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- [00:02]
Barry Diller
Tetragrammaton. When I was a kid, there were three television networks. There was a rotary dial that you turned to get these three video television choices. And over the next 20, 30 years, we saw first a number of cable quote stations, close quote, came into being men. I remember being at a cable convention in I think the early 70s where John Malone, a great cable pioneer, was on the stage and said, there will be a 500 channel universe, cable universe. And that was the first time anyone said it. And you may recall this, the 500 channel universe, which for about a decade after was the reference point. And of course, how overly true that is. We have way more than that. If you take YouTube, et cetera, we have thousands and thousands of quote, channels, close quote. So I've seen this evolution of enormous scarcity, basically three places that you could view things to what we have today. All of that has not, though, changed the essential, you know, nature of call it mass communication media, which is when you got an idea and then you can execute it, make it, whether it's a television series or a movie or whatever. While the distribution methods have changed, the form factor may have changed, but the form hasn't changed. It's still storytelling. It's always going to be storytelling of one form or the other.
- [02:17]
Interviewer
Has the fact that it went from the three networks to now maybe unlimited possibilities changed anything?
- [02:25]
Barry Diller
It hasn't changed the essence of what I just said. I mean, what it has changed, probably to me, the most important change is how fast it disappears, how little that affects the culture, stays in the culture. That because there's so much that it comes and goes in a flash. I mean, I'm so for my friends and just empathy for others when I see a film that I know people worked on for close to a year and it's gone in two days.
- [03:07]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [03:07]
Barry Diller
I mean, the work you go into to do this stuff, this is intensive work and that it's gone in a flash. And even things that have, except for big, huge bonanza ticket items like Current Wicked, let's call it, or Barbie that take over for a couple of months, almost everything is just gone too quickly and does not resonate. That's the greatest change from when I was growing up, when I began to participate, for instance, in making Roots, a kind of seminal television miniseries that was, I think, 22 hours, two hours over a night, over 11 nights and captured more than half the United States and stayed in the culture for months and months and months.
- [04:00]
Interviewer
It changed the world. Everyone saw Roots and people still reference it today.
- [04:04]
Barry Diller
Yeah. So the ability to do that today. So I think that's, to me, the biggest change is that really worthy stuff. Not, I mean, worthy stuff that's great in any form of worthiness or not just simple great, just doesn't resonate anymore, is sad. Among other things, I think it's this whole thing of gathering around the family, around the television set. I mean, it's such a lovely image and it's so ludicrous to even imagine it today.
- [04:39]
Interviewer
Yeah. Tell me the story of the miniseries. Not Roots, but in general, there was a time when there were no miniseries.
- [04:47]
Barry Diller
This is true. That time was in the late 60s, early 70s. Yeah, I think it's probably. No, it is early 70s. We'd started this thing called a movie the week and we had, I think at its height, we made 75 of them a year, 90 minute movies.
- [05:04]
Interviewer
Unbelievable.
- [05:05]
Barry Diller
And I had thought when I would read a really good, thick, juicy fiction book, I would think, why do they make a two hour movie of this stuff? I mean, how do you compress? It's almost impossible. So I thought, you know, here we got this thing, television thing, it's on all the time. We've got nothing but time, so why not try and tell a story in how long it takes to tell that story? We didn't have a word called miniseries. We had the word we invented, which is called novel for television.
- [05:41]
Interviewer
Nice.
- [05:41]
Barry Diller
First of all, I thought I got to get a book to do this with and no one would sell me books because they were all sold to movies at the time. And there was no form of this for television. So the only book I could buy was QV7, which was the story essentially of castration during Nazi Germany. A tough subject, to be sure. And I thought, well, okay, it's all I got. And so we hired, thankfully, Anthony Hopkins to play the lead. And it was four hours. We put it on over two nights and it was a big hit. And that was the first one. During the production of it, I got a hold of a second book called Rich Man, Poor Man, a much more popular first of all novel and also a great cracking story. And we made that quickly thereafter, probably a year or two, I guess, and that was 12 hours. And thus the miniseries was born. While we were doing Rich Man, Poor Man, Alex Haley came to my office with David Wolper, a major producer at the time, and told me that he was in the middle of writing this book called Roots and he hadn't finished writing the novel. And I think I had only an outline, but in the office on that Day I said, we're definitely doing this. I don't know if we bought it that day, but we bought it within an hour. And then he took him a while to finish the book and then we made it actually genesis of what became known as the miniseries.
- [07:19]
Interviewer
Once you had success doing miniseries, did the other networks copy?
