Welcome to you must remember this the

podcast dedicated to exploring the secret and or forgotten histories of Hollywood's first century.

I'm your host, Karina Longworth and this is another installment of our ongoing series,

Poly Platte, The Invisible Woman.

Poly Platte, The Invisible Woman.

By 1990, Poly had been working with James L. Brooks for almost a decade,

but only on a film-to-film basis, and not as a full-time contracted employee.

In 1990, when Brooks signed a new deal to move his Gracie films production company from Fox to Sony,

Poly was finally given a full-time job, with a contract. It included an extra $100,000

on top of her salary for each picture she produced, as well as a one-time only bonus,

as acknowledgement of her previous work to Gracie in an unofficial capacity,

particularly on the film she had hoped to direct The War of the Roses.

Sony had taken over the old MGM lot via the tech giant September 1989 acquisition of

Columbia Pictures. The studio was about to enter into an unprecedented period of excess and greed,

marked by major money losers like Mr. Saturday Night and Hudson Hawk,

presided over by John Peters and Peter Goober, the executive team that had caused so much frustration

on which is of Eastwick. But Goober had personally wooed Brooks,

and offered him much more money than any other studio, because he felt that once he and

Peter's lured one piece of blue chip talent, every other major creator in Hollywood would follow.

Gracie films moved into the old MGM costume building, and this is how Poly described the early

productive years there. I hired my stepdaughter Kelly Wade to be my assistant. I searched the town

for screenplays. The most I knew about Jim's deal at Sony was that we could make almost any

...