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David Geffen Would Be A Horrible Owner Of The Los Angeles Times

Billionaire David Geffen ranks among the ten most powerful persons in the entertainment industry.

Back in December of 1998, I interviewed a videotape editor who talked about Geffen and his friend Barry Diller, another leading homosexual power in Hollywood. Shortly afterwards my website was hacked and I was off the air for a couple of weeks. About $40,000 damage was done to the company who hosted my site.

A well placed source told me soon afterwards that Geffen and Diller were responsible for the hacking of my site. The host of my website, Ron Levi, told me, "You have some powerful enemies." He booted my sites off his servers and severed his business relationship with me (that was putting about $3,000 a month in my pocket).

SCSI Post editor Montel Bradford told me Friday, December 4, 1998 (and I published the interview that day):

"I’m the nicest guy in the world. I have nothing against gay people. But I didn’t want to blow the gay mob. I do have a problem with people discriminating against people based on their sexuality. The gay mob employ the boys who are in the know. Barry Diller is another huge gay mafia guy. He hit on me at the premiere of Grease [Greg was a background dancer]. The Grease producer, Carr, was my manager. He was the one David Geffen told me that I had to blow.

"I used to star in films with Patrick Swayze and stuff, but unfortunately the mainstream is just as seedy. Unfortunately, when you star in a major movie, guys like David Geffen come up to you and hit on you and say, ‘if you blow this guy, then you’re going right to the top.’ So I’m basically blacklisted from the mainstream industry [because he wouldn’t blow the gay mob].

"I starred in the movie Skatetown USA. My real name is Greg Bradford but in adult I use Montel Bradford. I did the TV series Facts of Life, and I did the movie Zapped where I played Heather Thomas’ jerk boyfriend. I got Willie Ames’ part."

The Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) lists Greg (Montel) Bradford for the following:

1.Vendetta (1986) .... Joe-Bob
2.Lovelines (1984) .... Rick Johnson
3.Let's Do It! (1982) .... Freddie
4.Zapped! (1982) .... Robert Wolcott
... aka Wiz Kid, The (1982) (USA: working title)
5.Skatetown, U.S.A. (1979) .... Stan
Notable TV guest appearances
1."CHiPs" (1977) playing "Chad Sullivan" in episode: "11-99:
Officer Needs Help" (episode # 4.11) 1/18/1981
2."CHiPs" (1977) playing "Bart" in episode: "Valley Go
Home!" (episode # 3.3) 9/29/1979

Montel Bradford: "I’m working in adult because it is the only avenue left for me to be creative. I see lots of crap but I believe that adult can become a mainstream thing if they make sure that the sex scenes advance the story line and develop the character."

On December 28, 1998, I faxed a copy of Bradford's interview to David Geffen's office. The next day I received this letter, via messenger, to my largely hidden home address:

Law Offices Of Greenberg, Glusker, Fields, Claman & Machtinger LLP
1900 Avenue of the Stars, Suite 2100
Los Angeles, CA, 90067-4590
Re: David Geffen.
 
Dear Mr. Ford:
 
We represent David Geffen. I have received an e-mail message that you sent to Mr. Geffen's office on December 28, 1998, regarding "Greg Bradford." Mr. Geffen does not know, has never met, and has never heard of you or Mr. Bradford.
The entire statement you attribute to Mr. Bradford in your e-mail is unequivocably false, and is both personally and professionally defamatory to Mr. Geffen.
Please be advised that if you or Mr. Bradford publish such false and defamatory information in way, or attempt to provide such information, or do provide such information to any media or publishing source, in print or otherwise, we will immediately file a civil action against you, Mr. Bradford, and the media source or publisher who publishes the false and defamatory information, and will seek compensatory and punitive damages.
Finally, should you propose to write or issue any other story about Mr. Geffen, please check with this office so that we may ascertain and advise you as to its truth or falsity. If you fail to accept this opportunity to check the facts, malice will be demonstrable.
cc: Bertram Fields, Esq.
David Geffen - Owner Of The Los Angeles Times?

Billionaire David Geffen ranks among the ten most powerful persons in the entertainment industry.

Bernard Weinraub writes in the New York Times: "HOLLYWOOD, March 5 -- The first full-scale biography of David Geffen, which depicts the billionaire entertainment industry figure as brilliant but cunning and corrosive, has outraged Mr. Geffen, stirred tensions at his studio, DreamWorks SKG, and placed pressures on media companies as diverse as Time Warner, Dow Jones, and Bertelsmann."

NYMag.com: "While King's book is a meticulously reported and often fascinating account of Geffen's Zelig-like presence in American pop culture, a bodice-ripper it isn't. King seems to hold back intentionally when it comes to anything intimate, including Geffen's much-speculated-about sex life. (Geffen's comment about his relationship with Cher -- "I f---ed her countless times" -- is, alas, as detailed as it gets.) King is more focused on the melodramas of his business dealings, especially an ongoing pattern in Geffen's life of forging powerful relationships, then sabotaging them, or at the very least getting supremely pissed at his closest friends."

