UB Law Forum

Volume 11 Number 1 Spring 1998 Article 4

4-1-1998

Silvers' Star Rises

Andy Danzo

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Recommended Citation Danzo, Andy (1998) "Silvers' Star Rises," UB Law Forum: Vol. 11 : No. 1 , Article 4. Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/ub_law_forum/vol11/iss1/4

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Alumni Publications at Digital Commons @ University at Buffalo School of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in UB Law Forum by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ University at Buffalo School of Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ers' ~-~-'--"-=""" S· v him, was at least:as inte t d ...... es e m ca era angles as tnal techniglle ltl h HI A oday, Dean Silvers enjoys a insists i~ didn't start/o'U t (};~t ~~Y~ "I·):al- busy entertainment law prac­ ly wasn tone of those who . ,...... tice and is a successful, award­ of 3 wanted to work with a sm c~we age winning film producer who has • t ar era, ,' he says. movieeam- produced five nationwide dis­ Born ib~ ABrooklyn, Silvers oi-iginally tributeTd films in just three years. But he wanted t? e ~ rabbi. He went to the remembers the lean days right after law State Umversity_of New York at Stony school, when he hawked chocolate chip Brook, then decided to spend his junior cookies from a shopping bag on the S eS year abroad at Hebrew University. It was streets of New York City. "Here I was UBLAW 1973, and when the bullets started flying with all these degrees and making he hooked up with an NBC crew cover­ FORUM $2,500 a year," Silvers says, "and most of ,_,..,.-=;;;,.t:in~th e Mideast war as a production that was from cookies, not legal fees." • assistan . Spri11 g Silvers, the producer of the 1996 hit 1998 After eturning, he enrolled in rab­ film "Flirting with Disaster," graduated binica1 co lege in Philadelphia. The from UB Law in 1979. He stuck around s; hoo1 required students to also take a Buffalo long enough to pick up a Ph.D. secular program of study, so Silvers in mass media. In 1981, he headed off to Chose communications. That eventually practice law in his native New York City. led him to Boston University and a mas­ Back then, his office staff consisted of ter's degree in film and broadcasting. the answering machine in his Forest wasn't exactly From there he enrolled at UB Law Hills studio. attracted by the then-new Baldy C~nte r "I always said I wanted to work fo r for Law and Social Policy. By this time, myself," he chuckles, "but the truth is, I iJ!Our conventional the rabbi idea was history. "It just didn't couldn't get a job." Looking back, he worl< out," Silvers says. regrets not a minute of it. "Slowly, I built law student. The sam e could have happened a practice in arts and entertainment. You with law school, where Silvers recalls could always find someone starting a Today, hes an the first year as not entirely comfortable. new band who wanted you to be their "When I came in there, my background lawyer- for free." was religious studies and philosophy," Even by late '70s standards, Silvers award-winning he says. "The learning curve was enor­ wasn't exactly your conventional law stu­ mous." During that difficult year, he dent. The "large, shaggy-headed crea­ remembers looking for guidance to ture," as one faculty member recalls film producer. Barry B. Boyer, now dean, and Thomas

4 UBLAW

FORUM

Spring /998

Dean Silvers '79

PHOTO: 0 ENIIIS KLEI~WI 5 E. Headrick, now UB provost. 'They one another during the Blizzard of '77. helped someone like me who was not - "It had a small community feeling," he your cookie-cutter type Jaw student," he says of the city. "And I'm still an avid says. 'They said you didn't have to be a Bills fan. It's like a disease." traditional lawyer." He became interested in the First Silvers also has fond memories of Amendment and its application to the Professor John Henry Schlegel as well relatively new medium of cable televi­ as Professor Emeritus jacob D. Hyman, sion. It was cutting-edge, exciting stuff. who suggested that he pursue an inde­ "By the second year of law school I real­ pendent study program in his second ly started to enjoy it," Silvers says. But year. "Don't think you are an outsider, he still didn't know exactly what he you can use this in your life," he recalls wanted to do with his life. Boyer, he Hyman urging him. recalls, helped push him to apply his 'These professors were real heroes cable TV research to a dissertation, to me," Silvers adds, "and I don't use which is what he did. that term lightly." ].D. and Ph.D. in hand, he returned Before long, things began to turn to New York Cify in 1981 with "tons of around. He edited The Opinion and education" but no job offers. He took wrote a column. Silvers started to like whatever work he could find to pay the Jiving in Buffalo, too. First he had a place rent on his $186-a-mooth studio in on the West Side, then he moved to Queens. "I did collections for dentists Amherst. He remembers people helping and doctors," he says. "I did real estate

UBLAW FORUM "Mr. Boyer and Sprin~ 199/i Mr. Headrick l1elped someone like me who was not your cookie- cutter type law student. They said you didn't l1ave to be a traditiOJlal latf!Yer."

