Marvel Still Looking For Captain America 
'Sopranos' Creator To Film Rock Drama 
LIVE-SNARKING THE 82ND OSCARS... 
'ALICE' IS A MONSTER! $116.3M Blows Past … 
Oscar Not-So-Thriller: Diller Mogul Picnic 
'Precious' Sweeps 25th Indie Spirit Awards 
Howard Stern Won't Be Next 'Idol' Judge 
Justin Theroux Readying 'Zoolander 2' For … 
Mickey Rourke Wooed For Two Big Roles, … 
CBS Reups Les Moonves Through 2015 
EXCLUSIVE: Who Will Be Captain America? 
Matt Damon To Star In New RFK Biopic 
Claire Danes Leaves ICM For WME; Also, ICM's … 
EXCLUSIVE: Jennifer Lopez And Sony Music … 
TAYLOR LAUTNER UPDATE: Universal Pays Him … 
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:
Loading ...
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.
Thomas R. Hart, will you marry me????
For all your claims that you ‘despise’ Jon Peters, you sure are doing a big service to him in driving up the price of his ‘Dickhead’ memoir with this hype. Do you not realize you’re being played or are you complicit in this farce?
I’m going to assume that a few of the women he mentioned in his proposal contacted their lawyers. Guy’s a creep who WISHES he’d fucked half those women.
Every book proposal is full of hype. That’s a given. And before a manuscript is typeset, the legal department pores through it like a CSI lab combing for hairs. The Peters/Stadiem document raises serious legal questions. It was not private correspondence, it was a sales tool designed to be disseminated for financial gain, and thus its authors share legal culpability for its misstatements. Whether Peters and his amanuensis were merely rattling sabers is immaterial; they named people and alluded to personal activities in a manner designed to denigrate. Does this rise to the level of libel or defamation even without the book being written? Autobiographies have lower First Amendment protection than a news organ such as Deadline Hollywood Daily, so it could be interesting. The real winner is HarperCollins who now doesn’t have to publish it, given that they recently trimmed their staff and told lit agents that they’ve stopped acquiring titles.
I bet you can get your hands on a lot of … as yet unpublished stuff
Speaking of “not cool” that’s one way to describe Jon and all the shit he rained down on so many people. And, that’s why publishing his own oh-so-twisted synopsis of his biography is a good thing. Even though it’ll just end up putting yet more money in that undeserving low-life’s pocket.
What’s he gonna sue for – not losing anything?
For what it is worth no one ever fucked with Jon because he had real muscle, from outside the US, he also made movies and created careers that have grossed hundreds of billions of dollars for Hollywood
most of the Studio Heads today are there because of him
try and be a producer, or try and make a movie and tell me that this industry is easy…… IT IS NOT
Most people outside Hollywood have no idea who Jon Peters is, apart from maybe the occasional “Some dude who used to date Streisand back in the 70s?”.
It’s true!
In the old days, when you made a publishing deal (or even a screenwriting deal), and you signed your certficate of authorship, the publishing company would indemnify you against the costs of ligitation in case someone sued you, and these costs were covered by E&O insurance. Or at least that was pretty standard. The rub, of course, is that if you were found liable (ie, “guilty”) of libel or plagiarism, then you, the writer, would be forced to repay the costs of litigation to the studio.
In essense, it was a pretty good incentive to tell the truth, and that’s why you’ve got some pretty top notch annotators out there who generate 2000 page annotations for 500 page manuscripts.
For Mr Peters to suddenly decide to write his memoirs “in private” means the publishing company’s E&O carrier probably got a little nervous and refused to indemnify him against ligitation. I mean, let’s face facts, would you take Jon Peters’ word that his “memoirs” are going to be bulletproof in court? I don’t know a soul in this town who would trust the guy to watch a tree for them.
And besides, the people mentioned in the outline were relevent in the 1980s and 90s. I’d rather read a book about Chester A. Arthur. Barbra might still be able to pack ‘em in on concert tours, but half her audience is in a wheelchair. I love Hollywood tell-alls, but Peters’ material is a bit stale by now, eh?
Once a hairdresser, always a hairdresser.
It’s an interesting observation that on the one hand there is the preaching of “tolerance, freedom of speech, exposing/exploring people/issues and hypocricy” by Hollywood but on the other hand, if exposing, discussing or writing about them (as they do others and topics in general)and suddenly they are threatened, aggressive, fearful and litigious. It would be different if the book was written FIRST and then looked at to see if there was legal cause but instead collectively, they worked to just shut it down like something from another era or reminiscent of tactics used by repressive regimes. Ironic.
Aurora — Not true most people know Jon Peters as the “Polar Bear/Giant Fuckin’ Spider Guy” from Kevin Smith’s hilarious telling of his Superman stint. YouTube it or go rent “An Evening With Kevin Smith” it’s wonderful.
to idiot bob,
“most of the studio heads today are there because of him”
is that so? we’ll let’s see.
Disney – Oren Aviv and Dick Cook
Dreamworks – Steven Spielberg and Stacey Snider
Fox – Tom Rothman & Jim Giannopoulus
MGM – Mary Parent
New Line – Toby Emmerich
Paramount – Brad Grey, Brad Weston and Adam Goodman
Sony – Amy Pascal
Universal – Ron Meyer, James Schamus, David Linde
Warner Brothers – Alan Horn, Jeff Robinov
New Regency – Arnon Milchan, Hutch Parker Bob Harper
Spyglass – Roger Birnbaum and Jon Glickman
Overture – Chris McGurk and Danny Rosett
Summit – Patrick Wachsberger and Rob Friedman
Relativity – Tucker Tooley, Ryan Kavanaugh
Lions Gate – Jon Feltheimer, Mike Paserornek
I’ve just listed 15 studios. Other than possibly Amy Pascal and maybe Stacey Snider(you could make very strong arguments that amy and stacey are where they are because of jon calley and steven spielberg respectively), who else is in their postion because of Peters? You’re full of shit. Peters is a fuckin’ joke and has been for the last 15 years.
