It was, as Hollywood billionaire Barry Diller poetically remembers it, ‘the coup de foudre of our first ferocious love’.
The first time he met the ‘deliriously glamorous’ fashion queen Diane von Furstenberg at a super-smart Manhattan dinner party in 1974, she’d rudely brushed the reserved movie man aside to talk to someone else.
As Diller describes it, he was an outsider in her snooty world: ‘I was standing alone next to the fireplace feeling I did not belong in this group when «Prince» Egon von Fürstenberg [Diane’s first husband] walked up to me and said, «Your pants are too short».’
But when he and Diane met again a year later at another fabulous soiree, she was suddenly all over him.
‘I was instantly bathed in such attention and cozy warmth I couldn’t believe it was the same woman I’d been dismissed by a year earlier,’ he recalls breathlessly. Later… ‘We stood at the door, and I said, «I want to call you,» and she said, «I want you to».’
The miraculous relationship U-turn begs the question: what changed so suddenly?
Had the fiercely ambitious von Furstenberg since discovered that Diller, one of the most powerful players in the film industry and awash in money, could be rather more useful to her than she’d assumed when, claims Diller, she’d brusquely dismissed his social shyness for unimportance?
Perish the thought!
The first time Barry Diller met the ‘deliriously glamorous’ fashion queen Diane von Furstenberg at a super-smart Manhattan dinner party in 1974, she’d rudely brushed the reserved movie man aside to talk to someone else.
When Diller and Diane met again a year later at another fabulous soiree, she was suddenly all over him. (They are pictured together at Studio 54).
Although a long excerpt, published in New York magazine, of Diller’s forthcoming memoir has made headlines for containing his admission that he’s gay, some will be more surprised by his portrayal of himself as a lost puppy, a sensitive soul just looking for a home.
And he found it, he insists, in the arms of von Furstenberg to whom he’s been married since 2001.
Diller, now 83, describes himself as ‘held back by shyness and, to a degree, fear’ in the book.
There are some who might take issue with that description – coming as it does from a man who earned a daunting reputation as a ferocious boss who reduced underlings to tears.
Diller, acclaimed as one of the shrewdest businessmen in Tinseltown history and the brash former chairman of Paramount and co-founder of Fox Television, remains an icon in the business world.
But the adjectives that tend to be applied to him – intimidating, unsmiling, vicious – have not been complimentary.
His proteges at Paramount – including Disney boss Michael Eisner and Dreamworks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg – were nicknamed the ‘Diller Killers’ in tribute to his take-no-prisoners business ethos. Many who’ve had to deal with him have admitted to being unnerved by Diller’s intense stare and charmless manner.
Indeed, Diller’s business success over decades has been tarnished by persistent reports of his temper tantrums and his manic attention to detail.
Fortune Magazine reported in 1999 about a meeting during which a furious Diller hurled a video tape at an executive with such force that it went through a wall. (The executive, Steven Chao, had the damaged section of wall framed as a memento). The following year, the New York Times described Diller as ‘among the most respected – and feared – figures in the entertainment industry.’
A long excerpt of Diller’s forthcoming memoir has made headlines for containing his admission that he’s gay, some will be more surprised by his portrayal of himself as a lost puppy, a sensitive soul just looking for a home.
In 2002, the Tampa Bay Times published a shocking investigation into Diller’s behavior at work. It described how staff were terrified whenever Diller jetted in for his monthly visits to ‘detonate’ management at the Florida HQ of the Home Shopping Network (which he owned and which famously flogged his wife’s products).
‘There’s no tolerance for errors; Diller is known to shred employees if his tea isn’t properly brewed or red poinsettias show up at Christmas time,’ said the newspaper. (Diller apparently hated red flowers).
It went on: ‘Diller has a hair-trigger temper that alternates between fire and ice… a secretary who neglected to note a returned phone call received a 20-minute tirade from Diller that drove her to tears.’
Criticism of Diller was rare because he fought back with ‘self-righteous indignation’ and legal threats, said the Times.
The newspaper said that at Paramount, Diller’s ‘bullet-bald head would flush red with anger, his piercing blue stare would go icy and curses would fly’. It went on: ‘At wild parties and in the workplace, Diller cultivated spies who would keep him up on the latest gossip and be protected in return.’
Diller biographer George Mair told the Times: ‘There’s almost a visceral fear of what Barry might do to them. He’s vicious as hell to anyone who crosses him. And he uses his power for personal vendettas. If he sees you in his gunsights, he’ll pull the trigger.’
Mair said he’d interviewed a secretary of Diller’s at Paramount who said he ‘would go into an uncontrollable rage if the papers on his desk weren’t precisely arranged, his tea perfectly brewed and the cups of cigarettes around the office not adequately replenished’.
According to the report, ex-employees said Diller ‘could be charming and funny, but he never showed a human side’.
Diller was unapologetic to the Tampa Bay Times about his behavior, saying: ‘What I do is to rub the idea as toughly as one can, to have as much conflict as I can.
‘I like to have passionate opinion in every matter until the issue is resolved. It improves the end decision.’
Diller (pictured), acclaimed as one of the shrewdest businessmen in Tinseltown history and the brash former chairman of Paramount and co-founder of Fox Television, remains an icon in the business world.
In 2002, the Tampa Bay Times published a shocking investigation into Diller’s behavior at work. It described how staff were terrified whenever Diller jetted in for his monthly visits to ‘detonate’ management at the Florida HQ of the Home Shopping Network.
