He offers a rare interview at the Television Critics Association semiannual press tour as press for an upcoming American Masters documentary titled Inventing David Geffen.
The Hollywood Reporter has a report:
Geffen, who is on tape suggesting "ego" isn't a "pejorative" term in his mind, insists he never saw himself as the smartest person in the room at any point during his career, revealing that he did poorly in school — “I thought I was dumb,” he said — and was fired from a number of early jobs coming out of high school. In fact, he said the only reason he had the confidence to go after a gig as a William Morris agent is because he believed it rewarded a different skill set, and one that he had: the ability to “bullshit on the phone.” Decades later, he's enjoying his time away from the business – at 69, he said, he doesn't “want a job” — and noted that he's content spending weeks at a time lost in books and newspapers. (Other Geffen facts: He's never carried a cell phone, has never texted anyone and doesn't own an ATM card.)
At THR, Geffen also discusses the movie and music industries, the newspaper business, DreamWorks, and "untrue" rumors:
If you've heard the one about Carly Simon suggesting her song “You're So Vain” is about Geffen, he assures you it wasn't. “Not that I'm not vain; I'm just not her vain,” he shrugged, adding that the one about him marrying Keanu Reeves – an actor he said he had never met at the time of the report — was similarly untrue.
