Just in the last 33 days, David Zaslav was heckled at his alma mater, scorned at Cannes, and lamented for his struggles in cable news and the theatrical box office.
The 63-year-old mogul, increasingly known in some creative circles as the “Butcher of Burbank,” was also subjected to a multi-secret-sourced takedown of his “hands-on” management style in the Penske showbiz trades last week.
So the Warner Bros. Discovery CEO is due for a break, right? Not so much.
After axing Turner Classic Movies GM Pola Changnon and several other top execs at the cable channel last week, Zazlav and WBD drew scrutiny from Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Paul Thomas Anderson, among other top filmmakers, calling attention to what they described as "not just a channel," but a "precious resource of cinema."
Then, over the weekend, New York Times sesquipedalian columnist Maureen Dowd — usually fixated on weighty topics including ongoing wars and heads of state — also weighed in.
Extrapolating from last week's Titan submersible disaster, Dowd wondered if the tragedy might have been avoided if the ill-fated operators had simply perused the 1980 action film Raise the Titanic.
Movies, she said, "are a great expander of horizons."
And while she’s never had a “stylist, interior decorator, life coach or psychiatrist,” Dowd says she’s “used TCM for all that, and it has gotten me through bouts of sickness, stress, mourning and insomnia. Studying the channel’s film noir femmes fatales taught me that women could be tough and play the game better than any man. Watching screwball comedies taught me the value of a zany streak.”
So, apparently, she picked up the phone and got Zazlav directly on the line.
“Let me start with this,” he told Dowd. “This is my favorite channel. I think it’s critically important. It’s like a trust. It tells you where America was and where America’s going. It defines how people see this country. This is a beautiful living history.”
Zaslav promised Dowd WBD would keep Ben Mankiewicz and other TCM hosts in place, while investing in the channel to make it "bigger and more powerful with more reach.
“This is going to be a magical thing," he reassured her.
“I’ll be watching,” the columnist responded in her coda.
