It’s Not Enough To Dream
Haresh Shah
There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. Oscar Wilde
It’s not unusual for small but ambitious publishers to be bitten by the idea of adding Playboy to their stable of publications. Bitten even harder are the ones who have had no familiarity with the publishing business. But they have dreams and the desire and some money to spare that drive them to near obsession, do everything in their power to buy the Playboy license. Because in their dreams and the desires what they are thinking is: If only I can get to publish Playboy! At this point they are not thinking what it really takes to undertake such a project. Their psychological business plans have no provision for what if it doesn’t quite work out?
The letter came forwarded from Andreas Odenwald – our editor-in-chief in Germany. Guess, this is for you amigo, said his scribble. It’s an inquiry letter from Poland from the company called Elgaz. Attached to it is a recommendation letter from their German partners, a PVC window manufacturers, vouching for the serious intent and the solid financial standing of this Polish company involved in various businesses, among them the international video distribution.
What is this with video distributors wanting to be magazine publishers? Accompanying the inquiry is a video cassette giving you a virtual tour of Elgaz businesses and facilities in Gdańsk. Quite impressive, considering that this is 1991 – years and years ahead of the virtual tour ever came into existence. I reflect upon the fact that I have also had a similar inquiry from Video Vision from South Africa. The owner, Anant Singh had actually stopped by my office one evening. After I explained what was actually involved and once he understood, he let it pass. Quite the contrary with Janusz Lekztoń – the young entrepreneur of Elgaz. For him, wanting to publish Playboy is not just a business proposition, it is his lifelong dream.
Following my meeting with Beata (Milewska) that January morning, I meet with Lekztoń’s designate, the journalist Jerzy Mazur (Jurek) for coffee and agree to have lunch with his boss Lekztoń and his associates the next day.
Boyish and pudgy, Lekztoń doesn’t speak any English. Neither do the ones accompanying him, except Jurek, who also spoke Spanish. From what I understood, Elgaz, as the name suggests was once a company that supplied household and industrial natural gas in Poland, the company Lekztoń had come to inherit during the shuffle at the fall of the communist era. No longer in gas business, his main income stream currently is international video distribution. That is, to acquire territorial rights, have the foreign movies dubbed in Polish and distribute them to the households through retail outlets.
Of the five of us sitting around the table, the interchange takes place only between Jurek and I. He is the communicator for Lekztoń, and if we were to reach an agreement, it would be him who would become the editor and the publisher. Though he would later tell me that he too had in mind Tomasz Raczek as his editor. I spend a pleasant lunch with Lekztoń and his associates. We stroll around the old town square with his photographer trailing us. They are gracious hosts and want to show me the past and fortunately undestroyed glory of one of the Europe’s most beautiful town squares.
The square is garlanded by the rows of three to five stories buildings butted together, each painted individually in vibrant colors that wear the sunny glow of the warm fall leaves – yellows, oranges, reds and pinks and the cooler but equally a s vibrant aqua marine and green. Those fairy tale houses remind me of the canal front row houses in Amsterdam and also the houses on Prague’s Old town Square. To see them within a day of having saddened by those dour panaleks as the Czechs call their pre-fabed clapped together wall panels communist housing complexes and juxtapose them with the Old Town houses make for a quick history lesson in the country’s recent past. Paved cobblestones, the square takes me to what must have been the glorious past of Poland.
We eat at one of the traditional Polish restaurants, table bedecked with crisp white table clothes under the bright yellow ones, propped on which are turquoise napkins. Antique wall hangings and all. They are trying to show me the best that their country has to offer, which makes for a very pleasant and laid back afternoon.
Even though it’s clear to me that other than his dream and the intense desire to be Playboy publisher, Lekztoń and his people don’t have a clue about how magazines are made. And yet, Lekztoń has already produced a “test issue” in the form of a complete prototype dummy which they present to me. It contains basic Playboy layout with lot of crudely photographed “original” nudes, assigned and produced by Lekztoń himself. His personal vision of Playboy. In his book Jurek reports Lekztoń saying, he spent several hundred million zlotys to create the “sample issue”. Even though Jurek warns him that Playboy rarely allows it’s international editions to publish domestic photos. The majority of the Playmates are born in U.S.A.. Only a few are models from other countries and they usually apply for American citizenship.
