When you enter the law offices of Goodman Phillips and Vineberg, the

atmosphere is laden with dignity and a distinct sense of power. People

working at the firm, located in one of the Eaton Centre’s three office towers, are joking with each other in hushed tones. The paintings on the walls aren’t the typical landscapes one might see in a bank, they’re serious examples of contemporary art. It’s here, tucked away in a modest office on the twenty-sixth floor, that Michael Levine, Canada’s most prominent entertainment lawyer, practices his art of the deal.

A compact and energetic figure who plays the telephone with the thought and persuasive insight that Glenn Gould brought to the piano, Michael Allan Levine is jokingly referred to as ‘e.l.’ – everybody’s lawyer. Among his clients are Frank Augustyn, Robert Bateman, Lloyd Robertson, Peter C. Newman, Patrick Watson and Pierre Trudeau. He represents the Charles Bronfman family’s non-profit interests in the CRB Foundation and the Historica foundation.

Levine counts among his friends Moses Znaimer, the Greenberg family, Avie Bennett and Conrad Black. He is connected with the heads of leading publishing houses Random House and Penguin and such major television and film studios as Viacom, Disney and Columbia.

Not content with being a lawyer and an agent, Levine has acted as the executive producer on a slew of films and television documentary series over the past 20 years. Among his credits are The Terry Fox Story, The Struggle for Democracy, Hollywoodism, The Danger Tree, The Land that Devours Ships, The Girl in The Photograph – the Kim Phuc Story and Just a Minute – the CRB Foundation’s Heritage series.

He has worked on projects with Sir Martin Gilbert, Michael Ignatieff and the discoverer of the Titanic, Robert Ballard.

Levine is the chair of Westwood Creative Artists and ceo of WCA Film & Television Ltd., talent agencies which represent a large roster of film craftspeople, directors and, most particularly, writers. Among the authors he represents either as an agent or as chair of wca are Mordecai Richler, Neil Bissoondath, Bonnie Burnard, Barbara Gowdy and Rohinton Mistry. Thanks to his longstanding friendship with Moses Znaimer, Levine is also the chair of BravoFact, which gives grants to artists for videos which are later broadcast on Bravo! He is the executive director of the CRB Foundation and is involved through the Bronfmans in the running of Historica, funders of a variety of projects, ranging from Canadian History Fairs for children to the documentary series The Canadians, hosted by Patrick Watson.

What is most fascinating about Levine, though, is that the credits he takes only reflect a fraction of his involvement in the Canadian entertainment industries. He regularly juggles the interests of financial institutions with artists, directors with producers, authors with publishers and network executives with broadcasters.

Levine has been involved with the Toronto International Film Festival, tvontario, the Simon Fraser University Book Publishing Program and the Royal Ontario Museum. He was there when Citytv began to syndicate shows, when Telefilm Canada replaced the old Canadian Film Development Corporation and when Alliance Communications was being formed.

Trying to piece together what Levine does, and for whom, is rather like assembling one of the vast puzzles the second Mrs. Kane tried to do in Citizen Kane: difficult to the point of being ultimately futile.

Levine, the man, is easier to get to know. Leaning back on his chair, behind a huge desk with piles of papers neatly categorized according to subject, the fit and snappily dressed lawyer recalls his past.

‘I was one of those classic bourgeois left-wing kids who believed in the principles of the labor movement although I had come from a family of employers. As far as I can garner, from my grandfather, who was born in 1867, on, the family was basically in clothing in one way or another. At one point, when my father was an equal partner, the company was the largest manufacturer of uniforms in the country. He never suffered a strike; he was a great liberal, a believer in social justice. I grew up at his knee believing in those things.’

After graduating from the University of Toronto’s law school in 1968, Levine briefly considered a career in the labor field but found the people he met to be less idealistic than he had anticipated. He left Toronto for Tanzania, where he worked for cida (the Canadian International Development Agency) as senior transport economist.

