If you go for a drive with Randy Newman, watch out!

Randy Newman has always had bad luck as a driver. To make matters worse, Newman has never had great vision either -- he endured a number of eye operations as a kid and still wears thick glasses. But when it comes to his scrapes and crashes, it sounds as if bad luck has had as much to do with it as bad eyesight. One night when I was doing an interview with Newman and Pixar's John Lasseter, Newman began regaling us with the gory particulars, leaving us both nearly weeping with laughter.

So when I finished talking to Newman about his Oscar exploits, I asked him if he could revisit some of his crash scenes. Here's his take on why things always seem to go wrong once he's behind the wheel.

-- Patrick Goldstein

 

Roger Ailes to Fox on Giffords coverage: 'Tone it down'

If you had to guess which media outlet Fox News boss Roger Ailes would choose to air his views on the media furor surrounding the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, pick No. 1 would probably not be the website run by a hip-hop mogul.

Yet there Ailes was Monday in a brief online Q&A with Russell Simmons, posted on Globalgrind.com, the website of clothing creator, Def Jam founder and entrepreneur Simmons.

Less surprising was that Ailes used the platform to scoff at the notion that angry political commentary (including on his cable station) had anything to do with the shooting of Giffords and 19 others.

Ailes did concede that a bit of dialing back of the rhetoric might be in order. "I told all of our guys, shut up, tone it down, make your argument intellectually," Ailes said. "You don’t have to do it with bombast. I hope the other side does that."

Fox's commentators — particularly the overwrought Glenn Beck with his bluster and constant fulminations about America's imminent collapse — haven't been big on toning down. But there was Beck's boss, for what it was worth, calling for, uh, modulation.

That's not to say, as I note in my "On the Media" column, that any commentator should be blamed, based on what we know now, for inciting the violence in Tucson. Jared Lee Loughner appears to be a disturbed young man whose political views were muddled. No specific evidence has emerged linking his oddball views to the shooting.

So why would Ailes choose to talk to Simmons about the media storm surrounding the shooting?

That's hard to know, since Simmons didn't offer any context or explanation for the interview. Simmons has been a stalwart backer of President (and previously candidate) Obama and has talked about building his Globalgrind into a powerhouse for news and for political organizing.

But I'm probably not alone among media writers in having never visited the site before the brief Ailes interview.

Besides insisting he really did want some measure of restraint from his staff, Ailes used the Simmons interview to rail about the incredibility (he used a saltier term) of claims that the conservative media drove Loughner.

In an interesting (and unintentional?) twist, Ailes said that "nobody screened [Loughner] for getting a weapon." Surely the boss of 2nd Amendment-friendly Fox wasn't suggesting a need for stiffer gun laws in notoriously laissez-faire Arizona?

He also said it was @*)@*#@ (that salty word again) for critics to suggest that Fox entertainer Sarah Palin had culpability in the shooting. During the recent midterm election Palin put out a map targeting 20 House members, including Giffords, for defeat. A gunsight-style target appeared on a map of America over each targeted district.

Ailes said he had personally had his picture tagged with a bull's eye over his head. "This goes on," he said, "both sides are wrong, but they both do it."

Simmons didn't give any push back on the notion that nasty rhetoric comes equally from both sides of the ideological divide. "Angry left, angry right," Simmons said, "none of it's good."

Simmons then seemed to make an attempt to jump-start the kind of caring dialogue he said would break down barriers. He told the Fox boss that Obama isn't really as left wing as some suggest.

The music impressario suggested he fit to the left of Obama. To that, Ailes laughed and responded:  "Then you must be skinny, you can’t get between him and the wall. You gotta to be one skinny guy, man."

So much for a meeting of the minds.

— James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: Entrepreneur Russell Simmons. Credit: Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images for Extra.

 

Wall Street Journal to Bob Dylan: Isn't it time to hang up the harmonica?

