It might be tempting to analyze the euphoric expectations and, later, crushing disappointments associated with the making of National Lampoon’s Pucked in the Triad during the mid-section of the last decade according to the plotline of the classic 1968 Mel Brooks comedy The Producers, , in which a plan is hatched to oversell shares in a play that is designed to flop so that the schemers secretly can pocket the funds.
Another movie appears to hold up a truer mirror of how the enterprise went sour — Pucked itself.
Written by Matty Simmons, a founder of the National Lampoon entertainment empire, the storyline concerns itself with Frank Hopper, played by Jon Bon Jovi, a lawyer and dreamer whose conception of business principles is equally grandiose and simple. When the hapless protagonist, who is looking for ways to finance an all-woman hockey team, receives a series of credit-card offers, he tears off in pursuit of the dream without giving adequate thought as to how to repay the debt — and inevitably winds up in court.
To executive producer Charles Grimes and a host of local investors, the project must have looked like a sure bet. After all, its lead was Jon Bon Jovi, the 1980s heartthrob hard rocker who animated the longings of teenage girls on middle school dance floors from New Jersey to Nebraska during the Reagan era. If Bon Jovi’s participation failed to engage the movie-going public’s interest, there was a line of name actors behind him: David Faustino, (“Married With Children”), Cary Elwes (The The Princess Bride), Nora Dunn (“Saturday Night Live”) and Curtis Armstrong (Revenge of the Nerds).
Charles Grimes is a producer with Sympics International. (photo by Jordan Green)
In a nod to nostalgia, the author of the screenplay and the lead producer for the movie was Matty Simmons, who also holds producer credits on the classic Animal House (starring the late comic legend John Belushi) and National Lampoon’s successful Vacation franchise. Arthur Hiller, an Oscarwinning industry veteran who began his producing career in television in the 1950s, was drafted to direct. (It would be the first director credit in nine years and the last ever for Hiller, who is now 87 years old.)
The players were known quantities, and the concept had been road tested.
“National Lampoon had a great reputation five years ago,” said Grimes, a Greensboro lawyer who made his first foray into filmmaking with Pucked. “Christmas Vacation is something we all watch. It was made by Matty Simmons, our lead producer. And so was Animal House, the top-grossing comedy of all time.”
Pucked pre- miered at the Grande in Greensboro’s Friendly Shopping Center in February 2006, and while local audiences found pleasure in spotting familiar landmarks onscreen such as the Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Winston-Salem, the Davidson County Courthouse in Lexington and Dixie Lock & Key on Greensboro’s Lewis Street, reaction to the movie itself was decidedly unenthusiastic. The movie never made it to theatrical release, and it would be several months before the picture was released on DVD.
The financing and marketing of the movie would generate cascading cries of fraud, with creditor and Greensboro Auto Auction owner Dean Green leveling the accusation at Grimes, and the producer in turn hurling it at National Lampoon.
An unresolved lawsuit filed by one of Grimes’ companies against National Lampoon alleges that the comedy franchise botched the marketing of the film, crippling its ability to compete and damaging its “acceptance in the worldwide market, among critics and its reputation with one or more of its movie stars.” Since Grimes filed suit in August 2007, National Lampoon CEO Daniel Laikin has pled guilty to manipulating the company’s stock prices.
“You know you had Bon Jovi involved in this thing, and Bon Jovi is a pretty well known actor,” Green would later tell a lawyer representing the local movie companies during a deposition. “And when you put it all together, you know, the value should have been there.”
Grimes thought so, too. “It was my first one, but the lead producer, Matty Simmons, had done a dozen movies,” Grimes said. “I had been talking to Matty for six or seven months before we did the project. I met Matty through mutual friends…. I thought it was a great script. And we sent it to Jon Bon Jovi and he liked it, and wanted to do it.”
Jon Bon Jovi, whose band shares the singer’s name, has maintained an enviable level of popularity since attaining mega-stardom with the Slippery When Wet album in 1986. A tour this year in support of the band’s new album, The Circle, culminates with a month-long residency at the O2 Arena in London in June. Pucked was not the singer’s first movie, but it was to be his last. Jon Bon Jovi could not be reached for comment on this story.
Grimes said he developed a friendship with Bon Jovi during the shooting, and entertained the star at the popular downtown Greensboro nightclub Much.
Local actors remember the shoot with fondness. Although much of the dialogue was handled by the big names, local actors received valuable experience through the project.
Crystal Largen, who was working with Marilyn Green’s talent agency at the time, was trying to make a transition from modeling to acting. Marilyn Green is the wife of creditor Dean Green. Largen showed up at an open call at Four Seasons Town Center in Greensboro and was cast as a member of the women’s hockey team, dubbed the Fearsome Foxes.
