Barry Diller unfiltered: Drugs, secrets, The Simpsons, and earning billions

33:08But I'm 23 in New York, and I remember the first time I did smoke grass, and I had a great time. And then through my 20s, kind of like occasional, not so much. And yes, I lived at the Bel Air Hotel and I stashed some in the hillside next to my little cabin there, cottage there. And I grew a mountain side of marijuana plants, it seemed. But quaaludes were your drug of choice? Yeah, Yeah, definitely. Why? The greatest drug ever invented. Okay, explain. As somebody who's not done Quaaludes before, explain that. They don't exist anymore. It's long past my time for it, whatever. But Quaaludes were a drug that made you feel so completely well and safe, with no after effects and no addictive nature to them.

34:15They just weren't addictive, though if you could get them, you'd get them. And for a relatively short, this probably lasted, oh, four years, something like that. These are the years of Studio 54, 78 to 80, basically. They were the drug of life. How about the best time you ever had at Studio 54? Oh, I had so many great times. I mean, the fact that I'm alive is the miracle of the times. Oh, come on. Really? Oh, yeah. All of us. I mean, you have to picture this. So we're, you know, kind of a defined group of us. So I'm 36 years old, 35, 36 years old. And I'm working every day at probably 8 or 9 o 'clock at the latest, till 7 or 8 at night.

35:10I'm working really hard. And at 11 or 12 o 'clock, we all gather at one of our friends' houses and stay there for an hour or two, go to studio at 1, 1.30, stay till 4. Sometimes 5. Or so, or 5. I don't know about the sleeping part, and then go to work at 8 in the morning. And did this with a big job? Yeah, I was chairman of Paramount. And now this was not every night, but this was probably three or four nights a week, and not weekends. So this was weeknights. I mean, it's just, I don't know how we, me and Dion, my wife, not then, but we were together during part of those years. so yeah it was it was a miracle of survival you uh you said uh you participated in extreme hedonistic behavior studio yeah now the thing is what i did not do which almost everyone at studio did i did not do coke what i probably i was afraid i mean i would never i could never be given my brother, I could, you know, too close to the idea that I could be addicted to something would be, you know, a cross to a vampire.

36:36So I could never go there. So lots of my friends were in the basement of studio doing cocaine. Not me once ever. And what's crazy about all of that is with as much stuff as you could have gotten yourself in trouble for, you then almost killed yourself through smoking. This is totally true. And it is really amazingly true. But then, because at that time, we really didn't know smoking was dangerous. You know, everybody smoked. You still smoke today? Oh, my God, no. Oh, no. But, you know, when I was growing up and whatever, You know, I started smoking when I was 16. And it was, there was no perceived danger in it.

37:28When was the moment you realized you had to stop? Well, because it was disgusting. I had to stop. And actually, Dion almost left me many times because, like, in the morning, I smoked so many cigarettes. There'd be like a bowl or an ash drape that was kind of big, and there'd be 30 cigarettes in it by 12 o 'clock or something. During the morning as I'm getting grosses from movies all over the country, I would be smoking these cigarettes. But it wasn't until 25 years later I thought, this is awful. It's a smelly, dirty thing. Again, I didn't think it was for health reasons. I just thought it was cruddy, and I didn't like the fact that I had the yellow thing.

38:21I mean, you know, the whole thing, whatever. And I actually stopped smoking by saying, one day when I woke up, I said, I don't need the next cigarette. I'm going to keep smoking. I'm not going to, of course, stop smoking. How could I do that? I've been smoking forever, many packs a day. But I don't need the next cigarette. And the more I said it, from that literal moment, I stopped smoking. And I never had any withdrawal. I never had anything. But it was this mantra of, yeah, I'm going to smoke, but I don't need that next cigarette. But it was the vaping that then caused the lung? Then I didn't smoke a cigarette for at least 20 years, 25 years, something like that.

39:15I'm totally myself up to over 100. So I'm off in the years, whatever. But I did start vaping, and it collapsed my lung. And I would say to anybody, anyone, the worst thing you can do is smoke. If you need to, have to do that. Hopefully don't. But don't vape. Vapes dangerous. Because I absolutely believe that if you do it, if you vape a lot, which is what most people who vape do. I'm talking about not vaping marijuana. I'm talking about pure tobacco. If you vape, you're going to get sick. You're going to get probably cancer. And I absolutely believe that. So we were talking a moment ago about you being in your mid-30s running Paramount.

40:10There were, I think, some pivotal moments in your career that got you there. But I think a family friend ends up getting you a job interning at William Morris. You didn't have the slightest interest in anything there that generated revenue. but explain how your version of the William Morris reading program kind of influenced your early business success. Yeah, I mean, I was so lucky that I found a place. I'm 19 years old. I have no experience, obviously, in anything. And I go to William Morris. I didn't want to be an agent. I couldn't have been an agent anyway, but I didn't want to. I had no interest in that.

40:50You called it morally corrupting. Well, over the long term. I do think it is corrupting because for many reasons. I mean, it is a profession. It's not a dishonorable one, but it is one where the essential thing is you've got to lie. You've got to—these are not heinous lies, but you have to—in promoting your clients, you're essentially making up tales and stories. And in talking to your clients, you're often doing the same thing. Anyway, I had no interest in doing it. But what I got is lucky that in this agency, there were file rooms before, of course, everything became digitized. There were big file cabinets in this room twice the size of this.

41:42And I read the entire file room, which took me about three years. So it was the greatest stroke of luck that I got to basically read the history of the entertainment business, the history of it. Because William Morris had been in business since 1890, and this is now 1963. So they had every artist from every part of the entertainment business and their entire history in these file cabinets, and I got to read it. What a foundation. How do you wind up on a plane with Chairman Goldenson going to California? Oh, wow. So now we're at ABC, and I'm in the program department at ABC, and I got the idea that we should make movies for television rather than just television series, which is what the networks at that time, three networks all basically programmed, were half-hour, an hour series.

