It was 1977, and Barry Diller — just a few years into his tenure as CEO of Paramount Studios ‚ was sitting down for a preview of “Saturday Night Fever” at the Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles when a publicist leaned in to give him a piece of advice.
“[John] Travolta’s the problem,” the publicist hissed at him, according to Diller’s new memoir, “Who Knew,” out Tuesday. “He’s a television person. You don’t put a television person in a movie. The kid just doesn’t put asses in seats.”
Diller, who was just 35 at the time and still trying to prove himself in the industry, recalls thinking, “Well, not old Hollywood asses.”
The movie opened nationwide just two weeks later, becoming an overnight blockbuster. “There were vast lines around the block at every theater across America,” Diller writes. Paramount, which had dropped to a distant fifth place among the major studios after Diller took over, jumped to No. 1 again.
For Diller, it was sweet vindication, especially given how many former executives from Paramount were “actively mocking” him “as a parvenu who was destroying their institution,” Diller writes. But during his 10 years with the studio — from 1974 to 1984 — he championed some of the most beloved films of the last century, like “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Terms of Endearment” and “Beverly Hills Cop.”
He also, he writes, oversaw his fair share of bombs, including William Friedkin’s “The Sorcerer” — a bloated, over-budget “nightmare” from “The French Connection” director that demonstrated “the sheer perversity of some Hollywood luminaries.”
And then there was “The Last Tycoon,” starring Robert De Niro, Tony Curtis, Jack Nicholson and Robert Mitchum and directed by Elia Kazan of “On the Waterfront” fame. “What could go wrong?” Diller asks. “Everything. I knew it wasn’t going to work when I saw the first assemblage.”
But “Saturday Night Fever” changed “how movies got made,” Diller writes. The script wasn’t pitched as a project for a pre-established A-lister. “No stars, no pedigree, no package, no nothing — just a good idea,” Diller writes. Even director John Badham, a mostly unproven TV guy, was a risk.
“All these Frankenstein-like parts came together while all those around us thought we were amateurs,” Diller writes. “It was heady stuff, and quite a shock to the naysayers.”
Before coming to Paramount, Diller had cut his teeth at ABC during the 1960s and early ’70s, where he invented the Movie of the Week and the miniseries.
But the movie industry offered him a new challenge. Unlike TV, it was a business “where ego and self-promotion corroded everything,” Diller writes.
Even his boss, Charlie Bluhdorn, ran the company “like an old-time emperor.” Diller remembers that Bluhdorn would call him randomly with ridiculous ideas for new movies that he was certain would become “the blockbuster of all time,” Diller writes. Like “the tale of Sitting Bull and Hitler at war with each other.”
Diller trusted his instincts, which weren’t always correct. The movies he championed at Paramount were often “just darts thrown at the board,” he admits. “I had to pitch and roll with whatever came my way. That made me a mark for every promoter and rascal in the film industry.”
Some of his lesser achievements include “Lipstick” with Margaux Hemingway (“the essence of putting lipstick on a pig,” he writes), “The Big Bus” (“a parody of disaster movies that ended up just being a disaster”), and Roman Polanski’s “The Tenant” (a “small film that had an even smaller audience”).
Even Diller’s successes came with controversy. During an advance screening of “Marathon Man” in San Francisco in 1976, the audience became irate during the notorious “Is it safe?” scene, in which the Nazi villain (played by Laurence Olivier) tortures Dustin Hoffman’s character with dental instruments.
Viewers weren’t “prepared for such invasive violence to sweet Dustin’s teeth,” the author writes. “They shouted and booed at what we were doing to them, and many charged up the aisles, enraged.” Diller claims he had to be evacuated from a movie theater for his own safety.
Some of his most ambitious projects, like a 1976 remake of “King Kong,” were almost derailed by bad decisions behind the scenes. It was brought to him by the Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis, who insisted “he’d acquired the remake rights, but of course, being Dino, he really hadn’t,” Diller writes.
One day De Laurentiis called him and announced, “I’ve found the actress to play [the lead in ‘King Kong’]. She’s right now a model with no acting experience, but I’m sure she’ll be a star.”
