Bart has internalized Hollywood’s A-list mentality, mistaking the highest-placed source for the best source, even when the higher-up has much to gain by what they’re leaking. When Milchan was negotiating to take his production company from Warner Bros. to 20th Century Fox, for example, the reporters working the story established that Warner Bros. had capped its offer at $ 100 million. Bart added another knowledgeable source, who put the number at $130 million. The source, the reporters were shocked to learn, was Milchan, whose bargaining position was sure to be strengthened by the $30 million boost.
“It might have been,” Bart says, “that I just called him and asked him what the number was.” But didn’t that help Milchan? “People like that, they don’t need my help. They’re doing fine. And let’s be pragmatic. You can’t use a newspaper to help your friends. You’ll end up getting fired.”
In almost the next breath, though, Bart says friendship does guide him. He recalls visiting Guber’s office one day when Guber was chairman of Sony. “The purpose of my mission was to yell at him. You don’t like to see a friend messing up,” Bart says. “I was telling him among other things how badly he was handling the press and how he was not being confrontative enough with the problems at Sony. It had nothing to do with reporting. No notes were taken. It had nothing to do with journalism.” Bart insists, however, that despite offering such counsel, he directed his reporters to grill Guber’s regime as they would any other.
“Is Guber a friend of mine? Certainly. I have never denied that,” Bart says. “Was he an effective president of Sony? No.” Those who attended a gala tribute to Bart at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in 1997, meanwhile, remember that Guber began the roast with this joke: “Will everyone here who owes Peter a favor for having killed a negative story please remain seated?” The room–filled with Hollywood’s heaviest hitters — erupted in laughter. Everybody stayed in their seats.
*
Nervous Peter has questions.
The magazine’s fact checker has just spent the day going over the story with him, and he wants to discuss a few things with me. “When we entered into this thing, I said to you, ‘When I write about people, I don’t write about religious beliefs or sexual orientation,’” he says. “I honestly felt you would respect that.” I remind him that all along I have told him that the profile would take into account his history.
“What concerns me is if you are characterizing me as a runaway Jew,” he says. “It’s not that I don’t acknowledge it. I just don’t talk about it. It’s not a part of my life. Isn’t this the equivalent of outing someone?” he asks.
I tell him I don’t equate revealing a person’s homosexuality with saying his parents were Austrian Jews.
He then changes course. “Do me one favor,” he says. “To avoid me being blackballed, quote me saying, ‘I have no problem saying my ethnicity is Jewish.’ Otherwise you’re going to get me into trouble with all these people.”
When I tell him I can do that, but that I’m sure my editor will insist that we put the quote in context, making it clear that it came after a call from a fact checker, he snaps: “Is he some kind of professional Jew, too?”
*
IT HAS LONG BEEN RUMORED — but never proved — that the editor of Variety writes scripts on the side. Bart has always denied this, but people still whisper. Earlier this year The Hollywood Reporter’s David Robb, who has never hidden his antipathy for his former boss, wrote an article about it.
In March, after Bart attended a Writers Guild meeting that was closed to the press and then published a report on Variety’s front page, Robb investigated why Bart was still an active guild member. He discovered that to remain active, Bart had to have sold a script within the past four years. Robb thought he’d found what to Bart’s enemies amounts to the Holy Grail: proof that Bart was engaging in journalism’s most serious conflict of interest — profiting from those you cover.
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