42:46And those kind of bored me because they were in stasis. You know, nothing ever changed. The father knows best. The family was, for 10 years, the teenager of 19 was 19 instead of 29. So nothing ever changed and no series bored me. And I thought, why don't we make movies for television rather than buy movies that have run in theaters, why don't we make our own? And so I'm 24, almost 25, I think, at the time. And I had this idea, and everybody at ABC thought it was kind of folly, but the chairman of ABC, who never got involved in programming, just dropped into a meeting just to listen one day, and I kind of spouted out this idea.

43:34And he said, let's go to California and see if we can sell this idea to the old moguls. And at this time, all the founders, they were on their kind of waning days of being in power at these movie companies. And so Mr. Goldenson and I went out to L.A. to try and convince them to make these movies for us. And they all turned us down. And Lou Wasserman's MCA ends up saying, we'll make all of them for you. And it seems like, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you're in this meeting with other ABC execs. You're the kind of young kid. Everybody's on board with MCA, Lou's company, just handling everything.

44:20And you, to your credit, have the testicular fortitude to speak your mind. I couldn't help myself. I felt so, every one of these studios turned us down except one, MCA, Universal. And by the way, just to interrupt momentarily, the context here, too, for millennials or Gen Zers, ABC, you know, one of only three networks at the time, you know, you could have a program that 30 % of the country's watching at any one time. So the gravity. The difference between now and then when, you know, if you've got 4 ,200 people, you have an audience or you have, because of the Internet, you know, tens and tens of millions, but fragmented and fragmented.

45:00Then the entire media was three television networks. That was it. And so, yeah, we had programs that got easily, if it was a failure, you'd have 20 million, but a success was 30, 40, 50 million people watching at the same time. There were no such thing as recorders. It was all live channel turning by hand or by a little clicker remote control. Wait, I'm sure I have my numbers wrong, but it's like, what, a quarter of the Super Bowl audience for just a normal program? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Those were those days. And anyway, this one company, MCA, they demanded they do all the movies and we couldn't.

45:48And I said, no, I don't want to give control to any one place. I want as many people, as many ideas as we can get, and I want the network to control it. It's our money. Why should we turn this over to them? Let us do it ourselves and do it with all sorts of producers. You know, independent studios don't want to do it, but individuals will want to do it, and that'll be creatively just much better for us, and we'll control the world. and all my older, older suited colleagues said, that's folly, you don't have the experience, you know this. I said, that's all right, we'll learn it. And thank God, Mr.

46:26Goldenson said, you know what? That's the right way to do it. And so at 24, basically because everyone thought it would fail, I got the ability to run the program. And it made my career, of course. You wrote, I'd been the most successful executive in film and television over most of the last 10 years, and yet I'd just been duped into joining a soon-to-be bankrupt company. You go on to say, what do you do when you realize you've made an agreement with a con man? Yeah. And in comes Rupert. Yes. How did you navigate that period? They say you should learn something new every day. Like how you should only drink Jägermeister at zero degrees Fahrenheit.

47:18Ice cold. Like those frozen cavemen they find. Which makes you wonder, what would a caveman think of Jägermeister? Well, if you served it warm, he'd probably throw it in your face, say, Oonga Boonga, and storm off. And nobody wants that. So drink it cold or not at all. Jägermeister. Damn, that's cold. Drink responsibly. Jägermeister liqueur, 35 % alcohol by volume. Imported by Masked Jägermeister, U.S., White Plains, New York. Your little one grew three inches overnight. adorable. Also, expensive. Sell their pint-sized pieces on Depop and list them in minutes with no selling fees. Because somewhere, a dad refuses to pay full price for the clothes his kids will outgrow tomorrow.

47:55And he's ready to buy your son's entire wardrobe right now. Consider your future growth spurt budget secured. Start selling on Depop, where taste recognizes taste. Payment Processing fees and boosting fees still apply. See website for details. Well, I had gone from Paramount, which was very successful. It had really led the movie business for, of the 10 years I was there, led it for the latter seven years. Where Michael Eisner was your member too? Michael was with me, yes, and a bunch of other great executives. And I left Paramount to go to Fox. And when I got to Fox, also as the chairman of the company and the chief executive, I guess, the title, when I got to Fox, I realized that I had been fraudulently brought into a situation that was actually a bankrupt entity.

48:52Yet it was a very attractive situation going into it. Superficially, it was 20th Century Fox, greatest studio lot, fantastic history, etc. Unfortunately, a con man, Marvin Davis, who'd put up almost no money to buy it and leverage the rest of it, wouldn't put up any more money, and the banks were calling due on the loans, and there I was. And so my solution to it was to get Mr. Davis to sell the company to someone else that someone else was Rupert Murdoch. And that's when Rupert came into my life. What was involved with convincing Rupert to bet the company? And why have you said before his risk appetite is far greater than yours will ever be?

49:46buying Fox was not the thing of risking his company. But shortly after he bought into Fox, this is really, I think, before the ink was even dry, we got the opportunity. I'd always wanted to start a fourth network. For a long time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we couldn't get the financing and this and that. But through this serendipitous moment, it looked like we could get a group of television stations that could be the backbone of building a network. People tried to build beyond the three networks for decades. Every one of them had failed. I thought that the three networks were now all programming in the same kind of way without any diversity.

50:29And I thought, you know, I thought we could build an alternative network. One day when Rupert happened to be passing from Australia to New York, again before the deal probably even closed for him buying, at that time half the company, in walks someone who owned these stations who was willing to sell them, and Rupert happened to be passing through, and I invited him to this, what I thought was a meeting, just a chat, and it became apparent that we could do this, and after he left, the seller left, I said, you know, I've always wanted to start a fourth network, and I went on for five minutes or so about what I thought it could be, and now this is in 84 when a billion 100 million dollars was a lot of money and that was what it was going to cost and Rupert said yeah I'll bet the company and that was it I said well don't you want to you know do you want me to give you I could off the top of my little hat I can give you figures I can do this I can do that.