I am a loyal fan of the Wall Street Journal's Friday Journal, which is usually loaded with smart and provocative arts and entertainment coverage. But when it comes to assessing a major cultural figure, last week's cover story by John Jurgensen was as hapless and borderline moronic as anything the paper has ever printed. Titled "When to Leave the Stage," it tried to make the case that Bob Dylan, at 69, should think about calling it quits, arguing that he'd lost his edge, not to mention most of his voice, and was in danger of tarnishing a distinguished career as he -- and a number of other music icons -- reached retirement age.

And how did Jurgensen bolster this premise? Basically by interviewing a doctor from the Johns Hopkins Voice Center, who stated the obvious -- that rock singers are especially prone to scarring or other damage to their vocal cords. Using this superficial medical diagnosis, Jurgensen dismissed the recent live performances by rock's single most iconic figure, saying that Dylan's voice has "now deteriorated to a laryngitic croak," impishly adding that Dylan now sounds like "a scatting Cookie Monster."

Jurgensen also interviewed a scraggle of disgruntled fans at Dylan gigs, such as Jim Waniak, who walked out of a recent show, saying "I know every word to 'Desolation Row,' but I couldn't sing along. What you're used to feeling from his music just isn't there." I hate to break the news to Jurgensen, but Dylan fans have been talking trash like that for decades. When I first started going to see Dylan as a teenager in the 1970s, the tie-dyed counter-culture cognoscente in the audience were already bitching and moaning about how Dylan had lost his mojo or butchered the arrangements of their favorite songs, just as, by the way, the early '60s folkies were all up in arms when went Dylan went electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

Dylan lives to confound his fans, and if you're easily confounded, you're not much of a fan. But I also disagree with a larger issue that Jurgensen raises: that there's now a whole generation of rock oldsters out on the concert circuit, unable to give up the ghost -- or live out the Who's "hope I die before I get old" maxim. After all, if Dylan should call it quits, why not the Stones or the Eagles or Pink Floyd's Roger Waters, who'd been out reviving "The Wall" on the arena circuit?

For me, the flaw in this argument is simple: Why should rock be held to a different standard than any other art form? Would anyone seriously argue that Philip Roth should hang up his literary aspirations, even though he's past 70 and still turning out great books? Should Clint Eastwood, who's now 80, put away his camera, even though some of his best filmmaking achievements have come in the last half-dozen or so years? What about Michael Caine, who's still one of the coolest actors on the planet, even into his 70s? Or Elaine Stritch, now 84, who won an Emmy at age 81 for her appearance on "30 Rock." Should she really quit the stage just because she's lost a few miles-per-hour on her fastball?

The obvious answer: Hell, no. The great thing about being an artist is that you get to live by a different set of rules than the rest of us mere mortals. So if Dylan wants to keep on humming and strumming, as long as there's an audience willing to follow his lead, he should keep the creative fires burning. As an artistic concept, retirement is wildly overrated.

-- Patrick Goldstein

Photo: Bob Dylan on the cover of a new box set featuring his first eight albums in their original monorual mixes. Credit: Sony / Legacy Recordings

 

Mel Gibson: The Twitter comedy gift that keeps on giving

I know that millions of fans relish following Justin Bieber on Twitter, hearing all about his bromance with Kanye West, but for me, the real Twitter art form is comedy. With only 140 characters to work with, your jokes have to be sharp, short and salty. It's like writing comic haikus. For a gag writer, it's like crafting jokes for David Letterman, except for the fact that the material has to be tight as a drum--and of course the gig doesn't pay as well.

I don't know who the comic geniuses are behind Real_Mel Gibson, but when it comes to Twitter humor, it's the form at its best. First you have a wonderful subject: the bigger-than-life Hollywood star who has self-destructed before our very eyes, thanks to the tapes of his chest-heaving rants and threats against his ex-girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva. But when it comes to humor, Twitter is the Web's own version of a sitcom, allowing us to follow a character as it takes on new and different comic dimensions. The humor is all in hearing what Mel Gibson would've said or thought about a particular topic, but in his own voice, or at least the voice that we imagine hearing from a sadly self-destructive star in eclipse. And yet it's simple: All you need to know about Gibson is that he's had problems with booze, women and his self image--and all the jokes make perfect sense.