- [07:23]
Barry Diller
Oh yes, absolutely. Everybody copied it.
- [07:26]
Interviewer
Why did it take you to see that you could make something longer? It's like it was just a different model. Why did you see that and no one else could see it?
- [07:37]
Barry Diller
Thankfully I did. And it's not true of anything that seems very obvious. Look, it was so natural to me, I mean, and it didn't develop like a bolt in my little dumb head of let's do this. But over, you know, over, I don't know, a gestation period of being a little frustrated by this 90 minute movie, which was really 75 minutes of actual film, but more so seeing novels butchered when they were made into movies, which was the only way that novels got translated. And then of course I knew the great maw of television had unlimited time to do anything. It wasn't that hard to do. But then I think the same thing after I saw Steve Jobs demo the iPhone. I don't know if you saw that original demo. I did, I saw it before I got the product. I thought this is frigging magic. And now you think what a simple idea, a form factor in your hand that you could interface with content. Anyway, I think that's true of almost ideas.
- [08:52]
Interviewer
Tell me the story of the movie of the week.
- [08:54]
Barry Diller
Well, I'm 24 over 24 I think. And I had been responsible at ABC for buying movies from major studios to show on the networks. And I realized that there weren't enough movies to buy. The movies that were being made were basically divided between the three networks and it was hard to get new product. They weren't making enough of it, so to speak. So I thought, oh, why don't we make our own? Which was a lunatic idea.
- [09:35]
Interviewer
It's a radical, radical idea.
- [09:37]
Barry Diller
And I thought the 90 minute form was good for television for a lot of reasons, scheduling reasons really, particularly an ABC schedule at the time. And luckily the chairman of ABC had come from the movie business and he was the only one actually, but it was the only one necessary really that allowed it to get a little spark to start the development process. And then because everybody thought it would fail because the only thing on television then was these half hour, an hour television series, they let this 24 year old kid, me actually do It. So I got from the very first day the responsibility without anyone actually bestowing it on me, I kind of just took it. No one said anything otherwise. Again, I think they wanted to stay away from it. And so I got to build a little movie studio inside this network from the scratch up. I mean, it was the seminal experience of learning how to manage because at the very beginning of any project, basically you really have to do every job because you're hiring every job, so you kind of learn every job. It gives you the great foundation for being able to manage stuff. So it was kind of a miracle. And then when it succeeded, it succeeded with such moment that by 2006, I think they made me the first youngest vice president in television history and no one could take it away from me.
- [11:21]
Interviewer
And was that really based on the breakthrough of the movie of the week and making them yourself?
- [11:27]
Barry Diller
Yes, yes, totally.
- [11:28]
Interviewer
That's a great idea.
- [11:29]
Barry Diller
We made the process of building an entity that actually made, manufactured, made 24 movies. At the first season we made 24, and then the second season we went to a second night, so we made 50, and then the third we made 75. I mean, it was, yeah. Giant manufacturing challenge.
- [11:54]
Interviewer
It's unbelievable considering the big movie studios, none of them made 75 movies a year.
- [12:00]
Barry Diller
No, they made 20.
- [12:01]
Interviewer
Yeah, it's a huge undertaking.
- [12:02]
Barry Diller
Yeah, it was. It was total fun. There's a wonderful thing about, I think, people presuming you're going to fail is that they leave you alone. And so you kind of are in isolation and protected by that because nobody kind of wants to get near you. Which means you get to make your mistakes and correct your mistakes, really, without anybody banging around and trying to alter your course in their way.
- [12:40]
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- [14:54]
Interviewer
Describe ABC versus the other two networks in those days.
- [14:59]
Barry Diller
Well, ABC was the hip shooter network because it was the third network, it was the youngest network since they commandeered the entire viewing population. CBS and NBC had been founded in radio days, 25, 30 years, yeah, before television. And so they were very established and ABC came along strung together from kind of wire coat hanger television stations. So in order to land itself, it had to take more chances than the more established networks. Also, it was while it was a large company, it didn't have very much bureaucracy. Get successful and you get established barnacles start to form and bureaucracy is inevitable. But because it had little bureaucracy, if you wanted responsibility, you could just take it. There was no one there to stop you. It was kind of run like a candy store. And what an incredible opportunity it was for those of us who got to participate in it in those years, these years being the late 60s to 74 when I left it to go to Paramount.
- [16:16]
Interviewer
Tell me about that decision to leave.
