restaurant, and then a huge screening at a local theater, and Planet Hollywood will host a big after-party. And here’s the good thing, guys: Planet Hollywood will fly the celebrities over and pay for the party. We’ll take care of the hotel rooms and all the other stuff involved in the premiere itself. By splitting the costs, we’ll save, and we’ll still get a ton of attention.”
Pulling off those kinds of deals meant that we would need a point person to schmooze with the studio. My first choice would have been Jack Valenti, the longtime head of the Motion Picture Association of America and Hollywood’s top lobbyist in Washington. Jack was a good friend and had been one of my closest advisors when I was chairman of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. I thought we should go to him and say, “Jack, you’re seventy-five. You have done a terrific job for the movie business, but what are they paying you? A million dollars a year? Here’s two million a year. Relax. And here’s a pension, and here are benefits for your grandchildren.” All of a sudden we’d have Jack Valenti schmoozing all the studios and making the deals.
Another vital matter that I raised: our hamburgers and pizzas were good, but I wanted to serve more interesting food. And I saw huge potential in the merchandise. Rather than cut back our spending on design, I believed that we should do more. I was fascinated by the way fashion designer Tom Ford had gone into Gucci and transformed it from an old-fuddy-duddy company into a source for hip jackets and hip shoes. Before Ford’s arrival, I never bought from Gucci; all of a sudden, I was in their store.
“You’ve got to get a guy like that to design for Planet Hollywood,” I told Robert and Keith. “You need actual Planet Hollywood fashion shows that you can take to Japan, Europe, and the Middle East, so that people will want to have the latest Planet Hollywood stuff. Rather than always selling the same old bomber jacket, the bomber jacket should change all the time, with different kinds of buckles and with different kinds of chains hanging off it. If you make the merchandise snappy and hip and the newest of the new, you’ll sell tons of it.”
Throughout my pitch, Robert and Keith kept saying, “Yes, yes, great idea.” At the end, they promised to get back to me on the points I’d raised. But Paul had been the only person taking notes. “I don’t think they got it,” he said after they left. I’d hoped this would be a game-changing meeting, because promotion and merchandising were realms I truly understood. But I had the sense that Robert and Keith were overwhelmed. The pressure from the market was getting to them. While Robert was supposedly focused on operations and Keith on the strategic vision, mostly they talked about investor deals. And Planet Hollywood had reached a scale where it was no longer possible for two entrepreneurs to do it all. The company needed structure, and it needed people who were expert in managing a global operation. I’m a loyal person, and I stayed committed to the business for several more years. But its popularity declined steadily, and the stock fell and fell until eventually the company went bankrupt. Financially I did fine, thanks to the protections we had negotiated into my deal, although I made nowhere near the $120 million or so my stock had once been worth on paper. I was better off than the many shareholders who lost money, however, and better off than many of the other actors and athletes.
Even so, I’d love to do it again, only have it managed better. Whoopi, Bruce, Sly, and all the other big-name participants would tell you that Planet Hollywood was fun. With the huge parties, openings, and premieres, we met people all over the world and had the time of our lives.
CHAPTER 22
Family Guy
MARIA HAD A TERRIBLE time with morning sickness while she was pregnant with Christopher in 1997. It got so severe that she had to check into our local hospital because she couldn’t keep anything down. I was worried even though she had good medical attention, and the kids were upset because Maria was gone. Katherine was only seven years old, Christina was five, and Patrick was three. To help them get through it, I put off commitments and spent a lot of extra hours at home trying to be both mom and dad.
I figured that what would reassure them most was making sure they saw Maria every day and otherwise keeping up the daily routine. Every morning on the way to school for the girls, we’d stop off at the hospital, and again in the afternoon. I explained to them that Mommy would want to have a part of home with her, so each morning before we left, we’d go into our garden and pick the most elegant flower to bring her.
Maria and I had been raised in wildly different ways, which meant we could draw on the best of each style for our parenting routine. Meals, for example, were definitely in the Shriver tradition. Both sets of parents insisted that we all sit down as a family every night, but that’s where the similarity ended. In my parents’ house when I was a kid, no one discussed anything at the dinner table. The rule was, when you eat, you eat. Each of us was very private, and if you had a problem, you worked it out yourself. But in Maria’s family growing up, they all shared what they’d done that day. Everybody told a story. I’m good at communicating, but Maria was so much better at creating fun at dinner, explaining everything to the kids. She brought her family’s atmosphere to our table. It was something that I tried to pick up on for myself, to learn and become the same way. It’s very helpful to have at least one parent with those skills.
When our kids had homework, we each went with our strengths. Maria would help with anything involving language, and I would help with anything involving numbers. She is a very good writer, with an unbelievable vocabulary and grace with words. In fact, motherhood inspired her to author books of insight for young people. Her first,
I’ve always been comfortable with numbers. As a kid, as I learned about math, it all made sense. The decimals made immediate sense. The fractions made immediate sense. I knew all the roman numerals. You could throw problems at me, and I’d solve them. You could show me statistics, and instead of glazing over the way a lot of people do, I’d make out facts and trends that the figures were pointing to and read them like a story.
I taught our kids math drills that my father had used on Meinhard and me. He always made us start them a month before school, and we had to do them every day because he felt that the brain has to be trained and warmed up like the body of an athlete. Not only did my brother and I have to do the math drills but so did anybody who came over to play. Pretty soon a lot of kids avoided our house. I hated all this, of course. But here I was thirty-five years later drilling my own kids. I always gave them the bill in restaurants to figure out the 20 percent tip. They’d add it up and sign my signature. I always checked to make sure they did the math right. It was a whole routine, and they loved it.
When it came to chores, we used the Schwarzenegger tradition. In Europe, you grow up helping to keep the house clean. You take off your shoes when you come in, otherwise all hell breaks loose. You turn off the lights when you leave the room because there is a limited amount of power. You conserve water because somebody has to fetch it from the well. You are much more involved in the basics. I remember my shock when I first got to know Maria, who had grown up with people to pick up after her. She’d come into the house and take off her sweater—it was a cashmere sweater—and if it fell on the floor, that’s where it stayed. To me, even today, I can’t treat a cashmere sweater that way. I’d have to pick it up and hang it on a chair. And even though I can afford it, I would never wear cashmere to go skiing or play sports. It has to be cotton or wool or something cheaper, like a $10 sweatshirt, before I feel comfortable getting it sweaty.
Although Maria eventually became a neat freak like me, I was still the one who brought European discipline to the house—with tolerance added, of course, because I knew I couldn’t go crazy. You have to tone it down, unlike some of my friends in Austria. The way they discipline their kids may work for them there, but it doesn’t work here. Otherwise, when your kids compare notes with their friends at school, they will think that their father is a weirdo. I’d also promised myself, this is the generation where the physical punishment stops. I wasn’t going to carry on that Old World tradition.
Maria and I settled on our own approach, where we pamper the kids a little, but also have rules. From the time they were little, for instance, they had to do their own wash—learn how to use the washing machine, put the detergent in, put the clothes in and choose a medium or large load. Then how to put the clothes in the dryer and fold them and put them away. Also how to time yourself so your siblings have a chance to do their laundry too.
Every day before taking the kids to school, I would inspect to make sure that the lights were off, the beds made, and drawers and closets closed. There could be stuff lying around and a little bit of mess; I was much more
