Most days, media headlines revolve around folks I’m familiar with but often never crossed paths with. Every now and then, someone who I do have a connection to will be in the news; lately such names tend to be part of long lists of those being laid off.
But yesterday, two folks I have more recent personal histories with each made headlines for being let go from their respective high-level positions, and they definitely caused me to sit up and take notice. And both made me wonder what exactly Hollywood seeks from those in such positions these days. Because proven competency and expertise sure seem to have been dropped down on the pecking order of priorities.
I’ll first tackle the relatively simplistic story of one Vin Rubino, who was Sony’s go-to showrunner for game show reboots during my stint with the studio. At various points, Rubino was overseeing reincarnations of THE NEWLYWED GAME, THE $100,000 PYRAMID and THE JOKER’S WILD. Rubino was a disciple of Michael Davies and earned his reputation as a key man on WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE. He earned the almost blind trust of Sony management by being the ideal executor of IP reimaginings where other executives’ bidding was involved. And rarely would he offer any unique thoughts or opinions in his own right on how he might do something differently.
But he did offer some uninvited thoughts in his most recent gig which resulted in this outing by DEADLINE’s Lynette Rice yesterday:
EXCLUSIVE: Vincent Rubino, executive producer/showrunner of the upcoming Hollywood Squares revival on CBS, has been let go from the show for allegedly making a racially insensitive comment to BIPOC members of the production staff.
According to a source close to the matter, the veteran game show producer is accused of raising his arms and saying “don’t rob me” to three persons of color — believed to be Black and Hispanic/Latino — who work as production assistants. Another person allegedly overheard the comment and reported it to HR.
Swift action was taken by Jesse Collins Entertainment, which is producing the new Hollywood Squares for CBS with Drew Barrymore’s Flower Films, and Rubino was removed from the show, sources said. Rubino declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the studio also declined to comment.
Assuming Rice’s source is fully accurate, Rubino is undoubtedly guilty of extraordinarily poor judgement. One would have thought he would have had enough self-awareness to not make such an unnecessary attempt at a joke while in the employ of a production being run by someone such as Collins. If a picture’s worth a thousand words, this one should be worth a million.
But it is intriguing that Collins and his team did wait until the actual taping of SQUARES’ episodes was completed before casting Rubino aside. A showrunner’s greatest value comes from organizing and keeping expensive productions on pace and budget; the post-production process is a secondary skill where more different chefs are in the kitchen.
Rubino undoubtedly deserved disciplinary action and his victims deserved a public apology. Perhaps a portion of his substantial pay should have been offered to them as some sort of compensation for the pain and suffering his words may have inflicted. I would merely ask Collins and the CBS braintrust–was potential cancellation of Rubino’s career the only viable option you saw as being equitable punishment?
Then there’s the more complicated case of one Michelle Mendelovitz. I worked closely with her during her tenure as a rising creative executive at Sony, and found few up-and-comers with more natural curiosity and attention to detail than she possessed. She also was unafraid to share her thoughts on what was best to her with anyone above or below her, from the top of the food chain to her assistant. Since then, as DEADLINE’s Dominic Patten chronicled yesterday, she’s been on a rocket-like trajectory:
Mendelovitz was Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton’s executive producer at Hiddenlight Productions prior to joining Mattel and Kreiz’s ambitious plans for the company in the greater media space. She also ran Drama Development for 20th TV and was a Senior Creative Executive for Scripted & Unscripted Programming at Apple before that.
But that all came to an unceremonious end earlier this week as Patten also reported:
EXCLUSIVE: (updated with more details) The sudden departure this week of Michelle Mendelovitz from running Mattel Television Studios looks to indicate the fun and games are over at the toy maker. With legal action hanging overhead like a sword of Damocles, former 20th Television SVP Mendelovitz has engaged the services of bare knuckles attorney Bryan Freedman to negotiate her exit from Mattel, I’ve learned. A situation that could be heading towards the courts.
“Michelle is a seasoned and well-respected television executive,” the Liner Freedman Taitelman + Cooley LLP co-founder told Deadline today of Mendelovitz’s shortish stint at Mattel. “She was hired by Mattel and assembled a high caliber team to build out a preeminent television studio for an otherwise dysfunctional company,” Freedman added with clearly carefully chosen words.
“It is unfortunate that certain members of Mattel leadership prevented her from doing so. She is prepared for legal action but hopeful that it will not be necessary. Time will tell if others follow.”
