Description
“A loopy American epic” –Newsweek
Complex, contentious, and blessed with the easiest-pitch skill to search out the following large skill, David Geffen has formed American pop culture and remodeled the best way Hollywood does trade. His mind-blowing profession has incorporated the jobs of energy agent, report-business tycoon, Broadway manufacturer, and billionaire Hollywood studio founder–However from the start his accomplishments were shadowed by way of the ruthlessness with which he has pursued status, cash, and tool. With The Operator, Tom King–who interviewed Geffen for the e-book and had unimpeded get admission to to his circle of intimates–items a enchanting chronicle of Geffen’s meteoric upward thrust from the mailroom at William Morris, in addition to an interesting excursion of thirty scorching years of Hollywood historical past. Drawing on the memories of celebrities corresponding to Tom Cruise, Yoko Ono, Warren Beatty, Courtney Love, Paul Simon, or even Cher (whom Geffen just about married), The Operator transports readers to a global that may be as ruthless as it is mind-blowing, revealing a really perfect American tale approximately good fortune and the deals made for it.
“An in depth portrait of Hollywood’s most useful manipulator…The Operator is as so much a composite portrait of the ‘New Hollywood’ as it is of the fifty-seven-12 months-antique spouse in DreamWorks SKG.” –San Francisco Chronicle
“Illuminating…[The Operator] presentations how raging ambition and chutzpah are as so much valued as skill–or extra so–in figuring out good fortune.” –Philadelphia Inquirer
DreamWorks cofounder David Geffen, as portrayed by way of Wall Boulevard Journal reporter Tom King, is in quite a lot of techniques a saint, a visionary, and an absolute maniac. In his saintly mode, Geffen each increases and provides report-breaking sums of cash to AIDS foundations, advises and helps the President and modern reasons, and races to talk over with antique pals afflicted with grief or sickness (even the washed-up agent Sue Mengers, whose friendship may just do him no earthly just right).
As a visionary within the tune, film, and Broadway theater industries, Geffen orchestrates the sale of his report corporations, which made him a billionaire, and brings you Laura Nyro; Cats; Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Younger; Tom Cruise; the Eagles; Nirvana; Bob Dylan; John Lennon; Weapons N’ Roses; Saving Non-public Ryan; and Joni Mitchell (who immortalized his inner most yearnings in her song “Unfastened Guy in Paris”).
However essentially the most spectacular and distinct element of King’s landmark biography is Geffen’s efficiency as an leisure entrepreneur, and on this capability he’s it seems that a visionary and a maniac on the related time. Now not most effective does he uncover all approach of skills and artistic endeavors and rent the most productive hit-sniffers within the trade, he additionally masters the advantageous Hollywood artwork of the Machiavellian tantrum. Geffen allegedly softens up his prey in a trade deal by way of providing up disarming gossip approximately his personal lifestyles–his annoying courtship of Cher, or Marlo Thomas, possibly, or the male prostitute he’s stated to have boasted approximately being in mattress with the evening John Lennon was once shot. Someday, mins or many years into an obvious friendship, Geffen is proven betraying somebody, even absolute best pals and mentors, in his relentless quest for profitable a deal. King’s e-book supplies a ringside seat; it is attention-grabbing to look at Tinseltown’s titans slug it out in championship bouts, maneuvering, mendacity, reuniting, and seizing energy like crazed Renaissance princes.
In a single memorable come upon, Geffen protests that Sid Sheinberg of MCA is displeasing his DreamWorks colleague, Steven Spielberg. “David, Prevent screaming,” says Sheinberg. “I am not screaming!” Geffen screams. “David, you already know what could make me satisfied?” says Speilberg. “Prevent screaming.” It seems that Geffen does not even recognize the main points of the deal in query. However no person is aware of strike a deal–with thoughts and maniacal middle–like David Geffen. –Tim Appelo
