I'm feeling very Hollywood, having lunch at Asia de
Cuba, the restaurant at the Mondrian Hotel, with Tom King, a
entertainment industry reporter for the Wall Street Journal
and the author of The Operator, a biography of multimedia
mogul David Geffen. Why Geffen? "I really felt that he was the only
living person in show business worthy of a book of this nature," King
explains. "There was no one who I could find who had had a greater
impact over the movies that we watch, the music that we listen to,
the plays we see on Broadway--the whole ball of wax--than Geffen."
After all, here was a man who'd founded two of the most successful
record companies in the history of the music industry, then shifted
gears to become a top-notch movie producer and, eventually, one of
the three founding members of Dreamworks. At the same time, King
was fascinated by the personal aspects of Geffen's story. So he called
Geffen and asked if he'd be willing to cooperate on a biography "And
initially," King reports, "he did."
RH: Was he hesitant at all?
TK: Briefly. We had a couple months of discussions about
this, but I sensed from the beginning that his protesting that he
didn't want anyone to write a book about him was a bit
disingenuous. And as I recount later in the book, he wanted Robert
Caro to write his biography, so it turns out that he had been waiting
for some time for someone to come along and say, "I'd like to write
your life story." He was taken with the fact that I write for the
Wall Street Journal and that I'm gay, so it really only required
a little bit of arm twisting and then he was along for the ride.
He was also conflicted about this from the start, though. He would tell
people that I was writing a business book, but I made it clear from
the beginning that I was writing a biography. And some days he
would be more comfortable with that than on others.
RH: But even when he didn't want to cooperate, he still
steered people toward you, right?
TK: I think that the first person he told after he stopped
talking to me was Sandy Gallin, and I don't think that he told him for
a year. That more than anything showed me that he wanted this
book written. He said to me once, "It's one thing for me to open my
life up to you, to allow you to interview my friends and family. It's
another thing altogether for me to give you my story myself. Why
should I cooperate with a book that might offend me?" By that time,
around Halloween, 1997, he had grown sufficiently concerned that
this wasn't going to be a Valentine.
RH: What was the thing you learned during your research
that surprised you most about Geffen?
TK: One, the power of his charm. It knocked me out that
people would come back to him, time and again, choose to work with
him, even after he had screwed them over in some horrible way.
People did really have a true and deep and abiding affection for this
man. They felt paternal toward him. I think a lot of people
recognized his insecurities and didn't want him to get hurt. The
other thing that surprised me the most was the simple realization
that this is a man whose friends are terrified of him. Think about
that. I don't know about you, but I don't have any friends who are
scared of me. At least I don't think so. That just seemed amazing to
me, so completely opposite of the whole notion of what friendship is
about. But he is a frightening guy. He has a rage that is almost
indescribable. When he screams, people run for cover. I've not only
heard countless stories of this from other people and how they had
experienced it, I experienced it myself, firsthand.
This behavior just would not be tolerated anywhere else but in
Hollywood, and not even here really all that much. It's my one point
of concern about the book--that somehow young people wanting to
make it in this town might view it as a textbook for how to get
ahead.
RH: And the whole career is based on lying and cheating
his friends. Here's a guy who jumpstarts his career by
waiting in the mailroom so when a letter comes, proving
that he lied about his credentials, he can get rid of it before
anybody sees it.
TK: What's wild about that story is he's proud of that. He
thinks it demonstrates his resourcefulness when it's just the clearest
sign that the guy's moral compass is off kilter. I mean, that almost
might be illegal. It's not mail fraud, like what he did as a kid when
he was scamming the CBS Record Club, but certainly opening letters
that aren't addressed to you is some kind of violation. Tampering, I
think. He just learned early on that it was easier to cheat and
sometimes simpler to get what you wanted if you lied.
But what makes David Geffen worthy of a book and worthy of our
chat really isn't so much that he exhibits these monster-like
qualities, though they make him a fascinating character, but the fact
that he built this show business empire from the ground up. There
are other people in Hollywood who are talented moguls, but the Walt
Disney Company existed a long time before Michael Eisner came
along and ran it brilliantly. What David Geffen has done is, in my
mind, in a completely different league.
RH: So now that you've got one book under your belt, are
you eager to start all over again and take on another big
project?
TK: I'm back at the Wall Street Journal, where I write
the "Hollywood Journal" column every Friday. At some point, I
would like to write another book. But the key is that subject. I was
so passionate about the Geffen book from the moment the idea
hatched. That was the fastest three years of my life, writing it,
researching and writing it. I never once got up in the morning and
said, "Man, I wish I hadn't done this." I always knew there was a
great story there. Just the nuts and bolts of his life... I figured I
couldn't go wrong because it was so amazing what he had done and
how he had done it. So that will be the key: finding a second subject
that really can get me that excited.
Buy it from
