Word: dillers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...George Orwell said, everyone has the face he deserves. Barry Diller had that face by the time he was 30 and a fast-tracker at ABC. His premature baldness and stark visage gave him the look of an Edsel with the top down. And he already possessed that icy stare that made him, according to one Hollywood wit, "the last person you'd want to spill a drink on at a cocktail party." These, and a great gut for pop culture, served him well as chairman of Paramount Pictures from 1974 to '84, when it produced golden-calf movies (Grease...
...though, Diller turned 50. And the miracle mogul had to wonder, Did he have the power he deserved? Spawning Home Alone and The Simpsons loses its savor if the profits you generate go out of Fox's entertainment pocket and into the frayed purse of the newspapers owned by your boss, Rupert Murdoch. Or any company owned by anyone else. At Disney, Diller's friend and former underling Michael Eisner answers only to God and the Bass brothers. Ted Turner, Larry Tisch -- these guys own stuff. Diller just ran things. "For 30 years I've been an employee," he says...
...That was Diller's explanation for his abrupt announcement last week that he was leaving Fox. The funny thing is that it may be true. "I decided to leave in June of last year," he says. "Finally, I ran out of excuses." With Fox TV in its third profitable year, Diller could leave with a keen sense of accomplishment. "I was there when Fox was a minute-and-a-half from going under," says producer James Brooks, who brought the network respect with The Tracey Ullman Show and then killer clout with The Simpsons. "But Barry brought...
...became an actress. I became an actress because I like to act, not to get my picture in the paper and have people wonder what color socks I wear -- not to be able to get the best table at the Polo Lounge or to be good friends with Barry Diller...
Foster graduated (cum laude) from Yale in 1985. But at that time Diller, chairman of 20th Century Fox, was probably not much interested in being good friends with her, or casting her in a movie. She wasn't box-office poison; she was box-office invisible. Another actress's hope was her fear: that she might end up as a regular on The Bold Ones. "My career was at a low point when I graduated," she notes, "but I couldn't let it go without a real push. Then it struck me that I wasn't going to do dreck...