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That is from the letter which a representative for Jon Peters sent to his autobiography’s publisher Friday explaining why he couldn’t go through with the deal. I have the letter and am posting it (see below). The letter follows by 24 hours DHD’s exclusive posting of the entire 35-page book proposal except for a few paragraphs I deemed too invasive or too boring. (See my IT SHOULD BE CALLED ‘DICKHEAD’: Why Jon Peters’ Book Proposal Sets New Low.) (Before that, various news and gossip outlets made references to the proposal, and quoted a few paragraphs from the proposal, but no news outlet had posted the entire proposal like DHD did on Thursday.) The New York Post’s Page Six today excerpted the cancellation letter. But here is the entire letter which makes clear that Peters is only cancelling the book deal, NOT the book itself:
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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I don’t think the old douche ever had any intention of doing the book – he just wanted to remind everyone that he’s still alive, and that proposal did the job. Sad.
Despite his faults, you must admire his consistency. Just look at the quote in the title of this post:
“I Have Been Besieged By Potential Lawsuits And Threatened Litigation By Some Of The Most Important Figures In The World Of Show Business”
Even when canceling a book proposal there’s an element of self-aggrandizement. Now everyone knows that the book promises to slag some important people, but his statement has to declare most emphatically that the threatened litigation is coming from “some of the most important figures in the world of show business.”
Everyone already assumes that he’ll be sued by important show-biz people. They and their lawyers are the only ones who would actually buy the book, and for the purpose of litigation.
Yet he, or to be more precise, his spokespeople, have to declare that the MOST IMPORTANT FIGURES are after him. Like even his trouble has to be the most important trouble in the world of show business.
Talk about trying to hard.
Ya know, sometimes you just gotta let somebody hang themselves. I would’ve liked to have seen the dust-up when the whole book came out….
Darn it. I was looking forward to reading the book. I know, I know… bad girl. But come on. We all live here and work around these people and we all know how crazy LA is. All of us moms would of read this book at secret coffee meetings while our kids were at friends and learn about our neighbors. I guess it will be another boring summer. DRAT
Sounds more like a face saving measure to me. I think the overwhelming negative reaction to the delusional hubris of this “Dickhead” made it apparent that this Book was an embarrassment to the Publisher, maybe even a bad business deal and that may have sunk the deal.
But you also have to admit, there were a lot of posters who said they couldn’t wait to read the book, so who knows. Maybe Peters pissed off so many people, they enlisted their Attorneys to wage a war against Peters and the Publisher.
Either way, this Book sounded like a narcissistic shitstorm in the making. I wonder what part, if any, Guber played in this. Nikki’s Guber quote seemed like quite the portent for things to come…
Great work Nikki!!!
Don’t cancel the book! It was going to cover all my Christmas shopping this year!
Dear Michael Morrison –
– it is with quite some annoyance on my part that I have to decline an offer that would have been merely my annual allowance on drugs and hookers, anyway. You had been the only publisher retarded enough to still believe that tell-all books, albeit it made up and libelous, would still be a good idea in a world where most of the people hate pricks like me and would rather see me hang or have my head on a spike, depending on the country I might be caught with my pants down. I was most impressed by the crew of professional blowjobbers you had assembled for my personal use while I pretend to see my life on an imagined movie screen created by my hands while I lie down on my couch.
I could never have imagined this. Other coddled execs, exes and people I professionally raped over the the past few decades? Fuck, man… never thought they could hold such a grudge. Don’t they know that the stupid public would love to have their lives? The stuff I had my assistant type up for you was only meant for you, and what the hell? I find myself on the Finke site? What kind of place do you run? Are you all blonde?
I now am the Man Who Imagined Too Much, and dude, you do not want to hear the shit that’s on my answering machine. There’s some stuff on my iPhone, too… but I can’t read it.
But now the cat is out of the bag, even though it was never in the bag, and now the cat is loose and roaming in the jungle. Did you know that the cat is the most fierce killer in the animal kingdom? It’s true, man, it’s got claws and shit, even think it might be able to fight off a giant spider…
… hey, I got a new idea for a movie!
Let me get back to you!
Sincerely,
Jon Peters
He should still write the book but instead of autobiography, place it in the fiction aisle as that was what the book was all along.
Hollywood’s Man Who Knew Too Much. LMAO. Better than Dickens meets Collins.
Que sera, sera.
Is anyone surprised? This was nothing more than a publicity stunt. 75% of the events described in the proposal are complete bullshit and the other 25% are greatly exaggerated. There was never going to be a book.
Peters’ lawyer should have advied him that the truth will always trump any lawsuit.
What’s he afraid of?