51:39He said, no, the concept's solid. Let's go. That's what happened. You're thinking what at the time? I'm thinking I'm dealing with a crazy person. Really? And you said if he's on site and he's engaged, he's the most stimulating collaborator. How so? He's the shrewdest and best gambler. I mean, this is a person who started with a single newspaper in Adelaide, Australia. And in Australia, within 10 years or so, became the biggest newspaper man in the entire country with dozens and dozens of papers all over, et cetera, and magazines. Then he goes to the UK, and he does it all over again. Then he decides that satellite television came into being.

52:34And there was a company called B-Sky-B, British Sky Broadcasting, which was funded by the government, which had an absolute sole license. Rupert figures out how from another country to launch a satellite dish that was this size, where there was a big satellite thing, and he busts the market, comes to the United States, buys an interest in Fox, finances me to build the fourth network. So on three hemispheres, the shrewdest gambler, but one who actually enjoyed the thrill of betting his enterprise. That's how much conviction and toughness is inside the man. And while I'm not a supporter of Fox News, which I had nothing to do with.

53:27That happened after I left Fox. Introduced Rupert to Red Rails. I did introduce him to Red Rails. But anyway, I have such respect for him as the most supportive person when you're trying to build a new idea. And he's launched so many new ideas in media that are just almost unimaginable. How did Home Alone save the company from bankruptcy? Well, Rupert being, as I say, this gambler, overextended himself time and again, and almost always was able to come through it. But one time in the early 90s, yeah, I think 90, 91, there was a particular market disruption of some kind, and he had borrowed too much money.

54:15And he had so many banks, and they, it was like 80 banks, and they had to each agree to extend his loans. And they really weren't going to do it. And the company was running out of money. And at Fox... You deferred taking your bonus for a long time? At Fox, we made this movie called Home Alone. and literally the cash flow Fox was kind of on News Corp the parent company was on fumes it was the cash from home alone that actually saved his company how do you think things would be different had Rupert bought CNN you mean a not started Fox well we tried by the way right Rupert and I went down and had dinner with with Ted Turner when Ted Turner was on fumes and Ted Turner wouldn't sell to What would have happened is he would have turned CNN into Fox News, what we know of today as Fox News.

55:18I think that would have been a terrible thing. I mean, at least we have CNN now, even though CNN is, I think, kind of bedraggled. We have CNN and trying to compete pitifully at the moment with Fox News. And by the way, I don't know if you were surprised by the news that your interest in CNN made. recently, but what's the genesis of that? Because for the last couple of years, I don't know, who knows? You never know. Probably the chances of my being able to get it are at best 30%, 40%, whatever. But for the last couple of years, I've been very interested, because I do think that, I don't think it's because the people are untalented or whatever.

56:07I think they've squeezed the people who run CNN. and I think it has not been managed optimally. You go anywhere in the world, and the video news service is and has been CNN. And so I think it has enormous potential influence, and I think it would be very worthwhile to be really fully competitive, which I don't think it is now. What do you think would have to happen for you to be able to buy it? Opportunity. The seller becomes a seller instead of someone who says, I want to keep it, like anything. You had written in your book, if only Ted Turner were running it today. And I was surprised when I saw that because, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you're friendly with John Malone and David Zaslav.

56:55Why do you kind of feel that way? I've said this to David Zaslav, and I've said this to John Malone, and David Zaslav has disagreed with me, as he honorably has, of course, the right to do, where I've said to him, I don't think your programming, I don't think it's being optimally programmed. I don't think it's competitive. Now, by the way, the facts support that, meaning that its ratings have declined, its revenue has declined. It still is quite profitable, but... How would you alter it? Oh, in every way. Look, feel, and see. Every way. And I mean, I hope I get the chance. I don't think I will, but I hope I do.

57:37It seems like way back when you were kind of screwed out of buying Paramount because of Bear Stearns. I wasn't screwed out of. I mean, wasn't it Bear Stearns like stock? No, no, no. The thing about Paramount, who cares? It's so long ancient history. The best line, though, when you lost it. Yes, yes, yes. I got in a bidding war with Sumner Redstone's Viacom company. And we went back and forth bidding the price up until I said it's no longer economically viable. And I did not make the last bid. If I had made the last bid, I would have owned Paramount. But I didn't because I thought it was diseconomic.

58:14Now, by the way, I was wrong. I was chicken. If you had gotten Paramount more recently, and I think Michael Eisner was telling me a little bit about how you guys talked about that. Well, if you guys had gotten it instead of the Ellison's, what would you have done with it? Well, I always maintain, and I think this is generally true, it's not absolute like nothing is, but I think if you get lucky, you find a company that's been mismanaged. And the longer it's been mismanaged and still exists, even if it's on somewhat fumes, that's your opportunity. Paramount was mismanaged for 10 years at least.

58:55So just coming into it at that kind of nadir of mismanagement is filled with opportunity if you just do step-by-step the right things. Hollywood, obviously now ruled by kind of the tech behemoths, a comment you made that I thought was kind of funny was, there used to be a kind of inbred, incestuous quality to Hollywood that's actually good. How so? Well, you know, when it was a company town, still somewhat, but much, much less so. When it was a company town, you lived and breathed in the best way. Not that it wasn't viciously, you know, rapacious, competitive, often ruthless. was when you're in the creative, any kind of creative enterprise at scale, it's a rough business, so to speak, because you're dealing hits and misses and misses and hits, and that process is a cauldron often.

1:00:01But even within that,

1:00:06because you're part of that community, you're living and breathing it really on essentially honorable terms with the product you make. And that's all you do. These movie companies that then became movie television companies, but they all started in the early part of the 20th century. And by the 30s, 40s, 50s, they had enormous worldwide influence. All they did is make movies. The head of that company was as much involved in movies as the gaffer who was doing the lights. Contrast that with the period of 2000 and post, when these businesses began to consolidate all sorts of other businesses. So the process of making movies, instead of being the only thing you did, was number 8, 12, 14 in the corporate organization.

1:01:16So the essence of the process was less important to the conglomerate. And if it becomes less important, then it becomes more kind of corporatized and institutionalized and less about actually the stuff at the base of it, which is, is it a good idea? Is it a good product, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that old system is the better system for making better product. And I think that's mostly gone now. Now, then you overlay on it the seismic change of streaming, which rendered everything gone in a flash. You know, it used to be like, name any, the last one maybe in this period, generation, was Barbie maybe.