“I was a baby back then,” she recalled during a recent interview on the set of Elephant Sighs in High Point, where she is handing hair and makeup. “I was trying to go from modeling to acting. I was taking classes, and just trying to build my resume. That was my biggest break.”
The local actors were surprised to find that the stars were not sealed off from the rest of the cast and crew. Friendships were forged and parties held. Largen said she still corresponds with Dot Jones, who put the newbie in touch with her agent in Los Angeles. Largen met with the agent, who told her if she wanted to move out to the West Coast he would represent her.
Largen also received the honor of getting to pose for the DVD cover with Bon Jovi and the other principal actors.
“Seeing myself in Blockbuster, that’s the coolest thing,” she said. “I’ve seen it in Harris Teeter. Random.”
Christy Johnson, who also plays a Fearsome Fox, now fronts the rock band Dreamkiller and has gone on to do television advertising work for local clients such as Moses Cone Health Services. She recalled that Elwes was running back and forth between the set and a Greensboro hospital, where his wife suffered a miscarriage. Despite the family difficulty, Elwes proved to be a “true professional with a big heart,” crossing the street to talk to fans across from the courthouse in Lexington during a break from shooting.
“Working on a movie is like going to war,” said Phil Smoot, the unit production manager for Pucked. “It’s always a battle. Some of those battles are better than others, and that film actually ran pretty darn well. Script and everything else aside, it actually went pretty darn well.”
In the fall of 2005, after shooting wrapped, Grimes and fellow producer Greg Harrison, a Greensboro businessman with a background in staffing agencies, were soliciting completion funding for Pucked and other movie projects, according to affidavits by Grimes and accountant Robert D. Patterson. In August, Grimes began talks with National Lampoon CEO Daniel Laikin about the sale and distribution of the movie. Grimes said that Laikin and Simmons said that the Greensboro film was superior to all that National Lampoon movies since the Vacation series, each of which cost almost $30 million to make, compared to Pucked, which filmed for a fraction of that amount.
“I knew Greg was an investor,” Dean Green recalled in an April 2008 deposition. “I found out about all the other investors later. [Grimes] never disclosed to me we got all these investors we owed money to. He did disclose to me and we knew that he owed Greg money. As far as I knew at the time, too, you know, that Greg had the majority of the money.”
SymPics International issued a formal statement about the nature of its agreement with the local investors.
“National Lampoon’s Pucked was funded in part by locally raised monies under very detailed and confidential private offering materials prepared by the companies’ Los Angeles-based legal counsel,” the statement reads. “These exhaustive materials fully disclosed the many risks involved in motion picture production and sales, all in keeping with legal requirements. In these documents, each person who wished to participate in the projects was made completely aware of the potential risks and rewards involved in the unpredictable entertainment industry, and each person attested that they had a net worth in excess of the required threshold for such offerings and that they could afford a loss of the entire amount of the investment.”
Corroborating Green’s remarks, producer Greg Harrison said in a prepared statement that his stake in the project represents more than 70 percent of the total investment, and that he has received no return on his investment or reimbursement for expenses to date. Harrison is currently enmeshed in a legal dispute with a Cayman Islands insurance company over money owed by his staffing agencies.
The shooting of Pucked allowed local actors like Christy Johnson the opportunity to learn from established names like David Faustino (courtesy photo)
None of the other investors in Pucked or Home of the Giants, a subsequent movie produced by SymPics International, would agree to go on the record for this story. Home of the Giants, a dark coming-of-age basketball picture starring Haley Joel Osment, has never had a theatrical release or received DVD distribution. Grimes said SymPics is still “looking at the possibility of a major city release under new technology that allows you to transmit digital technology.” (The producer added that digital transmission reduces costs by about 93 percent by eliminating the need to make film prints at about $2,000 a pop; the new technology did not exist four years ago.)
One creditor, Mark Lane, was granted an order from a Guilford County superior court judge on Jan. 7 upholding an arbitration panel’s award of $264,278 in his favor and against Grimes and Harrison. Legal documents in the lawsuit state that Lane loaned the two producers $200,000 in September 2005 for “an independent film project,” and Grimes confirmed recently that the money was spent on Pucked.
In late 2005, Harrison approached Green about buying a Cessna C2J jet. Harrison appeared to be strapped for cash, and asked Green for help financing the jet, and Green agreed to loan $750,000 to Harrison. To secure the loan, the two discussed putting up the domestic distribution rights of the movie as collateral.
