Peter Bart: Sumner Redstone Wanted To Champion Movies, But His Lust For Power Made Him A “Corporate Monster”
17.02.2023 - 00:01
/ deadline.com
From the outset, Sumner Redstone was a curiosity.
A cluster of power players 50 years ago were suddenly bidding for control of Hollywood’s revered movie studios. Competition was intense but most of the bidders were not even “movie” people. In fact, they’d rarely seen a movie.
The exception was a cantankerous lawyer from Boston who’d inherited a small chain of theaters. Unlike characters like Steve Ross (funeral business), Kirk Kerkorian (airplanes) or Rupert Murdoch (newspapers), Redstone was passionate about film. He wanted to champion filmmaking and build a media conglomerate around that zeal.
A new book by James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams chronicles the successes and lurid failures of Redstone and his troubled domain – Paramount, CBS, Viacom, etc. Titled Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire, the book, like its protagonist, becomes overwhelmed by legalistic intrigue, family rivalries and sexual aberration involving both Redstone and Les Moonves, the powerhouse chief of CBS.
While the book vividly captures the corruption of power and excess, its principals become ghost-like figures hovering on the sidelines. Also in the shadows is Shari Redstone, Sumner’s daughter, who successfully tightened her control over her father’s empire while sharing none of his passion. “She was intrigued by the power, not the product,” noted one key executive.
Unscripted drifts into the almost comedic details of Redstone’s bizarre social life, which prompted Shari to claw back the $150 million paid to two of her father’s girlfriends. It also details how a succession of investigations of Moonves derailed the complex plan aimed at delivering corporate control to the CBS dealmaker.
But Stewart and Abrams’ saga lacks the vivid