6 closings for friends. I got free meals .... I "Jilhat boning up on recording law so he could knew the best pay phone booths to work negotiate contracts. out of. They were my office." Before long, however, he had to The Citicorp allium became a (independent hire two associates to help with all the favorite hangout. He remembers using a work. ''I started making a living, much to pay phone in there steadily for several filmmaJ(el"s) the happiness of my parents,'' he says. months. But the creme de Ia creme had "Now I was an entertainment lawyer, not to be the Waldorf. ''They had a Little really want is a collections lawyer or a chocolate chip memo pad and a rose," he says. ''111e cookie lawyer." booth was very spacious." Then someone asked if he was a By this time, Silvers was in his early for you to film and television lawyer. "I said sure," 30s. His parents weren't thrilled, but he Silvers recalls. ''They gave me scripts to was happy. "It was great," he says. "I raise money. " read. I had about 50 scripts." went out with friends. I was inspired . ... I It was another learning experience. was orr doing 70 different U1ings." In this case. the lesson was that indepen­ The evolution to entertainment dent fi lmmakers are not particularly lawyer began somewhere in the mid-'80s interested in whatJawyers think about at a health club in Queens. Silvers met a plot and dialogue. "What they really producer who was interested in reviving want is fo r you to raise money," Silvers a cable music show called ''The Blue says. And they don't want to pay up Jean Network." He began to work on front, he adds. Silvers' counteroffer: this project. Soon after, he was Give me credit as co-producer and I'll be to be the lawyer for a new your fil m lawyer. asked UBLAW rock group being formed by Between 1988 and 1991, Silvers ended up wiU1 producing credits fo r model Kelly Emberg. The evolu- FOfWM tion continued as a fri end-of-a­ three low-budget but not entirely shabby friend introduced Silvers to a films: "The Sun and the Moon," Spring CBS Records jazz executive, with Jose Ferrer in 1998 which led to an int:J·oduction to 1988; jazz great Wynton Marsalis. Silvers negotiated a cable deal for Marsalis' manager and did some work on a Montreux Jazz Festival appearance. He also repre­ sented Mike Mainieri, another prominent jazz musician. For a time, he led a double life. He would work wiU1 small clients during the day, then go off to meet Kelly Emberg and Rod Stewart for dinner. He was also spend­ ing a fair amount of Lime in the library,

PtiOTO: BI\ARY WETCHER 7 , "Resident Alien," a 1991 feature with do1t, Silvers proclaimed. Let's just go John Hurt, Fran Lebowitz, Quentin Crisp For a time, he ltpd ou and do "Spanking the pnkey" our- and Sting; and "Unconquered," a 1989 selves. l ' CBS Movie of the Week, written by Pat a double life. He By that point in~ i s career, Silvers Conroy, author of Prince of Tides, that felt fully geared to be a successful was nominated for an Emmy. Silvers lawyer-producer, bu ih retelling the says "Unconquered" was the only one story he still seems a little surprised at that made any real money. It was also the audacity of the proposal. "I think I one in which he played a significant role, small clients had .just seen one of those Mickey spending weeks working with the writer. Rooney-j udy Garland movies where After that, he was hooked for good. during the day, someone says, hey, let's put on a play," But Silvers was still pretty low in he offers. the industry pecking order, and a lot of With a plot that could make Demi his work was still coming through Moore blush, "Spanking the Monkey" is fri end-of-a-friend connections. That: to meet not U1e kind of high concept that has how he got involved in "Moie"YeoPJe;" a commercial success written all over it. story about the shadowy iferuzens of/ The story, which involves a college kid New York's abandoned rail tunnels. I · Kelly Embljl'g and who gets seduced by his bedridden was one of those projects in which con­ moU1er, was described by Time as cept outpaced execution, and it fell to Rod Stewart for "alternately droll and disturbing." Silvers Silvers to find someone who could write says he and Russell raised about half the the screenplay. One of the sam l es he dinner. $80,000 fi lming budget from friends. got was a script called "Spanking the They got jeremy Davies, who portrayed UBLAW Monkey'' by a writer named David 0. a heroin addict on "Melrose Place," to Russell. The HBO deal for "Mole play the lead. Then, after coming up FORUM People" eventually fell through, but with another $40,000 fo r post-production Russell became Silver's friend and client. Spring work, they took it to the 1994 Sundance 1998 By this time, Silvers had already Film Festival. made another importan connection, this Critics loved it. "Spanking the one with Marlen Hecht; a talented New Monkey'' took the Sundance Audience York film editor. Hecht already owned Award for Best Film, and it went on to her own post-production editing compa­ land on numerous Best-of-the-Year li sts. ny, and the way Silvers tells it, she got Before long, Silvers and Russell the mistaken impression that he was were working on their next film , some kind of senior media executive. "Flirting with Disaster." This time they She started calling him up for lunch. He had big-name veterans like George took a lilting to her aesthetics. They Segal, Mary Tyler Moore, Lily Tomlin fo rmed a production collaboration­ and Alan Aida. They teamed them with and got married. the younger Ben Stiller, Patricia In April 1993 they were having din­ Arquette and Tea Leoni in a kooky ner in Russell's Upper West Side apart­ cross-country quest involving an ment. The mood was somber. Russell adoptee's search for his birth parents. was approaching his mid-30s without a "Flirting" was released in 1996 by significant credit to his name. Silvers Miramax, the Oscar-collecting studio remembers the aspiring writer-director founded by former Buffalo rock impre­ lamenting that he didn't know what to sario Harvey Weinstein. Silvers and do, where to go. Then there was one of Weinstein never met in Buffalo and their U1ose transformative moments. Let's just later collaboration was pure coincidence,

