bid for Paramount Global<\/a> last year, he\u2019s been relatively absent from the entertainment industry since stepping down as chairman of Live Nation Entertainment in 2010.<\/p>\nToday, he spends months sailing on his schooner, Eos, with Von Furstenberg and one of their cloned Jack Russell terriers (they have five), while still serving as chairman of digital media company IAC.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe most of it was building, always building,\u201d Diller writes of his career. \u201cAnd even better than that was being lucky enough to let a family build me into something resembling a person.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here are four takeaways from the memoir.<\/p>\n
Childhood trauma<\/p>\n
Diller grew up in Beverly Hills, where his father\u2019s construction supply family business benefited from Southern California\u2019s post-World War II boom in housing. But his home life was chaotic.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy parents separated often and came a day short of divorce several times before I was ten,\u201d he writes. \u201cMy brother was a drug addict by age 13; and I was a sexually confused holder of secrets from the age of 11.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were silent Sunday night dinners at restaurants and essentially no contact with any extended relatives. <\/p>\n
One particularly traumatizing childhood experience came when Diller was sent to sleepaway camp at age 7. He had attended that particular camp before when he was 4 \u2014 a few years below the minimum age requirement \u2014 but spent that summer living with the camp owners, \u201ccozied into the structure of a real family unit,\u201d he writes. At 7, Diller was placed with the rest of the campers and said he felt isolated and alone.<\/p>\n
When he called his mother, begging her to pick him up, she told him she\u2019d come immediately. He waited all day and she never showed up. <\/p>\n
\u201cI gave up on my mother that night. There would be no rescue,\u201d he writes. \u201cAs I walked down that driveway back to the life of the camp, I buried that fear and resolved never to trust anyone other than myself again. That summer at camp, I cemented myself shut.\u201d<\/p>\n
A brash first meeting with Charles Bluhdorn<\/p>\n
Bluhdorn, the head of massive conglomerate Gulf+Western Industries, purchased Paramount Pictures in 1966. One day, Bluhdorn wanted to negotiate with someone from ABC\u2019s programming department. Leonard Goldberg, who was head of programming at the time, was unavailable, so Diller, who worked for him, was sent to meet Bluhdorn for the first time.<\/p>\n
The two clashed on a deal Bluhdorn had made with ABC to buy more than 100 Paramount movies to air on television, many of which Diller said were duds. Diller, then 23, bluffed a \u201cbig boy voice\u201d and pushed back, resulting in an amended deal for the rights of new Paramount films that were better than the old ones, landing \u201cThe Godfather\u201d and \u201cLove Story\u201d for ABC.<\/p>\n
It would be the beginning of Diller\u2019s long relationship with Bluhdorn, which led to him becoming chairman of Paramount.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe liked me because I was probably the only person in the entertainment business, probably in any business at this time in his ginormous career, who didn\u2019t tell him exactly what he wanted to hear,\u201d Diller writes.<\/p>\n
The reason he left Fox<\/p>\n
After seven years at Fox, Diller approached Murdoch to ask to become a partner in the enterprise.<\/p>\n
Diller writes that Murdoch said he would think about it but came back a few days later and said, \u201cThere\u2019s really only one principal in this company. I mean, you make decisions, and that\u2019s been fine for me and for you. But this is a family company, and you\u2019re not a member.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their relationship slowly deteriorated after that, and Diller resigned as chairman and CEO in 1992. He writes that he has \u201cnot had a harsh word with Rupert since.\u201d<\/p>\n
He passed on Pixar<\/p>\n
In the early 1990s, Steve Jobs showed Diller a few scenes from the movie \u201cToy Story.\u201d After the screening, he asked Diller to join the board of Pixar, which Jobs had recently acquired.<\/p>\n
Diller, by his own admission, \u201cdidn\u2019t get any of the charm of \u2018Toy Story\u2018\u201d and had never been interested in animation. He said he didn\u2019t want to make any commitments in the aftermath of his departure from Fox before eventually giving Jobs a firm no.<\/p>\n
\u201cI completely underestimated the company and the man,\u201d Diller writes. \u201cWhat a dunce.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the Shelf Who Knew By Barry DillerSimon & Schuster: 336 pages, $30If you buy books linked on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[501,28021,52485,52488,3444,52490,52489,52487,1322,3590,77,9382,1429,52486,36115,3114,16,15,3118],"class_list":{"0":"post-116867","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-abc","9":"tag-age","10":"tag-barry-diller","11":"tag-bluhdorn","12":"tag-books","13":"tag-camp-owner","14":"tag-career-decision","15":"tag-chairman","16":"tag-company","17":"tag-day","18":"tag-entertainment","19":"tag-fox","20":"tag-life","21":"tag-new-memoir","22":"tag-rupert-murdoch","23":"tag-time","24":"tag-uk","25":"tag-united-kingdom","26":"tag-year"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114539782700348869","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}