Title: Unscripted
Rating: 4 Stars
This nonfiction work has drawn a lot of comparisons to Succession. It certainly deals with the ins and outs of a family controlling a media empire (in this case Viacom and CBS). However, Succession is pretty clearly based upon the Murdoch family. The saga of Sumner Redstone seems to be more closely aligned with the Sandy Furness character in Succession. Engaged in a hard fought war with Logan Roy, Furness ultimately suffers some kind of stroke and spends the final seasons a shell of himself, unable to communicate with anyone except for his daughter.
Unscripted starts with Sumner Redstone at his peak. Married and divorced twice, he seems to be, well, obsessed with women, or at least with sex. He pursues many women, often giving them gifts worth millions of dollars. In his late eighties, he’s seemingly convinced that he can live forever all the while maintaining the sexual vitality of a much younger man.
Let’s be clear, Redstone is not a nice guy. By controlling eighty percent of the voting share, he wields absolute power over Viacom and CBS. He’s been rich and powerful for so long that he’s lost all perspective. He’s completely estranged from his son and he treats his daughter, Shari, with barely concealed contempt. After being criticized for loudly spouting racist slurs at a crowded restaurant, he just shrugged his shoulders and said that it doesn’t matter, he’s going straight to hell anyway.
Shockingly enough, Redstone did not have eternal vitality. As he weakened, two women gained control over him. He was kind of technically engaged to Sydney Holland. Manuela Herzer was a former paramour that somehow managed to stay in his good graces. The two women moved into Redstone’s house and began to squeeze him for ever increasing sums of money. It’s estimated that the two women managed to get 150 million dollars out of him.
They began to scheme ways to get his entire fortune, most of which was locked in an supposedly ironclad trust for his grandchildren. They told him lies about his daughter to further alienate the two. They refused to let people visit him unescorted. They hired lawyers to get even more of his money.
In the midst of this Redstone continued to deteriorate. He lost the ability to speak. He appeared to be in serious cognitive decline. Bizarrely enough, even though he was in his nineties and severely impaired, the two women continued to hire other women to sexually arouse him.
Somehow, a couple of Redstone’s nurses got the message out to Shari that her father was being abused. Despite her father’s previous poor treatment of her, Shari and her cadre of lawyers took on the two women. Perhaps knowing that her children’s inheritance was possibly at risk might have played a role as well. Regardless, she did manage to drive the women away and reestablish her relationship with her father. Her attempts to claw back some of the 150 million dollars that the two women received from Redstone was not as successful.
At the same time that this was going on, Shari was trying to step into her father’s shoes as the controlling voice of Viacom and CBS. Both companies, bastions of the old boys network, had no interest in listening to Sumner Redstone’s daughter. In particular, CBS was ruled by Les Moonves. Considered a genius businessman responsible for leading CBS to a renaissance, he rebuffed all attempts by Shari to exert herself. Shari had a deep respect for Moonves’ talents but was frustrated that he continually ignored her. At one point, he got so annoyed with Shari that he instigated a plan that would have severely diluted the Redstone family voting power. Needless to say, this did not go over well and the two sides were planning to go to war.
However, Moonves, like apparently many (most?) powerful men in the entertainment industry, had a few skeletons in his closet. And by skeletons, I mean examples of horrible, criminal behavior. He went to lunch with one woman. On the drive, he pulled over, unzipped his pants, grabbed her head, and forced her to fellate him. There were other stories of times when a woman was literally on a casting couch and he would lunge and force himself on them.
In case you might be thinking, well, these are actresses and they must understand that this is the price of getting a role, well, no, but he also didn’t just limit himself to actresses. Being diabetic, he once went to a medical appointment with a doctor specializing in diabetes. When she turned her back to him, he snuck up on her, pressed against her, and started grinding on her. She pushed him away and he said, oh you’re going to be like that? He then went into the corner of the office and jerked himself off. He then left without saying another word.
When asked to comment on the doctor’s testimony, the head of CBS PR replied that Moonves (his boss, the CEO of CBS) was more of a blowjob guy than a masturbation guy. Here’s a pro tip for all of you thinking of entering the PR field: if you’re the head of PR for a very large company and this is your first response, then you’re going to have a very bad day.
Moonves tried to tough it out by claiming that all sex was consensual and denying the existence of proof. Alas for Moonves, there were literally hundreds of text messages that buttressed the story of his accusers. Over half a dozen women stepped forward with stories of abuse. Even though the accusations did date back decades, this was at the height of the #meToo movement. Moonves was done. He was fired for cause. His attempts to gain over one hundred million dollars in pay were not successful.
With Moonves resigned, Shari Redstone was able to install herself in a position of power both at Viacom and CBS. She forced through a merger that brought the two companies together again.
This was a fascinating read into the workings of wealthy, powerful people. Here are a couple of takeaways:
These are not happy people. Hundreds of millions of dollars does not purchase a proportional amount of happiness. Sumner Redstone spent a lifetime terrorizing people but then ended up under the thumb of two women that often verbally abused him into tears. Given his life story before that point, it was hard to feel sorry for him.
These are not smart people. Moonves in particular lied about things that were easily verifiable. Lacking a vision or a strategy, the Viacom CEO pretty much drove his company into the ground.
Sumner Redstone was the constant source of lawsuits in his last years. In nearly every case, the people arguing the case were put in the awkward place of arguing that at one point in time this non-verbal, barely cognizant person was totally in the right mind when making one decision but was severely impaired when making a subsequent decision. These decisions were, at times, a mere weeks apart.
At one point, unable to speak, Redstone was given a computer that had preprogrammed simple phrases that he could play by hitting a button. Some of the phrases were as simple as Yes or No. His favorite phrase, which he consistently played whenever Donald Trump was mentioned, was Fuck You.
At the height of hearing all of these horrible stories about Moonves, he would somewhat plaintively say that he was a good guy. If half a dozen women are coming forward with tales of abuse, then you’re not a good guy. It didn’t help that his all male board supporters blindly backed him, believing that he didn’t do anything that anyone else wouldn’t have done. Yeah, #meToo was long overdue.
If you’re rich, you’ll continually get paid even after you’ve long outlived your usefulness. Sumner Redstone would attend board meetings. In the beginning of his decline, he’d say something like good afternoon and then not say another word during the entire meeting. By the end, he wouldn’t even say that. Despite that, he was still getting paid ten million dollars a year to serve in his role.
Welcome to the meritocracy!
dorkenstein 