At the time, the movie was being prepared for final editing and, as Grimes described it in an affidavit, “hopeful sale and distribution.”
“And Mr. Grimes says, ‘Hey, so, we’ve got this movie here,’” Green said in deposition. “He told both of us this. ‘We’ve got this movie here.’ He told both of us this. ‘We’ve got this movie that there’s no lien or anything on. We’ll put this movie up for collateral. I’m going to have this movie sold by the middle of the year.’ This was in December. ‘I’ll have it sold, you know, by June or the middle of the year. There will be plenty of money to pay everybody.’” Green told lawyers in the April 2008 deposition that Harrison loaned Grimes “5 million for two movies. He told him he would have the money in 18 months and it had been three years and he hadn’t paid a dime, which I don’t think he paid any investor a dime.”
Smoot said Pucked cost upwards of $3 million to make.
Grimes said he understood that the $750,000 loan would be used for the benefit of the film companies and that Green hoped through a second related transaction to save money on his taxes through the sale of the jet.
On Dec. 22, Grimes and Harrison brought the prepared loan documents to Green’s office at Greensboro Auto Auction on West Wendover Avenue. What happened next remains a matter of dispute between Grimes and Green.
Grimes said that Green put the documents in his desk without signing them.
Later that day, Grimes said he received a phone call from Green, who told him the loan closing should be considered terminated if a second transaction involving the jet did not close before the end of the year.
Green has said of Grimes: “He’s good at fabrication to make it meet the situation.”
In complete contradiction to Green, Grimes said that during that phone conversation he informed the producer that the loan transaction had been completed through wire transfer.
A checking account document for Greensboro Auto Auction shows that $750,000 was paid out to Winston- Salem law firm Bell Davis & Pitt on Dec. 22 for the purpose of a loan from a company owned by Grimes to one owned by Harrison. A promissory note signed by Grimes and Harrison on the same day lists $750,000 as the principal amount of a loan for the benefit of Harrison with a “security agreement” clause stipulating that interest in the movie, including domestic distribution rights, would be assigned to Harrison, who would then be obligated to pay Green back from the proceeds of the sale once it was completed. A separate document signed by Harrison and Green assigns senior security interest in the movie to Greensboro Auto Auction in consideration of the loan. Green also contends that Grimes was supposed to file a UCC statement form “to record Harrison’s interest in the film rights.”
Grimes and Harrison met in mid-January with accountant Patterson to discuss capital needs for their movie projects, according to an affidavit sworn by Patterson.
Despite receiving the loan to finance the jet purchase, Harrison appears to have represented to his filmmaking associates that the deal had been terminated. Accountant Robert D. Patterson said in an affidavit that Grimes asked Harrison if there was any need to file a UCC statement, and Harrison responded that there was no need because the deal had been called off.
Green had a characteristically blunt response to the notion that he aborted the loan agreement: “That is an outright lie.”
Green concluded in April 2008 that Grimes failed to file a UCC on Pucked “because he didn’t want to cloud the title so he could misrepresent the damn thing later on down the road to Sony. He’s coming back with some other deal he just served a week ago saying that he got a copyright on it.
Well, how did he get a copyright on it if he didn’t misrepresent it? He misrepresented it, sir, or he couldn’t have gotten a copyright…. I believe the term is fraud.”
Greensboro Auto Auction contends that Grimes received $450,000 for from Sony Pictures for Pucked, which he should have paid to his creditors instead. Grimes denies receiving any money.
By that time, Harrison had defaulted on the loan, and by the end of 2007 he would sell the jet to High Point businessman Mark Norcross. In August of that year, Harrison acknowledged the outstanding debt by executing a consent judgment against himself and in Greensboro Auto Auction’s favor for $762,466.
Last August, Green abruptly dismissed his lawsuit against Grimes and the film companies. In his deposition, Green said Greensboro Auto Auction was worth more than $25 million and that the company earned upwards of $5 million a year.
“We weren’t getting anywhere,” Green’s lawyer told YES! Weekly. “There was no settlement.”
Grimes declined to discuss the lawsuit. Green said an associate of his wife’s advised him that Pucked was worth “between $3 million and $3.5 million had Grimes hadn’t screwed it up so bad in the way that it had been marketed. He said, ‘If he screwed it up, it might not bring that’… He says if a person is inexperienced and don’t know a whole lot about movies and doesn’t handle the thing right, they go on their own marketing and so forth and they mess it up and then it may not be worth the value. He said Mr. Grimes is fairly new in this industry is what — you know, he’s not a seasoned producer.”
