Book excerpts: Barry Diller's “Who Knows”

Who-who-cover-cover-simon and-schuster-1280.jpg — Simon & Schuster

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TV, film and media executive Barry Diller spent a decade with ABC, where he helped make TV shows “Movies of the Week.” In his new memoir "Who knows" (To be published by Simon & Schuster on May 20), Diller wrote his career, which included a lesson on the limitations of too much information - instinct (for example, what makes a week of fun movies an interesting movie?) might better predict the factors that succeed.

Read the excerpts below, and Don't miss a interview with Tracy Smith on May 11 with Barry Diller on "CBS Sunday Morning"!

Barry Diller's "Who Knows"

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We were very good at titles in the early days

Women in chains It's one of my favorites; it's a horrible movie, but it's a really facilitating title.

Screaming, pretty peggy Not bad, too.

Sometimes the staff would ask, “Is this business?” I would cruelly brutally ruthlessly because instead of using their intuition, they tried to predict the public’s appetite, and then I said, now, over and over, it was simply impossible. None of them used research to make decisions. Printing of paper (or computer screen) is not worth it, and no research on ideas is worth it. What can the data tell you It happenednot something Can or will happen. Data is often harmful to instinct, and I think it is not only about making creative decisions, but also about the correctness of many business decisions. PowerPoints can be enemies; structured information often shrinks the sieve when you need to expand the sieve in the space between information and real understanding. Overtraining our brains with data alone does not give an advantage, and if this is the only component of decision making, it may be a deterrent. This is usually a problem for MBA students who are equipped with all the business tools and case studies, but have little simple human instincts. I don't think it's a lazy process to use instincts, rather than deep, hard values or fact-based data to help with decisions. Too much information can be overloaded, trump and obscuring the nature of any suggestions: it's a good idea, does it make sense?

You rarely get the perfect project or the perfect script. From all my experiences, I probably haven't read a thousand scripts that are so fully implemented, so completely and undisputedly great that you just scream, "Do!" But one of them was that day in 1970, when Leonard Goldberg recently moved from ABC to a major TV production company, he called and said, "You have to read this script right away." It's called Brian's songa story of the deep bond between black and white professional football players, one will die of cancer. I cried while reading. I called him and said, "We can only screw it from here (it's perfect)." It's often called one of the best TV movies of all time and one of the greatest sports movies, and it was nominated for nine Emmys and won five. In these few times, ABC's leading daytime producer Dan Curtis sent me a manuscript of an unpublished novel. Colechak essay. I read it in two or three hours, and it's a contemporary story of vampires in Las Vegas - I told Dan, "It's as good as the stories I've read." It's a good idea: Las Vegas is the most active city of the night, and it's the perfect place for vampires to live in.

From the novel we made Night Walkerit turned out to be so great that we had a screening of ABC senior management and he all said, "That's a great movie. We should be dramatic!" I objected to that and said, "Yes, it's a great movie, but it's a Movies for the weekthat's where it belongs. Stark at nightr produces a sequel (The strangled person at night) and TV series (Kolchak: Night stalker), followed by two production TV movies, followed by a remake of the series. From a good idea!

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Barry Diller's "Who Knows"

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For more information:

"Who Knows" by Barry Diller (Simon & Schuster), in hardcover, e-book and audio formats, available on May 20