- [16:18]
Barry Diller
It wasn't a decision I didn't really want to go as crazy it is what happened now. There was nobody at that time from television who was allowed into the theatrical motion picture business. I mean, as I used to say, they used to pee on the people from television. Definitely not even second class citizens according to the very, very concentrated movie business, divided at that time among six studios and no one else. And this mad Austrian who ran a company called Gulf and Western, a big conglomerate at the time, had bought Paramount. And I'd gotten to know him because I had been buying these movies, as I said earlier, these theatrical movies for television. And I'd gotten to know him and he'd been trying to get me to come to Paramount for, I don't know, four or five years. And I kept saying no, I don't want to do that. Various run the television department of Paramount, et cetera. And one day he Called me over to his office and said, all right, I'm going to make you chairman of Paramount. I said, well, that's insane. You can't make me chairman of Paramount. I'm like a middle level ABC executive. He said, well, guess what? I am doing it. I said, well, I don't know that I want to do it. He said, well, then you are insane and true. He told me. And I said, I have to think about this. He said, think about it. I mean, just say yes, you bird brain. Eventually, of course, after a day or so, I came to my senses and I said yes. And so I became chairman of Paramount at the age of 32.
- [17:59]
Interviewer
Unbelievable.
- [18:00]
Barry Diller
And I was the first person from television that dared to come into the movie business.
- [18:05]
Interviewer
How was the reception in the industry to this outsider?
- [18:11]
Barry Diller
Not kindly. And of course for me, the only process I know is kind of fail first before I can figure it out and make my way. So for the first couple of years, I mean, epitomized by my favorite worst movie we made, which was called Won Ton the Dog that Saved Hollywood. And not only did it not save Hollywood, it sunk without a trace. And we made a lot of turkey movies in those first two years. As I was trying to figure out this movie business that again, everybody snobbily didn't want to have anything to do with me. And at the time, most of the movie business was dominated by packages where agents would put together writer, director, actors in a package and sell them to, quote, the highest bidder or whatever. And I didn't like that process because I, coming from this manufacturing process on the movie of the week, to me it was always about what was the idea and then developing it into a script. And when you like the script, then you proceed step by step. And I liked that development process that was very much against the rules of the movie business. Anyway, I started working on that after I got my first few dunkings into the world of very flamboyant Hollywood at the time. Outsized personalities from this, what was hardly an ancient regime, but the relatively staid world of television. And I started to develop material. I just felt more comfortable in that process. But it took a while, a little over two years. And I mean Paramount, we were the last ranked company and that was a miserable time. I went to the company that owned the man who'd hired me and I said, you've had taken this great leap of faith and it's failed and you ought to get on with it and get someone in here that can do better than I'VE done. And he said, just go back to your office. I'm not letting you out of here. And a few months later, we released Saturday Night Fever and went from last place to first place and held it for seven years. Wow.
- [20:46]
Interviewer
Was Saturday Night Fever the first film that really broke out?
- [20:51]
Barry Diller
It was the first big film. We released a film a few months before that, looking for Mr. Goodbar, based upon a wonderful, slim little book. That was in September, October of, I guess, 76, 77 or whatever. And at Christmas, we released Saturday Night Fever. And after that, a whole string of very successful movies.
- [21:16]
Interviewer
How did Saturday Night Fever come about?
- [21:18]
Barry Diller
It was a story in New York magazine. I just thought, this is, first of all, it's a lovely little short story. And we wrote the script. And Robert Stigwood, he was a great impresario of those decades from. He started as the Beatles manager, I think, after Brian Epstein died. And then he went on many record companies, et cetera, et cetera, all in the recorded music business, I think, until he got interested in the film business. And I don't quite know how he got involved with this project, but he did. And what he brought to it, again, this was just a story, but he brought the Bee Gees to it kind of midway in the development of it, and kind of the first marriage of kind of movie business and recorded music business. And the Bee Gees track was such a phenomenon. And we released the first or second track, Staying Alive, I think two, three weeks before the movie came out. Everybody said, well, no one's going to go see a movie with some television guy. John Travolta, in that case, in the lead, who'd been in the television series called welcome Back Cotter. I said, no, no, no. No television. That'll never work. And the first hour of the first day, there were lines around the block many blocks long, because between the music and then the movie itself, it was the definition of a smash.
- [23:02]
Interviewer
Tell me about the decision to put John Travolta in. I know he was big on television, but up until that point, no one had made that crossover from TV to the big screen.
- [23:12]
Barry Diller
No, no, he was definitely the first. And it was again for us, me and my colleagues, some of whom had then joined the company, particularly Michael Eisner, who went on to run Disney, as you know. And we knew Travolta from television, clearly. And the part was so perfect for John. It was just so obvious to us to put him in it. We didn't think twice about it. Everyone around us said, in the old hands of the movie executives said, that's crazy, so don't do that. You know, let's get some established person to play this part. And we thought otherwise. And yeah, it really broke through.
