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Psychopathic vault8/12/2023 ![]() ![]() Unscripted catalogues Redstone's sexual predations – including finding on-air roles for women he was interested in (another Logan move), and repeatedly dating or trying to date his grandson's girlfriends. The reality is more toxic, more dysfunctional and far more complicated than any TV script. Unscripted makes clear that Redstone's travails are even more compelling and incredible than his small-screen avatar's. It was a playpen of great wealth and wide influence. Redstone escaped his background with a scholarship to Harvard that set him on the path to a career that, at its peak, delivered him control of Viacom, Paramount Pictures, CBS, MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and publisher Simon & Schuster, as well as National Amusements. (And as a child, just like logan roy, Redstone briefly lived in a house with no inside bathroom.) His father sold linoleum, and went on to run two drive-in theatres, which Redstone would later develop into the movie theatre chain National Amusements. Redstone was one of those classic American success stories. We understand this almost instinctively in Armstrong's depiction of the Roy family and the gruesome fascination patriarch Logan Roy conjures from a combination of psychopathic paternalism and deal-making wizardry.īut now we can also see it in even more lurid detail, with the release of a book by two New York Times journalists on Redstone's savage battle to secure his own legacy: unscripted: the epic battle for a hollywood media empire by James B. Emotional fealty can have dollar signs attached to it. Sibling rivalry, parental respect – and often, the banality of favouritism. It appears that for these media tycoons' families, an inheritance goes beyond how much it's worth, or what corporate outpost might come their way: it's also about the family dynamic. ![]() Chris Pizello/APĪrmstrong's success has been to combine the all-too-common anxiety about our legacy with the elevated stakes that come with being one of those rarefied ultra-wealthy corporate media figures who believe mortality is negotiable. Jesse Armstrong (second right) was inspired to write Succession by Sumner Redstone and Rupert Murdoch, who both joked they intended not to die. “And I started to feel there was a show about what those people are like in general.” “It felt like something quite basic about not wanting to give up and feeling that loss of influence at the end of your life,” Armstrong explained. Stewart and Rachel Abrams (Cornerstone Press) Review: Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Hollywood Media Empire – James B. ( MENAFN- The Conversation) Just before the third season of the hit HBO television show succession began, the show's creator, Jesse Armstrong, was asked (again) what it was about real-life media tycoons Sumner Redstone and Rupert Murdoch that drove him to create a TV series about a fictional media family that bore some resemblances to each of them.Īrmstrong's answer was simple: when Redstone and Murdoch had been asked about their succession plans, both had joked they didn't plan to die.
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