One tweet, for example, simply said, "Do we really have to call it that?" It was followed by a link to an IMDB post about Edward Furlong's estranged wife obtaining a temporary restraining order against the actor for leaving threatening voice messages on her phone. The article's headline: "Terminator Star Restrained for Pulling a Mel Gibson." Another recent tweet provided a link to the Twitter topic: "#wordsthatleadtotrouble," adding what Mel would've surely thought were the words that applied to him: "Honey, do I hear a tape recorder in the background?"

Here's a few recent Real_MelGibson tweets that best capture its barbed comic sensibility. All you have to do is imagine hearing Gibson saying them:

-- I regret saying the Jews are responsible for all history's wars, OK? But they ARE responsible for Vampires Suck. And that's worse.

-- Whoever said "Money can't buy everything" didn't have enough of it to accurately make that statement. Trust me. I own a Kangaroo.

-- They say you learn something new everyday. Today I learned that you CAN overdose on Flintstones Vitamins...It takes 6 bottles.

-- You know why we can never have a woman President? Well, let's just say, it wasn't men that made Eat, Pray, Love #2 at the Box Office.

-- Either I just took too many mushrooms or Gollum from Lord of the Rings is actually sitting on my couch watching reruns of the sitcom Coach.

-- Just got some blood drawn. Doc said he'd never seen such a high alcohol to blood concentration. I was like, You should see me on a weekend.  

Photo: Mel Gibson at an Oscar nominees' function at the Getty House last March in Los Angeles. Credit: Angela Weiss / Getty Images

Is it time to close down the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

I was a rock critic in a past life, so every year around this time, I still get a ballot allowing me to vote for my favorite nominees in the annual election at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Actually, I don't get to choose my favorite bands at all. The Hall of Fame is a notoriously top-down institution, with an elite group of insiders making up a nominating committee that pre-selects their own idiosyncratic idea of the worthy candidates. So all of us lowly peons are only allowed to vote for 5 out of 12 possible candidates, which judging from this year's nominees makes for slim pickings.

The list (read it and weep): ABBA, the Chantels, Jimmy Cliff, Genesis, the Hollies, KISS, LL Cool J, Darlene Love, Laura Nyro, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Stooges and Donna Summer.

It's pretty pathetic when you consider that you can vote for the Chantels and Darlene Love, but not for Linda Ronstadt, Steve Miller, Chicago, Rush, Deep Purple, Alice Cooper, Journey, Dire Straits or Stevie Ray Vaughan, just to name a few of the ineligible worthies. It's no wonder that Joel Selvin, the veteran San Francisco critic (and former member of the hall's nominating committee), has blasted the hall for its insular decision-making. He heaps most of the blame on Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner, the hall's co-founder and dominant force, who is believed to be behind the mysterious last-minute selection of Grandmaster Flash over the Dave Clark 5, with Wenner apparently pushing aside the DC5 (finally inducted in 2008) so the hall could have a hip-hop group in the fold. 

"This thing has sunk to a shameless level of manipulation and behind-the-scenes chicanery," Selvin told the Detroit News in 2007. "If it were a public institution--which it is--it would be held up for public ridicule."

Despite my own shared concerns--I think it would a perfectly appropriate idea to close down the hall for repairs for a few years, until a few more deserving bands become eligible--I still feel obligated to vote. But I'd like some help. Take a second look at the names of the 2010 nominees above and let me know who you'd vote for--and why. Those of us who are actual voters are asked to choose a maximum of five nominees, using numbers (1-2-3-4-5) to signify our preferences. You can do the same. Here's how I'd make my choices as of now, but I'm open to being swayed by any especially passionate or persuasive arguments:

1) The Stooges. (They were short-lived, but had an indelible impact on my teen psyche. Any band that had the one-and-only Iggy Pop on board makes the cut for me.)

