Thompson On Hollywood

Battle of the Titans: Malone vs. Diller

Liberty chief John Malone is trying to oust long time business partner Barry Diller from the IAC Board, reports Jill Goldsmith, Marketwatch, and Businessweek.

Diller Talks Internet, Newspapers, Games, Yachts, and Stacey Snider

Check out Lloyd Grove's lengthy Portfolio.com Q & A with the always candid-yet-uptight Barry Diller. I get a kick out of Diller; always have. He's smart. But he's not an easy interview and if you know Diller you can cringe on behalf of Grove as he bobs and swerves through the nasty thicket of asking Diller questions he's happy to answer, and those he does not like (his stint running Universal is not one of his favorite topics, for example):

L.G.: You have a famous management style.

B.D.: Yeah.

L.G.: I was just reading an article: the president of Expedia [Dara Khosrowshahi] talking about how it’s generally people sitting around a table shouting at the top of their lungs.

B.D.: Well, he exaggerates.

L.G.: I mean you’re reported to have once made [DreamWorks C.E.O.] Stacey Snider cry [when she was running Universal Studios and Diller was grilling her in a meeting].

B.D.: Oh please! Stacey Snider cries for effect in whatever room she might be in. I mean, I didn’t make Stacey Snider cry! Stacey Snider wanted to cry for her own demonstrative purposes. But, there’s no question that our process, my process, is one in which I believe that in order to get to the truth of something, you have to argue it passionately. It’s not a Socratic process by any stretch. But in any situation, you know if you have all the information, it’s easy to make a decision. But with almost every decision, particularly the ones that get tougher and tougher, you don’t have all the information; you’re never going to get all the information; it isn’t there to get. What you’ve got to try and do is listen for what truth you can hear out of the passions of people arguing what they believe in. Because it’s what they believe in when you don’t have the facts, where you can maybe find something that will give you a lead on what’s more interesting to do, what’s the right course to make a decision.

But it does get intense, and it does get into conflict—the conflict of ideas. And when people get exercised about that, there’s no device to get them to do it, but just the fact that that’s what you’re really mining for, that’s going to sometimes be noisy and sometimes confrontational. There are those that love that, and thank God there are enough people like that—those are the people I like to be around. I’m very uncomfortable when I’m in rooms with people, as they are uncomfortable with me, if they don’t like this process. And there are people who don’t like it, and that’s fine. I don’t think there’s a value judgment here, I just think it’s something that is either enjoyable and stimulating for people or they want to run out of the room. And people who want to run out of the room, should. I’m happy that there are enough to stay.