Michael Eisner came through his door at 4 pm without knocking, a habit he had adopted from Evans.
He was carrying a sheet of paper in one handand his tie pulled loose, which meant the news was either good or bad. Never neutral. Can be a 50/50.
In his past life, when he started playing League, a friend taught him to always play things out, cause there was a 50/50 chance of the fed guy being shoot by an armed robber and Disconnecting.
50/50, it either happens or it doesnt.
Of course, Duke already knew about the matter at hand, and it was not very good.
"The Ninth Circuit," he said. "Just reversed the Betamax ruling."
Duke looked up from the folder on his hands. He was eating a pear, and he did not stop.
The folder was filled with pictures of actors for the role of Tigris of Gaul, the tall buff gladiator.
For now, he had some preliminary choices like Franco Columbu or Bill Kazmaier. Basically strongmen that were buff.
Silvester Stallone had been trying to get involved on this casting, but Duke had rejected it for being too short.
It was October 19, 1981, and the telex machine down the hall had been clattering since lunch.
Every line on the switchboard was lit.
Somewhere below, a secretary was reading a headline aloud over a ringing phone, and a messenger boy went past in the hall running, with a stack of yellow message in his hands.
"Sit down," Duke said.
"I don't want to sit down."
"Then eat this." Duke took a second pear from the bowl and handed it across the desk.
Eisner accepted it by reflex and stared at it for a moment.
The case was five years old already.
In 1976, Universal and Disney sued Sony over the Betamax, a machine that let ordinary people record television shows on a cassette and watch them later.
The studios argued that every recording was small theft and all that stuff.
Well, a federal judge in Los Angeles had disagreed in 1979, and Sony had gone on selling machines.
The ruling had also helped VHS, helping it avoid many lawsuits.
And now today, some judges in San Francisco had decided the other way.
Sony could be held responsible for what its customers did at home, and the court might order damages, or limits on the machine, or worse.
That kind of ruling, meant that not only was Sony going to get sued. Paramount was also going to start facing a lot more litigation that before.
For two years Hollywood had been able to pretend the argument was over.
Now every studio lawyer in town was reaching for a telephone.
Across town at Universal, there were probably popping champagne.
The studio had spent five years and a great deal of money on this fight.
Of course, they also wanted to deal with VHS and Betamax so that they could push for their own formant, Laserdisc.
Eisner finally sat, pear in his lap. "Do you understand what this means?"
"It means Sony will appeal."
"It means they might have to stop selling the machine. And that we may also be forced to stop selling."
"They won't."
"You don't know that."
Duke smiled and took another bite. Today he had woken up with urges to eat some fruits. He was wondering if asking for pears with pork for Dinner would be too heavy at night.
He did know it.
In just over two years the Supreme Court would decide, by a single vote, that taping a show at home to watch later was fair.
Lawyers would call it one of the most important rulings in the history of consumer electronics, and nobody in this room would remember that they even panicked this afternoon.
He could not say any of that, so he said the only thing that was useful.
"Let's see what the Supreme Court thinks."
"And if the Supreme Court says the same thing?"
"Then we make another plan. Has anybody ever told you to be less negative?"
Eisner looked at him for a long moment. "You're not worried about this."
"I'm interested," Duke said. "But yeah, not really that worried."
Eisner unfolded a sheet of paper from his pocket. "The lawyers have a list. Sue the stores, ask Congress to rewrite the copyright law."
"Put a huge tax on blank tapes, ban rentals. One of them even wants a warning on every cassette."
"A warning that says what?"
"That copying is a crime. Wait, no, they have a slogans ready. 'Home Taping Is Killing Music', 'The FBI is watching.' and 'You wouldn't steal a car'."
"People will read it once and move on," Duke said shrugging.
Fewer than 1 American home in 20 owned a video recorder in 1981.
A normal machines could run you close to a 1000 dollars, which was about the price of a decent used car, a down payment for a new car or several months of rent.
Most people had never touched one. Hell, most people had never even seen one outside a store window.
It was also a hard year to sell one.
The country had slipped into a recession over the summer. A family that skipped dinner and a movie to save money might still rent one for a few dollars and stay home.
Duke had a feeling that hard times would suit the VCR machines.
The format war was nearly over.
Sony's Betamax had a sharper picture and a smaller cassette, but VHS tapes had held two hours from the start, enough for a football game or most of a movie.
It had turned out that length mattered more to customers than sharpness.
Duke respected Sony for it.
Its engineers had built the better machine and were losing to a cheaper one, and now they were being told that their own customers were thieves.