And while Mendelovitz structurally reported to Chief Franchise Officer Josh Silverman she was brought into a company run by yet another one-time colleague of mine who has been riding the wave of immense popularity and acclaim since last summer’s BARBIE megahit, who at that time was the subject of a gushy profile by the TIMES OF ISRAEL’s Amy Spiro:
It’s Barbie’s world, and Ynon Kreiz is just living in it. The Israeli-born CEO of Mattel — the toy giant enjoying a resurgence following the release of the wildly popular “Barbie” movie last month — steered the company’s path to the film, and is even represented in it, as portrayed by Will Ferrell. Ferrell’s portrayal of a clueless and insensitive company chief, leading an all-male team of patriarchal capitalists, might have seemed like a dig at Kreiz — if he wasn’t at the top of the company that backed the entire endeavor.
Kreiz grew up in Ramat Gan and studied at Tel Aviv University before moving to Los Angeles to pursue an MBA at UCLA. While he was there, he met fellow Israeli business mogul Haim Saban, and the pair quickly struck up a friendship and business partnership. In the 1990s he established Fox Kids Europe in London on behalf of Saban, which was ultimately sold to Disney as part of a $2.9 billion deal.
I worked with Kreiz during that time at Saban’s behest, hoping to educate him on what information from the FOX KIDS’ U.S. success was applicable to his territories. More often than not, Kreiz pushed back and seemed much more interested in branding strategies that he believed would hide the inherent flaws in many of the shows that flopped domestically in the pious belief he’d deliver to “Mar Saban” (that’s Mister in Hebrew, FYI) results that would offset some of his losses. We didn’t refer to him as “Baby Haim” for nothing.
So to say he and Saban are close is an understatement. And need one be reminded of what Mar Saban considers his own priorities these days, all you need to do is read what Philip Weiss of the semi-eponymous MONDOWEISS wrote last fall:
Every now and then Democratic Party megadonor Haim Saban surfaces and makes refreshing remarks to the press. “I am a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel,” the Israeli-American businessman told the New York Times in 2004. And he repeated that line to the New Yorker in 2010.
Saban popped up again ten days ago, giving an interview to an Israeli newspaper in which he made some startling statements, printed in Hebrew, including:
–He was invited to lunch at the Biden White House in early September, and the meeting was supposed to last an hour but it lasted three hours.
He justifies giving money to AIPAC, which supports Republican election deniers, because his one issue is Israel:
“The only goal of this organization is to prevent people who are against U.S.-Israel relations from advancing and to support those who support relations between Jerusalem and Washington… Many Democrats called me and said ‘are you stupid? you’re a Democrat who supports [2020 election deniers]?’ I always say the same thing: It’s a specific, defined issue, and that is the U.S.-Israel relationship. In that sense, I’m not interested in anything else.”
–Saban has complete confidence in the Democratic Party leadership and Joe Biden. The party is “still solidly pro-Israel, and there are only about a dozen members of Congress who are anti-Israel” (as Jewish Insider translated that bit).
It must be pointed out, first, that Saban’s meeting with Biden and his comments have gone unreported in the U.S. press outside of Jewish Insider and our Michael Arria.
But Saban is scripting Biden’s policy on Israel.
In an odd bit of coincidence, Mendelovitz is married to an Israeli, and has been unshy about sharing her own political views on the state of affairs in that country on her personal social media feed. Suffice to say they’re not fully aligned with Saban’s.
One would like to believe that Kreiz was an astute enough businessman to recognize the upside of Mendelovitz’s talent and acknowledge that it would take even the most brilliant executive more than nine months to bring around results for what is effectively a reboot of a division that had been dormant for decades.
But based on my own experience with him and knowing how influential Saban is to him, I do have some doubts.
Would a possible disagreement on something like that be enough to justify making such an abrupt change in management? I can’t say with certainty. But that issue is now in the more than capable hands and knuckles of Bryan Freedman.
I do know that it’s to me somewhat inconceivable that someone with Mendelovitz’ track record and enthusiasm was somehow seem as a must-hire less than a year ago, and is now somehow no longer worth employing.
In both Rubino and Mendelovitz’s cases a mere apology, handled privately, might have been sufficient enough to defuse anything that ultimately made their way to the intrepid folks at DEADLINE needing holiday weekend exclusives. But it’s pretty clear that’s not the world we exist in any more. I’m just not sure it’s a better one.
Maybe Kevin Bacon might have handled things better. Well, I just so happen to know someone who’s recently worked for him, and I’m seeing that person this weekend. I’ll quietly ask.
Until next time…