Barry Diller has just opened his books, but is already trying to penetrate.
“I will shorten the tour,” said the 83 -year -old tycoon recently in his sonor baritone, the voice of “Killer Diller”, which intimidated and captivated Hollywood for more than half a century. “I’m not ready for interrogations about the aspects of my personal life.”
When we were sitting at Cappuccino-Colored Couches in his beautiful Art-Noveau aerie at the Carlyle Hotel, I reminded Diller about the confused sincere first paragraph of my bildungsroman, “who knew”:
The household in which I grew up was absolutely inoperative. My parents often separated and several times before I was 10, they came daily before divorce; My brother was drug addicted at the age of 13; And I was a sexually confused holder of mystery from the age of 11.
And there it was, Hollywood’s the worst secret was spilled: Barry Diller is gay. Or rather bisexual – or BI with di, because, as she writes, “While in my life there have been many men from the age of 16, there was only one woman here.” Mental Princess Wrap, Diane von Furstenberg, swept him back in the studio for 54 days. She is proud to be the first woman he has ever slept with, in a stormy romance that later developed into a long, happy and sexually liberated marriage.
Von Furstenberg and Diller’s friends watch, widely eyes when Diller first speaks of his unorthodox private life. He is a well -known harsh, point manager, as Netflix’s CEO Ted Sarandos said, as “one of the few who doesn’t care about what people think in a city full of people who care”. This is true in business. But for most of his life, Diller took care of what people think of his sexual orientation.
“I wanted to tell a story,” he said of his stolen childhood and dazzling career. “And I knew that when I told the story I had to tell the truth.” That’s easier. He didn’t keep his private life shrouded so long, now it’s hard to pull the cloak.
