You can’t get all that without depicting the subject sympathetically, and sometimes deferring to his or her wishes when deciding what to dwell on and what to gloss over. The best way to be definitive about an artist’s work is to gain access to the artist’s inner circle, private correspondence, and personal material.
American masters subject of 2012 series#
This is partly because the series doesn’t profile people it doesn’t deeply respect (why should it?), and partly because it prizes artists’ work over their lives and wants to explore it with definitive thoroughness. Granted, most American Masters specials fawn over their subjects. We don’t know what Geffen will do on the seventh day, when it arrives, but we know he won’t be resting, because he’s as tireless as he is wonderful. On the sixth day, Geffen co-created DreamWorks. On the fifth day, Geffen became an AIDS fund-raiser and came out, a big deal in the early nineties for a man of his prominence. On the fourth day, Geffen created another independent label, Geffen, put out records by major pop artists (including John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Double Fantasy), and branched into films, releasing Risky Business, Lost in America, Little Shop of Horrors, Beetlejuice, and Interview with the Vampire. On the third day, Geffen tried to find a record label that would sign an unknown singer-songwriter named Jackson Browne, and failing that, co-created his own label, Asylum, with Elliot Roberts, a former colleague from the William Morris Agency they later sold the label to Warner Bros., which merged it with one of the company’s existing divisions, Elektra. On the second day, Geffen quit the agency, created the career of singer-songwriter Laura Nyro, and convinced other pop artists to record her songs, establishing himself as a great talent scout with keen commercial instincts. The story goes like this: On the first day, a working-class Brooklyn kid named David Geffen created himself, landing a job in the William Morris Agency’s mailroom by lying about having a college degree and forging a letter to “prove” it. With minor exceptions - the account of Geffen’s 1983 lawsuit against Neil Young, who was then signed to his record label, for failing to produce “commercial” music, and an aside about Geffen selling an early label without warning its artists - this program is so reverential that it could be played at Geffen’s memorial. American Masters retains the first part of that description and glosses over the second, reframing Geffen’s notorious temper as “passion” (a favorite trick in hagiographies of the rich), ignoring his romantic life save for his brief relationship with Cher and his 1992 coming-out, and showing us headlines about his feuds with Michael Eisner, Michael Ovitz, and other Hollywood powerbrokers without getting into the details of what they feuded about. The result - 2000’s The Operator, by Wall Street Journal reporter Tom King - makes Geffen seem like a nervy, inventive showbiz kingpin who, like so many men fitting that description, also has a hot temper, holds grudges forever, and can be a cruel, petty bully.
American masters subject of 2012 full#
Geffen gave full access to a print biographer over a decade ago, then shut him out when it became clear that the book wouldn’t be flattering. Written and directed by Susan Lacy, the series’ longtime executive producer, this account of the agent turned Hollywood mogul is a near hagiography, and its inability to make the case for Geffen as a bona fide artist himself - as opposed to a man who discovered, mentored, profited from, and occasionally screwed real artists - throws the program’s editorial judgment into question. The American Masters episode Inventing David Geffen (November 20, PBS, check local listings) is engrossing but ass-kissy, and sits awkwardly amid the program’s biographies of real artists.
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