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An Originalist Take on Movies and Memoirs [Lex]

Constitutional purists, in the main, adhere to the judicial philosophy of ‘originalism.’ That is, they do not believe the Constitution and its Amendments are evolving or subject to change in meaning based on the mood of the times. They try to understand the contemporaneous intent of the words by those who wrote them.

In the field of criticism, a close cousin to originalism is textualism or new criticism. The proponents of new criticism, when looking at literature or poetry or film, tend not to want to be distracted by anything but words on the page or images and dialogue on the screen. So it matters little to the textualist if a movie might seem racist by today’s standards or if it is a faithful adaptation of the source material. The new critic eschews these considerations to concentrate only on what he can see on the screen and judges the film by what it is trying to accomplish.

I kept coming back to these models of interpretation when reading Barry Diller’s recently published memoir Who Knew.

Even though I have devoted a large part of my life to cinema, I have never much liked behind the scenes stories or biographies of stars and studio moguls. I knew the name Barry Diller but almost nothing about what he accomplished. And that is because I see many memoirs and tell-alls as distractions. The play is the thing for me.

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You can read the book to learn about Diller (in his own words) but, briefly, he was an aimless and troubled kid from Beverly Hills who grew up around Hollywood performers and executives. At 19, with no life direction, he called in a favor to get a job in the mail room at the William Morris talent agency. He worked his way up the ranks at William Morris but then leapt over to ABC where he impacted television in profound ways. Next it was on to Paramount where he resurrected that studio in the 1970s. After that, it was Fox, which he also revived. In his later years, he became a forerunner of internet commerce and content.

If you are a film and entertainment historian, you cannot ignore Diller’s legacy, though this begs the question: as one who leans towards textualism when watching movies, should I ignore him?

To give Diller the benefit of the doubt, I set aside the originalist lens to see what he had to say.

Right out of the gate, Diller disappoints. In the foreword, he declares he does not intend the book to be a teaching or business strategy guide (a la The Art of the Deal). The reason he states he wrote the memoir is, simply, because he thinks his life-story worth recounting. ‘Who Knew’ an angst-ridden kid with no education or prospects could succeed as he did.

The wayward-boy-makes-good story is interesting to a point, but what movies inspired him? What novels have moved him? Why did he want to become involved in storytelling--especially at such a grand scale?

Despite his disclaimers, I held out hope I could derive something inspirational from a man who helped shape studios and motion pictures for three decades.

And yet, after 320 pages, I was unsure what attracted him to fictional drama. He repeatedly affirms his love of problem solving, and in the film biz problems abound, but that tells me nothing about his process as a storyteller.

He also is not shy about sharing his distaste for MBA-style financial projections as an approach to crafting a successful film, and he is adamant in his disdain for the practice of packaging stars and material before ideas are hammered out.

I agree with those instincts, but Diller never digs deeper than that. Though he is responsible for some of the great movies in history, he has precious little to say about why they were special or what he understood their dramatic purpose to be.
Oftentimes, he will crow about a hit movie he produced but only to say it did well at the box office or won awards--not why it connected with audiences and what his hand was in setting the table for that connection to be made.

There are nuggets of wisdom in the book, but it is far too little, and as I read on, more and more, I was not only deprived of edification, but I also distrusted Diller.

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I do not read many memoirs (movie ones or otherwise) because they are, ipso facto, self-serving. Diller confirms this instinct by painting himself in the best possible light. He feigns humility frequently, but like the screenwriting seminars teach us: to write a great villain you must make the bad guy believe he is the hero of the story. I am not saying Diller is a villain, but having dedicated his life to one of the most cutthroat businesses, too often he styles himself as merely an amiable –though driven — fixer.

These moments of doubt I had for his authenticity occurred not just with his professional life but also in the many personal things he reveals. He spends much of the first third of the book discussing his homosexuality, how he had to hide it, be ashamed of it, how it caused him panic and self-loathing. One sympathizes with him, but then, in his thirties he meets the fashion mogul and bon vivant Diane von Furstenburg, and it is a love affair for the ages.

He is smitten with her but clueless about how to be a heterosexual romantic. On her 29th birthday he gets her 29 diamonds; yet, he presents them to her in a Band-Aid box. It is supposed to be an adorable tidbit about his inartful amorousness, but any sympathy I had for him in the early going – as a closeted and confused youth — falls by the wayside as he never seems to mention this again, instead opting for tales of opulent jet setting with Furstenburg.

These personal notes about Diller are probably not germane to my pursuit of a better understanding of movies, but they did confirm my belief that too often Hollywood memoirs and histories are more of the TMZ, gossip-style flavor and thus not very useful to the serious cinephile.

And as for Diller himself, in the end, I concluded he was not really dedicated to telling great stories. TV and movies just happened to be the milieu into which he stumbled. He clearly had a knack for getting things done, and, though he tries to disguise it, there was great appeal in the flamboyant lifestyle his success afforded him.

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For anyone who wants to be involved with or write about movies, basic cinema history is necessary to learn.

Of course it’s fun to know Kurt Russell was in the running to play Han Solo or to point out the cameos Hitchcock made in his movies, but, in the dark of the theater what good do these asides do for my relationship with and reaction to any given film?

Diller’s memoir and others like might fill in the blanks historically speaking, but they have no pedagogical or etiological value.

It will be a long time before I pick up another book like Who Knew. I would rather watch movies and absorb what I can in the moment.

I recognize it would be difficult for film reviewers and historians to write anything if they employed new criticism or textualism in its strictest sense.
But Constitutional originalism has taught us some of the most important lessons in American and world history. Applying some of its spirit to the study of film might not be that bad of an idea.