From the 4/1/00 edition of the Daily Mail, an article by Daniel Jeffreys:
Given their Out There affiliation, Jinks and Cohen knew just where to take the American Beauty script to get it made - to fellow Out There sympathiser David Geffen, Steven Spielberg's partner in Dreamworks.
As, The Operator, a new biography of Geffen makes clear, Geffen is a predatory homosexual who has devoted considerable energy to projects that target heterosexuality.
He is allegedly the main force in the Velvet Mafia, a loose association of powerful gay men who use their influence in Hollywood to advance gay issues.
Sources say Geffen has frequently changed scripts if they seem to be too sympathetic towards heterosexual love or if they show any hint of antipathy towards gays.
In 20 years of filmmaking, Geffen has become infamous for making or breaking careers based on whether the people involved are gay and willing to be part of his extremely active sex life.
His summer parties at Fire Island, a gay resort 30 miles outside Manhattan, are legendary as the place the Velvet Mafia meet to indulge in extraordinary bacchanals.
HIS GUEST list begins with designer Calvin Klein and includes other Velvet Mafia members such as Barry Diller (who helped create The Simpsons), George Michael and Sandy Gallin, the super-powerful talent agent who discovered Madonna, Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts.
In recent years, several guests at Geffen's Fire Island house have described weekend-long orgies, fuelled by drugs, at which Geffen and his powerful friends ran a 'meat market', selecting young men for either sex or stardom.
'If you weren't incredibly handsome and well-built, there was no way you would get in,' says a New York movie agent who has been to several Geffen parties. 'Dress was minimal or nonexistent, and Geffen would prowl with his friends, squeezing men like they were cattle.'
When Jinks and Cohen took American Beauty to Geffen, the billionaire producer was ecstatic.
He rushed the script through the approval process - virtually unheard of for a screenplay by a writer with no previous movie hits - and maintained a close personal interest in casting.
Geffen, Jinks, Cohen and Ball all attended half a dozen Oscar parties after the triumph of American Beauty. One producer who is close to Ball said they had good reason to be happy.
After all, he said, they have created a film that is both a masterpiece and the most corrosive satire of heterosexual life that has ever made $100 million from the very people it vilifies.
And that is the hard truth about American Beauty. It exists and triumphed because, for some gays, it is not enough to win civil rights and equality of opportunity.
They want more: a society in which heterosexuality is so condemned that homosexuals can win any increases in power they might choose.

Hollywood Coverage - NY Times Vs. LA Times

A .wav file from Dec. 12's (2006) Zocalo discussion between Sharon Waxman and Laura Holson of The New York Times and John Horn and Patrick Goldstein from The Los Angeles Times. It was moderated by Variety's Dana Harris.

Goldstein looks like he's dying of AIDS. 

(Goldstein has a soft spot for billionaires. You should read the way he sucks up to Barry Diller.)

Forty two minutes in.

Dana: "Is David Geffen the ideal buyer?"

John: "He says all the right things. As long as he doesn't make all of us write terrific things about Dreamgirls. If you look at what he says, it's all very appealing. He says that he wants a cultural and philanthropic legacy. He wants to do something that has some value for the company, I mean the city."

Patrick: "If you are so lucky as to free the newspaper from the obsession with quarterly earnings and predictions of future profits...and give the ownership to someone like David Geffen who clearly has made all the money he needs to make in this life and is clearly looking for a legacy and for a contribution to the city. In theory, that is a great way to go. I've written about David Geffen for as long as I've written about entertainment. We've definitely had our ups and downs over the years. But you'd have to say when you look at his history..., this is a man who is always associated with quality."

I ask the first question of the night. "What makes you think Geffen is a fan of free inquiry? The guy's a bully,. The guy is a blackmail artist. The guy's a thug. The guy is a lowlife."

Patrick: "He's a thug? I have a list on my wall of people I think of as thugs and David Geffen wouldn't come close to being on that list."

Sharon: "Patrick, come on. David Geffen is the one man...who you ask around town, people are afraid of him. They do not pick fights with him because David Geffen has nothing to do... He has a very long memory. He bears a grudge. He will mount a campaign against someone to get back..."

I chatted with a reporter after the event and we agreed that LA Times staffers are like a battered wife who dreams about being rescued.

Times staffers are so desperate that they'll imagine good things about a vindictive man such as Geffen.

The Tribune is a professional newspaper operation and the LA Times has been vastly improved by the Tribune's weeding out of hundreds of staffers and installing some pros in key positions. The Times is a more interesting paper to read today than it has ever been.

Kevin Roderick reports.

David Geffen And The L.A. Times

Kim Masters writes Dec. 28, 2006 :

I've heard from multiple sources in L.A., including an editor at the Times, that Geffen told a Timesman that were he to succeed in buying the paper, his first order of business would be firing a reporter in the business section who had crossed him. If Geffen has that on his to-do list—much less at the top—he is the wrong man at the wrong Times. Yes, he has a canny eye for quality, from Joni Mitchell to Jackson Pollock. But he could make Wendy McCaw, the multimillionaire owner who has decimated the Santa Barbara News-Press, look Pulitzer-obsessed.

Those who have dealt with Geffen while covering this business should find that obvious. Geffen is famously vindictive. One reporter now at the Times once called me in tears after an encounter with him on the phone (one truly has to be on the receiving end of his verbal savagery to appreciate it). And does anyone think he'll tolerate articles that annoy him or his friends? And he has lots of friends—from Hollywood to Washington, from Steven Spielberg to Hillary Clinton.