- [23:57]
Interviewer
Do you think you just didn't have the baggage of the old way of doing things? Gave you freedom to do things other people wouldn't do?
- [24:05]
Barry Diller
Don't you think that's always true? People think you're gonna fail, so you get to do stuff.
- [24:08]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [24:09]
Barry Diller
You know, history and experience is good for certain things. But I've always thought too much experience is very bad for new stuff.
- [24:20]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [24:20]
Barry Diller
And I've fought against the corrosion of cynicism all my life because I know that what kills instinct is cynicism. And if you gain experience, you can't help but develop a cynical attitude unless you force scrubbing it almost every day. You have to hold on to naivete because it's only if you have kind of naive sensibility. That's not knowing, that's not just held down by conventional or current thinking. That's when stuff springs free. It's always been a fight with me to fight off cynicism and sophistication in certain areas. I'm certainly after having lived a while, to say the least. No one could say I'm not sophisticated. No one can say I don't live a, quote, big city life. At the same time, I've tried very hard to keep scrubbing it in my exalted circumstances, scrubbing it as clean as I can to keep my instincts at least somewhat fresh.
- [25:41]
Interviewer
Let's talk about instincts a little bit. When you hear an idea and you know it's a good idea, what's the feeling of good idea versus bad idea?
- [25:51]
Barry Diller
Well, there is a thing called pure instinct. If you're very lucky, and I am very lucky, I think in this regard that my mainstream interests, I got a lot of little curiosity by ways. But my mainstream interests, they've always been in the general mainstream. Why that is, who the hell knows? I'm not overly intellectualized about extremely artistic, arcane, abstruse arenas. So that's pure luck. And then my instincts derive from that, I trust. So when I hear an idea, it either bounces off something that says now that's interesting or not. And what then additionally affects it is my arguing it with other people in a room. My process of creative conflict, which is you get a bunch of people in an enclosed space, usually past their point of endurance, and you talk about ideas and what you want to do and different aspects of that. And out of that you hear kind of people's passion and that really helps your instincts to get kind of soldered into something that you can then activate. You can then say, yes, let's go in that direction. And it is a process where A, you listen to your own instincts, but B, you have a tuning fork inside your head that when you hear a truth in the room, you hear it and you can act on it. And if you didn't provide that, the coarseness of this creative conflict, I mean, maybe it would. But in my experience, that's where those things come from. So that's kind of how it works.
- [27:57]
Interviewer
Is it as simple as the best debater in the room, their ideas win? Or might the best idea come from someone who doesn't explain it so well, but you can hear through that.
- [28:10]
Barry Diller
Oh yeah, you're totally right about that. First of all, the one thing I think is necessary to establish in that room is when someone says something stupid is you celebrate it because you got to hear dumb stuff in order to hear good stuff. And often it comes from pure passion. When you hear passion, when you hear that, you're hearing a different kind of truth, because passion is a kind of truth if you're tuned right. And I don't think any of this comes from deep brain work. Smarter doesn't get you there. I just think that that's a very good creative process.
- [28:55]
Interviewer
Yeah. And as you say, it's not an intellectual process. I guess it's an emotional thing.
- [29:01]
Barry Diller
It is.
- [29:02]
Interviewer
You said early when you were describing it, you said past the point of endurance. And it's an interesting idea that something happens when you talk about an idea for too long where your guard comes down out of exhaustion.
- [29:20]
Barry Diller
It's true.
- [29:21]
Interviewer
And really good, unusual ideas appear that wouldn't appear otherwise. Almost in like a dreamlike state.
- [29:30]
Barry Diller
It's very weird. I've always wondered about it, but it's been so true. Is that past the point of endurance is that space doesn't last forever because exhaustion does come. But whatever, complete exhaustion, where you're inoperable. But there is a time when everyone wants to leave the room and you won't let them. That that next period stuff happens.
- [30:00]
Interviewer
Yeah. Maybe it comes out of desperation in some way, probably.
- [30:04]
Barry Diller
But it works well, it's true. I'll tell you where it is most to me, in advertising, you know, I've always thought that the best advertising comes out of denial.
- [30:14]
Interviewer
Explain.
