American Masters: Inventing David Geffen (2012)

David Geffen's far-reaching influence – as agent, manager, record industry mogul, Hollywood and Broadway producer, and philanthropist – has helped shape American popular culture for the past four decades. Notoriously press and camera-shy, Geffen reveals himself for the first time in this new two-hour documentary

American Masters - S25E08 Inventing David Geffen:
You gotta see this movie if you're serious about entrepreneurship and the way high-achievers work and think!

Mr. Geffen’s story starts on a classic Hollywood arc: Brooklyn Jewish boyhood, apprenticeship in the William Morris mailroom, quick success as an artist’s manager and record company executive. But then it refuses to follow the usual rise-and-fall trajectory — it just keeps rising, to movie mogul, billionaire and most powerful man in show business.

American Masters: Inventing David Geffen is "an unflinching portrait of Geffen, who narrates his unorthodox rise from working class Brooklyn boy to billionaire entertainment power broker in extensive interviews." Interviewees include Neil Young. Elliot Roberts. Gary Burden.

Described by friends, peers and adversaries as “passionate,” “neurotic” and “giftedly non-diplomatic", Geffen has been a highly polarizing figure in the Entertainment industry.

Notoriously press and camera-shy, David Geffen reveals himself for the first time in this unflinching portrait of a complex and compelling man, directed, produced and written by American Masters creator Susan Lacy. Geffen’s far-reaching influence — as agent and manager, record industry mogul, Hollywood and Broadway producer, and billionaire philanthropist — has helped shape American popular culture for the past four decades.

The most frequent voice in “Inventing David Geffen” is that of Mr. Geffen, who cooperated with Ms. Lacy and narrates his own story in a calm and mostly self-effacing manner. His observations on charged subjects, like the misdiagnosis of cancer that interrupted his career, or on being one of the first Hollywood power players to be openly gay, are clipped, lucid and bland. If the documentary finally feels flat, it’s partly because the David Geffen we see doesn’t show the passion and prickliness that everyone else in the film keeps talking about.