly owned service, Movielink in the United States District Court for the Central District of California
, Western Division, accusing them of conspiracy to fix prices in the digital distribution of entertainment and restraint of trade. In March 2006, the defendants reached an out of court settlement with Intertainer. The lawsuit "was resolved to the satisfaction of all parties." Intertainer currently is in the business of licensing its video on demand patent portfolio. Companies such as Microsoft, Comcast
, The Thomson Corporation and Apple Inc. are currently license holders.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
writer, film producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
and scholar. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
and has lived in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
since 1973. Taplin graduated from Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
in 1969 and is currently a Professor at the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Taplin is married to the photographer Maggie Smith and has three children: Daniela Lundberg, a film producer; Nicholas Taplin, a recording engineer
Audio engineering
An audio engineer, also called audio technician, audio technologist or sound technician, is a specialist in a skilled trade that deals with the use of machinery and equipment for the recording, mixing and reproduction of sounds. The field draws on many artistic and vocational areas, including...
and Blythe Taplin, a human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
lawyer.
Taplin's early production work included producing concerts for Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
and The Band
The Band
The Band was an acclaimed and influential roots rock group. The original group consisted of Rick Danko , Garth Hudson , Richard Manuel , and Robbie Robertson , and Levon Helm...
. In 1973 he produced Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
's first major feature film, Mean Streets
Mean Streets
Mean Streets is a 1973 drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Scorsese and Mardik Martin. The film stars Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro. It was released by Warner Bros. on October 2, 1973...
which was selected for the Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
. Between 1974 and 1996, Taplin produced 26 hours of television documentaries (including The Prize and Cadillac Desert for the Public Broadcasting Service
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
) and 12 feature film
Feature film
In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...
s including The Last Waltz
The Last Waltz
The Last Waltz was a concert by the rock group The Band, held on American Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976, at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco...
, Until the End of the World
Until the End of the World
Until the End of the World is a 1991 film by the German film director Wim Wenders; the screenplay was written by Wenders and Peter Carey, from a story by Wenders and Solveig Dommartin. An initial draft of the screenplay was written by American filmmaker Michael Almereyda...
, Under Fire
Under Fire (film)
Under Fire is a 1983 political film set during the last days of the Somoza regime in 1979 Nicaragua. It stars Nick Nolte, Gene Hackman and Joanna Cassidy. The story is fictional, but was inspired by actual events, namely the murder of ABC reporter Bill Stewart by Somoza forces...
and To Die For
To Die For
To Die For is a 1995 dark comedy film, made in a mockumentary format, directed by Gus Van Sant and written by Buck Henry, based on the novel of the same name by Joyce Maynard, which in turn was based on the Pamela Smart story. It stars Nicole Kidman, Matt Dillon, and Joaquin Phoenix...
. His films were nominated for Academy Awards and Golden Globe Award
Golden Globe Award
The Golden Globe Award is an accolade bestowed by the 93 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association recognizing excellence in film and television, both domestic and foreign...
s and chosen for the Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
six times.
Early career
Taplin began working as a tour manager for Albert GrossmanAlbert Grossman
Albert Bernard Grossman was an American entrepreneur and manager in the American folk music scene and rock and roll. He was most famous as the manager of Bob Dylan between 1962 and 1970.-Biography:...
Management in the summer of 1965. Grossman was a manager of folk and rock musicians in the 1960s, with clients including Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary
Peter, Paul and Mary
Peter, Paul and Mary were an American folk-singing trio whose nearly 50-year career began with their rise to become a paradigm for 1960s folk music. The trio was composed of Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey and Mary Travers...
, Janis Joplin
Janis Joplin
Janis Lyn Joplin was an American singer, songwriter, painter, dancer and music arranger. She rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company and later as a solo artist with her backing groups, The Kozmic Blues Band and The Full Tilt Boogie Band...
and The Band. Taplin began work for the Jim Kweskin
Jim Kweskin
Jim Kweskin is the founder of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, with Fritz Richmond, Mel Lyman, and Geoff and Maria Muldaur...
