Los Angeles.
The 46th Golden Globe Awards, held on January 28, had become a laughingstock in many eyes.
Though never codified, tradition had long dictated five nominees per film category.
This year, the Globes threw caution to the wind.
Best Drama Picture: seven nominees. Best Director: six. Best Supporting Actor: six. Even the technical award for Best Original Song somehow merited six.
The Golden Globes already lacked the breadth of the Oscars; four categories with irregular nominee counts only deepened the perception of unprofessionalism that had dogged the scandal-plagued HFPA for years.
Irregular nominations might have earned mere mockery. The final results, however, turned the ceremony into a target for widespread media scorn.
Tied winners were not unheard of in film awards. When two equally strong contenders deadlocked, splitting the prize could even become a charming anecdote.
But triple ties? Had anyone seen that before?
Five nominees, three winners, leaving the other two to stand there empty-handed.
It happened this year.
And not just once.
Counting television categories, the 46th Golden Globes produced two triple ties and three doubles. When Sigourney Weaver, Jodie Foster, and Shirley MacLaine took the stage together for Best Actress in a Drama, the live cameras captured nothing but awkward smiles across the room.
One bizarre result after another left the audience numb with embarrassment.
The choices themselves were indefensible.
Best Drama Picture went to Sigourney Weaver's biographical Gorillas in the Mist. Dead Poets Society came up short, and the HFPA had already clarified that Rain Man had not been submitted, acceptable, if disappointing.
Gorillas in the Mist was undeniably strong.
Best Musical or Comedy Picture, however, went to Working Girl, leaving jaws on the floor.
Even its nomination had sparked controversy. Mike Nichols, director of classics The Graduate and Carnal Knowledge, had earned goodwill decades earlier, but Working Girl a blatant Wall Street knockoff was painfully ordinary.
Compared to the sharp, sophisticated dealings of Wall Street, Working Girl offered only a tired workplace fable: junior employee Tess (Melanie Griffith) pitches an idea to her boss Katherine (Sigourney Weaver), who pretends to reject it while planning to steal it. Tess discovers the theft, impersonates Katherine to pitch the client directly, meets executive Jack (Harrison Ford), sparks fly, Jack helps her succeed, Katherine gets fired.
That was it.
Wall Street had professional deal-making, ruthless intrigue, and Gordon Gekko's naked declaration that "Greed is good." Working Girl had little beyond Nichols's lingering prestige from The Graduate.
The other four nominees, aside from Universal's underwhelming Midnight Run, were clearly superior: Who Framed Roger Rabbit, A Fish Called Wanda, Big, and even the non-nominated When Harry Met Sally and Steel Magnolias from Daenerys would have been more deserving.
Facing backlash, the HFPA explained that When Harry Met Sally had not been submitted, while Steel Magnolias was deemed more dramatic than comedic.
Daenerys Entertainment did not leave empty-handed. Dead Poets Society won Best Director, Steel Magnolias took Best Supporting Actress, exactly what Simon had expected. He felt no grievance.
To Simon, any award that could be influenced was a good award. Perfect fairness would only cause problems.
He kept that opinion private, of course.
Instead, to pressure the upcoming Oscars, Daenerys launched a timely media campaign decrying the injustice done to its films.
The strategy usually worked.
In the original timeline, after one Oscar year produced no Black nominees, a few loud voices complained, and the next year delivered a Best Picture winner with an all-Black creative team, Black nominees across directing and acting categories, and several wins, an overcorrection so blatant it raised eyebrows.
Then, Wednesday, February 1.
The 61st Academy Award nominations were announced.
Daenerys Entertainment's Rain Man earned eight: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and more.
Among them was Simon's own name for Best Original Score. Unable to find an unknown Hans Zimmer yet, he had composed the film's music himself, drawing on memory.
Dead Poets Society secured Best Director and Best Actor.
To avoid competing internally with Rain Man, Daenerys had voluntarily withheld Dead Poets Society from Best Picture consideration. Its submitted Original Screenplay nod, however, did not materialize.
Steel Magnolias had been entered for Original Screenplay, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actress; only Julia Roberts landed the supporting nod.
Daenerys films collected eleven nominations.
Not dazzling, Warner Bros., spreading bets across Dangerous Liaisons, The Accidental Tourist, Gorillas in the Mist, Bird, Beetlejuice, and Clean and Sober, racked up nineteen.
But aside from Sandra's Dangerous Liaisons leading with seven, the rest were mostly minor categories.
Orion, still pouring PR resources into Mississippi Burning, saw Pulp Fiction, whose copyright they held earn only one nomination: John Travolta for Best Actor. It lost even the screenplay nod it had received at the Globes.
As last year's Palme d'Or winner with stellar reviews and box office, the snub felt glaring.