8 according to Silvers. "We talked about it 7ers is tation of the Isabel Allende novel to be once and said, isn't it funny," he recalls. Now Silt directed by Michael Radford ("Il In a sense, however, there is anoth­ Postino") for Lakeshore/Paramount. er Buffalo connection in the fi lm. About adding The screenplay will be penned by halfway throug h, there is a scene in Antonio Skarmeta, on whose novel "II which a tmck flattens a post office. SCJ''eenwriting and Postino" was based. Silvers claims credit fo r the postal Now Silvers is adding screenwriting destmction, explaining that it was a way dil''ecting to his and directing to his resume with a film to intl'oduce a pair of gay federal agents titled "Rock the Boat" due out later this who are key dominoes in the story's con­ year. The story involves idealism, an clusion. "We had to find a way to get the resume witlJ a environmental cleanup gone awry, and FBI or the ATF involved, and as a lawyer something someone once did in a gray I knew that post office destmction would film titled area of law. Talking a mile a minute dur­ be a federal offense," he says. "I think ing a break from editing, Silvers says he (former) UB Law professor Al Katz told '"Rock the Boat" tl1inks it's important to apply a light me that in criminal law. ll's funny what touch to heavy issues. He describes sticks in your mind." "Rock tl1e Boat" as "somewhere between "Flirting" didn't aspire to the cult due out later lngmar Bergman and Jim Can·ey." He is status of "Spanking the Monkey,'' but it also busy writing a new screenplay garnered plenty of good reviews for this year. which he intends to direct. laughs and showed up on a number of If there's an undercurrent of self­ year-end li sts. It also firmly established deprecating humor in Silvers, it's OK, he the producing credentials of the UB Law can afford it. In the world of movies, UB LAW g rad. When Silvers' next fi lm. "Manny & they take him quite seriously now. • Lo,'' came out later in 1996, the New FORUM Republic's Stanley Kauffmann began his re view by noting: "The first zing of inter­ Spring est in 'Manny & Lo' (Sony Pictures 1998 Classics) came from something that doesn't often register, the names of the producers. Dean Silvers and Marlen Hech t were involved in the production of David Russell's two films, 'Spanking the Monkey' and 'Flirting with Disaster,' so clearly they have an eye for new talent. T hat eye has worked again. " Silvers, however, has yet to go Hollywood. He holds a post as distin­ g ui shed professor at the fordham University Graduate School of Business Administration, and he maintains a full­ service Jaw practice in Manhattan. Silvers'latest producing e fforts are with Marlen Hecht, putting together the production of "Committed ," Lisa Krueger's second film, for Miramax; and with Sundance Film Institute head Michelle Satter on "Eva Luna," an adap-

Lily Tomlin and Alan Aida in "Flilting with Disaster" 9