PLUME: Are any of the projects that were developed in conjunction with Stan Lee Media moving forward?
LEE: No… Well, I shouldn’t say it that quickly. Some of the movie projects that we had at Stan Lee Media I may start pitching – one of them is one of the three movies we’re doing with MGM. Mostly, I’ve been creating new things, but of course I’m going to try to move those other things along, too.
PLUME: In the 10 Questions, you also mentioned that the one project you’ve always wanted to do is the life of Harry Stonehill…
LEE: That’s right… And you don’t know who it is…
PLUME: No, and your parenthetical comment pretty much made the case for why you need to do it…
LEE: I thought that was so great, putting that in. I really was proud of that little parentheses. Actually, he’s a guy I knew when I was in the Army. After the war, he said to me, “Hey Stan… Come to the Philippines with me.” I said, “Why?” And he said, “I found out that they don’t have Christmas cards there. I’m going to buy a batch of Christmas cards and start a business.” I said, “I love ya, Harry, but you’re a lunatic.” And I went back to my comics and he went off to the Philippines. To make along story short, a few years later, he was the wealthiest man in the Philippines. He was a billionaire. He started with the cards, but that was just nonsense. He ended up owning an import/export line with god knows how many steam ships, I think he had the American Tobacco franchise, he started glass factories – he was the biggest thing in the Philippines. At some point, the government fell because of him – there were accusations of graft and corruption – and he claims that the CIA or the FBI or some government agency wanted to get him out of there because he had become more powerful and influential than the United States government. And he started suing the United States government, and the lawsuit – as far as I know – is still going on. They had to get him out of the Philippines by submarine – he thought they were going to kill him – and he ended up Switzerland and England and all over. He’s always corresponded with me – we’ve always stayed friends – and I thought that his life would make a great movie by someone like Oliver Stone.
PLUME: So when will you be writing that screenplay?
LEE: Oh, I’m not. I don’t have time to do that. But I always thought that I would help him by letting people who do do those kind of screenplays know about him. Unfortunately, he was about 85 years-old or so, and he died a couple of weeks ago – so it changes everything a little bit. He was the greatest guy and – until the minute he died – full of energy and fire and vitriol and anger… I just loved him. I said to him once, “Harry, how did you make all your money?” He said, “Stan, all I needed was a piece of chalk, a blackboard, and a roomful of hungry, greedy investors – and I could talk them into anything.” That’s the kind of guy he was. So that’s why I put that down. I wouldn’t have written that answer normally, but it was on my mind because he had recently died and I was thinking of him.
PLUME: You keep mentioning that you “don’t have the time” – what is the one thing that people keep asking you about that you simply can’t find the time to do?
LEE: Everything. Even these interviews… While I’m talking to you, there are people waving to me in the doorway “Hey, come look at this…”, “What about this page?”, and “Did you read that yet?” But I love it – I’m not complaining. I love being busy. And I have a lot of things to write. What I do at my job here at Pow Entertainment is I write ideas for movies, for television shows – then, if MGM or some television network or whoever wants to go along with them, I then have to find a writer to do the actual screenplay or script. I don’t have time to sit down and write the script itself – and, frankly, I’ve written so many things over the years that I don’t want to go back to being just a scriptwriter. I’m in what I consider to be the enviable position of all I have to do is come up with the idea and write an outline that makes it seem like it’s a viable idea that will interest people, and then other people writ the scripts – and I become the executive producer or the producer, depending on how much involvement I have, and I get a creative credit and then move on to the next project.
PLUME: Are you more comfortable with what you’re doing right now than what Stan Lee Media became?
LEE: Stan Lee Media was a disaster, because, unfortunately, my partner – whom I trusted implicitly – turned out to be not an honest man. He’s in Brazil now, in jail, and he’s wanted by the SEC and the FBI and the Justice Department…
PLUME: I think the term is “Financial Vacation”…
LEE: I guess that’s what he’s taking. I’m heartbroken, because I liked the guy. We had been friends for years, and, frankly, I still can’t even believe it. I keep thinking there’s maybe another explanation, but I’m afraid there isn’t.
PLUME: I’m glad you’ve made it out of that situation…
LEE: I’m not totally out yet – there are still lawsuits going on… It’s a nightmare. It really is a nightmare. But I’m trying to get through it as best I can. The funny thing is, up until the time that everything went kaplooey, we were considered to be one of the most successful companies on the internet. All of the internet trade magazines listed us among the top 10, I was doing interviews all over where people were asking me how we did it – I didn’t quite realize that we had an overhead of $1 million a month and we had no money in the bank to pay it.
PLUME: But Stan Lee Media wasn’t alone in that – the story of the dot-com bust is all about things like that…
LEE: But in most cases it was just dumbness that they failed, but unfortunately, ours was linked to – what’s the word – culpability?
PLUME: Here’s hoping you can shake it off.
LEE: Thanks a lot… I’m sure we’ll come out of it sooner or later.
PLUME: I wanted to touch on the Spider-Man film – have you seen the final cut yet?
LEE: No, but I saw the rough cut, which was pretty close, and I loved it. I thought it was just great.
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