Fin: "Unscripted," age gaps, there is no “Epstein List,” Kevin Spacey and Michael Clayton

My weekly notes column

First of all, thank you for the response to the subscription announcement, and for those of you who went for the paid subscription, thank you so much. 

As mentioned before, I was off last week for a much-needed family vacation. And on that vacation, I read several books. The most interesting, by far, was “Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy,” by New York Times reporters James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams. 

I always love a good, reported book about Hollywood, combining equal parts business intrigue and juicy gossip. Stewart is the author of DisneyWar, one of the best in the genre. But “Unscripted,” the story of the last decade or so of battles involving the various interconnected, oft-renamed, and merged entities known as National Amusements, Viacom, Paramount, and CBS, might be even wilder. 

The highlights: The company’s chairman, Sumner Redstone, had a harem of women in his orbit who bled him of millions, as he was pushing 90 and was in steep cognitive decline. One of them, meanwhile, was having an affair of her own with a character named George Pilgrim, who was both a sometime actor and ex-con. The first half is mostly about those machinations, while the second focuses more on the corporate battle over the latest Viacom/CBS merger, which led up to #MeToo-related fall of CBS boss Les Moonves.