juggling act

Garland’s gift of gab

When Mark Zucker, president of distribution for Sony Pictures Releasing International, gets together with his old friend, entertainment and marketing consultant David Garland, PR 1973, he expects to be pitched – and not just movies.

“I was at his house the other day for a barbecue and he tried to get me on the local butcher’s meat delivery list,” Zucker says, joking. “David is a non-stop selling machine.”

An energetic, enthusiastic entrepreneur and a former executive at Paramount Pictures, where he met Zucker in 1975, Garland’s got more to sell than a Wal-Mart manager on Black Friday. The Los Angeles-based die-hard Gator who’s helped market 1,000 movies, including Grease, Saturday Night Fever and The Empire Strikes Back, is involved in nearly 30 eclectic enterprises. He’s developing real estate in Mexico’s Baja Peninsula; producing and promoting feature films, documentaries and TV shows; and marketing high-tech products, among other projects.

Garland, who also worked for Disney and Fox, has always taken as many chances as possible. As a kid, he’d drop eight lines into the Atlantic Ocean when he fished off the Jacksonville Beach Pier.

“I caught more fish,” Garland says.

Over the years, he’s turned this realization into his modus operandi, notes Tom Campanella, who recently retired after 40 years at Paramount, where he last served as executive vice president of worldwide marketing/advertising.

“David has created his own path,” Campanella says.

It helps that he’s endearing, industrious and focused, Campanella says.

Garland’s also fiercely independent and yet, at the same time, a natural collaborator and a master networker. After building a successful Hollywood studio career – he served as Paramount’s vice president for promotions and product placement and joined John Wayne and Jessica Lange on publicity tours – he ventured out on his own in 1993.

“I like to put all my energies into what I do best,” he says.

What he does best is grant each project the kind of attention Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood) eventually gives Maggie (Hilary Swank) in Million Dollar Baby. Here are just a few examples:

• Describing raising money and marketing 12 condo projects in Baja, Garland flashes his mega-watt smile, saying, “It’s the next Miami Beach, real estate wise.”
• Talking about remaking the old TV show Route 66 as a movie, he sounds driven. He’s spoken with car companies about sponsorship and with his buddy Sam Elliott about playing a part in the film. “It’s Risky Business meets The Fast and The Furious,” he says.
• Pitching Natural Outlaws, an environmental A-Team TV show he’s developing, he declares, “Families with kids need a show like that.” 
• Bringing up Robbie Knievel (Evel’s son), he shakes his head in a sign of concern for the daredevil’s well being. “You know the towers in Dubai?” he says. “Robbie’s hoping to jump from one to the other.” Garland hopes to broadcast it live worldwide – on cellphones.

“When I take something on,” Garland says, “I hit the ground running.”

How does he manage to deliver for such a large, varied group?

“He’s extremely well connected,” says Zucker, a 23-year veteran of Sony and Columbia Pictures. “He’s the only person I know who’s done really well without a job.”

Garland started in the entertainment industry as a teenager, working for ABC Florida State Theaters, the largest chain in the world at the time, which his father, Harvey, ran from an office above the 1,900-seat Florida Theatre in Jacksonville.

“I’m real proud of my dad,” says Garland, a native Floridian who traces his family roots to Dudley Farm in Newberry, a state park since 2001. “He’s my hero. I’ve worked for countless companies. He’s worked for one for 44 years.”

Assisting ABC’s vice president of promotion, Garland helped publicize Mia Farrow’s Rosemary’s Baby – as his first assignment.

Recently, he returned to the Florida Theatre for the Jacksonville Film Festival showing of a Bollywood film he’s promoting, The Gold Bracelet. In the lobby, he pointed at a statue, The Blushing Girl, saying, “That used to be in my house. My Mom donated it. Wait, that sounds pretentious – here’s what happened: When the theater closed, they auctioned everything off, and my dad bought the statue. When the theater reopened, my mom wanted it back in its original place.”

Garland often returns to Florida. In November, he’ll be at the Fort Lauderdale Film Festival to represent Local Color, directed by Midnight Run screenwriter George Gallo, and Rob Stewart’s  Sharkwater. He’s bringing a 17-foot fiberglass shark to Fort Lauderdale and another showing, in Key West.

When he’s in the South, he always stops in North Florida – to visit his father and other family members and friends in Jacksonville, where he grew up, and to go to football games and other UF functions in Gainesville. His e-mail address name is gatorgarland and he often finds himself at a Gator store, shopping for his daughters, 10-year-old Delainey and 18-year-old Remington.

“My little one, Delainey, told me before I came here this time, ‘I wear size 7 flip flops,’ ” he says, letting out a warm, hearty laugh.

In LA, Garland keeps his colligate allegiance in check. Yeah, right.

“He lets everyone know he’s a Gator,” Campanella says.

As the Gators geared up to take on the Bruins in the 2006 National Championship in basketball, Garland took bets from his UCLA friends. “I’m still collecting checks,” he says, letting out a Joakim Noah-like exclamation-point holler.

As a UF student, Garland honed his marketing skills by joining Student Government Productions, eventually becoming chairman. Among other acts, he booked Elton John at the Florida Gym. When the bespectacled Brit requested 40 limos for his entourage, Garland, knowing Gainesville had only one, asked his fraternity brothers to bring their parents’ black Lincolns and Cadillacs.

He also gained experience by organizing such events as his fraternity’s Derby, which pitted sororities against each other. And, being true to his family tradition, he lined up such films as the French Connection and Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid at UF’s Plaza of the Americas.

His entrepreneurial spirit kept him from accepting a job offer from Disney after he graduated. He stayed in Gainesville another year to continue booking musical acts and take post-baccalaureate classes. In 1974, he went to Texas to produce Roy Rogers’ first film in 25 years.

In 1975, he decided to gain studio experience and started working at Paramount. It paid off immediately, he says. He learned to focus and built up his professional stamina working with Jeffrey Katzenberg, who went on to become one of Steven Spielberg’s two partners at DreamWorks.

“I remember Katzenberg telling me on my first day, ‘If you don’t show up on Saturday and Sunday, don’t bother showing up on Monday,’ ” Garland recalls.

This work ethic has stayed with Garland to this day. He may appear indiscriminate in picking projects – but he chooses carefully.

“I turn down projects I don’t like. I can’t sell something I don’t believe in,” he says. “I don’t want to lie. I get involved in projects with my heart, not my head. I often take points or stocks instead of getting paid. I’m available 24 hours a day.” In a rare moment, Garland pauses, then adds, “Except when my daughters ask me to turn my phone off [he averages 7,800 minutes a month], or if I’m out fishing.”

–Boaz Dvir