Levine recalls that period as ‘the ultimate expression of my idealism. I wanted to make a difference. My then very young wife and I both felt that we had very privileged backgrounds and wanted to give something back. But as is so often the case, we probably gained more than we gave in the sense of seeing the world and growing as individuals.’

Returning to Toronto during the winter of 1970, Levine decided to enter a new field, entertainment law. It was quite a departure for the young man, who had worked assiduously for the Liberal Party during the Pearson era in the ’60s and had just finished a close association with Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere.

‘What changed me politically,’ recalls Levine, ‘were three assassinations. I think the pivotal moments of my life were the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King. It’s difficult for this generation, which reads about the exploits of Mr. Kennedy in the bedroom, to appreciate the sense of idealism and the sense of wonder and youth and energy that he brought to the ’60s. Even with the mistakes, the Cubas and all that, it seemed to be a golden moment. It all seemed pretty hollow after the Chicago convention of 1968 [when police attacked the hippies].’

Speaking precisely of his own career choices, Levine adds, ‘the combination of having been frustrated by labor law and being politically frustrated and also having married someone who really didn’t like the political life, drove me to do more serious things.’

Entertainment law was hardly an obvious field for an ambitious attorney. The National Film Board and the cbc still dominated film and television and there didn’t seem to be much room for growth in the private sector. But Levine’s decision proved prescient and, as the entertainment industry matured, he was able to find new applications for the idealism he felt in the ’60s.

In the spring of 1971, he began to work with William Rosenfeld, who headed up one of the few law firms in the country that had dealings with the then nascent entertainment industry.

‘Bill was a Rhodes scholar and although not himself personally interested in the entertainment industry, had come from a father and an uncle who were both deeply involved,’ recounts Levine. ‘I worked as his junior and was involved in the sale of Astral to the Greenberg family and the Edgar Bronfman family. I stayed on for a few years working for them.’

In 1973, shortly before becoming a partner in Rosenfeld’s firm, Levine picked up his first personality client, Brian Linehan. Possessed of an encyclopedic knowledge of the film business, Linehan showed a flair for interviewing celebrities on Citytv, then in its infancy as a broadcaster.

Levine got a call from Laurie Fein, then president of Astral Television, asking, ‘ ‘Would you meet Brian Linehan, he’s negotiating with this monster named Znaimer and he needs help!’ I went in and Moses, in his incredibly dynamic but sometimes aggressive way, said ‘I hate lawyers. I should throw you down the stairs but you fascinate me. What do you want?’ And I said, ‘Half the program.’ In a moment of weakness, from which he’s never recovered, Moses said ‘Yes.’ ‘

What Znaimer had encountered that morning was the now legendary Levine negotiating style. Though Levine is highly successful at representing his clients, he achieves his results in a style that is very reminiscent of the liberal-minded ’60s.

‘I’m not confrontational,’ explains Levine. ‘The art of negotiation is the art of understanding where the other person is coming from. It’s really easy to know what you want, and obviously that remains foremost in your mind. But I think people have a sense of dignity, a sense of need, a sense of entitlement. Unless you can negotiate in a way that honors that, in the final analysis, you get less.’

Levine’s style isn’t just diplomatic, of course; it’s highly pragmatic. ‘It’s about understanding power,’ he continues. ‘When you have it, treat it with dignity. And when you don’t have strength, find a position that allows your client a chance to maximize their potential. I’ve always believed in leaving something on the table for the other fellow.’

The Linehan brouhaha started Znaimer and Levine off on their great friendship, one that has affected the course of the Canadian entertainment industries. The two were believers, early on, in a rethinking of how Canadian culture should operate. Instead of relying solely on government subsidies, they preferred the development of a private sector which would create works based on an industrial model. They relished placing themselves, and their people, in situations where failure and success could be measured without a governmental safety net because of their absolute confidence in Canadian talent.