2) The Red Hot Chili Peppers. (Local L.A. boys made good, they capture the tumultuous spirit of rock and have made some terrific records along the way.) 

3) Laura Nyro. (Nearly forgotten today, she was a seminal influence on Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Rosanne Cash and untold other singer-songwriters.)

4) LL Cool J. (Probably not a major artist, but in his day, he was the epitome of cool.)

5) KISS. (I'm not a member of the Army and I think Gene Simmons is pretty obnoxious, but they were the voice of a generation--no one can forget their first KISS concert.)

Photo: The Rock and Roll Hall Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. Credit: Reuters

This is still Spinal Tap

From our friends in the Pop Music department comes Steve Appleford's report on the new album from Spinal Tap, "subject" of the 1984 Rob Reiner-directed mockumentary "This Is Spinal Tap." During the interview for the story, actors Harry Shearer, Michael McKean and Christopher Guest stayed in character as Derek Smalls, David St. Hubbins and Nigel Tufnel, respectively.

The new album, "Back From the Dead," was recorded in January at the Village Studios in Los Angeles. It was released last week on the band's Label Industry Records, with 19 tracks, a DVD interview disc and an elaborate foldout diorama of the musicians as action figures.

Among the newer songs is "Warmer Than Hell," a climate change anthem written for the band's performance at the Live Earth concert in 2007, where St. Hubbins introduced the lyrics: "Satan sat in Surrey / sweating like a pig. / He said, 'Is this just a fluke / Or maybe something big?' "

Fans will recognize many songs ("Big Bottom," "Stonehenge," "(Funky) Sex Farm") from the film, recorded in a studio for the first time, sometimes with such guest players as John Mayer and Steve Vai.

"We said, 'Why don't we make these tracks sound as best they can be?' " says Tufnel, "with us controlling it, with loudness, sonic integrity."

"It's just an ability to have these songs enjoyed the way they were meant to be enjoyed," says Smalls, "with royalties flowing to us."

Read the full story here.

Photo: Harry Shearer, left, Michael McKean and Christopher Guest as the members of Spinal Tap. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

Summit hires new 'Twilight' director, right? Wrong!

I hate to be the skunk at the picnic, but Summit Entertainment has not -- I repeat NOT-- hired "Orphanage" director Juan Antonio Bayona to direct "Eclipse," the third film in the wildly successful “Twilight” series. That would be the exact opposite of the "news" you read earlier today, first in Nikki Finke’s post on Deadline Hollywood and later in Dave McNary's seemingly authoritative Variety story, which baldly stated that Summit "has tapped Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona to direct 'Eclipse.' "

By sheer coincidence, I had lunch today with Erik Feig, who’s president of production at Summit and the man most involved with managing the hit series of films. ("New Moon," the second film in the series, begins production later this month with Chris Weitz at the helm.)

Feig was shocked to see the media reports saying Summit had hired Bayona, since -- ahem -- they’re not true. "The 'Eclipse' directing job hasn’t been offered to Juan Antonio or anyone else," he told me. "We’ve met with three or four talented filmmakers and we’ll be meeting with three or four more other candidates before we make any decision. No one has been offered the job."

Feig added that no one even bothered to call to check out the rumors before printing them, something that has become an all-too-often occurrence in the Wild West free-for-all that constitutes today’s Web-based entertainment coverage. "Nikki never called Summit or any of the producers, and Variety ran it off her blog without calling us either, which I find doubly irresponsible." (In fairness, McNary did call Summit’s PR rep, who would not confirm the story.)

