Streisand’s Ex-Beau Hand Slapped Over Proposed Tell-All

“Whatever happened to Jon Peters?”

“Who?”

“Jon Peters?”

“The Star 80 guy?”

“Naw. Not that guy. Maybe the guy who was boffin’ Streisand in the early 80s.”

“Oh, that guy. Maybe he’s dead?”

That might have been the conversation before last Friday when a shitstorm broke lose over the possible publication of a Jon Peters (“Jon who?”) tell-all that had the knickers of a lot of era stars in a twist last Friday. From The Wrap:

The Hollywood rumor mill was ablaze on Friday over the leaked proposal; speculation mounted that News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch, the parent company of Harper Collins, decided to pull out of the deal as too troublesome.

But The Wrap also seems fairly certain that the whole thing was a bit of a ploy by the coy:

But at least one prominent insider was convinced the entire incident was an exercise in attention-grabbing by Peters. "It's arranged hype," said this insider. "I don't think there's been any lawsuit at all."

Peters is already a somewhat notorious figure in Hollywood, a former hairdresser who rose through ambition and drive to cut a swath through the industry in the 1980s. Along with his former partner Peter Guber, he led Columbia- Sony Pictures and legendarily spent a fortune there before losing his job.

I remember Peters. Sorta. A lotta pretty hair in the shadow of Streisand. And while I sorta remember -- again, sorta -- I have trouble imagining exactly who would be rushing to buy that book. And, honestly, if you’ve been thinking about it, think again. There are a lot of terrific -- and even important -- books published every year. You’d likely feel more enriched by almost any of them than you would from the kind of trumped up tripe on offer here. Check it out:

In the noted Hollywood tradition of bridge-burning, the proposal included numerous outrageous stories and anecdotes, most of them depicting Peters as a street-smart macho man bedding his way across a sea of Hollywood goddesses, while bitch-slapping the town’s most feared figures, including Barry Diller and Ray Stark.

In one such story, two girlfriends called Peter from Washington to whisper: “I just f---ed the President.”

In another, he offers up stories about his former girlfriend Barbra Streisand – “he saw her becoming even hotter under his Pygmalion skills - and how producer Ray Stark had molested her during an audition.”

OK: that’s just stupid. Anyone who knows anything knows that Streisand was way hot before Peters ever dialed her number. Let’s just do the math: Streisand, who won a Grammy for Album of the Year in 1963, the same year Peters was allegedly 19.

Here’s the thing: every year thousands of books are published everywhere that are better/more intelligent/more meaningful than what we’re talking about here. This is just goofy. Please: be good and sensible people. Go and buy one of those better books.