While introducing Producers Guild of America Milestone Award nominee Jason Blum at the PGA Awards on Saturday night, Barry Diller took a dig at David Ellison, as well as the Guild itself, for bestowing the honor on people like Harvey Weinstein and Les Moonves in previous years.
“Samuel Goldwyn, Adolph Zukor, Jack Warner—what would Jack Warner do to learn that a living pilot had succeeded him?” said Diller, chairman of Internet and Media Group IAC and the executive who led Paramount Pictures and Fox, drawing audible gasps and laughter from the audience. Ellison, the current Chairman and CEO of Paramount, who has been in the news in recent days due to the mega merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, is a licensed pilot to fly helicopters, acrobatics and more. Warner was of course the founder and president of Warner Bros. Studios.
Diller, a longtime friend of Bloom, continued: “Cecil B. DeMille, Disney, and now Bloom: not the most obvious succession, but then this award was also given to Harvey Weinstein and Les Moonves. So that’s the way it is.”
Diller continued his introduction by mocking Bloom’s “cheapness.” Of course, Blum, founder and CEO of Blumhouse (which is behind horror franchises like PAbnormal activity, Insidious, Black phone, Cleansing), is known for investing small sums in films and giving directors their creative freedom. For example, 2007 Paranormal activity It was produced for only $15,000 but has grossed nearly $200 million worldwide.
“We have some commonalities with the greats,” Diller continued. “DeMille made movies for $15,000, and so did Bloom almost 100 years later. To say cheap is an understatement. It’s a characteristic. … 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 enrolled in college, 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 certainly did.”
Bloom worked as an executive for Bob and Harvey Weinstein at their production company Miramax before becoming an independent producer at Paramount and founding Bloomhouse Productions in 2000.
Diller continued: “300 films were made at the lowest pay levels in the history of movies, but he also did something extraordinary in itself, which was helping artists tell stories and helping them make a lot of money. … Once Jason found his calling, he focused with rare intensity on this work, and that’s worth saying because Hollywood is basically a machine designed to distract you. There’s always a bigger budget dangling in front of you, a more popular type of film that will give you an awards campaign or a franchise that someone swears by will change everything. The Shining Things in This city is endless even though Jason has remained focused on scary things and people betting on themselves… Jason is this strange thing of a Renaissance man, a true embodiment of the man. [who] He can do everything if it is his will. His will and stick to persevere in what he believes in and how honest and honorable he is is what makes me so happy to be able to present this award to him.
When Bloom took the stage to accept the Milestone Award, he joked: “I think my biggest accomplishment is getting Barry Diller to the PGAs!”
“Barry has been a long-time friend of mine, a mentor and someone I admire greatly,” he added. “He changed my life in so many ways.”
During his acceptance speech, the horror mogul also spoke about AI’s inability to replicate a product’s emotions and tastes. “We live in a time where machines are so confident that they can choose 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 based on our mood next Tuesday. But what machines can’t do?” Then he brought up success Hot competition“, noting, “If you asked an algorithm a few months ago to predict a low-budget gay romantic hockey game with no established stars, I promise you the algorithm would be like, ‘Don’t do that show.’ But this is why Hot competition need us. It needed producers. Bloom added that he invited the show’s producers to be his guests on the show, but they were in New York to watch Connor Story host Saturday Night Live.
For the full list of PGA winners, click here.
