Diane

"We live life as fully as possible in every arena we’re able to. I don’t feel guilty about it and guilt isn’t the reason for our philanthropy. I’ve worked hard, helped make some beautiful things, tell some great stories, built companies, and created jobs. I believe Diane and I have earned our keep, but we surely know our keep is vastly different from most others. There is such disparity in this that *fairly earned* doesn’t seem enough. Nothing really does. The wealth gap is far too great and unless better guardrails are put around our capitalistic system I doubt it will, or even should, survive."

"We went on our first trip to Santo Domingo, where Gulf + Western owned a huge sugar plantation and had developed a luxe golf resort on the southeast coast called Casa de Campo. We had our first fight there. Whatever hurt it was that stung me I no longer remember, but I had to get away. I fled on my motorbike up into the rocky hills of the Dominican mountains and slowly unfroze as I dodged potholes along the unpaved road. Why was I so emotionally unprepared for intimacy? When I was eight years old, I had given up believing my mother could protect me from my brother or from my emerging sexual confusion. I became a “walker in the city,” all on my own, not dependent upon anyone. Now my emotions were all over the place because an actual person was becoming important to me. I didn’t just *want* her, I *needed* her, and that banged hard into my built-up self-protections. But all that receded as I drove back to the house, and found Diane standing in the driveway, instantly stitching me back together with her huge earth-mother heart."

"As we walked, we made little asides to each other, and then, like the gym scene from *West Side Story* when everyone else fades away and Tony and Maria are left alone, Diane and I found our way to a sofa, far away from the rest, and we stayed there for a long time. There was a glow around us that was setting off sparks, accurately described best by the French as a *coup de foudre*. Flushed and completely discombobulated, I said, “I’ve got to go,” and she walked me to the door. I was functioning without a brain, not a thought in my head, being willed on by pure primitive urges. We stood at the door, and I said, “I want to call you,” and she said, “I want you to.” As I walked to the elevator, I knew something heretofore unimaginable was about to happen. All my life I’d been mostly un-seducible—by a man or woman—held back by shyness and, to a degree, fear, yet here I was with no restraint at all, knowing I was going to see her again and that nothing was gonna stop that."

"It was too late for further arguments, and I’d handled it badly, so I folded and we floundered around until we found Richard Gere, coming off his breakout debut in our film *Looking for Mr. Goodbar.* *Gigolo* made him a star, and for extra good measure he would go on to break up my relationship with Diane."

"I’ve lived for decades reading about Diane and me: about us being referred to as best friends rather than lovers. We weren’t just friends. We aren’t just friends. Plain and simple, it was an explosion of passion that kept up for years. And, yes, I also liked guys, but that was not a conflict with my love for Diane. I can’t explain it to myself or to the world. It simply happened to both of us without motive or manipulation. In some cosmic way we were destined for each other. At that time the Europeans had a wiser attitude about this than us provincials. And today, sexual identities are much more fluid and natural, without all those rigidly defined lanes of the last century. I’ve always thought that you never really know about anyone else’s relationships. But I do know about ours. It is the bedrock of my life. What others think sometimes irritates but mostly amuses us. We know, our family knows, and our friends know. The rest is blather."

"Jeffrey was like a hummingbird. Compact and wiry with the work intensity of a beaver on speed, he started as my assistant, hired because I thought he was sparky and enthusiastic. He was the super-assistant of all time—he furnished our house in the Dominican Republic in three days, he got me diamonds for Diane’s birthday, he ran New Year’s Eve parties for me—whatever he did, he did with gale-force intensity. He was also irritating in his zealotry to run interference for someone who liked interfering—me. I had to get him out of my office just to keep peace with all the executives who resented his ambition, so I put him in the marketing department, hoping it would round off his roughest edges. Soon we moved him out to the studio in L.A. to get some production experience, which he sure did, eventually running Disney’s movie operation, founding DreamWorks, and becoming the most ferocious political fundraiser of the age."

"Until, that is, one momentous day when Diane told me about a television shopping channel called QVC, the acronym for Quality Value Convenience. It sold all sorts of merchandise directly to viewers. I’d never heard of it before. She said since I was stuck in this limbo, I ought to go to the wilds of Pennsylvania, where it was located, to see the operation and report back if it would be worthwhile for her to sell her clothes on the channel. It is no understatement to say that trip gave me one of the purest and most powerful epiphanies of my life. I didn’t know it then, but it would turn out to be my way forward."

"It was around then I bought a sailing ketch called *Mikado*, the first boat of mine that needed a crew and that started our now decades-long cruising and adventuring around the world. Diane and I often try and calculate, in the thousands, how many miles we’ve swum, how many hikes we’ve taken, how many places we’ve traveled, both inhabited and not, with friends and family and not. Boats for us aren’t for keeping in marinas or sitting in one placid place to entertain guests and have parties. If we have guests, that’s nice, too, but we’re in the most contented rhythm when we’re on our own. We often look at each other across our twin chaises on the bridge deck after a day of swimming and hiking and count our endless blessings."