Casino Famous Quotes

49.​TRUE OR FALSE: 2006’S CASINO ROYALE WAS THE FIRST BOND MOVIE THAT COULD BE WATCHED IN CHINA. True. It was the first film in the James Bond series that the Chinese censor board approved. 50.​TRUE OR FALSE: THE FIRST INTERRACIAL KISS IN TELEVISION HISTORY HAPPENED ON STAR TREK. True. Although the network originally didn’t want to air it, William Shatner reportedly sabotaged all of the other shoots, forcing the network to run the kiss. 51.​TRUE OR FALSE: THE FIRST TELEVISION COMMERCIAL EVER WAS A CAR COMMERCIAL. False. It was actually a commercial for watches, and it aired in 1941. 52.​TRUE OR FALSE: ACTOR JIM CAVIEZEL WAS STRUCK BY LIGHTNING WHILE PORTRAYING JESUS IN THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST. True. Caviezel suffered a large number of calamities during the filming, but this one seemed like a bit of an omen. 53.​TRUE OR FALSE: BRYAN ADAMS’ FAMOUS SONG “SUMMER OF ‘69” IS NAMED AFTER THE SEX POSITION, NOT THE YEAR. True. In fact, Adams was just 9 years old during the summer of 1969. 54.​TRUE OR FALSE: THE ROLLING STONES PERFORMED IN BACK TO THE FUTURE 3. False. But ZZ Top did! 55.​TRUE OR FALSE: THE WORD “FUCK” WAS ONCE SAID OVER 1,000 TIMES IN ONE MOVIE. False. But Swearnet: The Movie came close with the word appearing 935 times—a record amount! 56.​TRUE OR FALSE: BATTLEFIELD EARTH WAS WRITTEN BY THE FOUNDER OF SCIENTOLOGY. True. L. Ron Hubbard was a well-known science fiction writer in addition to being the founder of Scientology.

The leader of the Drexel refugees was Leon Black, a husky, brash, Dartmouth and Harvard Business School graduate in his 30s who was running the Drexel merger group out of New York. Black was a native New Yorker born into privilege. But his world shattered in 1975 when his father, Eli Black, then the chief executive of Chiquita banana importer United Brands, leaped to his death from his office in the Pan Am building above Grand Central Terminal. In the days after his death, United Brands was discovered to have made millions in bribes to Honduran officials in order to reduce taxes on banana exports.

Crucially, most of the existing Harrah’s debt did not have to be refinanced. Because it was not secured by any collateral, suddenly Harrah’s could issue senior debt backed by the company’s assets. It would do so in the LBO deal, pushing $4.5 billion of existing debt to the bottom of the totem pole in a $25 billion debt stack. This was cruel. Those existing unsecured bonds crashed in price as they were last in line to be repaid. But the maneuver allowed Apollo and TPG to issue new debt more cheaply. And it illustrated one of the key legal principles that would echo through this case: Debtholders’ relationship with the company remains strictly contractual. Any rights they have must be bargained for and embedded in documents. The management and board of a company, in contrast, have fiduciary duties which dictate that they maximize shareholder value.

Unlike Millstein, the teams from Oaktree and Appaloosa believed there were higher stakes at play. Private equity firms, they believed—best exemplified by Apollo—had become far too abusive of creditors, wielding legal documents and hardball negotiating tactics as swords to take value from loan and bondholders that simply did not belong to them. To Oaktree and Appaloosa, nothing less than the sanctity of the US capital markets was at stake in this room. The

Jon Huntsman’s 2015 autobiography devoted a full chapter to the Apollo saga, entitling it simply “The Double Cross.” It offered such lines as, “Our earlier experiences with Bain and Blackstone proved there is no honor among thieves or among Wall Street shops. Apollo was no exception…Matlin [a Huntsman board member] had warned us Apollo would attempt to shaft us and Apollo did not disappoint…the route Apollo chose for saving itself was duplicity.

Harrah’s had committed to finishing the new Octavius hotel tower at Caesars Palace and spent $1.1 billion in capital investments in 2008. By 2010, capital investments had dropped to just $160 million. One bellman at The Paris described the years after the Apollo/TPG takeover: “It felt ugly after the buyout. Before you could service the guest, it was a great place to work before those private equity guys took over.” Attrition and hiring freezes meant that employees were often forced to do the work of two people. Customers were suddenly facing longer lines to check in and have their luggage delivered, which proved stressful both for guests and the remaining staff. Holes in the wall weren’t fixed because maintenance crews were let go, and there was no money for repairs anyway. Duct-taped carpet was evident everywhere. The system for delivering and bussing room service orders broke down, leaving carts of food scraps next to elevators and guest rooms, leading customers to complain and forcing the union to intervene.

Apollo was having a difficult time finding candidates for the top spot, and Frissora would have had a hard time finding any job at any other public company. In September 2014, he had left as CEO at Hertz Global citing “personal reasons.” In fact, Hertz was in the middle of a massive accounting scandal where the rental car and equipment company was facing accusations of inflating profits. Carl Icahn had taken a near 10 percent stake and was making noise. Another hedge fund said Frissora had “lost all credibility.” To his surprise, Frissora got a call from an executive search firm just two weeks after leaving Hertz. They asked if he had interest in the Caesars job. He met with Rowan, Sambur, and Bonderman. Apollo claimed it would be a brief six-month bankruptcy, and the job would be fun. Frissora had been the CEO of two public companies, Hertz and auto parts maker Tenneco, and was new to gaming. But Hertz had gone private in a $15 billion LBO in 2006, so he had experience working with private equity. Until the accounting scandal, Hertz had prospered under Frissora. Rowan and Sambur were hoping an experienced operator could impose business discipline they believed Loveman had not.

Rowan liked to point out that Norwegian Cruise Lines, another Apollo company, had 600 subsidiaries. “Did each one of those entities require independent directors?” he would ask rhetorically.

Years later, Rowan recalled that when he had joined Drexel, he believed that he was five years too late—all the money had been made and all the fun had. What he said he had learned from the Drexel blow-up and the subsequent birth of Apollo was that, “you want chaos, you want things to be shaken up, you want the system to be brought down and built up again. Just when you think the world is coming to an end and things are never going to get better, that is the time to build a career and build the next great fortune.

In 1993, on the strength of the Continental turnaround, Bonderman, his younger colleague Coulter, and William Price, an executive with experience at GE Capital and Bain & Co., would together form Texas Pacific Group, a private equity firm jointly headquartered in Fort Worth and San Francisco (in the early days, the founders would joke that they had to explain the company was not a railroad).

Apollo had become a trailblazer in the so-called “distress for control” market where it could buy up loans and bonds at steep discounts. When a troubled company restructured its debt, the paper that creditors had accumulated could then be swapped for stock in the reorganized company. If the company then turned around and improved, those credit investors who took on the risk could then make a windfall.

Hollywood Boulevard at night was a dream in neon. Mickey cruised along the strip, colorful lights blurring by like hallucinations. On his right, the El Capitan Theatre lured customers in like a Vegas casino, while the Walk of Fame preserved stardom on his left. Tourists bustled beneath the blinking signs like extras in the giant story of this land of stories, hoping for a real-life glimpse of that other world just behind the veneer of this place. In the ’50s, Hollywood Boulevard had looked different—less buildings, less vehicles, less pedestrians—but the aura of the strip, the energy, hadn’t changed at all.

you want chaos, you want things to be shaken up, you want the system to be brought down and built up again. Just when you think the world is coming to an end and things are never going to get better, that is the time to build a career and build the next great fortune.