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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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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I bet you can get your hands on a lot of … as yet unpublished stuff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.