Garth Drabinsky
At first, Garth Drabinsky's comeback seemed to be shaping up like some script from one of his Broadway hits. The highflying producer once credited with revitalizing New York's Great White Way found himself center stage six years ago, starring in the flame-out of his debt-ridden Livent empire and on the run from the Securities and Exchange Commission and a 16-count indictment by the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan. Then last year, back in his hometown of Toronto, where Drabinsky remains a fugitive from U.S. justice and faces an additional 19 charges of alleged fraud regarding Livent, the impresario announced an even unlikelier plot twist: his own resurrection as a showbiz tycoon, producing films based on the Bible for the Christian evangelical market.
But in recent months, Visual Bible International, the Florida company for which Drabinsky coproduced his $10 million film, the Gospel of John, has been embroiled in headline-grabbing lawsuits by former officers amid reports of sagging sales and mounting debts. Drabinsky, 54, dismisses a recent lawsuit as "a joke" and blames Mel Gibson for stealing his thunder. "Obviously we were the flavor of the moment till The Passion took over," he says. "And it was kind of overwhelming."
Now Drabinsky is negotiating a new video deal for his film. But in SEC filings last June, Visual Bible --formerly known as American Uranium--declared that if income didn't materialize, the company could be forced to close up shop. Still, Drabinsky shrugs off any suggestion of impending disaster. "In business careers, there are moments of soaring highs and deep lows," he says. "^You can't lose yourself over either. You have to stay the course."
Drabinsky should know. In the 1980s, his Cineplex Odeon chain was hailed as the savior of the film industry for converting cavernous movie palaces into slick multiplexes with cappuccino bars. But in 1989, its board ousted Drabinsky. He promptly recreated himself as a modern-day Ziegfeld, winning raves and Tony awards for his productions of Ragtime, Show Boat, and Kiss of the Spider Woman .
Despite his 1999 indictment, Drabinsky says he works all over the world as a theatrical consultant. Unlike Martha Stewart, he has no desire to face the legal music in New York. Still, anyone who wrote him off hasn't read his 1995 autobiography. In it, Drabinsky dismissed naysayers who compared him to Icarus of Greek myth. Icarus's woes didn't come from trying to fly too close to the sun, Drabinsky argued: "I think the bastard just gave up too soon." -Marci McDonald
This story appears in the October 11, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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