Letting the “cat” out of the bag refers to the cat o’ nine tails. In the Royal Navy the whip was kept in a red bag. Often metal barbs were added to the tip of each tail to cause increased injury. Thus, the cat’s claws would easily draw blood. The punishment was intended to cause severe pain and humiliation.
That is the original meaning of the expression. In the above letter, the “cat” is a metaphor for the contents of the book. I will let others decide if they see any irony in the use of that phrase.
Wow, even in his personal correspondence (albeit it through someone else) he comes off as an arrogant prick.
So NOW he’s the “The Man Who Knew Too Much”?? Wasn’t that the whole basis of his proposal, that he was ALREADY “The Man Who Knew Too Much”? I mean, that exact phrase was IN the proposal!! “Also, Jon is The Man Who Knew Too Much.”
Nikki, I have to believe this was because of you posting the treatment and all the fuss it caused. I’m sure you and most of your readers think that’s great, I think it’s just plain old Hollywood thuggery and intolerance. I don’t care if his book gets published or not, but somehow this just seems wrong. I hope he sues you for copyright infringement and damages caused by you publishing his intellectual property. It won’t be so cool then.
Remind me to use Boulevard Business Management for ALL my private correspondence.
Am I missing something here? Since when can’t you write about your life? I don’t care who you are but you lived it so you have the right to tell your story. And stories are all we have. My perspective of and event won’t be the same as anothers. Each persons perspective is their own reality.
I know that when we talk about something that happened, like when we fell in love. That story changes over time in the retelling and that becomes its own truth to the person. And he is how old? And this stuff happened when? He thought things happened because?
It’s is just another sad day that lawyers find another way to make a buck. I would think if you lead a life that you are afraid for your mother to see you can either be ashamed, embrase it or have a lawyer as a best friend.
Apparently Jon took my advice, and went home to get his f*ckin shine box.
Having been around forever, I know there was mostly truth in this proposal and this is how business was conducted thru the decades that Jon Peters was partially sane and had the balls to get what he wanted by any means necessary. The insane part let him get away with all of it, let him get what he wanted, who he wanted and did him in in the end. I think it’s all in the proposal so who needs the book and certainly all of these celebs and studio execs don’t need this stuff in print. It’s way too truthful about the wild days of the 70s and 80s. It was a crazy time…..
He put everybody on notice. He is in the process of gauging the reaction legally and otherwise. He potentially upped the price of the book certainly the expectation level. Sometimes you make “amends;” sometimes you wear “Depends.” What Hollywood memoir hasn’t been a little of both? It was the self-mythologizing “voice” of the proposal that was the problem. But there had to have been a reason for Warren Beatty to “fictionalize” Peters’ story in “Shampoo”, no?
I say 50% truth; 25% “woe is me” exaggeration; 25% “you give the people what they want” all finessed through a lens of payback. I highly doubt Peter Guber’s assertion that it’s all “fiction.”
This is what you get when you find professional “storytellers,” if not pathological liars, in a Mexican stand-off.
Are you kidding? Hello! The pitch ALONE is a piece of Hollywood history ALREADY! Who cares he won’t publish the entire thing? This Cliff’s Notes version is gold!
Don’t cry for anyone in Hollywood people. They are all dickheads AND I MEAN ALL! so if Peters wants to do an expose of all the other assholes in that town. So be it. Scum killing each other is good television. ROFL don’t EVEN suggest there are ANY people in Hollywood worth a shit. The only ones that are indeed are the crew membrers that eschew the bullshit—- quietly unfortunately.
seems pretty obvious that the ‘potential lawsuits’ come from the srteisand camp. hell, underlings aren’t allowed to LOOK at her, much less tell private tales of her past. the man has a right to tell his own story, babs.. call off your dogs !
He claims he’s been “besieged by lawsuits.” Threating legal letters, I get, but along the lines of Edguardo’s point, let me ask any lawyers here: on what basis could someone have filed a lawsuit? How can you sue someone over what they haven’t yet written unless there was an iron-clad non-disclosure agreement?
I think the buried lede in all this is the presidential affairs: with Hillary Clinton enjoying her highest perch yet astride the world’s stage, I can imagine tremendous pressure coming down to prevent additional embarrassing revelations about her marriage to surface so publicly.
Otherwise, something doesn’t add up here… no?
I can’t believe no picked up on this… $700K is now peanuts. After the free publicity the book will be worth ten times that amount. Read the letter. The book will be written and the negotiations can then begin in earnest.
I bet you can get your hands on a lot of in development or as yet unpublished stuff — scripts, treatments, manuscripts. You should publish them all, everyone of them, in their entirety so every bum in Hollywood can post their petty dislikes and opinions about it. Then nothing would ever get made or printed unless of course it conformed to your version of reality and your idiosyncratic tastes. That would be cool huh? Nikki Fink and her DHD cabal running the town. I hope Jon Peters sues your ass off.