The fact that the initial stories were erroneous didn’t stop everyone else on the Web -- including many of my favorite blogs -- from not only linking to them, but rewriting them in a way that repeated the falsehood. That includes everyone from the Vulture, whose post was headlined "Juan Antonio Bayona to Direct 'Twilight 3,' " to our own Hero Complex, which led its account by saying: “It’s official, according to the trades, the filmmaker behind the hypnotic horror film, 'The Orphanage,' will be brought in for the third 'Twilight' film."

I mean, if you can’t trust the Hollywood trades, who can you trust, right? As it turns out, Bayona was in town and had a Wednesday meeting with Summit execs, who are certainly impressed by his resume. Bayona has also met with "Twilight" author Stephenie Meyer, who has a lot to say about any key creative choices made on each film in the series. On the other hand, Bayona has told friends that he isn’t sure he wants to tackle the film. Though he also admires the series, he's concerned about how much creative involvement he would have coming in to direct the third installment in a series, where most of the casting and character development is already in place.

The real lesson here: The madcap pace of the Web, where everyone gets hits by linking to newsie items about cultural hot buttons, is creating an environment where you have to check stories out before you reprint them -- or you end up with egg on your face. (Trust me -- it's happened to me too.) This is just the latest example of a story that was good but, alas, too good to actually be true. 

Did the Boss go Milli Vanilli at the Super Bowl?

Lost in all the hullabaloo over Bruce Springsteen's Super Bowl appearance, Wal-Mart apology and scathing attack on Ticketmaster is the revelation that Springsteen's heralded E Street Band ... didn't actually play live at the Super Bowl.

As the Chicago Tribune's Greg Kot reveals in this interview with Grammy-winning producer Hank Neuberger (who oversees the broadcast audio at the Grammy Awards telecast), everyone at the Super Bowl prerecorded their performances, including Jennifer Hudson and Faith Hill as well. Springsteen's vocals were live, though it's unclear from the Kot story whether the other singers were live or not, having clearly been asked -- by Super Bowl organizers -- to tape their performances and record backing tracks. Hudson's publicist says that "Hudson's mike was on" -- she was singing live to a backing track at the request of the Super Bowl producers.

Is this new? I guess not. Lots of singers (think Britney Spears and Ashlee Simpson) have been ridiculed for their use of backing tracks during live performances. Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma also played to a recorded track during the presidential inauguration last month. But what about the Boss? A legendarily exciting live performer, should he have made it clear ahead of time that his band wasn't actually performing live at a mammoth media event like the Super Bowl, where everything is bound to go under the microscope? It wasn't like everyone was just miming to a record -- the band rehearsed and then recorded the new versions of the songs Springsteen performed on Sunday.

I think what stirs up criticism is that we live in a world that is now dominated by so many examples of pseudo events (starting with all the reality TV shows that are actually as carefully cast, scripted and edited as any dramatic fiction) that it feels increasingly unsettling to discover that something so seemingly authentic -- the E Street Band for the first time at the Super Bowl -- is, while not a fake, still technologically altered and rearranged. It creates all sorts of fuzzy gray areas. If it's bad for athletes to use chemical enhancement to improve their performance, then shouldn't we question artists if they use technological enhancement to improve their performance?

I'd like to hear your views on the subject -- as in where should we draw the line between the real and the artificial? As an audience member, I'm slightly squeamish about the blurred lines. But when I spoke to Neuberger, who as a producer is accustomed to dealing with new technology, he viewed the issue in a very different light, saying that using backing tracks is standard operating procedure in public live performances, especially when the artist is suddenly taking the stage in the middle of a football field.

"You're dealing with a staging set-up that would normally take all day, and suddenly has to be done in five minutes," he explained. "You really don't have a choice -- you're at a football game. There's a reliability factor that can't be guaranteed by five minutes of set-up time. The artists have to hear themselves, the mikes and sound equipment have to be all set up -- all that would be at risk if you tried to do a live performance with so little set-up time. The artists are really doing the right thing."