- [30:15]
Barry Diller
Well, when you're on anything that you want to market, let's just say it's an ad, it's an Old parlance, a print ad or any kind of thing that's visual. And I discovered this really, with movies where every year you're putting out. At Paramount, we were generally doing 15 to 18 movies a year, major movies a year. So twice a month or so you'd get ready to market a movie and they would bring in your marketing department, advertising department, bring in different examples of ads and the normal processes of. Okay, you get presented five and you pick one. My process was to say, no, all five are bad. Come back, because you don't have to argue a good ad there. It's clear instantaneously to everyone. And the amount of rationalization that goes on to point out different aspects, whatever, is just wasteful. But if you just deny and keep it up till something comes that's good. And obviously in your denial of it, and you say, no, this is not right because of this or that, or it'll spark an idea for something or a direction or an avenue to explore or whatever. And I've always thought that what most particular, let's call them creative ad agencies want to do, they want to go home. You know, they want whatever they've done to be accepted so they can go home, get onto the next thing or whatever. If you just say not good enough, actually out of anger, frustration and whatever else, out often pops a good thing for you to do. So this thing of denial and exhaustion and all is wrapped up in creativity, at least for me. Yeah.
- [32:20]
Interviewer
It also sounds like you're not as interested in checking something off the list of things to do as getting it right.
- [32:29]
Barry Diller
Well, yeah, and getting it right. Listen, there's a handful of times it is handful. A few handfuls, maybe. And I can recall some of them where it's just perfect from the first hour of the first day where it comes in. Yeah. That's the rarest of rare. Usually you got to work for it. Yeah.
- [32:50]
Interviewer
Tell me an example of one time where it came in and it was just like, thank you.
- [32:55]
Barry Diller
There's a movie we made called Heaven Can Awake, Warren Beatty's movie. It's actually a remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan, a movie from, I think, the 30s. And they came in my office and it was a picture of Warren Beatty and he had wings, angel's wings on his back. It was like this just perfect image for this movie.
- [33:20]
Interviewer
How important was the poster for a movie or the ad campaign?
- [33:26]
Barry Diller
Well, in an olden days, very important because it's all you had at Paramount. Movies were not advertised in television spots up until Paramount came along because we from television said, oh my God, we've got, hey guess what? We can make 30 second spots that'll sell our movie nationally rather than start with two theaters and progressively depend on word of mouth. So you just had very little means of communicating. But that poster, that print ad in the newspaper, principally the New York Times, but in every newspaper in the US because again, at that time newspapers had huge viewership and you could put an ad in newspapers and if it cracked, it would open your movie for you.
- [34:15]
Interviewer
Do you remember the first movie that.
- [34:17]
Barry Diller
You did, a TV spot for Bad News Bears.
- [34:20]
Interviewer
And did it work completely from then on? Was it a decision whether or not to do a spot for a movie or did every movie get a spot?
- [34:28]
Barry Diller
No, no, no. Everybody adopted it. It became just general practice and was true. Is still to a degree true, although less prevalent now with social media and other means of marketing. But I'd say from the 19, mid-70s to 5, 10 years ago, it was the way you sold movies. A 30 second television spot.
- [34:57]
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- [36:26]
Interviewer
In the book you talk about your parents being hands off. Would you say that that made you who you are?
- [36:33]
Barry Diller
Well, yeah, Hands off is an interesting. I never thought of it that way. Yeah, they were kind of. They weren't absent, but they weren't involved in the conduct of their child. Look, I actually think the thing that is the most important thing that develops you is your own biology, for which I take no credit. But yeah, everything that my, the dysfunction in my family, which certainly was garden variety. It wasn't violent or anything particularly strange. It was just absent that and the anvil of my at the time, determined, deviant sexuality, all that stuff, if you survive it, then it contributes somehow, some way, some which way, for sure.
- [37:29]
Interviewer
You talked about your mom saying she was going to pick you up, not picking you up, you losing trust for her. And if you lost trust for her, you lost trust for everyone. How would you say that lack of trust impacted your life?
- [37:44]
Barry Diller
Again, I think biology saved me. And I think that if I hadn't had that, who knows? But what it certainly did is I kind of gave up on people, meaning people to protect me or to give me hope, let's say. So I had to, not had to, because I didn't have to do anything. But when that happened, I had to depend on myself. It kind of excluded me from humanity to a degree. But like other things, you know, if you can't see, you hear better. If you can't do this, you do something else better. So my compensation, the compensatory effects of all that stuff, gave me certain superpowers as I went on that other people didn't have. I had one huge worry, the worry that my sexuality would be revealed. When you have one giant worry, other worries are prosaic. And so I could take risks that didn't. They weren't risky to me because I had one big risk. So there are lesser risks, like, am I bold about ideas, am I bold about this or that business decision? This decision. That decision didn't appear risky to me. Gave me great, great latitude.
