While introducing Producers Guild of America Milestone Award nominee Jason Blum at the PGA Awards on Saturday night, Barry Diller made digs at David Ellison, as well as the guild itself, for giving the honor to people like Harvey Weinstein and Les Moonves in previous years.
“Samuel Goldwyn, Adolph Zukor, Jack Warner — What would Jack Warner do to know he’d been succeeded by a stunt pilot?” Diller, chairman of internet and media conglomerate IAC and an executive who led Paramount Pictures and Fox, said, which evoked audible gasps and laughs from the audience. Current Paramount chairman and CEO Ellison, who has been in the news in recent days for the mega merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, is a licensed pilot for helicopter aviation, aerobatics and more. Warner, of course, was the founder and president of Warner Bros. Studios.
Diller, a longtime friend of Blum’s, continued: “Cecil B. DeMille, Disney, and now Blum: Not the most obvious succession, but then you also gave this award to Harvey Weinstein and Les Moonves. So there’s that.”
Diller continued his introduction by making quips at Blum’s “cheapness.” Of course, Blum, the founder and CEO of Blumhouse (behind horror franchises like Paranormal Activity, Insidious, The Black Phone, The Purge), is well known for investing small amounts of money in films and giving directors their creative freedom. For example, 2007’s Paranormal Activity was made for just $15,000 but grossed almost $200 million worldwide.
“There’s some commonality with the greats,” Diller continued. “DeMille made movies for $15,000 and so did Blum almost 100 years later. To say he’s cheap isn’t a characterization. It’s a defining attribute. … I’m giving this award to Jason, not because I like horror movies; I actually hate them. But because we’ve been friends since before he matriculated, if that’s the right word to describe working for Harvey Weinstein. How he found his groove after that is anyone’s guess, but he sure did find it.”
Blum served as an executive for Bob and Harvey Weinstein at their production company Miramax before becoming an independent producer at Paramount and founding Blumhouse Productions in 2000.
Diller continued: “300 films made on the lowest pay scales in film history, but he also did something quite extraordinary in itself, and that’s helping artists tell stories and helping them make a lot of money. … Once Jason found his calling, he focused with an intensity that is rare in this business, and that’s worth saying because Hollywood is essentially a machine that’s designed to distract you. There’s always a bigger budget being dangled in front of you, a more prestigious kind of movie that will get you an awards campaign or a franchise that someone swears is going to change everything. The shiny objects in this town are endless. Jason though stayed focused on scary and people betting on themselves … Jason is this odd something of a Renaissance man, a true embodiment of a man [who] can do all things if it is his will. And it is his will and his stick to perseverance of what he believes in and how essentially honest and honorable he has been that makes me ever so glad to be able to present this award to him.”
When Blum took the stage to accept the Milestone Award, he joked, “I think my biggest achievement is getting Barry Diller to the PGAs!”
“Barry’s been a friend of mine for a long time and a mentor of mine and someone I admire so, so much,” he added. “And he’s changed my life is a lot of ways.”
During his acceptance speech, the horror mogul also talked about how AI cannot replicate the passions and tastes of a producer. “We’re living at this time where machines are very confident that they can pick what will work, that algorithms can tell us everything we’ve ever watched and what we should watch next, and AI can tell us what to stream in the mood we’re in next Tuesday. But what machines can’t do?” He then brought up the success of Heated Rivalry, noting, “If you would ask an algorithm a few months ago to predict a low-budget gay hockey romance with zero known stars, I promise you the algorithm would have been like, ‘Do not make that show.’ But that’s why Heated Rivalry needed us. It needed producers.” Blum added that he even invited the hit show’s producers to be his guests at the show, but they were in New York to watch Connor Storrie host Saturday Night Live.