1:02:13Because it took hold of the culture for a period of time. Most stuff that's made for television and movies, it's over in a flash. You know, it doesn't sustain. There's no, there's no, we talked earlier about a television program that got 30, 40, 50, 70 million people. We had, we had two thirds of the country watching Roots for 11 nights, you know, and it lasted. It was so deep in the culture. And so as you get such optionality, so many options for you, that, that it just comes and goes. none of it has very much importance. I just think that's unfortunate. Why are you going to argue and yell about it?

1:03:01It is the evolution of technology and our own media culture. But, and it's like an old person, I yearn for days when it was simpler. The thing is, we really did have, while it was tumultuous, we all, all of us in the movie business and television, we're having a great time. We were having fun. Right now, you ask almost anyone who's in the movie or television business, other than as a one-off, meaning it's their life, their career, very, like this many people are having a good time. Why? Because it's so difficult now, because it's so industrialized, because it's so enervating. The process is so enervating.

1:03:49If you're an actor, you go to auditions, you learn humiliation, you learn all sorts of things when you get rejected, but you're sitting across from a person who's actually rejecting you, and you know that's your lot in life until they accept you and it works out or it doesn't work out. It's a human process. Today, this doesn't exist. You know how you audition for work if you're an actor? in front of a screen, your little iPhone, you shoot a scene in your little cubbyhole room, and you send it electronically to the casting agent, and you never hear another word. I mean, just think of the impersonalization of that and how impossible that would be if you're an actor wanting to score and wanting to make your way, that that's your process for getting there.

1:04:52That's just one tiny little example of what technology has done. And I want to veer ever so slightly into politics, and then I want to get back to your career because there's so much more I want to ask you about. But what do you make of the tech companies' embrace of President Trump? Oh, my God. Oh, no, not oh, my God. It's necessity. I don't, you know, a lot of these people are my very close friends, and I've had to defend them. Really? Yeah, and I do defend them, and I do it for this reason. If you, if your business depends upon government contracts,

1:05:36and you, with this particular administration, are not that friend, or not a friend or you're an enemy, you are not going to get the contract. It's very binary. This is unheard of. I mean, we are passing through this moment in history, which I hope it means we are passing through it and we'll come to the other end of it. But that is the condition of life today. It is true. And therefore, if that's what you do, I find no moral depredation in your wanting to be on the good side of it. Because I was going to say you're buddies with Jeff Bezos. I'm friendly with many people, and I definitely, Mr. Bezos is, he's...

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1:07:21What do I think? I don't, I don't, I don't advocate it. I don't know that he was involved in it, by the way. And I think he's actually, or people have said he was not involved in that decision. Nevertheless, it's his company, so he's responsible for it. But again, look at his situation. He's in competition with Elon Musk in SpaceX, right? That's his competitor. Elon Musk is very, except for a moment, aligned with this administration. He's got Blue Origin trying desperately to compete to be at least the second player in that. How do you go against the government of the United States when you know that that government, if you're not supportive of it, is going to deny you being able to be in business?

1:08:10Of course he has to do that. There's no moral judgment. Independent of politics, you once said Bezos is closer to Steve Jobs than most people give him credit for. How so? Because he's so much the real deal. I mean, this is someone who, you think of starting a business on books, who built this Amazon that invented the Kindle, that reading device that no one had thought possible, that invented, essentially, using its computing power and allowing other people to use it and building a huge... He's built under complete adversity, coming close to bankruptcy, which is what happened in 2000, around 2000, to Amazon.

1:09:07Just by grit and grime and brilliance, true brilliance. I mean, you listen to Jeff Bezos for 10 minutes, and you're dealing with a mind that is so capacious and so interesting. And the things he taught the world of business, time after time, product after product, it's remarkable. I want to ask you about good deals and bad deals you've made over the years. We can start with when Amazon was on the brink, the$2 billion worth of Amazon debt that didn't quite work out for you. Yes. Well, it would have worked out. We thought if we bought their debt, one of two things would happen. We'd get paid back four times over or we'd own the company.

1:09:58And at that time, we had to get approval, and our overlords in France at Vivendi stalled us to the point that, without giving us an answer, that that period of opportunity just passed. Would have been worth. Would have been worth a lot. speaking of Steve Jobs and turning down the Pixar offer he made to you. Yes, yes, yes. Why and how much do you think that would have been worth had you said yes? Oh, I have no idea in monetary terms. I couldn't do that. But it was just, the truth is I still have no affinity for animation. I don't really like it. I don't watch animated films. I don't really understand them.

1:10:50And so when I saw Toy Story in its embryonic state, I wasn't really, I didn't like it very much. And it was like, of course, it was like a completely dumbass decision. What was the bigger miss, that or AOL? No, AOL, Toy Story was commission, meaning, you know, I said no to something I should have said yes to. AOL I said yes to, but I couldn't get the financing to buy out the owner, Paul Allen, who owned 25 % of it at the time. I couldn't get the financing to be able to buy it. So just the window passed. That's omission. You remember being criticized for not buying MySpace back in the day? Oh, of course.

1:11:39Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I, look, one of the lucky things that happened to me when I got into the e-commerce and the internet is that I never forgot that you really had to have revenue and expenses in some balance in whatever you did. And so a lot of those Internet companies that I could have acquired instead of the ones I did or built is because I couldn't make that balance of their revenue and expense. And in the early days of the Internet, everybody was just going after huge expense and no revenue. And I just didn't want to do that. I mean, kind of similar to what's going on right now with AI.

1:12:19It's very possible. What made merging Ticketmaster and Live Nation one of the worst mistakes of your career? No, merging them was brilliant. I'm like, God, should I use such an ego-intensive word? That's not how it came up. Whatever. It's true. It was brilliant. Putting those two together was absolutely right. Here's the company that dominated ticketing and the company that dominated producing and distributing live events. I have a perfect merger. My stupidity or my naivete was that when I did that, I said, instead of, which we could have done, demanded control of that entity, I said, let's have a board of directors, six from your company and six from my company.

