Studios celebrate their box office hits — unless it’s Paramount, where even success becomes opaque.
Tom Cruise’s $400 million Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning was produced by Skydance Films for Paramount, but Skydance also wants to acquire Paramount, an ambition mired in layers of Trumpian and dynastic complexity. Indeed, the intrigues are reminiscent of those of Barry Diller, the onetime Paramount chief whose dealmaking forays ended in defeat, but then success.
Diller’s new memoir, titled Who Knew, details double-crosses and plot twists among Hollywood majors that could justify its rebranding as Who Cares.
Despite the success of Mission: Impossible, the Skydance morass may trigger a reversal for David Ellison and his billionaire father, Larry. It could further imperil the CBS network and the future of its revered 60 Minutes as well as redefine Donald Trump’s policy toward future mergers and acquisitions.
As I said, who cares? Except all this adds perspective to those of us who want to learn more about Diller’s contentious adventures at Paramount, Fox, the Fox Network, Universal and Vivendi where he was up against Charles Bluhdorn, Marvin Davis, Edgar Bronfman and Rupert Murdoch among others. A frustrated Diller moved on from these power plays to foster a new domain in technology ranging from QVC to Expedia.
Along the way, Diller was frustrated by the fact that, despite CEO titles, he was unable to shake off his status as “an employee,” not a true owner. As such, he shares that attitude with the Ellisons, whose wealth is based on Oracle, not an entertainment company.
With their Paramount bid, the Ellisons confronted the resistance of Shari Redstone, Sumner’s daughter and Paramount’s biggest shareholder. Sound familiar? Sumner Redstone, Shari’s father, bitterly fought Diller in an epochal 1994 battle for control of Paramount.
As a central figure in so many Hollywood wars, Diller’s memoir is being read with interest by combatants and victims who admired his ambitions but distrusted his morals and management skills. Having risen quickly at the ABC television network, Diller himself was startled when Bluhdorn, then “owner” of Paramount, offered him the job of studio chief. Bluhdorn had become fed up with the destructive infighting between Bob Evans and Frank Yablans (personal note: I had earlier quit my job at Paramount for the same reason).
Diller admitted he felt alien to the movie business and suffered a disastrous initiation before hiring Michael Eisner as his key film executive. Diller was also haunted at the time that rumors of his personal life as a gay man would hurt his corporate ambitions. Ted Turner, he claimed, was antisemitic as well as anti-gay, both of which Turner denies.
In his first Paramount episodes Diller believed studios were too dependent on storied filmmakers and their pet projects and steered his slate away from the Godfathers and Rosemary’s Babys to favored fare like Saturday Night Fever and Flashdance. He later reversed himself and financed Reds with Warren Beatty.
After the death of his tempestuous mentor Bluhdorn, who “foamed at the mouth” when angry (Diller’s words), Diller ventured to Fox whose boss, Marvin Davis, lacked the billions in funding that he boasted of. Diller welcomed the takeover by Murdoch but found himself again pleading with bankers who were themselves suspicious that Murdoch was desperately overextended.
Through all this Diller was re-creating his personal life, falling in love with Diane von Furstenberg, a beautiful if ferocious designer. They were together, then separated, and then married in 2001.
Many who knew and did business with Diller have asked, why did he write this candid, superbly detailed book? In his personal encounters Diller himself presented as an argumentative and remote figure. His book, by contrast, is almost convivial, and vivid in its description of Diller’s remarkable philanthropic activities – his island on the Hudson River and the fabled High Line.
“Who knew” the real Diller? And “who cared”? He wanted us to care.
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