Fair enough. But does the audience have the right to know about the set-up ahead of time? Or would that spoil the illusion?   

Photo of Bruce Springsteen by Morry Gash / Associated Press

Hey Obama, name that tune!

When we were all gathered around the TV Tuesday night, watching Barack Obama on stage in Chicago's Grant Park, basking in the glow of his historical victory, with the returns in and the election safely in the bag, the only question that remained unanswered was: What was that music playing that served as the underscore to Obama's big moment?

It was obviously a movie score, but what movie? The first guess, from someone who figured the campaign was going for uplift, was "Chariots of Fire." Wrong. One of my Chicago pals suggested "The Untouchables," figuring (1) it had a nice local angle and (2) it was about Eliot Ness cleaning up the mob, which has a certain resonance for die-hard Democrats after eight long years of Bush rule. Wrong.

The answer: Obama's triumphant music was from "Remember the Titans," the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced film from 2000 that stars Denzel Washington as a tough-minded coach of a newly integrated high school football team. The movie's composer, Trevor Rabin, was at home, watching the speech with his wife when the music began to swell. "We almost didn't get through the thing, because the phone started ringing and it didn't stop," he told me today. "I must've gotten a couple of dozen calls from friends and such. After about the fifth caller, I stopped picking up the phone because I wanted to watch Obama all the way to the end."

Rabin reacted to the way his work was displayed the way most film composers do. "I have to say I was surprised," he says with a laugh. "They played it louder at the rally than they did in the movie. They really cranked it up."

Hearing his music accompany Obama's victory celebration was especially moving for Rabin, who was born in South Africa and whose  family has a long involvement in the anti-apartheid movement. His cousin, Donald Woods, was a newspaper editor who spoke out against apartheid and fled the country after the death of his friend, Steve Biko, who was immortalized in Peter Gabriel's song, "Biko," as well as in the film "Cry Freedom," where Woods is played by Kevin Kline. Sydney Kentridge, another one of Rabin's cousins, prosecuted the South African government on behalf of the Biko family.

"We were a very politically active family," Rabin says. "My father was one of the first lawyers in South Africa to have a black partner, so I grew up very aware of the struggle going on. Coming from that background, it really gave me chills to have my music be a part of the election of the first black American president." As it turns out, Rabin wasn't entirely surprised to hear his score playing at an Obama event. The Obama campaign also used the score after his outdoor speech at the Democratic National Convention, playing it, Rabin says, "at the volume level you'd expect at a KISS concert."

Why did Obama--or someone in his camp--pick the music? I have no official word, though the obvious theory would be that it provided a nice fit for the Obama campaign's theme of inclusiveness and openness to change. "In the movie the football players triumph over adversity, so that's obviously part of it," says Rabin, who's written scores for dozens of films, including "Armageddon," "National Treasure" and "Get Smart." "But I'm guessing the music feels hopeful and stirring, or as my wife would say, invigorating. I guess it represents some of the optimism that Obama reflects."

An Obama supporter, Rabin says he'd happily make himself available if the president-elect needs any musical assistance for his inauguration. "I'm just happy to be associated with him in any way," he says. "One of my friends who called on Tuesday said, 'Wow, you've been immortalized!' But for me, it's just nice that anyone recognized the music. Obama didn't need any help. I thought his speech was great. He was uplifting, but he also said--let's get down to business. He seems to know what he's doing." 

The City of Hope has its mojo working

The stock market was down 733 points, the Dodgers were on the brink of being booted out of the playoffs and "Obama vs. McCain III" was on the tube, but instead of staying home, I went out to a party. And what a party! The music business may be in a death spiral, but they still know how to have a good time. Next to the Grammys, there's no bigger night in the music biz than the City of Hope Spirit of Life award dinner, which unfolded last night under a giant, Cirque du Soleil-style tent on the beach in Santa Monica. The dinner raised a record $10 million, with Universal Music Chairman Doug Morris as its drawing card. Since Universal owns Motown Records, the legendary Berry Gordy made a rare public appearance to pay tribute to Morris and introduce the Doug Morris Motown Revue, a killer band of session players who backed a series of Universal label stars doing Motown oldies.