Jug Band while still a student at Princeton. In 1967 he managed tours for Judy Collins
Judy Collins
Judith Marjorie "Judy" Collins is an American singer and songwriter, known for her eclectic tastes in the material she records ; and for her social activism. She is an alumna of the University of Colorado.-Musical career:Collins was born and raised in Seattle, Washington...
and helped Collins's manager Harold Leventhal
Harold Leventhal
Harold Leventhal was an American music manager. He died in 2005 at the age of 86. His career began as a song plugger for Irving Berlin...
produce the 1968 Tribute to Woody Guthrie
Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his...
at Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
, which featured Bob Dylan and The Band, Judy Collins, Pete Seeger
Pete Seeger
Peter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...
and Arlo Guthrie
Arlo Guthrie
Arlo Davy Guthrie is an American folk singer. Like his father, Woody Guthrie, Arlo often sings songs of protest against social injustice...
. In 1969, after graduating from Princeton, Taplin moved to Woodstock, New York
Woodstock, New York
Woodstock is a town in Ulster County, New York, United States. The population was 5,884 at the 2010 census, down from 6,241 at the 2000 census.The Town of Woodstock is in the northern part of the county...
to manage tours for The Band. In early August of that year, The Band played at the Woodstock Festival
Woodstock Festival
Woodstock Music & Art Fair was a music festival, billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music". It was held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in the Catskills near the hamlet of White Lake in the town of Bethel, New York, from August 15 to August 18, 1969...
, and in late August Taplin managed Bob Dylan and The Band's appearance at the Isle of Wight Festival
Isle of Wight Festival 1969
The 1969 Isle of Wight Festival was held on August 30–31, 1969, at Wootton, and attracted an audience of approximately 150,000 to see the acts of Bob Dylan, The Who and Free. It was the second of three music festivals held on the Isle of Wight between 1968 and 1970...
in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, Dylan's first public concert in three years.
Concert for Bangladesh
In June 1971, George HarrisonGeorge Harrison
George Harrison, MBE was an English musician, guitarist, singer-songwriter, actor and film producer who achieved international fame as lead guitarist of The Beatles. Often referred to as "the quiet Beatle", Harrison became over time an admirer of Indian mysticism, and introduced it to the other...
asked Taplin to help him and Ravi Shankar
Ravi Shankar
Ravi Shankar , often referred to by the title Pandit, is an Indian musician and composer who plays the plucked string instrument sitar. He has been described as the best known contemporary Indian musician by Hans Neuhoff in Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart.Shankar was born in Varanasi and spent...
stage a benefit concert
Benefit concert
A benefit concert or charity concert is a concert, show or gala featuring musicians, comedians, or other performers that is held for a charitable purpose, often directed at a specific and immediate humanitarian crisis. Such events raise both funds and public awareness to address the cause at...
at Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden, often abbreviated as MSG and known colloquially as The Garden, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in the New York City borough of Manhattan and located at 8th Avenue, between 31st and 33rd Streets, situated on top of Pennsylvania Station.Opened on February 11, 1968, it is the...
for the newly created state of Bangladesh
Bangladesh
Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...
, which was undergoing extreme famine
Famine
A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including crop failure, overpopulation, or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every continent in the world has...
conditions. The resulting Concert for Bangladesh, with appearances by Harrison, Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
, Ringo Starr
Ringo Starr
Richard Starkey, MBE better known by his stage name Ringo Starr, is an English musician and actor who gained worldwide fame as the drummer for The Beatles. When the band formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He became The Beatles' drummer in...
, Eric Clapton and others was the first benefit concert of this magnitude in world history. The concert, record and film have raised millions of dollars for UNICEF. In a documentary about the concert, Taplin tells the famous story of trying to get Eric Clapton (undergoing heroin withdrawal
Withdrawal
Withdrawal can refer to any sort of separation, but is most commonly used to describe the group of symptoms that occurs upon the abrupt discontinuation/separation or a decrease in dosage of the intake of medications, recreational drugs, and alcohol...
) on stage.
Film production
In early 1973, Taplin moved to Los Angeles where he was introduced to a young film editor who had worked on the WoodstockWoodstock (film)
Woodstock is a 1970 American documentary on the Woodstock Festival that took place in August 1969 at Bethel in New York. Entertainment Weekly called this film the benchmark of concert movies and one of the most entertaining documentaries ever made...
documentary, Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
. Scorsese, who had just finished shooting his first feature, Boxcar Bertha
Boxcar Bertha
Boxcar Bertha , director Martin Scorsese's second film, is a loose adaptation of Sister of the Road, the fictionalized autobiography of radical and transient Bertha Thompson as written by Ben Reitman...
