Photograph by Justin Bishop.
V.F. Summit
Barry Diller Reflects On Old Hollywood, His Paramount Days, and Philanthropy
Plus: how Bad News Bears changed the now-I.A.C. chairman's career.
By Maya Kosoff
On Thursday afternoon, at the end of the third-annual, two-day Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit, Barry Diller, the chairman of Expedia and I.A.C. joined Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter in conversation to discuss Diller's legendary career, which has spanned management roles at companies including A.B.C., Paramount Pictures, Fox, and now I.A.C. and Expedia.
Early in the conversation, Carter discussed rumors that Mr. Burns, the acerbic boss on The Simpsons, was based on Diller. "I've heard it all this time, but really, the character that was after me was Marge," Diller deadpanned. What follows is a transcript of Diller's comments on his life and times.
On his early days at Paramount:
"When I got to Paramount, I'd come from television. I was the first person actually to go into the movie business from television. Today they'd say of course, television is a much more creative business. But in those days, people in the movie business sort of peed on people in the television business. I didn't know what I was doing. It took a couple years for me to figure it out and make it what I thought that making it up, it should be. But those two years were a terrible period. I came to Paramount when Godfather II was almost finished in a rough cut. I remember seeing it, and if you remember, it was 'the past' and then it would jump back, and then go forward, and then jump back, and then go forward. Francis Coppolla said he was actually thinking of getting rid of the cross-cutting. He was tortured by this. It became academic and he couldn't change it. And thank god he didn't."
On the turning point for Diller at Paramount:
"I read a script for a movie called Bad News Bears. I thought, this is a really good script. And they said, yes, but it doesn't have auspices, it doesn't have a big director. . . . And I said, I don't like that. I don't come from that world, which is: if you have a good story, that's what you make. You make a good story. You don't make packages. And Bad News Bears was my indicator. It was true to what I simply believed. When it became a success it gave me the energy to throw out everything at Paramount and really start making movies we want to make."
On his attempt to buy Paramount:
"After I left Fox, I went to QVC, and that started to skyrocket. We had this very valuable stock. Sumner Redstone had actually made a deal for Paramount but we thought he had teased it out, that he'd offered too little for it. It was being sold by a company called Paramount Communications. I overbid Sumner Redstone and that eventuated into a six month back-and-forth war. In the end, I didn't do it. He topped our last bid and I didn't top that. The truth is, I should have done it, but I was chicken."
On whether he'd buy Paramount now:
"I don't know why anyone would want a movie company today. They don't make movies; they make hats and whistles. You can't run a successful movie studio unless you're in the franchise business."
On whether he'd buy H.B.O.:
"Of course you buy H.B.O. That's the greatest gig in the world. You get to do whatever you think will satisfy the audience."
On his childhood, and getting into the entertainment business:
"I was frustrated, for sure. My family never thought I would actually work; they thought they would support me and that would be okay. I had no seeming ambition. I didn't want to go to school. That was the big thing. My friends were all going off to college. I didn't like school. I never learned much in school. I read tremendously; that's how I was educated, by reading. I thought, I won't go to school. I'll go to the beach."
"My instinct was I loved the entertainment business. I remember Doris Day's son was my best friend in high school and i went once to Universal to watch her shoot. I thought, I don't want to be in front of that camera, but I want to figure out everything around it. I had no idea how to do it. I was not very engaged in some big ambitious pursuit. But I went to the William Morris copy room and I literally read from A to Z in the file room. . . David Geffen was in the mail room."
On his new public park in New York City, and competitive philanthropy:
"It started after the High Line. Diana Taylor is a friend of ours, and was the chairman of the Hudson River Park Trust. Pier 54 was falling apart. It was a mess. They literally had to tear it down. And they said, would you be interested in rebuilding it? They had some drawings and renderings. It was a rectangle. It had a few trees on it, but it was boring. But I do like parks, to say the least, so if you let us be ambitious about it . . . sure."
"As a matter of fact, I thought, we're building a park, we're not asking for anyone else's money. It's for the public and it's a performance center. It was very ambitious. In fact, we went through community boards and did all this stuff; we had overwhelming positive support. And then this group of three people sued us and in the beginning—they sued us for odd things. Like, there is in the Hudson a fish called the American eel, and it craves light. And they said since we're going to build this flat thing, there wouldn't be any light. To which I said: the Hudson is 167 miles long, why can't the eel go somewhere else? We didn't do an environmental survey. They sued us for things that were odd. I couldn't figure it out until the three people—one of whom was a Durst, like the family killing machine . . . He should have killed his brother, too. . . They didn't have anything to do with what we're doing. It had to do with the anger and revenge they wanted to wreak on the Hudson River Park Trust, because years ago the Hudson River Park Trust had spurned Mr. Durst."
Diller's remarks came as the closing panel of the second day of the third-annual event in San Francisco, which brings together leaders in business, media, Hollywood, and entertainment. Over the course of the two days in San Francisco, Uber C.E.O. Travis Kalanick expounded upon his company's plans for growth and an eventual I.P.O., Sarah Ellison broke news about tensions between Donald Trump and Roger Ailes, and Amazon C.E.O. Jeff Bezos aired his thoughts about Silicon Valley contrarian and Trump donor Peter Thiel.
Photos from the 2016 New Establishment Summit
Sarah Jessica Parker in conversation with Krista Smith, executive West Coast editor, Vanity Fair.
Maya Kosoff
Maya Kosoff writes about tech for VF.com. Her work has appeared in Business Insider, Slate, Inc., Entrepreneur, and she has appeared on CNBC's Closing Bell, Good Morning America, Entertainment Tonight, and Huffington Post Live. Maya graduated with her bachelor's in magazine journalism from the Newhouse School of Public Communications at... Read more
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