Barry Diller shares personal story and chronicles remarkable career in 'Who Knew'

Transcript

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Geoff Bennett: Barry Diller has been a major force in American entertainment and business for more than half-a-century. He helped reshape television decades ago by creating ABC’s groundbreaking “Movie of the Week,” went on to lead Paramount Pictures during a golden era of blockbuster filmmaking, and later launched the FOX Broadcasting Company, disrupting the TV landscape yet again.

Today, his digital empire spans travel, home services, and online dating with companies you know, like Expedia, Angi, and Match under his umbrella. He’s also known for his longtime marriage to fashion icon Diane Von Furstenberg.

I recently spoke with Diller about his remarkable journey and the surprising personal revelations in his candid new memoir, “Who Knew.”

Barry Diller, welcome to the “News Hour.”

Barry Diller, Author, “Who Knew”: Thank you.

Geoff Bennett: This memoir, some 10 years in the making, spans decades of your life at the center of entertainment and media. What compelled you to write this book now?

Barry Diller: It’s not now. I have been writing it forever, what seems like endlessly forever.

But it’s really because I thought, I know something of my whole life has been involved in telling stories. And I thought, this is just a good story if I can tell it and if I could tell it true. So that’s why I tried to do it, and probably didn’t even commit to publishing it until fairly recently. I thought I’d maybe never publish it. But here it is.

Geoff Bennett: Really? Why is that, the idea of never publishing it?

Barry Diller: Well, my wife, who’s been her brand for her whole life, said, this is going to be enormously exposing. And for somebody who’s been kind of private his whole life, why would you want to do this? Maybe you should do this after you’re dead.

I said, well, guess what? After I’m dead, I really won’t have anything to do with it. And I’d rather have some agency here.

Geoff Bennett: You know, in the beginning of the book, you really recount your rise from the mailroom at William Morris to reshaping, ultimately, Hollywood and digital media. At ABC, you pioneered the highly successful “Movie of the Week,” then later created the even more successful TV miniseries.

You had these landmark events like “Roots,” this TV series that half of the country tuned into. That era of mass media dominance doesn’t exist anymore. What have we lost in this fragmented algorithm-driven media landscape?

Barry Diller: We have lost that you had almost an entire country at — watching one thing at one time. So if it was either wonderful or terrible or something terribly newsy happened or whatever, the next day, that was the conversation of the day.

And so it was enormously community-building. It is where kind of mass culture got cultured, educated. And so I think now we have so many options — and that’s not a bad thing. But for that — for having those options, we kind of give up a kind of central gathering place. And that, I think, is a shame.

Geoff Bennett: Now our gathering place is on the Internet. I mean, you were one of the first old-school media moguls to embrace the digital era. What did you see early on that others didn’t?

Barry Diller: Well, again, my life is serendipity, luck, and however you want to define it, which is that I was able in ’92 — this is three years before the Internet. I came upon a Home Shopping Network. I only knew screens to tell stories. I saw screens being used in this primitive convergence of televisions and telephones and computers.

I saw that screens could be interactive. And that was a true, a big-time word, epiphany. And it — I didn’t know what to do with it then, but I knew that something was going to change, so, great, good luck to be prepared and have some feeling in my fingertips when in three years along comes the Internet and interactivity is the revolution of the time.

Geoff Bennett: This idea of good luck, this idea of serendipity, is that the through line that connects all of your successes?

Barry Diller: Yes, yes, for me. I absolutely believe that. And it is true, of course. It is what you make of serendipity, but, nevertheless, I do think I had a remarkable string of inexplicable things that you could never have predicted.

That gave me these extraordinary opportunities.

Geoff Bennett: You said earlier that your wife, Diane Von Furstenberg, mentioned that writing a memoir like this would be exposing, because in this memoir, you share your journey of coming out later in life, even though you say you knew early on that you were gay.

What was the emotional turning point that made you ready to speak open to me about your sexuality?

Barry Diller: First of all, if I was in a closet, it was the most brightly lit closet in existence with a big glass door. The only thing I did not do is make declarations.

Everyone in and around and way beyond my own life knew about my life. I just didn’t make declarations. And, of course, I wish I had had the courage to do so at that time, when it was relevant 40 years ago in this long life. And so, when I wrote the book, I mean, it wasn’t like I thought — I didn’t ever realize, because I’m somewhat dim and naive in certain ways.

I thought that this was — kind of everybody knew and title of my book “Who Knew.” I thought this was not some big deal. But if I wanted to write this book, I knew I just had to tell my story true. And that’s what I tried to do.

Geoff Bennett: Well, in the book you describe your wife as your bedrock. How did you reconcile your private and public lives?

Barry Diller: I don’t know that I have ever reconciled anything. I just do one idiot step in front of another.

But I don’t think there is any reconciliation. And there’s no contradiction either. This is not a plea for everyone to go out and read it. But the only way I can explain it is the way I did.

Geoff Bennett: Barry Diller. The book is “Who Knew.”

Thanks again for speaking with me. I appreciate it.

Barry Diller: Happy to.