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From The Archives: Legendary promoter Jerry Weintraub reflects on Elvis, Led Zeppelin and his forays into film...

When he was 25, Jerry Weintraub had a dream in which he saw a sign in front of Madison Square Garden reading “Jerry Weintraub Presents Elvis!” This convinced him to relentlessly pursue Elvis Presley’s manager every day for a year in a bid to promote the singer’s first ever arena tour of the United States. Three weeks after he presented a check for US$1 million to “Colonel” Tom Parker, Presley was on a concert tour and the Bronx-born hustler was a millionaire himself.

(Promoter Jerry Weintraub is on the far left of this picture, with Elvis Presley on the far right; backstage at one of the late singer’s shows).

“What Elvis did for me was establish me. He changed my life,” the 72-year-old says with a booming bass voice from his home in Los Angeles (one of five he owns) as he reflects on a life born from a showbiz fairy tale: promoting Frank Sinatra and Led Zeppelin, managing The Carpenters and John Denver, shadowing chess whiz Bobby Fischer, and forming friendships with a varied group including former U.S. President George Bush Snr, pianist Liberace, and Las Vegas mogul Steve Wynn.

(A glimpse of Weintraub’s Palm Desert, California home, one of five he owned. The 9,152 square foot house features six bedrooms).

As if that’s not enough for three lifetimes, let alone one, there was his foray into the film industry at a time when he could produce such controversial movies as the Robert Altman-directed Nashville, and Cruising, the controversial 1980 film which starred Al Pacino as an undercover detective who pursued a serial killer targeting homosexuals in a pre-AIDS era New York City. What followed was a stint as Chief Executive of United Artists, the Ocean’s 11 film series, and a recent remake of his own 1984 production The Karate Kid.

“I actually didn’t want to do it,” Weintraub says of the remake, in which Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan reprise roles originally played by Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita. “I was very much against it. But Will Smith came to me many times and said ‘I really want to make this film’. The script was terrific, then when they came up with the idea of shooting in China, where I had been many times, I thought that was extraordinary. Then when they got the help of the Chinese government — that made it even more extraordinary.”

(Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith in a scene from “The Karate Kid” remake).

Weintraub admits “they were right and I was wrong” in remaking the film, which replaced the California-based teenager-out-of-water (Macchio), with an even younger 12 year-old-boy from Detroit (Smith), who finds himself learning kung fu in Beijing at the hands of a mentor (Chan), in order to fight his bullying tormentors. While deftly sidestepping attempts to explain his exact role in the film as one of five producers, Weintraub is quick to point out that “my relationship was more with Jaden and Will, but I think Jackie Chan is great. I think it is probably the best acting role of his career.”

Because the film grossed over $US350 million worldwide at the box office, a sequel is guaranteed. “We’re going to do a sequel, of course with Jaden, and we want Jackie involved. We haven’t made a deal with him yet but we want him involved,” Weintraub says. Without divulging more details (and one gets the sense there aren’t any yet), the veteran producer goes on to remark about how blown away he was by today’s China (“It was pretty fantastic!”) before launching into one of his many stories where name dropping is second nature.

“I first stayed in Beijing at the state guest house in 1978 when Deng Xiaoping was there,” he recalls. “I went there with Armand Hammer, a philanthropist and oil man, and we were invited for a dinner with George Bush Sr., before he was Vice-President. I remember running in Tiananmen Square. It was quite different then.”

(The cover of Weintraub’s best-selling autobiography and audiobook, co-written with Rich Cohen).

Weintraub has so many seemingly fantastic stories that writer Rich Cohen (whose past books include profiles of famous blues label Chess Records and Jewish gangsters) decided to capture them in a memorable March 2008 Vanity Fair profile in which he likened the showman to God. “He is jealous like God too, and boastful,” Cohen wrote. “No god before me, none greater. I made this, I made that, etc., etc.”

With comparisons like that, it’s no surprise that it led to the pair collaborating on a best-selling memoir titled “When I Stop Talking You’ll Know I’m Dead: Useful Stories From a Persuasive Man” that is a combination of life lessons and recollections by the master promoter. “I’ve acted in films and been the subject of many pieces, but sitting down and writing is new for me and it’s been the most fun experience of my life.”