During the rest of the ’70s, as Levine’s practice began to grow, Znaimer made a point of introducing the now well-known entertainment lawyer to Patrick Watson and Peter C. Newman. They joined Levine’s client list, as did many others including, on occasion, Znaimer himself.

The next big step forward for Levine was his involvement in The Terry Fox Story.

Like many Canadians, Levine had watched in fascination as Terry Fox attempted to run across the country after losing one leg to cancer. A Canadian nationalist, Levine was deeply impressed that ‘the whole run took place around the time of the first Quebec referendum. It was so wonderful to see this young man, in Trudeau’s terms, ‘speak for Canada,’ going across our absolutely beautiful geography, showing us what we shared, while certain members of our society were trying to tell us that we didn’t share anything.

‘When Terry fell at Thunder Bay,’ Levine continues, ‘my friend Arthur Weinthal, who then ran entertainment programming at ctv, called me because by that time I was representing people like Frank Augustyn of the National Ballet and he wanted to put together a telethon for Baton and ctv. I helped him by making some phone calls to personalities.’

At that point, film producer Robert Cooper contacted Levine to acquire the rights for Fox’s story. ‘It turned out that the trustees of the Terry Fox trust included Izzy Sharp of the Four Seasons Hotel and Herb Solway from the law firm of Goodman and Goodman. I was still part of a boutique law firm [with Bill Rosenfeld and others], and in my penchant for negotiating, I negotiated the rights for the Terry Fox story and merged my law firm into Goodman’s.’

Another Rosenfeld, Gersten, worked with Levine to give Cooper ‘the moral and financial support he needed to make the film. We went to see the film and there up on the screen were our names as executive producers.’

With that credit and the move to what is now Goodman Phillips and Vineberg, Levine had set himself up as the premier deal maker in the country.

By 1982, he was connected to the major tv executives, film producers, journalists, broadcasters, non-fiction writers and performing artists in the country.

While Levine’s practice continued to grow, he was able to work on a number of personal projects, the most exciting of which involved the discovery of the Titanic. Through a friend, Dr. Joseph MacInnis, the underwater explorer whose film The Land That Devours Ships he had helped to produce, Levine was introduced to Robert Ballard.

‘Basically, Ballard said to me, ‘Levine, I’m a spy for the U.S. Navy. I’m the guy who’s looking for Russian subs and I’m testing a lot of new equipment for them. They want me to go on an expedition with the French to look for other stuff. I want to look for the Titanic.’ ‘

He asked Levine to raise money for a film crew. Enterprising as ever, Levine cast his net widely, trying to get money in London, New York and Germany with little success. Time was of the essence – it was 1983 and Ballard’s expedition was due to depart in 1985 – so Levine decided to try his luck at home. Through personal contacts at ctv, the Toronto Sun and Madison Press, he was able to cobble together enough funds to assemble a crew to film Ballard’s adventure.

‘The rest is history.’ Levine smiles at the recollection. ‘Ballard went out and discovered the Titanic. I got the first images at my home. The Sun had the story. So did ctv, which had world media rights to the discovery. All hell broke loose in the u.s. because they thought we had sold the news. I had a huge fight with the Secretary of the Navy. The u.s. networks ended up stealing the images off the satellite. It was a picnic!

I can remember running away from the New York Times, who were trying to interview me, and over my shoulder I said, ‘I always wanted to be interviewed by the Times, but not today!’ ‘

Levine considers three men to be his mentors in the entertainment field – Moses Znaimer, Arthur Weinthal and Patrick Watson. It was while working with Levine on The Struggle for Democracy (1988), their Gemini award-winning documentary series, that Watson received an urgent call.

‘It was Michael on the line, telling me that Charles Bronfman was going to have a brainstorming group at the Foundation headquarters. He wanted me to go and I said ‘No, I can’t, I’m either stuck in the cutting room or on the road shooting.’ But Michael said, ‘Go,’ ‘ Watson recalls.

