Philip F Anschutz

For years, author Clive Cussler has boasted on his website that his Dirk Pitt adventure series sold more than 100 million books. He made the same claim in a 2005 legal document signed under penalty of perjury. But when pressed Friday on the witness stand, Cussler acknowledged he had been warned in the late 1990s that the 100 million number was unreliable.

Attorneys for Philip Anschutz allege that author Clive Cussler duped the Denver industrialist into paying $10 million for film rights to the adventure novel "Sahara" by flagrantly inflating his book sales to more than 100 million copies. "Cussler and his agent had gotten away with these numbers for years," said Alan Rader, Anschutz's lawyer. "It was a lie and it doomed the movie." The claim is "ridiculous," Cussler said Thursday outside a courtroom at Los Angeles County Superior Court.

After coming up dry on such costly movie flops as "Around the World in 80 Days" and "Sahara," Hollywood's highest-rolling wildcatter is looking for his first gusher. And once again, Philip Anschutz is risking big.

Adding to its array of properties in its attempt to become the dominant player in Southern California sports, L.A. Arena Co. and its majority owners, Philip Anschutz and Ed Roski, have exercised an option to buy 25% of the Lakers. Terms of the deal, announced Wednesday, were not disclosed. The option was granted on June 14, 1996, in conjunction with the Lakers' agreeing to become a tenant in the new Staples Center, a $300-plus million, 20,000-seat downtown facility that will also house L.A.

In the film "Adaptation," a screenwriting instructor named Robert McKee humiliates a struggling scribe played by actor Nicolas Cage. Launching into an obscenity-laced tirade, the McKee character screams, "You, my friend, don't know crap about life! And why are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie? I don't have any bloody use for it!" The real-life McKee turned in an equally dramatic performance last week in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom.

Since Philip Anschutz became one of the nation's youngest billionaires at 42, he has enjoyed a low profile. The publicity-shy tycoon routinely refuses to talk to reporters, even though he owns daily newspapers in San Francisco, Washington and Baltimore. The last time he sat down for an on-the-record interview was in 1974. Anschutz also prefers to stay out of courthouses, despite spending a small fortune on litigation and attorney fees.

A probe of Qwest Communications International Inc. was closed by a House panel after it found no evidence to link founder Philip Anschutz to an accounting scandal. The investigators' interview with Joseph Nacchio, Qwest's former chief executive, produced no evidence that Anschutz helped Qwest overstate revenue, a committee spokesman said. Anschutz has said he had only a ceremonial role at Qwest, the fourth-biggest U.S. local-telephone company.

Since Philip Anschutz let out that he may be planning to build a football stadium in downtown Los Angeles, the Colorado billionaire has created a buzz about where he might put such a massive project. But many within the commercial real estate industry and in economic development agencies are skeptical that such a plan is financially or politically feasible, even if City Hall agrees to help.

Qwest Communications International Inc. founder and director Philip Anschutz spoke by phone with congressional investigators examining his knowledge of the company's financial troubles, a source close to the Denver billionaire confirmed. House Energy and Commerce Committee staff members were focusing on sales of nearly 6.1 million shares in May and June 2001 that netted $213.5 million for Anschutz Corp., solely owned by Anschutz.