He’s got that Alfred E. Newman what me worry look? about him and why should we give a rip about DG? But I was captivated by this Netflix documentary on the billionaire Geffen, the new L.B. Mayer or Jack Warner.
Dave appears in this documentary in an off-white t-shirt with a very frayed collar that he might have picked up at the Goodwill. Yet the Geffen rose from a humble start in Brooklyn, the son of struggling immigrant parents, with his heart’s desire the good life in LA. Somehow that got short circuited and he returned to the Big Apple to work in the William Morris (talent agency) mailroom in 1963 while I was shlepping news film from LAX to NBC News in Burbank.
Our paths might have crossed because he returned to LA, newly minted as a freelance talent agent/manager associated with iconic folk-rock artists Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, Crosby Stills, Nash and Young, Jackson Browne and the Eagles. Before he was fired by Warner Records, a stone’s throw on Buena Vista Blvd. where I worked at NBC, he invented Asylum Records and then convinced Warners that he should be a movie producer which led to “Risky Business.” Some of the dollars from Geffen Inc. go to charities and he appears to be politically correct.