‘It became perfectly clear that if I didn’t go, there was going to be an earthquake or a poison pill in my coffee. So I found myself in a big room with about 25 people: historians, film people, tv people. We sat around for a whole day trying to come up with an answer to Charles Bronfman’s question which was: if we can use a minute of television time to persuade people that corn flakes or sanitary napkins or Cadillacs are interesting, couldn’t we use the same amount of time to persuade Canadians that Canada is interesting?’

The result was the Heritage Minutes, a series that has run for over a decade and has made Canada far more intriguing to adult, and more importantly, young Canadians.

As his sphere of influence has broadened over the years, Levine has been called on to act as an executive producer for documentaries and tv series. The people he knows and the institutions he works with often have an interest and inclination to invest in worthwhile projects.

His skills as a negotiator can prove helpful, as well. That was the case with Hollywoodism: Jews, Money and the American Dream (1997), Simcha Jacobovici’s award-winning documentary. Jacobovici had adapted a book by Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own, which proposed that the immigrant Jewish moguls who institutionalized the Hollywood studio system had created an American dream to supplant the terrible realities they had faced in Europe.

The premise was interesting, but Jacobovici found himself facing a problem: none of the studios wanted to lease old Hollywood footage for what they feared would be a controversial film.

‘The Jews were afraid that it would be anti-Semitic,’ comments Levine, who came to Jacobovici’s aid and made the film happen. ‘The Japanese didn’t want to get involved in anything that had to do with politics or religion. The Anglo Saxons didn’t want to insult the Jews.

‘I give credit to one person and one person only for breaking the incredible circle: Andrea Bronfman, the wife of Charles Bronfman, with whom I’ve had a friendship since we were children and who frankly trusts me as I trust her. Fortunately, the Bronfmans had taken a large piece of Universal Studios and they opened their vaults.’

For a moment, Levine pauses and one sees that sometimes his style can occasionally be ruthless, if he realizes that diplomacy cannot provide the proper result.

‘I humiliated the other studios into playing ball. I had some conversations that bordered on threats and libel. That seemed to work.’

Jacobovici got the footage he needed for what turned into an award-winning film.

Levine’s passion for Hollywoodism may, in part, be related to his background as, he puts it, ‘a cultural historical Jew as opposed to being a religious person.’

Raised with a belief in fair play and equal access to all people, Levine’s fighting spirit was roused when Jacobovici’s film was threatened by forces of ignorance and suppression. From his liberal Jewish roots, Levine has formed his deep attachment to Canada.

‘If you tolerate your neighbor and you’ve got ingenuity and you work hard, you’re welcome here,’ he notes. ‘The whole idea is to keep this [country] as an open society.

‘I’m a great export nationalist,’ he continues. ‘I believe in excellence. I think incubators, such as the National Film Board, when it functioned well, and Citytv and cbc when they function well, are very important to the country. I was very much a part of Norman Jewison’s effort to create the Canadian Film Centre. To raise our people in our culture, I became involved in a literary agency with the belief that we have excellent people who create work that can make us hold our head up to the rest of the world.’

That literary agency, Westwood Creative Artists and its offshoot WCA Film & TV, is occupying more of Levine’s creative time. The combination of Bruce Westwood’s huge stable of writing talent coupled with Suzanne de Poe’s roster of directors and craftspeople puts the agency in a position to do more than simply manage talent. Levine and his associates can now package films for an international audience. It promises a future for Canadian culture that excites Levine.

‘On the one hand, we have a service industry that is wonderful and on the other hand, we have the Kevin Sullivans, the Michael Ondaatjes and Patricia Rozemas, talents that express themselves through literature and film. To me, the excitement is that Canadians now have a choice of sitting at home and exporting to the world rather than having to go to Hollywood or London or New York. That Mordecai Richler has come home, that Norman Jewison has come home, that Moses Znaimer never left, is a tribute to the fertile field we are now living in.’

Certainly that field would not be as fecund without the presence of Michael Levine.