1:13:09And we'll have no rules other than that, thinking that the balance would be an honorable balance. What I did not know is one of my six directors was an infidel who had made a deal with their six directors. Irving. to dread Irving Azoff, to actually vote with them. And so at the first board meeting, I was outvoted. And the next day I sold my stock. How does that influence your view of Ari Emanuel? Ari was part of the coup, so to speak, for sure. And he did apologize. I've never spoken to Irving Azoff nor would after that. But he's an incredibly aggressive player who is smart enough and devious enough to make a great way in media.

1:14:06And so I have certainly respect for that. And he's the biggest agent on the planet. He's not the biggest agent anymore, but he's become, actually, he's become quite entrepreneurial. You wanted to pass on India, Anna Jones, back in the day. How about the best deal in history that you gave to George Lucas for the original, and why you improved it for the sequel? Well, we made Raiders of the Lost Ark, and I loved the material, but I was very worried about it. I thought that opening sequence would bankrupt us just on its own. so I was very wary about that but we did a lot to ring fence that and whatever anyway we made it but I was very careful when we made that deal with George Lucas which was as great a deal as anybody had ever achieved in the movie business and I said look I don't want to be in the position of ever arguing about this again so if we make a sequel I want to be sure that it's on the same terms as we made this original and I want you to I want that to be contractually laid in concrete.

1:15:20And that's what we did. And then when he said it's time to make the sequel, he said, no, that deal's not good enough for me anymore. And I said, well, that's a level of hypocrisy from someone who disdains Hollywood morals that I can't stand and tried to reverse it, and he wouldn't do it. In the end, we ended up paying what he demanded. Sanctimonious hypocrite, I think were the words you used. I think that would be the phrase. I mentioned we just profiled Michael Eisner for an episode. How did your relationship evolve with Michael over the years? Well, I met Michael when I was 22, 23, I think. Yeah, 23, when I had just come to ABC and he came for a job interview.

1:16:07and I recognized on the spot this was someone to pay attention to. And so that began... He thought he was interviewing with somebody else. Yeah, he thought he was interviewing with my boss. But that became, that was the foundation of a relationship that now, 60 years later, we are the closest of friends. You said he was capable of saying things that were so ridiculous and then in the same breath, out would come something absolutely brilliant. The genius of Michael. So like what? Oh, just, I mean, Michael's fount of original ideas, original thought, original takes on things that just defy, you know, your understanding.

1:16:52It's just out of native talent. What do you remember from the days when Jack Nicholson couldn't get a job? Oh, but I met Jack, I was 20, 19, 20, yeah, certainly, or very early days at William Morris. And Jack, I don't know that he'd even gotten a job at that point. And he was hanging around William Morris. And I was one of the only people who would pay any attention to. And we became friendly and been friends ever since. How about the time Catherine Hepburn calls you and then the swimming pool adventures you guys would have together? Well, Catherine Hepburn came into my life when I was at ABC.

1:17:38Probably, I don't know, probably I'm 25, 6 at the time. And she had made a Glass Menagerie. Tennessee Williams play. She had done a version of it, and she didn't like the idea that we were going to interrupt it with commercials. And so she called ABC, and they got me on the phone. It was probably an accident. And through that beginning, difficult conversation with the great Hepburn, we became friends. And she would come to California every once in a while, and she loved going around, driving around the houses that she had lived in at various times during the 30s, I guess 30s, 40s, 50s. Now we're in the 60s, 70s, I guess.

1:18:3270s probably. And we would go swim in these pools of these houses and sneak in and sneak out. And it was just a great time to be with a great, great, great character. And there are endless people I could throw out, and I'm going to move on from this, but Warren Beatty and Johnny Carson and Andy Warhol, and you gave the green light to a then-unknown Steven Spielberg. I mentioned to you right before we started, I spoke this morning with Simpsons creator Matt Graney about you. Tell me, tell me. I guess my question for you is because, you know, I wanted to kind of take a little bit of a dive into kind of a program that, you know, you were at least partly responsible for birthing.

1:19:23And I thought that would be a great one. What did you notice during the cartoons that ran during Tracy Ullman's show that led you to Greenlight? Well, I thought they were great. I mean, I just thought they were original. and I thought the characters were great. But again, these were minute 30, maybe most two minutes, little interstitials that we ran between the scenes of the Tracy Allman sketch comedy half hour. And it was really, it wasn't me, it was Jim Brooks who came to me and he produced the Tracy Allman show, created it, and he's the one who collaborated with Matt Groening to create The Simpsons.

1:20:11And Jim came to me and said, I think we could make a half-hour series of this. And it was such a good idea. Nobody had done, again, that kind of show in 30 years. Wait, but you say such a good idea. I'm listening to you talk about Pixar a moment ago, and you just don't get animation. It's true. So Matt was talking to me about how, like, your genius was recognizing you could do animation aimed at adults. I never thought it was animation. How's that? Okay, explain that. The nature of The Simpsons was so story, character and story based, and was such a unique form that I never, I thought those were actual live action characters.

1:20:54I never thought of it as an animated show. So originally folks at the company were suggesting. No, no, no, no, no. They thought it was crazy. And only suggesting doing a special. And then Matt and company were pushing. And then you guys came back with four specials. And Matt said it was you, though, that were like, no, we're going to green light 13 episodes. Well, it was because as a practical matter, because it took the time six months to manufacture an episode, you really couldn't you couldn't arithmetically put on this show and actually have it be on week to week to week which was the nature of television at the time you couldn't do it unless you ordered 13 of them in advance six months in advance you had to order the whole thing so you could consecutively air them week to week to week and so it was the biggest commitment that Fox had ever made.

1:21:57And it was not because we kind of wanted to. It was the only way you could do it. So I was up for the gamble. Two rumors that I wanted to kind of call out to you. The first was one that he said he was unsure about. He brought up to me that you always used to leave a car of yours parked in front of your office so nobody would know if you were actually there. Introducing the new Chicken Bacon Ranch Street Chalupas at Taco Bell. You can't get just one because they come in twos. One for you and one to share with a friend who loves Taco Bell and slow roasted chicken, bacon, and avocado ranch as much as you do.

