In January 1999, Drabinsky and Gottlieb were charged with 16 counts of securities fraud and conspiracy in New York, where they face up to 140 years in prison and fines of up to $16 million if convicted. A civil suit by the Securities and Exchange Commission came next, followed by OSC charges. Drabinsky responded by calling a press conference, blaming the new Livent management for “motivating American and Canadian authorities to take quick and ill-conceived action against us.”
The duo refused to surrender to U.S. authorities, effectively becoming fugitives from justice. Unbowed, Drabinsky recalibrated his ambitions for a smaller stage, becoming a consultant for his loyal friends, including Conrad Black, Frank Stronach, and Lantos. He organized the “Pamela Wallin Cultural Weekends” at an Ontario resort with various performers, including Diana Krall and the National Ballet of Canada: “You could hear the grunts and groans and see the sweat on the dancers,” says Wallin. “He wanted people to understand what was required to perform.”
In 2002, the year he and Gottlieb were charged criminally in Canada, Drabinsky announced plans to stage a revival of the 1980 British play The Dresser on Broadway. “My intention is not to wither and die but to keep working,’’ he told the New York Times, insisting that he expected no trouble finding financial backers and mounting the production from afar through a general manager.
His ambitions found fuller expression at Visual Bible International Inc., a former uranium company traded in the U.S. over-the-counter market that produced Christian Bible-themed DVDs. Drabinsky and Gottlieb were hired in 2002 to produce The Gospel of John. Then-chairman of the board, Steven Small, a Toronto dentist, was concerned about their involvement, but Drabinsky charmed him into a 15-minute meeting to which he and Gottlieb showed up with 20 huge three-ring binders. “They spent three hours showing me point by point how they were innocent,” says Small. “He persuaded me.”
Soon, however, the film was dramatically over budget, Small says. Nothing was tendered: “A job for half a million went to the person Garth thought was the best.” Several production accountants quit.
Drabinsky persuaded the board the film should have limited theatrical release in movie houses. “He became convinced he could win an Oscar,” says Small. Ever the showman, he wanted to generate buzz with a $500-a-plate charity gala, inviting religious thought leaders. Concerned the plans were beyond the reach of the company, Small resigned.
The Gospel of St. John, narrated by Plummer, premiered at the Toronto film festival to critical praise, though DVD sales were sluggish, in part because of competition from Mel Gibson’s blockbuster The Passion of the Christ. Still, Drabinsky and Gottlieb were lined up to produce the Book of Mark. Then came another lawsuit, launched by Visual’s former chief financial officer, that alleged the two were in “de facto control over the business and affairs of [Visual Bible]” and exercised “power and authority as if they were directors or officers.” Drabinsky laughed off the lawsuit as “a joke.” In 2004, the RCMP launched an investigation into whether Drabinsky and Gottlieb’s involvement was in violation of their bail agreement, which forbade them from serving as a director or officer in any public company. Soon the matter was moot: the company filed for bankruptcy protection in April 2005.
Months later, Drabinsky staged another, more personal event: his wedding to Elizabeth Winford at Toronto’s Four Seasons hotel, attended by old Broadway colleagues, including Plummer, Chita Rivera and director Hal Prince. The next year, Drabinsky sold his reality show Triple Sensation to the CBC, pitched as a cross between Bravo!’s Inside the Actor’s Studio and the audition scenes in the movie Billy Elliot. Drabinsky is executive producer and a judge on the show, which features 12 young contestants competing for a $150,000 performing arts scholarship.
Drabinsky expressed confidence he’d be vindicated, says one friend: “He said, ‘Don’t listen to the Crown’s case. Listen to the defence. They’re going to blow them away.’ ” Drabinsky declined to be interviewed, but friends say despite his remarkable resilience, the past decade has broken him. “This is a man who has been subjected to 10 years of intensive torture,” Lantos says. “He has been stripped of his dignity, of all of his assets, of his liberty to leave the country, his reputation, of every penny he’s ever had and has had to live off the largesse of friends. So of course he doesn’t have the same bluster he had 15 years ago. Far from it. This has managed to break him long before the judge found him guilty.”
Yet some bluster remains. In January 2008, just months before his trial began, Drabinsky sued Triple Sensation producer Alex Ganetakos when she left to pursue another project. The two had a harmonious working relationship. “Alex knew how to manage Garth, and stop people from walking out,” says someone close to the show who compares Drabinsky’s behaviour to that of a spurned lover: “It’s ‘you’re deserting me and I’m going to punish you for it’ or ‘you’ve chosen someone over me and that can’t be done.’ ” Pride fuels everything with Garth, remarks a former colleague. “And the underbelly of pride is shame: he demands everyone look up at him because otherwise they’d be looking down at him.”
The prospect of a permanently grounded Drabinsky, of course, is at odds with his own self-mythology. As he concludes in Closer to the Sun: “It never stops, I just never, ever stop.” Sentencing arguments begin next week; Drabinsky and Gottlieb each face a maximum 34 years in prison. Were this any other story, it would end there. But the phantoms from this opera live on.
Update: Drabinsky and Gottlieb’s three-day sentencing hearing has been deferred until June 3.
