Puttnam vs. Columbia . . . the Sequel : Studio Tells Its Side in Variety

David Puttnam has been giving his side of his dispute with Columbia Pictures for months--in newspapers, magazines such as Vanity Fair, on the “Today” show, and in speeches in Los Angeles and elsewhere.

On Wednesday, Columbia started talking, too. For the record and, notably, in the show-business bible, Variety.

“While former Columbia Pictures chairman/CEO David Puttnam has been feeding voracious press corps with tantalizing tales from the back lot, the front office now in place at the studio has been presented with a $289 million tab.”

So begins the first of two articles in the trade paper by New York-based staff writer Charles Kipps. Wednesday’s piece--which ran simultaneously in the Los Angeles-based daily and the New York-based weekly--ran over three full pages and onto a fourth. The second installment is due next week.

Kipps, contacted in New York where he is still writing Part 2 of the saga, promised “a lot more disclosure of information but no sensationalism.” He said he has been working on the pieces for nearly three months, extensively interviewing Puttnam before approaching the Columbia regime.

Part 1, which is one more retelling of the Puttnam-Columbia wars, includes the first on-the-record comments by former and current Columbia executives such as Herbert A. Allen, Guy McElwaine, Richard Gallop, Frank Price and the elusive Dawn Steel.

Most notable, however are comments by superproducer Ray Stark, who said he broke his silence on the Puttnam affair because, “Variety is a trade paper, not a gossip magazine, and I would like to set the record straight.”

The straight record, according to Variety, is an unusual picture-by-picture accounting of the official Puttnam slate of inherited and approved titles. According to the trade paper, the Puttnam slate of 33 films cost $432 million, including production budgets, prints and advertising. To date, the paper said, only $112 million worth of tickets have been sold.

There are 18 Puttnam pictures yet to be released.

Puttnam was hired to run Columbia in 1986 and resigned last October after 15 months in office.

Kipps said that he believes that Columbia officials finally decided to respond (“retaliate would not be the right word”) as a result of the continuing publicity (and controversy) surrounding the Puttnam-Columbia dispute.

The banner headline over the masthead in the just-out Weekly Variety reads “Who ‘Got’ David Puttnam?”

The story on Page 7 is tagged: “The Rise and Fall of the Coca-Cola Kid” and includes a precede that says: “Hollywood offered a warm welcome, then gave Puttnam a cold shoulder.”

Wednesday’s Daily Variety was more subdued: a small box in the lower left-hand column reads, “Special Report--Puttnam’s Hollywood Year” and refers readers to Page 15.

The Daily Variety article also did not include the weekly’s prominently played sentence: “Until now, Puttnam has been performing a soliloquy for the press. A lone figure monopolizing the media with an eloquent delivery of controversial barbs aimed at his former employers and colleagues.”