Everyone took a turn in the spotlight. Stevie Nicks, dressed all in black, did the Supremes' "Love Is Like an Itching in My Heart." Erykah Badu funked out to Rick James' "Mary Jane." Mariah Carey crooned the Jackson 5's "I'll Be There." Lionel Richie showed he hadn't lost a step, handling his own "I'm Easy." Duffy, the new Lulu-style neo-soul starlet, sounded totally at home with Smokey Robinson's "I Second That Emotion." Rihanna channeled Diana Ross, doing "Baby Love." If I had to pick favorites, I'd say the Stevie Wonder numbers brought out the best in everyone, with Robin Thicke (who looks like a young Pierce Brosnan) doing "Ribbon in the Sky," Maroon 5 performing "My Cherie Amour" and Michael McDonald belting out a white-haired soul version of "Living for the City."

Before the music began, Nicks gave an emotional speech about her connection to the City of Hope. When Morris got up to speak, he made a special point of thanking Zach Horowitz, the Universal COO who is the driving force behind the dinner, his father having been the City of Hope's chief fundraiser for years. Morris sounded an optimistic note about the future, saying that if new technology had put the industry into its current funk, it could well be new technology that gave it a new lease on life, saying he'd never been more hopeful about the industry's future.   

As good as the speeches and performances were, the real fun was getting to circulate, seeing all the big players from both music and film renewing old friendships or smoothing over old rivalries. The dinner's whopping $10-million take is a tribute to the respect the industry has for Morris, who is the last of the old-style record moguls still in power, reigning over Universal, far and away the industry's biggest company. With Morris in the spotlight, I saw people who rarely show up at these kind of dinners. Top music lawyer Allen Grubman had David Geffen at his table, who sat with producer Irwin Winkler. They seemed an odd couple, until Geffen reminded me that they'd become friends after they both worked in the William Morris mailroom 40-plus years ago.

Between dinner courses, conversation was the sport. I found film director Brett Ratner schmoozing with Warner Records chief Edgar Bronfman. Eagles manager Irving Azoff was huddled with Interscope chief Jimmy Iovine. Music attorney (and sometime novelist) Don Passman gave me a great recommendation for my book club. Revolution Films founder Joe Roth stopped to chat before going over to see his pal Steve Jobs. Talk about smoothing over rivalries. Jobs, who looks even more skeletal in person than he does at Apple presentations, has been locked in a bitter struggle with Universal for years over iTunes music pricing and other issues, but there he was, having shown up to celebrate Morris' big night.

My favorite moment of the evening came when I was talking to filmmaker Taylor Hackford, an ardent music lover who directed "Ray" and the Chuck Berry tribute film "Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll." Just as we were getting ready to go our separate ways, along came Lionel Richie, who did a song for the filmmaker's "White Nights." Richie jabbed an elbow in Hackford's direction. "This is the guy who came to me and said, 'You have to write a song called 'White Nights,' " Richie said with a mischievous grin. "I told him, 'There's never gonna be a hit song called anything like 'White Nights,' especially not sung by a black man!' "

Hackford cracked up. He said, "What I remember most is that Lionel used to write songs, put 'em on a cassette and throw it into the glove compartment of his car. And when we'd be driving around, he'd take a cassette out and play it in the car." Richie chimed in: "That's how you know if a song works, if it sounds good in the car on the freeway, with the top down." Hackford said, "If Lionel thought the song didn't work, he'd just toss the cassette out the window." Richie laughed. "You never know," he said merrily. "I bet I threw a lot of hits out of that window too."

That was the mood in the music business last night. Times are hard, but everyone always hopes there's another big hit just around the corner.

Photo of Doug Morris by Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times