When I met him, I thought Jurek was quite knowledgeable and an earnest journalist. Where he got the above notion and the information is a mystery to me. Perhaps his own perception of how things worked at Playboy. But what I do believe to be true is him saying that Lekztoń’s mind the text in the magazine existed just to fill the pages and therefore not worth his while to pursue. He thought that Jurek could write most of it, if not all. At least he didn’t even pretend to have his readers buying his version of the magazine for the interviews. Lekztoń had enough financial backing – he had everything that Polish Playboy could buy for money, continues Jurek. But I am getting ahead of myself. I thank Lekztoń for his hospitality and tell him that we weren’t yet quite ready to launch in Poland, but would certainly meet with him once again when the time comes.
Ten months later I return to Poland and hop a plane from Warsaw to Gdańsk and visit the offices of Elgaz. I no longer remember the offices as such, but what I remember very distinctly is their warehouse size space furnished with large industrial bare metal shelves. Piled onto them are hundreds and hundreds of VCR machines. Masters and slaves. Rolf (Dolina) defines them for me. He has accompanied me to Gdańsk. Seeing question mark on my face, he explains: the ones on the top contained the master tapes and the bottom ones – the slaves were there to copy them, one at a time. All those machines, hissing and blinking in chorus!
As we stroll down the wide aisles of the masters and slaves operation and hear Lekztoń talk and explain and watch the expressions on his face, no longer sure of being considered for the license, I notice a certain sadness color his face. His lifelong dream of publishing Playboy in Poland fading, he seems lost. That’s how much smitten he is. I wonder if he ever realizes that he would be far from being qualified to publish any magazine, let alone Playboy. Had he by a fluke of nature ever gotten to do Playboy, what a tragedy would that be?
Months later we would sign with Rolf – form a joint venture company with additional participation of Beata (Milewska) and Tomasz (Zięba). It takes another year before we’re ready to launch in Poland with the first issue coming out in November of 1992, with the December cover date.
It’s a big success. While Hungary and Czechoslovakia bring in minimum to fair revenues, Poland being the much larger market, turns out to be quite profitable business venture. The magazine becomes talk of the town. Lekztoń and Jurek are obviously distraught and disappointed, but Jurek certainly understands why we would choose Beata over Lekztoń as our publisher. Still, I give Lekztoń the credit for being the first one from Poland not only to envision Playboy in the Polish market,, but also pursue it till the end.
A year later, I receive a press clipping of an excerpt from the book Jurek is writing about his experience working with Lekztoń. The excerpted chapter is titled: How the Gdynia Playboy Was Not Created. Enclosed also is a cover letter from Jurek. He is kind enough to have translated the contents of the clipping for me. Mentioned in it is something Tomasz Raczek supposedly said in an interview: Beata Milewska won the editorial contest organized by the American editors. Interesting. I wonder how and from where Jurek got such a notion? Plain old gossip machine? Sour grapes?
I guess even before Jurek started working with Lekztoń, he too was as bitten and smitten by the idea of brining Playboy to his country, as he narrates in the opening paragraph of the excerpt: In 1986 I was standing at the Playboy building in Chicago and I thought that the socialist system will fall some day and Playboy will enter East Europe. But I knew that only a man with big financial background may talk about the license with Christie Hefner. For him Lekztoń turned out to be that man with big financial background – and therefore a perfect man to team up with to make his dream come true. But fortunately for him and for us, the flamboyant Lekztoń would run through his fortune. Now on his own, Jurek returns back to journalism and ends his letter with telling me: It (the book) will be published at the end of this year – probably at the same time as when Lekztoń will face a trial for financial abuse.
© Haresh Shah 2015
Illustration: Celia Rose Marks
SISTER SITE
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DON’T GO AWAY
No, it’s not the title of the next post. But I feel I need bit of a break to mull over the next several posts that I hope to write. I don’t want to promise the exact date of the return, but hope to make it a short break to last between two to four weeks. By then, the spring will be just around the corner. Stay tuned.
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