Katzenberg's B-Movie Bar Tiff

It's hard, after FEMA became public incompetent No. 1 with Katrina, to blame the agency's deputy director Harvey E. Johnson for staging a fake news conference on the Southern California fire aid efforts the other day with newsy offerings like, "I'm very happy with FEMA's response" (this after he'd been tosssed, "Are you happy with FEMA's response so far?). Not long after, having read the New York Post's Page Six coverage of DreamWorks Animation topper Jeffrey Katzenberg's Chuck-You-Farley confrontation with the staff at the Four Seasons Hotel bar, we received this presumably authentic transcript of a Katzenberg press conference.

Mr. Katzenberg--who doesn't hate having a bunch of damn waiters underfoot when you're trying to make a cell phone call in their service area?

I couldn't have put it better myself. (Sotto voce to an aide at his left: Didn't I ask you to put these question in press-speak ?)

Sir, I understand there's a perfectly plausible reason you said to him, `Who the [bleep] are you? Do you know who I am?

Well, Jimmy--aren't you supposed to be having my car brought up?--that's a two-parter, but I'll respond. Frankly, I had no idea who the man was. And secondly, for a moment there, I didn't know who I was. [Raised voice] It seems like lemmings, we are all racing faster and faster into the sea, each of us trying to outrun and outspend and outrun the other in a mad sprint toward the mirage of making the next blockbuster. In this atmosphere of near hysteria...

Sir, I believe that's an excerpt from your famous 1991 memo. Um, anyway--a spokeswoman said that you and the other party both got "overheated".

I'll admit I told him he would never work in Hollywood again.

But this was the manager of a bar of a hotel on East 57th Street in Manhattan.

Exactly. So why is everyone so upset?

Sir, were you `on something'?

I'll repeat to you what I told Aljean Harmetz in1998-- I have never ingested an illegal substance.

Your old Disney colleague Ricardo Mestres said, "Jeffrey will push until he gets resistance back -he's revving at 8,000 rpm's." Were you redlining?

I topped out at 6,000. I did this for a price.

Like The Island?

Okay, you're fired. Er, next question. Edit that out.

So, what lessons have you learned? Like, next time you're in a a crowded bar in a busy service area, making a cell phone call, and somebody er, doesn't know who you are, who's a foot taller and fifty pounds heavier than you, what's your plan?

We must hear what they have to say. Allow ourselves to get very excited over what will be likely be a spectacular film event, then slap ourselves a few times, throw cold water on our faces and soberly conclude it's not a project we should get involved in.

Sir, that again repeats something you said in your 1991 memo.

Do you know who I am?

One kids because one is a fan of the Katz's work in the animation sphere. His Seinfeld-centric Bee Movie, going wide this Friday, is subject of one of the more impressive television ad blitzes in memory, and appears to be a lot of fun--visually deft, and full of quick-hititng jokes. It has numbers to boast of out the wazoo, as a Sunday Boston Globe piece detailed:
''An animated movie normally has 30 sequences, 30 locations, 30 speaking parts, maximum,'' said Simon J. Smith, who co-directed ''Bee Movie'' with Steve Hickner. ''We were 75 speaking parts, 65 locations, and 40 sequences. So that's one and a half, two movies already, before you started."

There's more, including 212 versions of the script, two bee stings for Seinfeld during his research, over 300 recording sessions for the star, and an explanation from the star that it's really just an overgrown episode of Seinfeld:

I approach everything like stand-up, actually. Even the movie. *Every line in the movie is there to set up a joke at some point. That's the same way we approached the TV show. It was really like a 20-minute stand-up act. Everything is here to create something funny, although I think the movie went into some other places for me. ..... In a 20-minute sitcom the relationships are really there just to serve as comedy. But in this story the relationships get a little more important because they go through more trials and tribulations together.

Katzenberg himself tested out the apparatus Seinfeld used to wire-fly across the Croisette at Cannes, getting in the rig to do so at 4:30 a.m. one May morning, then flew home for the North American debut of Shrek the Third.

So you may call him Sparky, you may call him (as mayoral candidate John Lindsay did back in the day when Katzenberg was a campaign aide) Squirt, but when the picture debuts on November 2 we'll be well reminded exactly who Katzenberg is.

If you have even a passing interest in Bee Movie, or have a child who does, ("This is a family movie," says Seinfeld, " you can take your grandmother and your 4-year-old.") there's a rich supply of clips on the web; try the site for the film itself or the unusally large trove at Yahoo.