- [39:23]
Interviewer
Do you think of yourself as a gambler?
- [39:26]
Barry Diller
No, actually, I'm a really rotten gambler. It's so bizarre. I really can't figure it out because, I mean, I am a gambler to the extent that I don't see risk in certain areas, but in the prosaic word of gambler, I am a lousy gambler.
- [39:45]
Interviewer
It's really about how you see yourself, and you don't see yourself as a gambler, even though you make, yes, essentially bets on things in your working life.
- [39:56]
Barry Diller
Absolutely. And again, it is, because I really think it goes to the very earliest formation. I had this imagery of this giant anvil over my head and it was so conclusive to me that nothing else mattered.
- [40:15]
Interviewer
I understand. What technological breakthrough has most impacted your life?
- [40:22]
Barry Diller
Clearly digital and clearly, for me, I was really lucky enough. And I really do believe it just depends upon where you are at certain times in history. As Warren Buffett best said that if he were in the. Just his own area, where fire had just been discovered, let's say, he would have been eaten very early. He was just Very lucky that when he was born and grew up was a time where his talent was conducive to situations. And so I think serendipity and timing and all that is so much a part of stuff. But for me, it was having been a person who'd been in the storytelling business, narrative business for decades, and only understanding screens now and a computer screen. But screens to me were at that time either television screens or big movie screens. I had only known, let's use that stuff for telling stories. That's what those things are. They're passive environment. And I was just lucky in 92 that I got to this home shopping network and saw for the first time a screen being used interactively where products would be shown. And you pick up the phone at that time and you'd punch some numbers and you'd order it up and you interacted with. And I saw this interactivity, this primitive convergence, and I thought, wow, now that's something I didn't know. Certainly I didn't know the Internet was three years away from coming for normal folk. I didn't know anything other than, wow, screens can be used for doing something other than telling stories. That was a moment. And I was lucky enough, again, pure luck. I had gotten some fluency in my fingertips for understanding interactivity. So when the Internet came along, I was ready and out of it. We developed a bunch of companies. But that technology, that digital change at a formative age for me, that formative age being actually 49, but I was primed.
- [42:53]
Interviewer
And also in terms of serendipity, you didn't go to QVC out of your own interest. You went to check it out for Dion.
- [43:00]
Barry Diller
I did. My wife called me up and she said, there's this thing called QVC and I'm going to go see it. I said, okay. And I went to see it. And that's when I had this epiphany. And I didn't know what to do with it. I didn't do anything with it other than it did strike me down. And I think two months, maybe later, I'm sitting with the people who owned qvc and they wanted me to come and I just left Fox and I again, I run two movie studios, very successful and all that. I didn't want to repeat myself, but they. And they wanted me to start a, you know, production company. Some repeating of my past stuff which I was not interested in at all, and just mentioned that they owned qvc. And I said, wow, tell me more about it. And as the discussion went on, just for A few minutes. The founder of it was going to retire. And I said, can I buy into it? And they said yes. And that changed my life.
- [44:01]
Interviewer
Amazing. Tell me about going from Paramount to Fox.
- [44:06]
Barry Diller
I met Paramount and the person who had hired me, this is eight and a half years, nine years after I started at Paramount. He died young at 56. And the person who replaced him I didn't like, and I don't think he liked me either. And I thought, I've got to get out of this place. I don't like the environment here. And again, serendipitously, this other person came and said, would you come to Fox and I'll give you 25% of the company? And I said yes. And in a matter of months, all that changed. I came to Fox and then got this bad guy without going into boring detail about him, got him out of the company, got Rupert Murdoch into it. And a few months after that, I had always wanted to start a fourth network. Got the chance to do that, and then that again, changed conditions because we started Fox Broadcasting and that went through its teething. My normal teething process, screw it up until you can figure it out and get it right. Took about a year and a half and we made a success out of that. Put on the Simpsons and other shows and Fox became the number one network.
- [45:27]
Interviewer
Let's talk about Fox the network a little bit, because I don't think anyone was thinking there was ever going to be a fourth network. I don't think that was in the air at all.