Dirt on Streisand? Bring it on Jon-Boy!
I absolutely love the fact that somebody actually listed a whole slew of the names of studio people as though any of these people, or anyone in Hollywood for that matter, is really even one micron as important as only THEY think they are. Like most people, I am a very happy and satisfied person in life, I recognize not a single one of those names, and it all only serves to remind me that the whole lot of you, from all the players, to the gossipers, to those who spend more than one minute of your time on any of this rather than on the real problems in the world, really deserve all the angst and the agita that you live through and pay your life savings to psychiatrists for. What a complete and utter load of cobblers! Go out in the world and do something productive and good for someone and ignore this rubbish! Celebrity, my backside! You have but mere years left to live on this planet!
Well well May 24, 2009 @ 10:43 am
just do one movie as big as Jon’s and then tell us your opinion,
btw according to “Hit and Run” and other articles he financed the movies and plays himself in the beginning out of his own pocket, that is why he is a PRODUCER
Now if he had been running around hollywood back then trying to raise money for films like 99.99% of the jerk offs in this town try to do day in and day out I doubt he would have ever made it, and you have to respect that, the “money raisers” that I know are still trying to raise money for films and they are broker than broke, have no pot to piss in and cannot pay their rent, just curious are you one of them ????
Just Another self indulgent Hollyweird scumbag saying remember ME. So what’s new.
I will wait in line the night before it comes out to get this book. It sounds incredible.
To “Partially Bigoted Zealots” – thanks. I will!
Question
Have any of you
A. Produced a movie with deniro, decaprio, cruise, smith in it when they were starting out ?
B. Produced a “studio movie” with a budget of over 20MM
I did not think so
so shut your pie hole you loooooooooosers
I agree that the dust-up around this proposal has potentially given Peters a better pay day IF he writes the book and someone agrees to publish it, although he could easily self-publish it. Either way, it probably would’ve made for good beach reading.:-)
And to Pogue Mahone..the reason that person listed the studio heads was(as stated)in response to ‘Bob’s inaccurate declaration that their success was tied to Peters.
And to Pogue Mahone..does anyone else see the irony in the fact that you are insulting everyone in showbiz while reading Nikki’s column? Clearly, YOU must have more important things to do, eh?
Doesn’t he mean he’d let the giant robotic spider out of the bag?
I’m curious whether he leaked this himself to get all this publicity (aka free market research/feedback) to see how well the book might do before taking an offer.
the people he can dish about are so old and irrelevent. plus what was scandelous 20 thirty years does merit a tweet these days. by the time this gets publish contempories won’t even remember who they are.
Kevin Smith was on the Howard Stern show years back, talking about what happened to the SUPERMAN script he wrote for Jon Peters and Nicholas Cage.
Smith said he found Peters “energetic” but completely unknowledgeable about the very property he owed.
Peters’ contribution to Smith’s script was to suggest that Superman go to the Fortress of Solitude (in the North Pole) and fight a polar bear, despite the fact that polar bears live at the South Pole. Peters then counted, “Make it a mutant polar bear,” as a way to “explain” the faux pas.
Peters is a guy who was in the right place at the right time and knew the right people, and got some good advice that he listened to. Now that he’s older and “knows everything,” he has become one of these people that can’t be told that anything he wants to do is wrong.
I’ve read most of these comments slicing and dicing and praising a producer. Perhaps that’s the problem with Hollywood. So much show and tell, too many bad movies ( Next Day Air, Wolf Boy, T4)
I liked a Star is born but that was 33 years ago. I was 17. Caddy Shack and Missing master pieces from the eighties .Rain Man, Ali, The Color Purple and Batman. What about all the misses and never will be a hit movies he produced over the past 33 years?
Unless he has some great stories will this book sale over 5, 000 copies. Wont the stars get an injunction on invasion of privacy, publicity, and trademark infringement etc etc. Only five percent of books make that number in sales. Secondly I don’t think it will be a DaVinci code with 60,500,000 plus copies sold.
It’s non-fiction at best. Maybe Amazon will take a cut at 40 percent. Maybe his efforts would be best in making a great movie like Rain Man etc instead of copying his Boston Boy’s effort. After all with TMZ etc. why read a book when you can see it all live everyday. ( I enjoyed T Braxton grinding) Further, the tell all books, I’m still reading Julia Phillips and The Kid stays in the picture ( its like over ten years, and I cannot get through either book). Boring, P. Theoroux’s dark Safari book showed more interesting real life liaisons with banana men and their European concubines sailing down the Nile. Jon the Don go back to your roots help Stephen make Kid Carson or better yet buy the rights to Blood and Thunder a great book and a better movie.
Bob – May 24th @ 5:35pm,
Unfortunately for you, i’m not the subject of this story. Jon Peters is. Most of the successful films he’s credited with, he was either an executive producer or he glommed onto in one way or another. Other than pounding his fist and acting like a big baby to get things done, the man had no talent. it is really amazing he got as far as he did.
interesting that you reference “Hit and Run” since it’s a book that absolutely demolishes his reputation, but whatever.
Please get back to my question/statement with the studio people. Other than possibly Stacey Snider and Amy Pascal, who on the list i wrote is in their position because of Peters? do tell… thanks.