TRAILER: Inventing David Geffen

It airs tonight on PBS at 8PM. The New York Times has a review.  An excerpt:

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. Ms. Lacy’s two-hour film acknowledges the well-documented ruthlessness and volatility — accompanied by shrewdness, drive and, for the lucky, intense loyalty — that fueled Mr. Geffen’s achievements. They’re framed as positive qualities, though some people shake their heads as they say it, and some of his more famous antagonists, like the agent Michael Ovitz, don’t appear. Less flattering examples of hubris, like his long battle against public beach access next to his house in Malibu, or his taste for gargantuan yachts, are not mentioned.