In fact, Grimes outsourced the marketing to National Lampoon, hoping to build on Matty Simmons’ involvement and the comedy giant’s entertainment connections in southern California. The deal was closed on Jan. 31, 2006, less than two weeks before the movie’s premiere in Greensboro.
“Lampoon was paid good money to participate and to help with the marketing,” Grimes told YES! Weekly. “They have failed miserably.”
A pending lawsuit filed by another Grimes’ company, American Cinema Distribution Corp., alleges that National Lampoon “constantly changed budgeted amounts” without explanation and submitted handwritten charges with film names crossed out and written over “even though no authority for this type of brazen conduct or attempted crossing of expenditures… was ever agreed to between the parties.”
The lawsuit also alleges that National Lampoon submitted invoices that were dated long after National Lampoon was fired from the project and informed in writing to stop marketing the movie.
Grimes said National Lampoon severely undermined marketing of the movie just before the premiere by releasing unflattering stills of Bon Jovi that angered the star.
“He was talking about the movie on talk shows, at concerts and other things; he was very excited about promoting it,” Grimes said. “Then he stopped talking to us and pulled the key art from his band’s website.”
Among the other allegations leveled at National Lampoon is the company appears to have attempted to sell licensing rights to the film in foreign markets without authorization, that it used funds raised for the distribution of the movie as a “profit center for its own business concerns,” and that it generally performed shoddy work. Lastly, in a further example of life imitating art, Grimes’ lawsuit alleges that National Lampoon claimed to have expended $300,000 — roughly the same amount that Frank Hopper ran up to finance his all-woman hockey team — “despite not providing appropriate and agreed upon backup for these expenditures.”
Mark Nebrig, a Charlotte lawyer representing National Lampoon in the case, said he was unable to comment on the merits of the case. Calls to National Lampoon’s office in Los Angeles went unreturned.
The lawsuit went into mediation in late 2007.
Grimes traveled to Los Angeles for a weeklong series of meetings with National Lampoon’s Laikin.
“He quoted numbers and gave us a lot of positive spin and positive projections,” Grimes recalled. “A few months later I was walking to the mailbox in my robe with my coffee cup and opened up a newspaper with John Belushi’s picture on the front page, and there’s an article saying, lo and behold, the man I had been talking to had been hauled off to jail.”
Laikin pleaded guilty to manipulating National Lampoon’s stock prices in September, and faces sentencing on March 1.
Legal problems for the company’s leadership have only accumulated. The Indianapolis Star reported that the FBI raided successor Timothy Durham’s offices in Indianapolis and Akron, Ohio and hauled off documents in late November.
Grimes’ said National Lampoon’s legal problems have caused delays in his litigation against the company, and he is considering his options.
Ultimately, National Lampoon’s Pucked may have failed because it wasn’t what the marketplace wanted, because it cost too much money and because of unscrupulous actions among the principals in its financing and marketing, which led to spiraling mutual distrust.
“If you do anything over $2 million and you don’t have a theatrical release, I don’t think you can make money,” said Phil Smoot, the unit production manager. “I just think it was not that good. Everybody aimed a little high thinking they were going to make the next Animal House and the next National Lampoon’s Vacation, but those films had already been done, and that wasn’t what people wanted to see.”
Local productions have continued to employ actors and crew in the Triad, and the region has produced notable successes such as Goodbye Solo and Leatherheads. Its promise continues with enthusiastic local participation in Elephant Sighs in High Point. It remains an open question whether a creative and commercial homerun by Pucked would have significantly enhanced the regional industry’s prospects; likewise, whether its failure represents a missed opportunity.
“Better business practices in filmmaking breeds a community that is willing to finance films,” said Harvey Robinson, a Greensboro filmmaker who created the “Harvey’s Kitchen” video documentary series at www.monkeywhale.com. “In filmmaking, there’s often a long-term return. If people are engaged in bad business practices, it makes it less likely that investors are going to stick it out for the long-term return.”
Even then, there’s no guarantee. “Backing films is a pretty high-risk thing, but the potential return on the film can be pretty huge,” Robinson said. “Most people that are backing films do it because they love film or they really love a particular director and his ability to tell a story.”
Grimes has drawn a similar lesson about the foundation of solid filmmaking from his experience with Pucked: Creative integrity and resourcefulness matter most.
“Find the best story, well told,” he said. “Just tell it really well. Use your creativity to overcome problems. You can solve a $10,000 problem for a thousand dollars.”
‘LAMPOON WAS PAID GOOD MONEY TO PARTICIPATE AND TO HELP WITH THE MARKETING,’ GRIMES TOLD YES! WEEKLY. ‘THEY HAVE FAILED MISERABLY.’