Set amid the moment he realized showbiz artists were human (hint: it has something to do with Betty Grable), the book details fights with client John Denver (“I don’t remember any other artist firing me”), the efforts to make rock group Led Zeppelin seem bigger using bizarre methods, and features name dropping galore. It also reveals one of many childhood lessons that form the crux of Weintraub’s chutzpah: an ordinary piece of jewelery his father used to convince buyers that he was carrying the rare, valuable “Star of Artaban” (a famous 287 carat sapphire that is currently housed at the Smithsonian). His experiences also taught him the concept of “packaging”, which has been one of the keys to his success. “That certainly makes sense in the film business,” he readily admits.

(Weintraub (right) getting his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame alongside actors Brad Pitt and George Clooney).

This seemingly endless reservoir of larger-than-life showbiz tales combined with a high amount of enlightened self-realizations convinced the then Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter that a book wasn’t enough for Weintraub. There had to be a documentary. And before one even has a chance to ask, Weintraub is already off to the races. “George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Julia Roberts, President Bush Senior, Elliot Gould, Ellen Barkin, they’re all in the film,” he says.

At a time when many would be easing into retirement and feeling content with such reflection, Weintraub himself seems busier than ever. “I’ll tell you how I look at it,” he says when asked about how the film industry of the 1970s compares with today. “I don’t. If I looked at it for too long, I wouldn’t stay in it. I make different films than the films today.”

A remake of Tarzan is in the works (“with story and characters”, he emphasizes) and so is a much talked about biopic of his flamboyant late friend, the pianist and showman Liberace, which will star Michael Douglas and Matt Damon as his boyfriend. “It’s a very interesting piece about a man who was tortured his whole life about his sexual preference, and this won’t play well in China,” he says with a faint chuckle.

And no doubt driving him is his own sense of mortality, which he came to grips with during a near fatal staph infection last year. With his family at his bedside while a rabbi gave him last rites, Weintraub swears he had an out-of-body experience. “I literally died and came back, and needless to say that changes you,” he says during one of the few moments when his voice noticeably softens. “And that’s going to be the first chapter in the sequel.”

JERRY WEINTRAUB REFLECTS ON…

Frank Sinatra (above): “He was my idol. I think in my time he was the greatest live performer I ever worked with.”

John Denver (above): “He fired me one day and we were very close. I was upset, but at the same time I had Elvis, Frank, Led Zeppelin, and The Moody Blues, so it’s not as if he left me on a diving board. I don’t remember any other artist firing me, but I talked to him before he died and it was water under the bridge.”

The Carpenters (above): "Karen was an angel and I lost her much too young. It’s a stupid way to go and I’ve seen it mostly in women. She was very childlike and her favorite thing was Disneyland. I miss her a lot.”

Bobby Fischer (seen above playing 50 chess opponents at once in Hollywood): “He was nuts! He was crazy. I’m not a chess player and I think that was one of the reasons why he was interested in me. He saw the world, I think, as if it was a giant chess piece.”

On running a film studio: “I’m a very creative guy and when you’re a studio head, you do things by committee. It’s much more fun to create a film than to talk to Bank of America about what we’re spending and talk to human resources about a medical plan.”

(POST SCRIPT): A variation of the above story was published in the South China Morning Post in 2010. There were plenty of anecdotes by Weintraub that I didn’t use (and may do so in a future story). But I thought I’d revisit this profile after recently reading Graydon Carter’s account of working with Weintraub in his just published book “When the Going Was Good” (and who knows: I may even try to talk to Carter soon).

In any event, after this interview, “His Way”, the documentary of Weintraub’s life aired in 2011. Weintraub also won an Emmy Award for “Behind The Candelabra”, his TV film about Liberace. He won another Emmy Award in 2014 as co-producer of “Years Of Living Dangerously”, a TV documentary about global warming. But “Tarzan”and the “Karate Kid” sequel of the remake never came to fruition. That’s most likely because Weintraub died in 2015 at the age of 77 from cardiac arrest.