- [45:37]
Barry Diller
As I've said, I really like it when people think you're going to fail and doubt you. But everybody thought there was no chance. People had tried to do fourth networks for 20 years. Every one of them failed. No one thought that there was either room. There weren't enough television stations actually at the time to support a fourth network. There were independent stations that had no viewing, but there were very few strong affiliated television stations with strong enough signal to support a fourth network. No one thought that the economy would support on and on and on and on. And we thought differently. And thankfully, Rupert Murdoch, a great gambler, instantly said, yep, go do it. And so we got the backing in order to try it. And despite, of course, everybody. And it took us a while, but despite everybody, we came through. Because the reason I wanted to do it is I thought all these networks started to really program exactly in the same. They used to have their own personalities, but by then they all were kind of uniform programming of the same stuff. And I thought an alternative would Be good. And we found our voice with a show called Married with Children.
- [46:58]
Interviewer
Great show.
- [46:59]
Barry Diller
Which was actually, it was originally called not the Cosbys. At the time, the number one show on television, huge hit, was the Cosby show about this lovely, wonderful, perfect American family. And that was the image as against later developments, it was quite extraordinary. But anyway, so this script, when I saw it, when it came across, not the Cosbys, instantly I wanted to read it. And we later had changed the name to Married with Children. And that was the breakthrough. And then it followed with the Simpsons and Cops and all sorts of other alternative programs.
- [47:38]
Interviewer
Tell me about that philosophy of alternative programming in general. You've always maintained a sense of the alternative.
- [47:48]
Barry Diller
Well, I'm a contrarian by nature. Anybody who's in a room with me kind of knows that. I mean it just, it is my nature. Contrariness also, I don't know, very early, the idea of quote, counter programming, anything always appealed to me. Whatever's over here, go over there, you'll find something. So it's just been a natural. I didn't have to scratch very hard for it. But I've always just gravitated towards if it's in evidence, it kind of bores me. If it's not in evidence, I'm kind of interested. That by nature is contrarian.
- [48:33]
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- [50:00]
Warning.
- [50:01]
Barry Diller
This product contains nicotine.
- [50:02]
Sponsor Voice
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- [50:08]
Interviewer
When did your love of sailing begin?
- [50:10]
Barry Diller
Oh God, you know, not that early. No, I would say somewhere in my late 20s I started to like boats. And then the thing is, I think after you get your first boat, you either say, I Never want another one. Get me out of this or you get another boat you're in. And so I've been doing that for now, decades. And now I have two boats. One is a sailboat, a three masted schooner, and the other's a kind of classic boat that kind of hangs around the us Close ports. I've always been drawn to water, and if water is not near me or around me, I'm uncomfortable. I don't know what would have happened to me if I were in the Midwest too long.
- [51:00]
Interviewer
What's it like living on a boat for a long period of time?
- [51:03]
Barry Diller
Well, it's the greatest luxury. Think of it this way. And a lot of people take their boats to St. Bart and sit there. That is not us. The great thing about having a boat is you go to places that are adventurous, places where you're exploring. And I and my family like hiking and biking and swimming and stuff. And so you go off for a hike and you get filthy, messy, awful, dirty and draggy, and you come back to your wonderful house and then that house moves.
- [51:42]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [51:43]
Barry Diller
You think, what possibly could be more luxurious than that?
- [51:48]
Interviewer
How does Dion make you better?
- [51:51]
Barry Diller
Oh, my God. There's no way to start and end that. I mean, other than end it and start it, which is characteristically. She is an earth mother. Her whole sensibility, her whole being is enfolding others in her. Everything. So I am just. Again, I've used this word luck a few times, but it's. And I hate using it because it scares me, because I think it'll end. But anyway, the luck of that we found each other and she and our family. I mean, it has. As I said earlier, when very early, I decided I couldn't trust anyone. I trust her and she's made me trust everyone else.
- [52:42]
Interviewer
I listened to the audiobook of your book and you read it beautifully.
- [52:46]
Barry Diller
Well, would you like me to quickly tell you the story of that?
- [52:49]
Interviewer
Yes.
- [52:49]
Barry Diller
So first, my wife, who's done four books, told me I had to do the audiobook myself. And I thought, well, that makes sense. It's a biography. I want to read it myself. So I don't know if you've done this process. So for 25 hours I sat in this little room with Simon and Schuster, and at the end of it, I thought, wow, God, that was great. I sent it to Scott Rudin, a friend of mine, who's the best creative force I know. I said, just listen to an hour of it. I just want to. He calls me 20 minutes later and he says, it's Shit junket. I said, oh no. He said, look, you're not an actor, you can't. You need proper direction here. So we got somebody we both knew, great young Brit director come over and on my boat, which is where I am now, we. We spent 15 hours and re recorded it and it came out authentic.
- [53:45]
Interviewer
I think it's beautiful. Through the process of working on the book, did you learn anything about yourself?