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1:23:20Our experts have the answers to those questions and many others. Tax Act. Let's get them over with. That's kind of true. The second one being, you know, I brought up to him the Mr. Burns character that has widely been speculated in part modeled after you. He told me he wanted to dispel that, couldn't be farther from the truth and that he's afraid of you. So he wanted to make sure that I knew it wasn't true. That's so sweet of him. And, you know, I've so enjoyed being, you know, being the emulation, so to speak, or the origin of Mr. Burns. I mean, what a great, what a great, horribly evil character to have you in your, in kind of your imaginated past.

1:24:08I wanted to talk to you about your personality. Why has living in the moment been hard for you? You know, I've thought about this only, I've thought about this recently more than I think probably I've ever thought about it.

1:24:26I think that it's because I had a fear that was ingrained in me very early that there was kind of an anvil over my head of consequences from basically homosexuality. So that fear, kind of ever-present, really since I'm a child, has probably the root cause of not living in the moment because I was afraid of the consequences of the moment. And that's probably the, I mean, I don't, I've not dug that deeply in there, but I think that's probably the answer. Comments have been made about you before about micromanaging. You've said your need to be in control has never wavered. Why? I think the need to be in control comes from the lack of control.

1:25:24I could not control my biology. I could not control my environment. and it became very important to me that the things that I could control, I controlled. And so that's always been in, it's almost pure DNA.

1:25:47We can divine where and what it comes from, but it is from a lack of control that means I need to be in control of things that I can control. What about the ability to always say the right thing to make a situation better? Well, I think, again, if you're out of my childhood and navigating it, you know, my mother's personality was such that I learned very early to keep her in a pleasant mood. I figured out how to say the right things to do that. And so when I grew from there, I had a kind of bit of an extra ability to please people that grew out of that situation with my mother. Your best friend, David Geffen, has been quoted as saying about you that you've mellowed tremendously.

1:26:53How have you seen that happening in you? No? You don't believe that? I don't think so. Why not? Because I don't think I'm mellowed. I don't think that's true. I probably have, and maybe I'm equivocating here, because I certainly, I still have a decent amount of rage. Really? Sure. Okay, in what scenarios? Oh. Anything that displeases me. Parts of the center. Oh, yeah, you know, I mean, enjoying the life. So I... How does that come out in you? Well, I probably have learned over the years, certainly not probably, I have learned to suppress it, find other ways of dealing with it. Maybe I just don't want to admit that I've mellowed, but I probably have.

1:27:50Do you think you're a good boss? I think I'm an interesting one, and I don't know, you have to do the etymology of good, but I think I'm definitely an interesting one, and I'm one that if you can tolerate me and tolerate my inconsistencies and tolerate all of my juice, my stuff, I have enough evidence that you can be the better for it because while I don't like mentorship and whatever, I've seen enough people who've been in my environment and how successful they've been out of my environment. So, you know, I think there's something there. I would argue there's connectivity here back to your Charlie Bluedorn days and even earlier.

1:28:43But you said with... There's always connectivity. You've said with regards to hiring that you much prefer hiring people who are blank slates. give them responsibilities before they're considered ready, and drop them in the deep end? Oh my God, yes. Why? Look, you can have two methods of hiring people. One is that which you bring people in at the earliest stage of their career, when they don't have experience and are not formed, and then you give them more responsibility than they're prepared for, or that they have any experience for. and then you watch what happens and it and at least a very good part of the time I put it in terms of swimming you know they may drown for a few minutes not to complete you know capitulation but they learn to navigate they learn to swim and then they learn to swim faster and faster and faster and I think that's a great process as against reading a resume of someone who's experienced, who qualifies for the job, who comes in and presents themself to you.

1:29:56You don't know them. You just read something, talk to them for an hour or two, and then you hire them. You don't know screw all about them. And they're already formed. So the odds and the chance that they're going to come into a foreign environment and actually succeed in that, the odds are just bad. So which would you prefer? I prefer a system where you bring people in at the earliest stages and have them grow up in your company. And you are a failure, and I've failed many times at this, you are a failure if you have to go higher from the outside rather than promote people from the inside. I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you a couple more questions about Charlie.

1:30:41You're thinking what, when at 32 years old, he's pursuing you to be the head of Paramount? Well, Charlie I'd met when I was 24 or 5. But by the way, if I could indulge you, all of a sudden he shows up when you're a kid in your office to argue with you. Well, that's it. Yeah. Charlie, I'm 24 or something, and I'm buying movies, and he just bought Paramount. and he comes in to sell these movies and I kind of turned him down. And he didn't like being turned down, but he respected being turned down. And so... Which it might as well have been Jeff Bezos showing up in a kid's office. Yeah, but that began my relationship with Charlie.

1:31:20And over the years, 25 to 32, he tried to hire me 30 times to be head of their television operations or become an executive in their this or that. You learned never to give an inch when arguing with him? Miraculously, it seems impossible that a 24-year-old could argue with this business titan, but I did. I don't know how or why, but I did, and he liked that. And so then I'm 32, and he comes and says to me, well, now you're going to have to come over here. I said, no, I'm not. He said, yeah, I'm going to make you chairman of Paramount. I said, Charlie, this is crazy. I'm from television. Television people are going to the movie business.

1:32:05And certainly not at the level of being chairman of Paramount. This is madness. And he said, well, I'm doing it. And I said, yes. The silver frame that he gave you, what about it was so impactful to you? Well, he had taken this great chance on me. Again, I was the first person from television to come to the movie business, I had no credentials, etc., etc. And the first two years was very tough as I was learning how to navigate in this new world of mine. And I said to Charlie, after about two years being head of Paramount, I said, you really have to get rid of me because it's not working and you took this great risk and, you know, do yourself the favor and let me go.

1:32:59And he said, just go back to your office and shut up. And I knew we were doing good work, but it hadn't come out yet, kind of. And then a few months later, we released Saturday Night Fever, and it was a huge, obviously, mega hit, and it turned the fortunes of paramount. And I have, in a place that I see every day when I'm in one of our places we live, and I never passed by without looking at it. It's a little silver frame and it's the box office chart of that week or whatever with Saturday Night Fever number one and Charlie handwritten on it. No one but no one deserves this more than you. Even when I say it, it just...

