Monaco Media Forum: Barry Diller Is Not Shy

One of the great things about interviewing Barry Diller, the Hollywood mogul turned Internet impresario (via InterActiveCorp), is that he actually answers questions you ask him. Here is a sampling of quotes from my one-on-one interview with him onstage at the Monaco Media Forum on Friday morning, taken from the not-so-audible audio of my Flip video camera. But you’ll get the idea of why Diller (pictured here) remains one of the more robust characters out there. We began talking about the split of IAC into five parts, lopping off unrelated businesses, with the backdrop of a struggle he has been engaged in with Liberty Media’s John Malone. Why do it? “We were being superficial managers,” said Diller. For example, of the mortgage business around LendingTree, he said: “I have little to no interest and that is not how I want to live my life.” (Very few execs, I can assure you, will admit to rank corporate boredom about their businesses.) But Diller was just getting started, taking shots at everything from the “dumb” Hollywood writers’ strike to the insanity of Facebook’s $15 billion valuation, as well as his own corporate shortcomings. (more…)

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