- [53:52]
Barry Diller
Yes, for sure. It's just because one of the things that's true for me, it's definitely true. I think for a lot of other people is an inability to have ever much lived in the moment. I mean, I was going through so much stuff, so many different ways, so many experiences that living in the moment. I don't think I did much of that. Well, when you write a book about yourself, you are actually able to live in those moments and it gives you a frame that you just never had before. So, yeah, I mean, I know the difference pre and post. I don't think I have much wisdom, but if I have any, it came from that process.
- [54:38]
Interviewer
Beautiful. What makes a great assistant?
- [54:42]
Barry Diller
Me.
- [54:43]
Interviewer
What did you do that made you the great assistant?
- [54:45]
Barry Diller
First of all, one of the powers that I had was pleasing others, learning how to please people that I needed for this or that I was just very good at. Very young, you know, 19, 20, 21, my first little work experiences because I had a need to please people because I had no self. So I was the only way I could survive, function well, if you have that as a base and then you're ambitious and whatever. And then if you like process and detail, there's some ingredients. And I was the assistant to several people age 19 to 23, I'd say 24. Before I was somewhat independent. I was the best little assistant the world had ever known. Just because of that matrix of those ingredients.
- [55:41]
Interviewer
Have you ever been able to find a great assistant for you?
- [55:44]
Barry Diller
I have found some, yes, very much so. I still think, though, often that in so many areas people are so much better than me. I mean, areas that I've been involved in through my life, et cetera, that people would say that I have some peers. I have no peers and assistants. This is the one statement of confidence I can make with absolute certainty.
- [56:11]
Interviewer
Tell me about your clone dogs.
- [56:14]
Barry Diller
We have five now. We had six, but one was eaten by a crocodile in Costa Rica, a place I'll never go to again. Wow, this is now 12 years ago. Yeah, A dog that I had found in Ireland on a biking trip and picked up at nine months old. Was getting into her teens. And I had heard that in South Korea, they started cloning dogs. And so I thought, well, let's try it. And so we did that. And the mother of all the five dogs died about a year after that. And out came this perfect replica and this soul of their mother. And then we had more DNA, which is how you are able to get the matter that makes the dog the replica. And so we've done it several times now. The last two we did in New York before that was all in South Korea. And they really are. Well, they're physical, absolute replicas. The only thing that doesn't translate is pigment. So the colors, some of the spots are different, but they are all the soul of their mother.
- [57:32]
Interviewer
The same demeanor, the same personality.
- [57:35]
Barry Diller
It's slightly different stuff, but you can. At least I can now. Maybe I'm. Maybe it's. Maybe I don't think I'm making it up, because everybody who knows this, who's been around the mother dog, Shannon, and sees these clones, says the same thing. They're not exact, but the soul is the same. That's as best as I can do.
- [57:58]
Interviewer
Is content King.
- [58:02]
Barry Diller
It is never not going to be. I mean, with all of the different transitions we're going through now, you're never, I think, going to ever get away from what's the idea. But one of the things that's most amazing to me right now is the inability to see true from fake. It really does get at one of the little hearts of content, which is other than in fiction. You really want to know that. That what you're seeing, what you're participating in is true. And the ability now to make fake content is so alarming to me. I mean, I saw a picture, it was, I guess, a couple of months ago when Bob Redford died, and it was a picture of seemingly Redford with his, I think, sisters, the three of them, and he looked like he was gonna die. And it was kind of billed as the last picture of Redford. Of course, it was completely fake.
- [59:16]
Interviewer
Wow.
- [59:17]
Barry Diller
And I saw it, and I thought, first of all, to make it and for me to believe as I'm looking at this, oh, how sad and sweet that they took this last picture of Redford. And it just disturbed the hell out of me. Yeah.
- [59:36]
Interviewer
If you think about the whole history of, like, yellow journalism, there's always been an aspect of the public never really knowing what's going on. You know, we know what we're told, but we never know the real story. I'm sure so many things have been written about you over the course of your life that you'd read them and you know they're not true?
- [59:56]
Barry Diller
Oh, yeah, I've often said. I said, well, the one thing I am absolutely an arbiter of is what is true or not in my life. And so when I see the easy way that people have to fabricate stuff about me, I know what's true or not. If I don't know anything else about anything else, I know that part. As the distribution systems proliferate, as more and more people give voice, the worse all this gets.
- [60:44]
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- [60:56]
Barry Diller
Tetragrammaton is a podcast. Tetragrammaton is a website. Tetragrammatin is a whole world of knowledge.
- [61:11]
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