“I’ve always thought that each person invented himself… that we are each a figment of our own imagination. And some people have a greater ability to imagine than others.”
–– David Geffen
David Geffen’s far-reaching influence — as agent, manager, record industry mogul, Hollywood and Broadway producer, and philanthropist — has helped shape American popular culture for the past four decades. Notoriously press and camera-shy, Geffen reveals himself for the first time in the new two-hour documentary.
American Masters: Inventing David Geffen, premieres nationally on Tuesday, November 20, 2012 on PBS (check local listings). It’s an unflinching portrait of Geffen, who narrates his unorthodox rise from working class Brooklyn boy to billionaire entertainment power broker in extensive interviews.
American Masters explores the highs and the lows in Geffen’s professional and personal life through more than 50 new interviews with his friends, colleagues and clients, as well as other media luminaries. Irving Azoff, Jackson Browne, Cher, David Crosby, Clive Davis, Barry Diller, Maureen Dowd, Rahm Emanuel, Nora Ephron, Tom Hanks, Don Henley, Arianna Huffington, Jimmy Iovine, Elton John, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Calvin Klein, Steve Martin, Lorne Michaels, Mike Nichols, Yoko Ono, Frank Rich, Steven Spielberg, Jann Wenner, Neil Young, and many others illustrate Geffen’s riveting story.
ABOUT
Starting out in the William Morris Agency mailroom in 1964, Geffen channeled his ambition by devoting himself to his work and perfecting the art of the deal. He launched the early successes of Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Jackson Browne, the Eagles, Tom Cruise in Risky Business (1983), and Guns N’ Roses through his companies Geffen/Roberts Management, Asylum Records, Geffen Records, and Geffen Pictures. In 1994 he co-founded DreamWorks SKG with Spielberg and Katzenberg, the first new Hollywood studio in more than 50 years, which went on to release Oscar®-winning Best Pictures American Beauty (1999), Gladiator (2000) and A Beautiful Mind (2001), as well as animated features, including the Shrek franchise. Geffen also produced the Broadway musicals Cats (1982) and Dreamgirls (1981), and helped realize the Golden Globe-winning 2006 film adaptation. Witty and self-aware, Geffen admits, “I have no talent except for being able to enjoy and recognize it in others.”
A multi-millionaire by 1972 and a billionaire by 1995, Geffen became one of the earliest — and consistently one of the largest — contributors to the fight against HIV/AIDS. Through his philanthropic efforts and media heavyweight status, Geffen became an important political voice, first as an early supporter of Bill Clinton and later for Barack Obama, helping harness early support in the creative community during his 2008 presidential campaign.
Notorious for his fierce loyalty, bluntness and chutzpah, Geffen has not avoided conflict or controversy. American Masters Inventing David Geffen addresses his rifts with Laura Nyro, the Eagles, and the Clintons, his lawsuit against Neil Young, his unsuccessful stint at Warner Bros. Pictures, his whirlwind romance with Cher, and his struggles with cancer, homosexuality, and the AIDS-related deaths of his friends, including Michael Bennett. In 2010 Geffen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and in 2011 he received the GRAMMY Salute To Industry Icons® President’s Merit Award.
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American Masters is made possible by the support of the National Endowment for the Arts and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding for American Mastersis provided by Rosalind P. Walter, The Blanche & Irving Laurie Foundation, Rolf and Elizabeth Rosenthal, Cheryl and Philip Milstein Family, Jack Rudin, Vital Projects Fund, The André and Elizabeth Kertész Foundation, Michael & Helen Schaffer Foundation, and public television viewers. Additional support for this program is provided by the Ziff Family.
When will the David Geffen episode be rebroadcast, please?
I taped the David Geffen story, as I record all American Masters on PBS. Oh, dear, I’ve watched it at least four times now. What a fascinating story! The complexity of this man is riveting and it must have been incredible to know and work with this committed and brilliant person. Thank you for bringing this story.
I’m glad to see other people sticking up for Laura Nyro. There were definitely two sides to that story from what I’ve read in her Biography “Soul Picnic” and other places. I’m grateful to David Geffen for nurturing her, bringing her to the world and I identify with him for being so taken with her and her music but they came to a fork in the road as far as careers go. She just wanted to be an artist (as her father says in the book) on the east coast. She didn’t care about fame (or money to a great extent at all. Just her music. She never wanted to be a star. She was more a fine artist than a commercial artist. He wanted to be a successful businessman on the west coast. And SHE felt betrayed by HIM too. As someone else has said, he got 50% of the money she made. She was very conflicted about leaving Columbia for Asylum and had conflicting loyalties between Clive Davis at Columbia and David Geffen. His story is just one facet of the situation. It’s a shame that it is the only one many people will see and will walk away with a bad impression of Laura when it isn’t justified. In the book, even David Geffen says there was no reason for her to make amends to him because “Our lives were the answer to it. And we both knew it”. He became commercially “successful” and she perservered as an artist with great integrity, originality and talent
Please show this again. I loved watching Reinventing David Geffan.
However you only showed it on two nights.
One of them thanksgiving.
This gave the viewer a historical glimpse of the music and movie world.
So well done, I hope you show it again.
Thanks,
Tom
A more offensive personality could not have been portrayed . The belief in free speach includes the right to express views we find offensive. It is harder for me to see these persons listed as American “Masters”. The tribute to Elia Kazan was likewise distasteful to many who understood the Holywood Blacklist and those that chose to rat out thier colleagues. im not the only viewer to feel Geffen too wouldve sold his mother to the jailer for a quarter. Momentarily I thought the attributes too ugly to endure for 2 hours viewing, until the undertones arose in discussion:”What does this society reward? and how do we remember them in history? The lingering questions will be “Masters of” WHAT?
To Paul Cate, one of the previous posters…
I finally found the song at the end of the doc that sounds like “I Like To Dream.” I looked up the early roster of Asylum artists and found which one he looked like and, ultimately, was and looked up his music. It’s Ned Doheny singing “I Can Dream”
Best,
Wynne
This in point of fact answered the downside, thanks!