barry diller--9/18/26

18 Sep 2026

barry diller--9/18/26

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Today's selection-- from Who Kew by Barry Diller. Legendary business mogul Barry Diller started in the mailroom of the William Morris talent agency:

“I wasn't really working, I was studying. I had the world's greatest entertainment ‘library’ at hand–the William Morris file room. It was a huge place with hundreds of metal file cabinets that housed the entire history of the entertainment business. I found excuses to disappear into it and deeply read every file from A to Z.

“At William Morris in the 1960s, the primary job of a mail-room boy was to get out of there as fast as you could. The next step was to become an assistant to an agent, listen in on his calls, and begin to learn what his job entailed. By osmosis, you would emerge as a junior agent.

“As a mail boy, you didn't really sort the mail; your job was basically to run around and pick up and deliver things, more like a messenger service. One of my duties was to take the day's mail to the post office in huge bags. One day, early on, I lugged the huge bag of mail to the parking lot, put it in my trunk, got in the car, and promptly drove home and went up to my room. Two days later the bell rang in my head–Oh my fucking god, I forgot the mail! It was still in the trunk of my car. I raced to the post office, but they refused to take it because it was already postmarked.

“The post office clerk said I had to take it back and have every item repostmarked. I thought; Well, this is surely curtains.

“Somehow I talked the post office clerk into accepting the mispostmarked mail and lived to spend another day mail-rooming.

“There were eight or ten of us there at any one time. The mail boys either got their jobs through connections or were such fervid hustlers that they couldn't be denied. There were no requirements for being in the mail room, no college degrees needed or tests to pass. But to be an agent did take a scrappy charm, and a streetwise gregariousness. What it didn't particularly take was brains, since the main part of an agent's job is simply to sign clients. Selling yourself to a performer–who by definition is likely insecure and vulnerable–isn't a monumentally difficult obstacle. You simply need that savvy and confidence. I had neither, so I knew from the outset that I'd never graduate to junior agent.

“The other mail boys loved doing the mail runs to the studios; there were people to meet and impress and contacts to file away for future use. But I wasn't learning anything other than the best driving route to the Valley. Lord knows why, given my life's taste for the fastest cars, I drove a blue Buick convertible–the first car I bought on my own (well ... on my parents' own).

“Once, though, during my runs, I did have the pleasure of accidentally knocking down Louella Parsons's Christmas tree and setting it on fire. I entered her dour, gloomy house and tripped over the five hundred presents (read: bribes) that were scattered around her dark living room. Parsons was the enormously powerful Hollywood columnist whose influence had only recently receded, but she still received those holiday tributes. I was so lucky to see the last gasps of old Hollywood life–the moguls who started it all were passing from the scene and with them their outsized exuberance, egos, and excesses. I remember a poignant scene from the lobby of the Beverly Theater when I was in my late teens and went to a preview of a new movie. The heretofore immaculately-turned-out great old mogul Jack Warner was emerging from the bathroom and it saddened me to see he'd left a pee stain on his trousers.

Diller with his wife Diane von Fürstenberg at the 2009 Metropolitan Opera premiere

“Early on I knew I wasn't much like the other guys in the mail room. They were so aggressive about ‘making it,’ while I was just oh-so-tentatively putting my ambition training wheels on. Then, one Christmas holiday, into the mail room walked David Geffen, a scrawny nineteen-year-old who looked more like a malnourished twelve. He introduced himself, saying he worked in the New York office, but wanted to use the holiday to find out what the L.A. office was like. I thought, Whoa, now that's ambition. l could actually feel the hunger for success vibrating out of him. I'd never met, then or since, someone with more focus, more pure drive and ferocious intelligence than David. Unlike me, who loves process, David is the most efficient problem solver ever born. No artificial intelligence will ever exceed his ability to go faster from problem to solution, or from poverty to so many billions. Despite all the biological aggression and occasional occupational conflict that has bubbled between us at various times over sixty years of knowing each other, I treasure him now as my best friend.

‘On one of my missions as a messenger, I was assigned to go to the airport to pick up Barbra Streisand. Barbra was already on her first step to stardom, coming out to L.A. to appear at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub. We aimlessly chatted along the way, then I dropped her off at the hotel, saying I hoped I'd see her again, and she, politely dismissive, said the same. The next night at a party the Danny Thomases gave for her opening night, she was surprised to see yesterday's chauffeur introduced to her as one of the guests. Over these sixty years, Barbra and I have become good friends, although I have definitely tried her patience. One night some years ago she was receiving an award, and I was to introduce her to a Hollywood audience of five thousand. She called me the afternoon before the event, and, naturally, the controlling one asked me to read her my intro. I did so, and at the end I made the unforgivable mistake of pronouncing her last name as STREISand rather than StreiSAND. She shrieked at me, and I vowed to do it right when I made the introduction that night. Of course, I got scrambled and didn't, and her glare at me as she walked out would have fried a fish.

“I was rescued from messengering around the city by a mandatory threemonth rotation, during which all mail boys had to spend their time mimeographing hundreds of copies of the interoffice telegrams sent out daily to all the agents. Everyone hated that job. The room was in the basement, and not only was there no natural light, but the job gave the boys no exposure to their higher-ups, and thus no opportunities to impress them. I, however, loved every minute and managed to extend my three-month rotation to almost three years. It wasn't the mimeographing–that I finished in half an hour–but it meant I could spend the rest of the day in the file room, where I was transfixed by the history of every transaction going back to the turn of the century.”