Diller was hesitant but curious, and asked if they should give this up-and-coming model a screen test. “Yes,” De Laurentiis allegedly told him. “But first I want to have her breasts augmented.” The model was future Academy Award winner Jessica Lange.
Sam Spiegel, the legendary producer of classics like “On the Waterfront” and “Lawrence of Arabia,” approached Diller about adapting F. Scott Fitzgerald’s unfinished novel, “The Last Tycoon.” During his meetings with Spiegel, who Diller describes as “a true satyr,” he learned more than bargained for about the producer’s sex life.
“He often said — and it was hard to know if he was joking — he only liked to have sex with virgins and, if he could find them, lesbian virgins,” writes Diller.
Run-ins with directors could be hostile, and sometimes costly. After his 1978 epic “Days of Heaven,” Diller paid auteur Terrence Malick an enormous sum — $500,000 (or $2.5 million in 2025 dollars) — to, in Malick’s words, “just experiment with things.”
Every four or five months, Diller would call the director for an update, and get little beyond, “I’m making progress.” Occasionally Malick would give him some vague sense of his next film, like “I’ve got this idea to follow a paraplegic in New Mexico in a footrace.” But beyond that, Malick wouldn’t give details, declaring that it was a “secret.”
Diller finally cut off Malick’s salary. “It would be twenty years before he directed another movie,” he writes.
The author’s handling of actors could also be a minefield. He got into hot water with Robert Redford after Paramount used a shirtless photo of the star embracing Faye Dunaway in a full-page ad to promote the political thriller “Three Days of the Condor” in 1975.
Redford called Diller and insisted that “the ad had ‘disrobed him’ in front of his kids,” he writes. The actor asked for the ad to be taken down immediately, but Diller declined. “And that was the last we saw of Robert Redford for five years,” he writes.
After the huge success of “Saturday Night Fever,” Princess Margaret requested to meet John Travolta “for tea” during her visit to Los Angeles. Diller made the request to Travolta, who responded, “I don’t do tea!” He was finally cajoled into meeting the royal at the Beverly Wilshire. “And when he came back, he said, ‘She hit on me!’” Diller writes.
He admits that has hasn’t always had the best movie judgment.
Diller thought “Grease” was a terrible follow-up project for Travolta — even producer Robert Evans agreed, imploring Diller to “burn it” before the footage ruined the actor’s career — and pushed Travolta to star in “American Gigolo” instead. Travolta resisted because he was wary of the “somewhat gay subtext.” (The role eventually went to Richard Gere, and “Grease” was a huge hit.)
Cocaine was rampant in the movie industry during the ’70s and, Diller writes, Paramount’s sets were no exception. During his visit to Robert Altman’s production of “Popeye,” starring Robin Williams, Diller realized that “everyone in our made-up village — and I mean everyone! — was completely coked out.”
He eventually discovered that his own driver, an affable New Yorker named Mario, was also a major cocaine dealer, “particularly to all my friends,” Diller writes. “I always wondered why they insisted that Mario drop me off first after our nights out. Once I left, Mario would open his trunk and deal out the drugs.”
In 1984, Diller joined 20th Century Fox, where he served as CEO until 1992. One of his first projects was “Die Hard” — and he immediately objected to the casting of Bruce Willis. “Who cares about Bruce Willis?” he scolded the casting director. “No one really likes Bruce Willis!”
But Willis would soon prove to be the least of his worries. Producers Joel Silver and Larry Gordon asked to use an office tower owned by Fox for a pivotal final “blowout” scene. “We won’t hurt anything,” they assured Diller. “It’ll only be one night.”
Later that evening, Diller received a call from the studio’s real estate division, screaming that the filmmakers were “destroying our building!” He drove to the shoot and realized it wasn’t an exaggeration. Diller confronted Silver, who just shrugged and said the scene had been “more complicated” than they anticipated, and they’d need “about two weeks” to finish their cinematic destruction.
Diller changed his tune after seeing a rough cut of the film, telling the director, “Don’t touch a f–king thing. This is not a good movie. This is a great movie.” But he still wasn’t enthusiastic about Willis, insisting the star’s face not appear in any of the advertising.
“No one likes him,” Diller continued to declare. “After they see this movie, they’re gonna love him, but coming in, they don’t like him.”