Duke made money from the tapes, but most of it came from the machines, a fact that every executive in Hollywood knew and few liked to mention.
Some of them called him a arms dealer. They did not say it to his face, and they only partly meant it as a joke.
"Valenti called me at lunch," Eisner said.
Of course he had.
He was not the only one.
Columbia's people had called to ask what to think, and Fox had called to ask what Paramount thought, which was another way of asking what Duke thought.
Jack Valenti ran the Motion Picture Association of America, the trade group that spoke for the studios in Washington.
He did not like Duke.
To be honest, Duke did not think that Valenti was a fool.
He thought Valenti was sincere and wrong, which was harder to argue with.
Hollywood had always been afraid of new Technology.
Sound had frightened the silent stars, and television had frightened the studios.
Each time, the business had survived by finding a new way to sell.
"He wants the studios together on a stage by Friday," Eisner went on. "As one voice. The MPAA will publicly ask Congress for a fee on every machine and every blank tape, and a ban on renting movies in stores."
Rental stores had started to appear in strip malls across the country.
A customer could buy a single cassette and a shop could rent it out, and under an old rule called the first-sale doctrine, the studios earned nothing from any of it.
Once you bought a copy, it was yours to lend or sell.
To Valenti, that was a leak in the machi9ne.
"And you're having a meeting with Sony when?" Duke said.
"Tonight at 8 in a hotel in Beverly Hills." Eisner looked a little embarrassed. "They asked for me. They want to know where Paramount stands."
"And where do you want Paramount to stand?"
"...I want to know where you want it to stand."
Duke stood up, and walked to the window.
In the world he lived before, the Paramount of 1981 was a large and respected studio that still answered to Gulf+Western.
In this world, there was no Conglomerate above them.
In this world, the studio had finished near the top of the box office list almost every year since 1970, and the other studios had started to copy its habits, its schedules, and Duke had notice even his haircuts.
Paramount belonged to one man. So did Atari, which earned nearly as much each year as every ticket sold at American theaters.
An executive in Duke's old life would have needed a board vote to approve a full-size Colosseum. Duke only needed a pen.
"You want to go to Morocco," Eisner said.
Duke turned from the window. "Italy, and then Malta. Morocco is still undecided, Jordan also is an option. You know I just want to make a good movie."
"So 3 months or maybe even 4 months in the desert." Eisner waved his hand around, not really caring for his explanation.
Duke shrugged, getting back on his seat, and going through his fruit basket. There were no peaches.
"And while you're out there, Valenti has the microphone." Eisner set the pear on the corner of the desk.
"A lot of our friends in the goverment, only trust the mountain because of you," Eisner said, more quietly. "If you go away for a time, what kind of message or image does that send?"
Duke laughed, because there was nothing else to do.
A man who had come from the future to engage in his creative desires had somehow ended up as an executive being asked to stop his passion project for what? A few more dollars?
He had sort of lost his main desire from the beggining.
Did he ever wonder why he had woken up in this era? Yes. Did he care enough to investigate it? No.
There were more important things to do. Movies to make. Actors to meet and Videogames to play.
"I'm not leaving," he said, slightly mad about the whole thing. "I'm going to shoot my movies, that's not the same."
"It is to a Washington lawyer."
"Then let's give them something else to think about."
He pulled a legal pad toward him and uncapped a pen.
"Tonight, you tell Sony three things," he said. "One. When this reaches the Supreme Court, Paramount will file a brief on their side."
Eisner's eyebrows went up.
"Two. Reitterate that we won't join any alliance to tax or ban home recording."
"Valenti will take that personally. We don't want to fully offend him."
"He already hates me so whatever."
"Three." Duke wrote it down while he spoke. "Announce that by next spring, Paramount will consider to start making some of its own movies for cassette only."
"Duke, won't that offend the studios."
"It might. But I dont really plan to go through with it."
"You want me to say this at dinner?"
"You are welcome to say it at dessert if that helps," Duke said.
Eisner laughed, and rubbed both hands over his face. "And what about Morocco?"
"Morocco is still undecided as a location. But I'll come back for anything that matters. You can contact me too."
"...From the desert."
"I'll bring a telephone there."
"They don't have telephones in the desert. And isnt Morocco on Africa? Do they even have electricity."
"Every capital city has electricity whether in america or in Africa."
Eisner shook his head, took the legal pad, folded the page in half, and put it in his breast pocket.
At the door he stopped. "For what it's worth, I think you're right about the machines."
"I know."