1:33:41What about it touches you so much? I mean, no one but no one deserves this more than you from someone who took such a risk and it came through? So much later on in life, at the tail end of your time with Rupert and Fox, you essentially go to Rupert and say you want to be a principal too. He says your last name's not Murdoch. The rest is kind of history, and you go through this period where you're figuring out what you want to do. You wonder if your life or career had peaked. What was it about Dion mentioning QVC to you that kind of completely changed that? Well, I'd left Fox because I wanted to see if I could start something on my own, a blank piece of paper with not an ID in my head.

1:34:33I didn't want to have an ID in my head. And I thought I want to create some space between me and all the people who wanted me to run another movie company or do stuff like that. And I didn't want to repeat myself. And so I was kind of wandering around the country, and Dionne calls me, and she says, you have to come to QVC. And I said, QV what? What is that? She said, it's this home. I said, what is home shopping? I hadn't even heard of that thing. She said, no, you have to come to Pennsylvania and see this thing. And so I wasn't doing anything. I had the idea in my head, and I go to Pennsylvania, and I see a space about this size, this convergence of televisions and television sets and computers and telephones and this kind of primitive convergence of media.

1:35:19And I saw something that was an absolute epiphany, and I don't use that word lightly, which is I had only known you use screens for telling stories. That's what screens were for. I'd never known interactivity, and there I was seeing it in its primitive emergence at QVC, where you'd put up a product, and people would, through a computer, through telephones, but managed by computers, would order it, and it would be delivered to you. That interactivity, using screens for something other than telling stories, knocked me cold. And then, serendipitously, a few months later, I was offered to buy QVC, and I said, I now know what I'm going to do.

1:36:10And again, everybody in the orbit of Hollywood thought I truly lost my mind. What was I doing? But I knew what I was doing. I didn't know how, but I knew that this interactivity, this is three years before the Internet, was being used by humans, by common folk, and I knew that it was going to change things. I didn't know how, but I wanted to participate. And that was just the great good luck of my life. How do you take HSN within a year from losing$70 million a year to making 60? Easy. I knew how to do it. It wasn't hard. It was just the company. No, no, it wasn't. The company was mismanaged. I'd had this experience earlier, the year earlier with QVC, so I kind of knew the tools.

1:36:59But it was not, that's easy. Turning a company from loss to profit if it's in a business that isn't to the winds is not a hard trick. But what was just this great good luck is this is now two years before the Internet. And along comes the Internet, and I kind of had fluency in my fingertips to a degree. So I was able to attack all the opportunities that were to come once the Internet came along with e-commerce, because I was in the primitive part of e-commerce, and that made the next, you know, that created$100 billion of value. And 9-11 happened. How close was Expedia to almost not happening because of that?

1:37:46Well, travel stopped. Right. 9-11, there was no travel worldwide. So Expedia, this travel business, had no revenue. It was like dead cold. and someone in the room, wasn't me, said if there's life there's travel and I said yeah I'm going to bet on that and so we bought the company even when it had no revenue. More success with Match or Tinder or Hinge? Yes, we were very early in internet dating and we bought Match, a tiny little company in Texas and built it and then we invented Tinder and kind of dominated all that whole world of online data. And correct me if I'm wrong, it's the home services part of your business that kind of funds some of the riskier stuff.

1:38:37Well, we built up this interesting business model of kind of the anti-conglomerate conglomerate, which is a multiplicity of businesses. Some work, some don't work, some fund them. Others are successful, some are unsuccessful. But the fact that we were operating so many different businesses and then we'd spin off to the public ones that had established themselves. So that's kind of the anti-conglomerate of the conglomerate. It just was a rare business model. When you want your spring break to feel like... And your kid's pool day to feel like... And your hotel bed to feel like... Ooh, and room service to feel like...

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1:40:02Near beer, fit for all times. But it worked. Yeah. Wanted to ask you oh so briefly about sexuality because I feel like that's kind of, for whatever reason, been what's gotten oh so much attention with the memoir. Why do you believe Dr. Theodore Rich saved your life? Because I was 19 years old. I was having this nervous breakdown because I was having to come to terms with my sexuality, my gray, odd, whatever, my own version of my stuff. and luckily someone sent me to see him and he, through patience and doggedness and whatever else a good teacher, doctor does for you, he kind of raised me. And so from 19 to 22, I'd say, 22, 23, he really brought me up and saved me.

1:41:12How do you think therapies helped you over the years? I think you're very lucky if you get a good therapist, whether it's a deep psychoanalytic one or a therapeutic one or a psychopharmacological, is that the right word? I know it's close enough. Yeah, ish. If you're lucky, you get that and you benefit from it. And I think, I do think, I mean, is it luck? Yeah, I think so many things are. Do you get in good hands, wherever they come from, with whatever the trauma is that you're trying to deal with? And obviously times have changed so much now. Oh, yes, of course. I want to give two moments that I think give context to the times.

1:42:00Then the first one being at 11 years old when you write the Beverly Hills Library. What happened? So I was, to say the least, confused. I didn't really understand this nature of mine. I ride my little bike down to the Beverly Hills Public Library, and I look at books on homosexuality, and in every single one of them, I was there about, I don't know, maybe an hour or so. It was mental illness repeatedly nailed for being a mental illness. It wasn't until probably 10 or 12 years after that the American Psychiatric Association said, no, it's not a mental illness. But at 11 years old, if that's all you know, that's all you know.

1:42:54Really devastating. Explain what you did after you took an AIDS test. So in the 80s, I, as AIDS started being, I never thought that I was, I really didn't think I was a victim of it. But at one point, I thought, well, I guess I've got to take this test. And so I went to my doctor and did it. And then I became absolutely frozen with fear that there was in some little test tube somewhere outside of my body was a potential death sentence. and the idea that it existed, whether I was or not, was just the idea that in an animate object miles away from me, this thing could come back and I'd be told I was going to die from it.

