Last week, a few steps from Manhattan Little IslandPeople who enjoy the Sun at the high line tok little notice of the man who helped create this corner of the world, the legendary businessman Barry Diller.
“When you’re here, I just thought you’re not very high, you’re really high, [with] A totally different perspective from the city, “said Diller.
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Talk about different perspectives: at 83, Diller himself is now inviting people to take a look at Him. Next week he will launch his memoirs, more than ten years in process. In “who knew”, he names many names, tells wild stories and discovers his soul about the things that he says he had never promised to speak in public.
In his preface, he writes: “When I was young, I was too afraid. I am no longer that. And I am too old to worry.”
Fear or what? “I was afraid that secrets are revealed,” he said. “I was afraid, I thought I didn’t qualify. I think I’m just afraid to reveal to me.”
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Diller says he was in primary school when he realized that he could be gay. “Eleven or twelve years, or 13, I put myself on my bike and red to the public library of Beverly Hills. And I looked books about homosexuality. And everything I read, like, horrible. And I put myself on my bicycle and headed home and thought, I am a convicted person. I mean, for a small child, that’s not great. “
He had his first sexual encounter at age 16. I asked him: “Did you tell your friends? Did you tell someone about it?”
“Or the course is not! Are you joking? I didn’t tell myself,” Diller replied. “I mean, I thought, oh, what did I think? Oh, I did that. I don’t have to do it again.“
“I did this with a boy, but is that the end?” I asked.
“Yes, I don’t need to do that again,” Diller said. “And then a month later, I did. And then I knew.”
But at that time, he thought it is better to keep it a secret. He promised to lie about it, just to keep him silent. He writes that, throughout his life, his sexuality was like an “anvil on a cable” hanging on his head. “Yes, because I was afraid,” he said. “Listen, this is in the 60s and 70s. Well, I think it is likely that it was realistic that, first, my sexuality was confused. And I thought, Well, if I reveal it, what am I really going to reveal?
“I did it because risking what many other people had risk, just at that time. I mean, to talk about homosexuality, talk about BI, any sexuality, it was something that scared me,” he said.
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In private, Diller lived in fear of being discovered, but in public he was one of the most attentive leaders of the game. As Junior executive at ABC, he pioneered the film of the week highly aware of the week, and then created the even more successful television miniseries, with historical events such as “Roots.”
When “Roots” was broadcast for the first time in 1977, more than half of the population of the United States tuned. “You really had 30 to 40,000,000 people watching at the same time,” because there was no recorder, “he said.” It was a visualization of citations. And all in the United States came to the appointment. “
And then, the man who conquered television went to the cinema, becoming, at 32, the head of Paramount.
Did I feel it belonged? “Oh my God, no,” he said. “When I became president of Paramount, and I was this television child, of all things, was it like,” how, in the name of God, did that happen? That is an accident in the story that will be corrected quickly. “
But the television child knew how to tell a good story, and cool the green light with a series of films that have become classics, such as “Saturday Night Fever” from 1977.
It was the moment of those first days in Paramount that Diller with fashion designer Diane Von Furstenberg. Interestingly, they did not click on the beginning. “Yes, the first time I with her, I never wanted to see her again,” because she dispatisfied me and whatever, “he said.
“It was a smoking romance,” I said.
“Yes. Oh, yes, were those things.”
“And you let it clear, I mean, I will put it out there, your relationship with Diane is not just Platonic.”
“No. No. It wasn’t that, no, no, no, no.”
“You are lovers.”
“Yeah.”
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“It seems to me that one of the points you are trying to do in the book is that this is not, it is not, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you can’t not make you cannot be in love with Diane and, at the same time, be attracted by men?”
“Yes,” said Diller. “I see nothing exclusive to that, no. I mean, other people can, but I don’t know if the person cares about me, I’m not jealous of anything else. So, that’s just luck, I suppose.”
Diller says that he also owes much of his professional success to luck. And he has had a lot: in the 80s, as president of Fox, he created a fourth television network, Homer Simpson and everything.
When asked if he gets bored of success, Diller replied: “Yes, definitely. I mean, once it’s there, what are you going to do it?”
In the 90s, Diller changed progress again, investing in home purchases and any wing collecting a lot of Internet businesses that became family names, such as Expedia and Match.com.
And in the middle, he and Furstenberg helped create the high line, donating their time and dozens of millions of dollars. “Don’t cure cancer,” he said. “It will not change the dynamics of the world, eradicate the disease or whatever. But it brings pleasure to people.”
He says he has a similar objective with this book: share a good story. And that means telling the truth: finally putting aside a secret that is clinging for a lifetime.
I asked: “You touch these feelings of Maybe I was wrong?“
“I don’t know if I was wrong, I don’t speak of my private life; I think it was a coward,” Diller said. “And I don’t like it. But that’s the truth. It was. I didn’t have it, and I would like to do it, I didn’t have the courage, at that time, to make statements.”
“Does that weigh on you?”
“I would weigh on me,” he said, “but it is something that, of course, I have thought …” Pause. “But it wasn’t so terrible.”
The same could be said of their personal life as well: Diller and Von Furstenberg married in 2001, and are as strong as ever.
He calls her relationship with her the bark of her life. “Well, I don’t know any better description than Bietrock,” Diller said. “The best moments for us when we are only us. And after almost 50 years, what luck are you?”
Read an extract: “Who knew” by Barry Diller
In his new memories, the former television, film and media executive explains the limitations of too much information: when instinct (for, such as, what makes an intriguing film of the week?) It can be a better predictor of success.
Exclusive Web: Look an extended interview with Barry Diller
For more information:
History produced by John D’Amelio. Editor: Remington Korper.
See also:
Tracy Smith
