Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon Books

Reviews
"Taliban" by Ahmed Rashid
A veteran journalist relates the full horror -- brutality, oppression of women and genocide -- of the new Afghanistan.
By Jonathan Groner
[04/06/00]

Martin the moribund
Why is the New York Times' publishing columnist so lame?
By Kera Bolonik
[04/05/00]

Reviews
"Men in the Off Hours" by Anne Carson
The poet's breathtaking fourth collection takes in the picnic of sex and love and death that time spreads in its wake.
By Kate Moses
[04/05/00]

Dear Mr. Blue
Secure, solid, stable -- boring?
I love books and artsy movies and he's strictly business. I'm a liberal Democrat and he's a Republican. Is there any way my relationship with this dependable man can work?
By Garrison Keillor
[04/04/00]

Reviews
"Fay" by Larry Brown
The heroine of Brown's sixth novel is a Huck Finn navigating the Mississippi lowlife in the body of a 17-year-old femme fatale.
By Virginia Vitzthum
[04/04/00]

Complete archives for Books

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

"I'm not Sammy Glick," Geffen protests, referring to the unprincipled subject of Budd Schulberg's 1941 Hollywood novel "What Makes Sammy Run?" Yet of course Geffen is Sammy Glick to a T, although a contemporary, gay variation on the standard grasping, vindictive theme.

The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New Hollywood By Tom King Random House, 670 pages Nonfiction Buy this book at B&N.com The Keys to the Kingdom: How Michael Eisner Lost His Grip By Kim Masters Morrow, 469 pages Nonfiction Buy this book at B&N.com

Born in Brooklyn to an unambitious father who died early and a bossy, enterprising immigrant mother, Geffen was a flop at school, but fell in love with musicals and movies. Hustling a job in the mailroom at the William Morris Agency (he claimed that he was related to Phil Spector and had a degree from UCLA), he found his niche. Within just a few years he'd won the trust of up-and-coming artists (Laura Nyro, Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell), and made himself the indulged protégé of powerful men (Clive Davis, Ahmet Ertegun). Soon he had a record label of his own. Asylum Records was, Geffen explained to the talent he wooed, meant to be an asylum for its artists. He'd care for his musicians personally; he'd look after them. Weren't they surprised when he sold Asylum and moved on. Some years and a few attempts at moviemaking later, he was head of another new label. At Geffen Records, he explained, the artists came first. And weren't those artists surprised when he sold Geffen Records, too.

Today Geffen is worth around $2 billion. He has produced a variety of movies, from "Risky Business" and "Personal Best" to "Interview With the Vampire," and has cultivated a wide circle of high-powered friends and enemies. According to King, during his clawing-to-the-top days, Geffen was dismayed by his homosexuality; he formed intense friendships with Cher, Mitchell and a few other women while making compulsive use of male prostitutes. These days he's open about being gay and is a big contributor to AIDS charities. A shrieker, a liar and a bully for most of his working life, he's now entered a statesmanlike phase. He's a partner in DreamWorks and has become a friend of Hillary and Bill's, advising them on how to spin the press.

Geffen is small, slim and hyper. Michael Eisner, who was once described by the late producer Don Simpson as "a big Gummi Bear," is a more modern, self-satisfied kind of fat cat. He grew up wealthy on Park Avenue, wearing a jacket and tie to family dinners. Where Geffen is hysterical and pushy, Eisner is self-deprecating and entitled. According to Masters, he has some charm and smarts, and much self-possession; running things suits his sense of himself. He got started doing grunt jobs at NBC and CBS, made his mark at ABC, and together with Barry Diller, Dawn Steel, Don Simpson and Jeffrey Katzenberg, he was part of a famously aggressive executive team at Paramount. When that group fell apart, he got himself (and Katzenberg) hired by the moribund Walt Disney Productions. Together with the lawyer/executive Frank Wells, they worked the Disney brand. Out of their first 17 films, 15 made money, and within eight years, Disney was worth over 10 times what it was when Eisner, Wells and Katzenberg arrived.

Along the way, Eisner has also had some less well-known defeats. EuroDisney got off to a spectacularly bad start, losing over $1 billion in its first two years. A feud with Katzenberg led to a humiliating court battle, and Eisner's choice of super-agent Mike Ovitz to be his No. 2 was an immediate disaster; after little more than a year on the job, Ovitz was given around $100 million to leave. Masters contends that, since the death of Wells in a helicopter crash and the departure of Katzenberg, who was largely responsible for the rebirth of Disney's animation unit (and who wound up co-founding DreamWorks with Geffen and Steven Spielberg), Eisner has been floundering.

But along the way he has cashed some awfully big checks. In 1992, his salary and cashed-out stock options totaled more than $200 million, the largest sum the head of an American corporation had ever received. Where Geffen, in his new old-mogul way, actually has some dreams and some taste (he bought and refurnished a mansion that once belonged to Jack L. Warner, he owns art and he tries to make classy movies), Eisner, for all his affability and "warmth," is professionally interested only in winning -- Masters claims that Eisner doesn't even enjoy dealing with "the talent." Geffen appears to be more infuriating than Eisner, yet he's also more appealing -- he's more mixed-up, a tiny part of him may actually love the arts and he has a streak of generosity.

Next page | To succeed in Hollywood, have a Jewish mother