After blanking at the Globes and now ignored by the Academy, many outlets spoke up for the film. Mike Nichols's Working Girl, meanwhile, scored six major nominations, including Best Picture and Director.
One Variety critic, after the announcements, sharply accused both the Globes and the Academy of dragging a banner year packed with Rain Man, Pulp Fiction, Dead Poets Society, A Fish Called Wanda, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, When Harry Met Sally, and more, down into mediocrity through insider dealing.
The critic pointed the finger squarely at the Writers Guild of America.
Attentive observers noticed a pattern: apart from the universally expected Rain Man, every other Daenerys title Dead Poets Society, Steel Magnolias, When Harry Met Sally, and especially Simon's own Pulp Fiction received zero screenplay nominations.
Simon Westeros, the standout young screenwriter of the outgoing decade, had now gone two straight years without even a nomination. It was laughable.
Oscar screenplay jurors were almost exclusively WGA members.
Daenerys's breakout hit Who Wants to Be a Millionaire had nearly derailed the Guild's strike the previous year. Though the strike ultimately succeeded, the final deal was heavily watered down.
Given that grudge, sparing Rain Man was already restraint. Other Daenerys scripts could expect nothing.
Of course, as Daenerys grew stronger, the rift would gradually heal.
At root, writers and studios were employees and employers. When livelihoods were at stake, most people willingly or not chose to forget, pretend to forget, and compromise.
The turmoil in Japanese financial markets did not disrupt Daenerys operations.
After the Oscar nominations, Ira Deutchman launched the final PR sprint.
Meanwhile, on February 3 Daenerys released its first new film of the year: Kathryn's second theatrical feature, Blue Steel.
Compared to ongoing earners like Rain Man, Blue Steel earned respectable reviews averaging around seven out of ten, but box office was worse. Opening on 1,121 screens, it took in just $3.81 million, projecting a domestic total near $8 million.
With a $10 million production budget and roughly $3.5 million in marketing, even adding ancillary revenue, the film was headed for a multimillion-dollar loss.
Simon and Kathryn's relationship was an open secret in the industry.
Thus, few inside Daenerys minded the flop. After a year of nonstop hits, the occasional miss almost felt refreshing.
The world couldn't stay abnormal forever.
On February 17, after more than a month of auditing, Daenerys Entertainment's 1988 financial report was finalized.
For the year ended December 31, 1988, total group revenue reached $708 million.
Still in early growth, the company did not yet break out revenue in granular detail, dividing it only into film, television, and comics. Smaller ancillary streams like merchandise, as well as expenditures such as office purchases and private-jet leasing, were lumped together.
Of the three main segments:
Film contributed $276 million split between Daenerys Pictures splits and New World Entertainment theatrical and home-video revenue.
Heavy investment in production, marketing, and rights acquisition meant films like Rain Man and Dead Poets Society had contributed nothing by year-end. New World legacy titles added little.
After costs and taxes, film net profit was $67.72 million.
Television, under Robert Iger, generated $361 million. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire alone accounted for $196 million; Survivor and other reality shows plus inherited New World series like The Wonder Years added solid revenue.
Thanks to the quiz show's sky-high margins, television delivered $165.75 million in net profit.
Finally, Marvel Entertainment, singled out at Simon's request posted $71.32 million revenue and $5.26 million profit.
In truth, under Stan Lee and James Gold's stewardship since 1975, Marvel had remained steadily profitable.
Though the North American comics industry had been shrinking and Marvel's sub-10% margin looked thin, the company would never have been sold had parent Cadence Industries not gone bankrupt in 1986.
Daenerys Entertainment's 1988 net profit reached $238.73 million.
$238.73 million, enough to outpace every second- and third-tier Hollywood studio, and among the majors only Warner, Paramount, and Disney cleared more. Warner's figure included the entire Warner Bros. company, not just the film division.
Columbia and MGM lost money. Universal relied on late-year Twins to prop up recent performance; parent MCA's total profit fell short of $200 million, with Barry Diller focused on network expansion. Fox barely broke even.
The disparity reflected less studio weakness than Daenerys's extraordinary performance.
Extending beyond Hollywood, Forbes's still-unfinished 1988 Fortune 500 data, using 1987 as reference would place Daenerys's $238 million profit inside the top seventy U.S. companies.
In that era only a dozen or so giants like Ford and General Electric cleared $1 billion; over 95% of the 500 earned under a billion, and only about 150 surpassed $100 million.
When numbers this enviable emerged, Daenerys leadership unanimously agreed to keep them as quiet as possible.
Outside estimates of the company's 1988 profit already varied widely, and most media analyses were remarkably accurate.
Yet like Hollywood's many notorious closet cases, as long as the star never came out, fans unwilling to face reality happily believed the evidence meant nothing.
The same psychology applied: as long as Daenerys never published detailed figures, the rest of Hollywood could conveniently ignore them.