1:43:58It was so crazy-making to me that I called my doctor and I said, first of all, he wasn't in town, he was in some place, I don't know, some foreign territory. I got him on the phone. I said, you have to destroy this. And he said what? And he first said, no, I'm not. This is crazy. I said, look, you don't know how important this is to me. I can't have this knowledge out there in some test tube. I just can't bear the thought that it's there. I want it destroyed. You have to give me your word that you will do that so I can rest. Whether I've got AIDS or not is not the issue. The issue is, because I either do or don't, the issue is it's known somewhere outside of my body, and I can't bear that.

1:44:45And he said, okay. And so I rested and relaxed and didn't think about it again. And a year or two later, he said to me, oh, by the way, of course, I opened the thing, and you were negative. You waited a year or two. Oh, yeah. You wrote, I would have secrets, but I would tell no lies. Yes. You also said it wasn't courage. It was simply the minimum conditions of my conduct, and I recognize it now as the opposite of courage. Yeah, I think that's true. It just seems like you're unnecessarily hard on yourself. No, I don't think so. I think that, I mean, listen, I'm not hideously harsh on me for this.

1:45:24That was certainly not an act of courage, because courage would have been to say, really, I could be a role model for other people. I could make other people feel better about their circumstances if I was forthright about mine. That's an act of courage. I didn't do that. I mean, I have my reasons. I have my rationales. I have all of that. My sexuality was gray at best. It wasn't absolutely one way or the other, da-da-da-da-da. I could have posed. I could have done this or that. But, you know, I wasn't courageous. You and Dion, why have you called it the miracle of your life? Does anybody not think that the person, if they have had a long-term relationship with someone, a sustained— A good one.

1:46:20Yes, not a bad one, obviously. It would end. But a long-term relationship with a single person is, I think, the miracle of anyone's life. And certainly it's the miracle of mine. Met in 74, separated 81, reunited 91, married on your birthday in 2001. I felt bad when I DM'd you saying happy birthday the other day. I realized after it, I'm like, oh, I should have wished happy anniversary as well. She reminded me of that. I was reading an interview she did the other day, and she said in those early days you were insistent, pointed and pointed out her first visit to you in L.A. and you hiring a limousine for her luggage.

1:47:05What stands out from those early days? Oh, I mean, what stands out is that they're like anything. I mean, these are wonderful and, you know, to me, of course, unique to anyone else. Their memories would be unique. But we did not meet cute, but we had this coup de fode where we were destined for each other. We didn't know it, obviously, at the time, but it was just very clear this was going to happen. It was beyond our willpower to resist. Looking back, would you have liked to have had a kid together? Very much so. I was just too much of a dope. I was so immature. What do you think you most respect about her?

1:47:56The most respect. She kind of is Earth Mother. She has the capacity to take care of everyone. She is the essence of, and you would not think of it because of her glamorous nature and history, But she has such innate kindness that it's just, it's a fount of constantly giving, loving kindness. I mentioned I wanted to wrap talking about Charity in Highline Park. I know Dion particularly likes the sunsets from there, but what do you remember from you going in before any visitors had yet to enter? Well, this is actually for Little Island. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. No, no, it was Little Island. I mean, it took us 10 years to build Little Island.

1:48:58Almost didn't happen many times. And it was enormous adversity and all of this and whatever. And when it just finished, before anybody came, I just, I marveled at, like I do any public work or anything that is the will of a single person to actually get something done in an adverse environment. It just made me glow with the idea that, my God, this thing happened and is going to bring 5 million, I think 800 ,000 people who have come across Little Island and been in its environment. And there are many other things you can do with philanthropy. There are many things that save lives and do whatever.

1:49:39But this makes people happy, and that makes me very happy. From what I understand, they're like endless species of plants. There's like 60 ,000 plants. Some insane number. How does that experience compare for you in terms of what you did with Highline? Well, Highline was different. The idea of building an island in the Hudson River is so insane. So that was a creation from the ground up, so to speak, from the water up. The High Line was different. The High Line was an elevated railroad track that had been used in 60 years and was filled with weeds, and it was an obstruction. People wanted to tear it down.

1:50:28It almost got torn down. So it was a rescue mission, and that's completely different than an act of creation. I know there's been talk about building a gondola to the Hollywood sign and the circular. We are building a park in Los Angeles in a place called Franklin Canyon. And where does kind of that stand in the kind of ambition of what you want to do? It's just actually, I think a week or two ago, I mean, again, regulations to get to do anything. It took us years, but we got just the right to actually build the first section of it. So it's probably several years away from completion. And what's still left on the kind of wish list in terms of philanthropic endeavors?

1:51:22I'm really building it now, meaning I'm thinking more and more about, I kind of, the high, it wasn't the high line so much, but Little Island took so much energy and it took, you know, it took, I don't know what's now about$300 million of our family's philanthropy. And from what I understand, after the maintenance fees over time, it's going to be$400 million. Yeah, it'll be more than that. It'll be a lot. but it started out a considerable amount. So after we built that, I kind of, for a couple of years, was fallow with, I thought, okay, I've done that. We did a few other things. We've constantly doing different forms of philanthropy, but nothing of like building project, project by project.

1:52:08And I'm just now beginning to, I want to fill the larder back up. And so I'm just at the beginning of that process. And what's under that? I have nothing. But you're at the stage where you're thinking, ideating. I'm definitely... And lastly, and I'd imagine we're going to end where we started, what makes you happy? Oh.

1:52:34What makes me happy? I don't know. The thing is, so many things right now, there's nothing that makes me unhappy. It would be a crime for me to be unhappy. I'm so fortunate. I've been so lucky. I mean, eventually luck ends, but I mean, I have been, and as my wife's mother said, they can't take away from you what you've already had. And I've had so much. How could I do anything but be grateful and say thank you? And that, to be not happy would be sinful. Two hours, two minutes, 51 seconds. I know it's having you sit here for this long takes a lot. I appreciate you making the time and I'm glad we could do it.

1:53:29It's a long time coming. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this week's podcast. Don't forget to leave a rating and review. and for more in-depth interviews, visit GrahamBenzinger.com.