, for Roger Corman
Roger Corman
Roger William Corman is an American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Some of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 2009 he won an Honorary Academy Award for...
, showed Taplin his script named Season of the Witch (co-written with Mardik Martin
Mardik Martin
Mardik Martin is an American screenwriter of Armenian descent. He was born in Iran and raised in Iraq. Although his family in Iraq was wealthy, he fled the country to avoid the draft and arrived in New York in a penniless state...
). Changing the title to Mean Streets
Mean Streets
Mean Streets is a 1973 drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Scorsese and Mardik Martin. The film stars Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro. It was released by Warner Bros. on October 2, 1973...
at the suggestion of their mutual friend Jay Cocks
Jay Cocks
Jay Cocks is a film critic and motion picture screenwriter.He is a graduate of Kenyon College. He was a critic for Time, Newsweek, and Rolling Stone, among other magazines, before moving into film writing....
, Taplin later told Peter Biskind
Peter Biskind
Peter Biskind is a journalist, former executive editor of Premiere magazine, and the author of numerous books depicting life in Hollywood, including Seeing Is Believing, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Down and Dirty Pictures, and Gods and Monsters...
that "I was naive enough to think that if I could have produced 150 concerts, I could produce a movie." Taplin raised US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
500,000 independently and Scorsese cast Harvey Keitel
Harvey Keitel
Harvey Keitel is an American actor. Some of his most notable starring roles were in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, Ridley Scott's The Duellists and Thelma and Louise, Ettore Scola's That Night in Varennes, Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, Jane Campion's The...
and Robert DeNiro. Shot in 34 days, the film was eventually sold to Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
for distribution. The film was hailed by many critics as one of the most original American films of the 1970s and The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
s Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
said it was "a true original, and a triumph of personal filmmaking" and "dizzyingly sensual". In 1997, Mean Streets was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
by the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
After Mean Streets Taplin produced or executive produced The Last Waltz
The Last Waltz
The Last Waltz was a concert by the rock group The Band, held on American Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976, at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco...
, Under Fire
Under Fire (film)
Under Fire is a 1983 political film set during the last days of the Somoza regime in 1979 Nicaragua. It stars Nick Nolte, Gene Hackman and Joanna Cassidy. The story is fictional, but was inspired by actual events, namely the murder of ABC reporter Bill Stewart by Somoza forces...
, Until the End of the World
Until the End of the World
Until the End of the World is a 1991 film by the German film director Wim Wenders; the screenplay was written by Wenders and Peter Carey, from a story by Wenders and Solveig Dommartin. An initial draft of the screenplay was written by American filmmaker Michael Almereyda...
, To Die For
To Die For
To Die For is a 1995 dark comedy film, made in a mockumentary format, directed by Gus Van Sant and written by Buck Henry, based on the novel of the same name by Joyce Maynard, which in turn was based on the Pamela Smart story. It stars Nicole Kidman, Matt Dillon, and Joaquin Phoenix...
and three long form documentary series The Prize (Public Broadcasting Service), Native Americans (TBS
TBS (TV channel)
TBS , stylized in the logo as tbs, is an American cable television channel owned by Time Warner that shows a variety of programming, with a focus on comedy. TBS was originally known as WTCG, a UHF terrestrial television station that broadcast from Atlanta, Georgia, during the late 1970s...
), and Cadillac Desert (PBS). He was also instrumental in the distribution of Shine
Shine (film)
Shine is a 1996 Australian film based on the life of pianist David Helfgott, who suffered a mental breakdown and spent years in institutions. It stars Geoffrey Rush, Lynn Redgrave, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Noah Taylor, John Gielgud, Googie Withers, Justin Braine, Sonia Todd, Nicholas Bell, Chris...
when he ran the American division of Pandora (a Paris-based film distributor that controlled the distribution rights to Shine) and had a legendary confrontation with Harvey Weinstein
Harvey Weinstein
Harvey Weinstein, CBE is an American film producer and movie studio chairman. He is best known as co-founder of Miramax Films. He and his brother Bob have been co-chairmen of The Weinstein Company, their film production company, since 2005...
at the Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
.
