It was late June 1984 and I had just gotten the New York Times to do a Sunday Business section feature on my boss, Ben Holloway, the chairman of Equitable Real Estate Group. It was a big deal story -- we had just become a subsidiary of Equitable Life and we were positioning ourselves as the biggest "independent" institutional investment advisor in the real estate industry. We had $30 billion under management and we were trying to expand our pension fund client base.
Anyway the Times sent over a photographer to take Ben's picture. He was an asian fellow, boylike in stature and very soft spoken. You couldn't really tell how old he was, but he was not a boy. We trooped up to the roof of 1285 Avenue of the Americas, Equitable's then headquarters, for one of those skyline shots. The only problem was the 10 foot-high building parapet made it impossible to see the skyline without taking a chance Ben and the photographer would fall off the building. Sometimes photographers would get upset about bonehead pr guys, who didn't scout out shoots adequately, but this guy calmly went to plan B -- a basic head and shoulders picture.
Ben always asked to check out photographers' cameras and we started making small talk. He told us he had just come over to the States from Cambodia. And that he had known a columnist at the Times who had gotten him the photographers job. He then volunteered that a movie was coming out about himself. It would be about the Khmer Rouge atrocities. I said we would have to look out for it.
It was one of those "Oh Yeah" moments. Oh yeah right a movie about this guy. I said to Ben it must be one of those art house documentaries. Well, a few months later the movie came out. It was called "The Killing Fields" and it was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. The actor playing the photographer won Best Supporting Actor.
Dith Pran, the photographer, died over the weekend.
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Jonathan D. Miller
A marketing communication strategist who turned to real estate analysis, Jonathan D. Miller is a foremost interpreter of 21st citistate futures – cities and suburbs alike – seen through the lens of lifestyles and market realities. For more than 20 years (1992-2013), Miller authored Emerging Trends in Real Estate, the leading commercial real estate industry outlook report, published annually by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Urban Land Institute (ULI). He has lectures frequently on trends in real estate, including the future of America's major 24-hour urban centers and sprawling suburbs. He also has been author of ULI’s annual forecasts on infrastructure and its What’s Next? series of forecasts. On a weekly basis, he writes the Trendczar blog for GlobeStreet.com, the real estate news website. Outside his published forecasting work, Miller is a prominent communications/institutional investor-marketing strategist and partner in Miller Ryan LLC, helping corporate clients develop and execute branding and communications programs. He led the re-branding of GMAC Commercial Mortgage to Capmark Financial Group Inc. and he was part of the management team that helped build Equitable Real Estate Investment Management, Inc. (subsequently Lend Lease Real Estate Investments, Inc.) into the leading real estate advisor to pension funds and other real institutional investors. He joined the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the U.S. in 1981, moving to Equitable Real Estate in 1984 as head of Corporate/Marketing Communications. In the 1980's he managed relations for several of the country's most prominent real estate developments including New York's Trump Tower and the Equitable Center. Earlier in his career, Miller was a reporter for Gannett Newspapers. He is a member of the Citistates Group and a board member of NYC Outward Bound Schools and the Center for Employment Opportunities.
