Bring Back the Moguls!

By Gerald Clarke

Cheap? Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus know about cheap. Some people in Hollywood and other places where movies are made even believe the word was coined for the "Go-Go Boys," as the two Israeli cousins who run the Cannon Group are commonly called. That is not the case, although it is true that their idea of a power lunch is not Le Dome but a salami sandwich at their desks. It is also true that their headquarters on Sunset Boulevard has all the glamour of a discount electronics warehouse, with overflowing wastebaskets, well-scuffed walls and an assortment of mismatched gray carpets, all of them stained. Yet it is also a fact that in a generally depressed business the Cannon Group is doing well. King Solomon 's Mines, which came out before Thanksgiving, has made $16 million. Runaway Train and Sam Shepard's Fool for Love, which open across the country next week, show promise of a big draw at the box office as well. And, brags Globus, "nobody gave us nothing on a plate of gold."

In fact, the company plans to make about 20 films next year, more than any of the major studios. Several of them will be either gory shoot-'em-ups like the current Death Wish 3 or comic-book films like Captain America and Pinocchio--the Robot. Golan hopes that one of their films, Delta Force, which comes out next month with Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin, will be Cannon's first $100 million grosser. The script has terrorists taking over an American airliner and Norris and his Delta Force flying to the rescue, spraying bullets everywhere. The plot sounds very much like last summer's TWA hijacking, which caused the production schedule to be speeded up. But in the much improved Cannon version, the good guys win, and the bad guys are sent to their proper, bloody reward. Golan, 56, and Globus, 42, follow what was once Hollywood's golden rule: audiences love happy endings.

The resemblance does not end there. Even some of their critics compare the Go-Go Boys to Hollywood's founding fathers, who snorted when anyone talked about art in films and were devoted to making money. "They are like the old studio moguls; they eat, sleep and breathe pictures," says J. Lee Thompson, a 50-year show-biz veteran who is directing one of their thrillers, Murphy's Law. "The whole industry used to be like that. It's not now." Globus agrees: "The moguls cared to make money like we care to make money--so that they could make more movies."

The two cousins, who were born in the town of Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, have wanted to make pictures since they were teenagers. Golan, the elder partner, devoted much of his time to the movies, watching his screen idols, Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart and Charlie Chaplin. He spent the '50s working in the theater, and though he became Israel's highest-paid director, he now regards the time as wasted; it kept him from his true love, the movies.

In 1959 he came to the U.S., and the following year he took a job as a driver for Roger Corman, America's master of the cheap and quick. Soon promoted to assistant to the director, he learned everything he needed and then returned home in 1962. Globus, who had gone to business school in Tel Aviv, joined him in 1963 to form Noah Films, which eventually dominated the Israeli film industry. In 1979 they decided to move their base to Mecca, as they call Hollywood, and bought control of the ailing Cannon Group.

Their first big hit was the $1.2 million Breakin', which, riding the crest of the break-dancing craze, grossed some $40 million. That set the pattern, and even today the average Cannon movie costs only $5 million to shoot, less than half of the industry's $11 million standard. "What do you have to do to put that kind of money on the screen?" asks Golan sarcastically. "You can buy a city for that." A Cannon film is almost always presold, he adds, to pay cable, videocassette distributors and foreign markets, and even if it flops at the box office, chances are that it will still break even. "You must be a professional idiot to lose money in this business," he says.

While Golan and Globus are often derided as mere dealmakers, many people enjoy working without the usual studio restraints and like the instant decisions they get from Cannon. In the last couple of years, such inducements have lured stars like Katharine Hepburn and Nick Nolte for The Ultimate Solution of Grace Quigley (a bomb, alas) and Sylvester Stallone for his upcoming Over the Top. Over the years, the cousins have made some 116 films together.

In fact, they are as thrifty with themselves as they are with everyone else, comparatively speaking. They pay themselves salaries of $350,000 each, much less than the top studio heads make. "You know what is our wine?" asks Globus. "Coca-Cola." Both have families in Israel and make frequent trips there.

Perhaps because they are only cousins, they harbor no sibling rivalries. Golan is the creative half of the team; Globus is the business half, the salesman. In Hollywood, their offices adjoin, and they shout from one room to the other. When they are separated, they talk by phone four or five times a day. "I have minuses; he has minuses," says Globus. "Together we are one perfect man." Or one old-fashioned mogul, 1985 style. --By Gerald Clarke. Reported by Michael Riley/Los Angeles and Robert Slater/Jerusalem

With reporting by Reported by Michael Riley/Los Angeles, Robert Slater/Jerusalem