Production and seduction in Hollywood

Because it is supposed to be one of the most conservative companies in the publishing business, people could not quite believe the reports that HarperCollins had paid $875,000 for the memoirs of Jon Peters, the former head of Sony Pictures. Yes, he has had lots of beautiful girlfriends: Barbra Streisand, Kim Basinger, Pamela Anderson, Sharon Stone and Catherine Zeta-Jones, to name but five. But almost a million dollars for their lives with the man who was a hairdresser before he became a producer?

All that changed, however, when the top Hollywood blogger, Nikki Finke, posted a copy of the book proposal on her Deadline Hollywood Daily blog. According to the proposal: "This will be the most revealing Hollywood gossip book since You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again. For example, not one, but two of Jon's girlfriends called him from Washington on two separate occasions, whispering the breathless news: 'I just fucked the president.'"

Peters, the producer of films such as Batman and Rain Man, says he seduced Barbra Streisand while cutting her hair. "He found Barbra totally hot," according to the proposal, and Sharon Stone was "a cyclone sexually".

Two days after Finke posted the leaked proposal, Peters told The New York Post that he was cancelling the HarperCollins deal for Studio Head because "some of the most important figures in show business" had threatened to sue him.