Entrepreneurial activities
In 1984, while working as an independent producer at Walt Disney PicturesWalt Disney Pictures
Walt Disney Pictures is an American film studio owned by The Walt Disney Company. Walt Disney Pictures and Television, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Studios and the main production company for live-action feature films within the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, based at the Walt Disney...
, Taplin worked with Richard Rainwater
Richard Rainwater
-Early life:The son of a wholesale grocer, he grew up in Fort Worth, Texas. He graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in mathematics, where he was a member of the Tau chapter of the Kappa Sigma fraternity. He was recognized by the national organization in 1996 as Kappa Sigma Man of...
and Sid Bass
Sid Bass
Sid Richardson Bass is an American investor and businessman.-Life:He is a graduate of Yale University and Stanford Business School. His father, Perry Richardson Bass , built an oil fortune with uncle, Sid Richardson . Bass took control of the business in 1968. His investments include oil and gas...
of Fort Worth
Fort Worth, Texas
Fort Worth is the 16th-largest city in the United States of America and the fifth-largest city in the state of Texas. Located in North Central Texas, just southeast of the Texas Panhandle, the city is a cultural gateway into the American West and covers nearly in Tarrant, Parker, Denton, and...
, Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
to help Disney fend off a corporate raid
Corporate raid
A corporate raid is an American English business term for buying a large interest in a corporation and then using voting rights to enact measures directed at increasing the share value...
by Saul Steinberg
Saul Steinberg (business)
Saul Steinberg is a former financier, insurance executive, and corporate raider. He started a computer leasing company , which he used in an audacious and successful takeover of the much larger Reliance Insurance Company in 1968...
. Taplin then joined Merrill Lynch
Merrill Lynch
Merrill Lynch is the wealth management division of Bank of America. With over 15,000 financial advisors and $2.2 trillion in client assets it is the world's largest brokerage. Formerly known as Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., prior to 2009 the firm was publicly owned and traded on the New York...
Investment Banking as a Vice President for Media Mergers and Acquisitions. He was involved with various transactions with companies such as Viacom
Viacom
Viacom Inc. , short for "Video & Audio Communications", is an American media conglomerate with interests primarily in, but not limited to, cinema and cable television...
and Vestron. In 1996 Taplin founded the first Internet Video On Demand service, Intertainer, with Richard Baskin and Jeremiah Chechik. Investors included Intel, Comcast
Comcast
Comcast Corporation is the largest cable operator, home Internet service provider, and fourth largest home telephone service provider in the United States, providing cable television, broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers in 39 states and the...
, Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
, NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
, Qwest
Qwest
Qwest Communications International, Inc. was a large United States telecommunications carrier. Qwest provided local service in 14 western U.S. states: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.On April...
and Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
. By 2000 the service had licensed more than 7000 films from Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
, Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
, Universal Studios
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
, Lions Gate Entertainment
Lions Gate Entertainment
Lions Gate Entertainment Corporation is a North American entertainment company. The company was formed in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1997, and is headquartered in Santa Monica, California...
, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
and others. In 2002, Intertainer's shareholder, Sony, launched a similar service MovieLink in a joint-venture with Warner Bros., Universal, MGM and Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
. Soon after that, the major studios stopped licensing films to Intertainer and the service was forced to close down. In September 2002, Intertainer filed an anti-trust
Competition law
Competition law, known in the United States as antitrust law, is law that promotes or maintains market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies....
suit against three major entertainment companies, AOL Time Warner, Vivendi Universal and Sony and their wholly owned service, Movielink in the United States District Court for the Central District of California
United States District Court for the Central District of California
The United States District Court for the Central District of California serves over 18 million people in southern and central California, making it the largest federal judicial district by population...
, Western Division, accusing them of conspiracy to fix prices in the digital distribution of entertainment and restraint of trade. In March 2006, the defendants reached an out of court settlement with Intertainer. The lawsuit "was resolved to the satisfaction of all parties." Intertainer currently is in the business of licensing its video on demand patent portfolio. Companies such as Microsoft, Comcast
Comcast
Comcast Corporation is the largest cable operator, home Internet service provider, and fourth largest home telephone service provider in the United States, providing cable television, broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers in 39 states and the...
, The Thomson Corporation and Apple Inc. are currently license holders.