A decade later, in 2012, Business Insider included Diller (along with Harvey Weinstein) in a list of ’18 executives who lead by fear’.
It wasn’t just secretaries who were reduced to tears. Seasoned Hollywood executive Stacey Snider, chairman of Universal Pictures, says even she ended up crying in a brutal 2002 meeting with Diller. She told GQ she lived in dread of ever having to work for him again.
But none of that is touched upon in the early offering of his new book. Instead, the most talked about revelation in ‘Who Knew’ is that Diller is actually gay, but he insists, still able to find in Diane von Furstenberg a ‘unique and complete love’.
He writes: ‘While there have been a good many men in my life, there has only ever been one woman… I’ve lived for decades reading about Diane and me: about us being best friends rather than lovers. We weren’t just friends. We aren’t just friends. Plain and simple, it was an explosion of passion that kept up for years.’
Diller continues: ‘Yes, I also liked guys, but that was not a conflict with my love for Diane… I have never questioned my sexuality’s basic authority over my life (I was only afraid of the reaction of others).’
He says he was surprised when he found himself experiencing a heterosexual attraction to Von Furstenberg – a sexual libertine who claimed Mick Jagger and David Bowie once suggested having a threesome with her (Diane says she declined) – that was strong as any he felt for men. ‘When it happened,’ he says, ‘my initial response was, «Who knew?»‘
So, if that explains the odd title of his book, it will come as a relief to many people in the entertainment world for his homosexuality confession is no surprise. Everyone knew about that.
His sexual preference has been an open secret for decades. What may surprise industry insiders more is the mogul’s insistence that his relationship with von Furstenberg hasn’t just been warm and loving but also passionate and sexually charged.
He says he was surprised when he found himself experiencing a heterosexual attraction to Von Furstenberg – a sexual libertine who claimed Mick Jagger and David Bowie once suggested having a threesome with her (Diane says she declined).
His sexual preference has been an open secret for decades. What may surprise industry insiders more is the mogul’s insistence that his relationship with von Furstenberg hasn’t just been warm and loving but also passionate and sexually charged.
Diller lays on that passion with a spade in his book.
Within 24 hours after that second dinner party encounter, they were on her sofa ‘wound around each other, making out like teenagers, something I hadn’t done with a female since I was 16 years old’. She promptly ditched her boyfriend and was soon back in his arms at his New York mansion.
In what he describes as an ‘explosion of pent-up demand’, Diller recalls them having to run off from friends as they sat by the pool so they could have sex, only for friend David Geffen – another gay media mogul – to accidentally walk in on them and retreat quickly in astonishment.
According to Diller, his British butler, Derek, accosted her in the kitchen on the morning after von Furstenberg spent her first night at her beau’s New York home and asked: ‘Madam, may I ask you? Did you sleep with Mr. Diller last night?’
Would a professional butler really ask such a personal question? Like some of the other details in Diller’s gushing, romance novel-worthy account, readers will have to make up their own minds on its accuracy.
Von Furstenberg has reacted positively if cryptically to Diller’s public admission – stating, ‘The secret of honoring love and life is to never lie.’ And yet, critics note, the couple haven’t been honest for years about their marriage.
But it’s surely embarrassing for anyone to have their marriage so publicly skewered. Has Diller tried to sugarcoat the pill, some wonder, by making sure everyone is left in no doubt that theirs has been a proper union in every respect?
For decades, the general assumption in the media – which studiously avoided formally ‘outing’ Diller – was that this was a marriage of convenience. The couple split up for a decade in 1981 after he discovered she’d been having an affair with actor Richard Gere. They reunited in 1991 and then, in 2001, announced they were getting married.
Reporting on the news at the time, the New York Times couldn’t resist dropping a few heavy hints that this wouldn’t be a conventional marriage, noting that Diller would be keeping his apartment and that ‘after years of speculation about a relationship widely assumed to be platonic’, many of the couple’s friends were surprised by the abrupt decision to wed. (The general assumption was that they’d done it for tax purposes).
A few months after their 2001 wedding, Von Furstenberg assured Vanity Fair that ‘everything has always been normal’ in their relationship. ‘We share the same bed. We go on vacation together… It’s so weird that people can even ask.’
Perhaps. Others may say that it’s more weird that Diller has now written a book about it.
For decades, the general assumption in the media – which studiously avoided formally ‘outing’ Diller – was that this was a marriage of convenience.
The couple split up for a decade in 1981 after he discovered she’d been having an affair with actor Richard Gere. They reunited in 1991 and then, in 2001, announced they were getting married.
Why has Diller – a famously private man who kept the media’s attention focused only on his business life – waited until he was in his eighties to make his big confession? And one that he really doesn’t need to make anyway as so many people already know?
The usual justification for dropping shocking revelations into memoirs is to shift copies of the book but Diller – who after all, is worth an estimated $4.5 billion and has myriad homes and a 305ft boat that is one of the world’s largest private sailing yachts – hardly needs the cash.
Some Diller watchers believe the book is clearly an attempt not only to tidy up the rumors about his private life but also to soften his image in this post #MeToo age as one of Hollywood’s most notorious bosses.
However, it now appears that everyone who ever froze in terror in Diller’s presence or quaked under his verbal assault for not sharpening his pencils (another crime) got him all wrong.
Behind the slavering T-Rex, he assures us in his memoir, is a shy, sensitive guy whose marriage to the woman he loves is no sham.
To borrow its title, Who Knew?
