Jon Peters’ Final Cut: Hair-Raising Tales From a Legendary Wildman
His knees are bad, he’s paunchy and puffy, and the former celebrity hairdresser has gray roots at least 2 inches long. At 79, Jon Peters no longer is the bad-boy seducer of women from Barbra Streisand to Pamela Anderson, the inspiration for the Warren Beatty film Shampoo, the wild-man character that Bradley Cooper portrayed with all the old bluster in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2021 film Licorice Pizza.
But as he sits in a combination bed- and sitting room in his apartment in the Beverly Hills flats, he still spins out grand plans that may or may not be grounded in reality. Let no one say that Jon Peters no longer dreams big.
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I had not seen or spoken to Jon in the more than 25 years since the publication of Hit & Run, the book that Nancy Griffin and I wrote about Sony’s ill-advised 1989 decision to hire him and his then-partner, Peter Guber, to run Columbia Pictures.
People still read Hit & Run, which chronicles the wild spending and heavy financial losses that Sony took as a result of hiring a pair of Hollywood hustlers well known within the industry for poaching ideas, grabbing credit and sometimes making — or at least getting their names on — big hit movies, such as Tim Burton’s Batman in 1989. That was one where Jon became hands-on in more ways than one: He was dating Kim Basinger at the time. Predictably, chaos on the set ensued.
While Peter pursued the more conventional path of starting as a management trainee at a studio after grad school in New York, Jon was an unlikely success story. He was a difficult boy whose father died when he was just 8 and who wound up in reform school by the time he was 12. But he made his way to Hollywood, became Streisand’s hairdresser and lover and, after teaming with her on the 1976 remake A Star Is Born, launched a producing career that would see him credited on dozens of films.
Peter married his college girlfriend, but Jon went in a different direction. He had a knack for spotting and dating women who had star potential. In the late ’80s, he met Anderson at a party when she was in town to test for a Playmate spread. He urged her not to do the photo shoot, but she didn’t take his advice. While we were working on the book, he told us he had started seeing an aspiring actress who had just arrived from Wales and who was going to be big. If you guessed it was Catherine Zeta-Jones, you are correct.
Unfortunately for Sony, Peter and Jon did not come up with any blockbusters during their tenure at Sony Pictures. Jon — who kicked off his time at the studio by sending a company plane filled with flowers to court supermodel Vendela — was the first to be ejected, at Peter’s behest, in 1991. Peter continued to spend Sony’s money freely and managed to hold on until 1994, at which point Sony said goodbye to him and acknowledged a $3.2 billion loss on the company’s Hollywood adventure.
After Peter pushed Jon out at Sony, Jon was crushed by the subsequent estrangement from his former partner. When Jon decided to talk to us for the book — which Peter steadfastly refused to do — he showed us a handwritten contract that Peter had sent him saying simply that the friendship would be renewed if Jon promised not to participate. It looked like something meant to resolve a grade-school tiff. There was a line where Jon was supposed to sign. Thankfully, he didn’t.
Trying to fact-check his stories was a challenge. He claimed to have bought the San Ysidro Ranch (nope); he claimed to have once jumped up and down on the desk of then-Warner Bros. chairman Bob Daly during an argument (nope); he repeatedly claimed to have taken Sony for $100 million (but offered no proof).
When I sat down with him July 31, he was flanked by Julia Faye West, his 46-year-old partner of six years, and his three daughters from two relationships. He apparently is not legally married to West; his four marriages include Marie Zampitella, whom he wed when he was a teen; Lesley Ann Warren, with whom he had a now-estranged son; Christine Forsyth Peters, mother of two of the daughters and onetime Sumner Redstone girlfriend; and Mindy Williamson, mother of another daughter.
Jon met West after he saw her photo on the cover of the online men’s magazine FHM and tracked her down. He says he’s happily married now (though not technically) but also says that in the past couple of years he “died twice” from taking pills (Vicodin) when he hit rough patches in the relationship.
In the day, Jon had an explosive temper: He once pulled a gun on a worker in Aspen who showed up to collect a bill. He chased Dawn Steel, then president of Columbia Pictures, out of his house. He’s had other issues: In 2011, a Los Angeles jury ordered him to pay $3 million to a former assistant who accused him of sexual harassment; he says that later, someone tried to blackmail him with an accusation of improper conduct during a massage and that cost him $100,000.
Now, he says he’s not only in recovery but very focused on doing good for the less fortunate. After our interview, I started to wonder how it happened that Jon had never started something as lucrative as a church. As if on cue, Jon called to say that he and his wife are also starting Oz: The Church of Dreams, and that they’re going to give away money.
He also says he has some show-business projects in the works. One is a movie called The Hoodlum Priest with Mike Tyson. “It’s a suspense thriller and based on me,” he says. “All the movies I made are based on me. … There are no guys like me in Hollywood. They’re all a bunch of pussies. You can quote me. They’re all a bunch of fucking pussies.”
He also says he’s talking with Oliver Stone about making a film about the Trump assassination attempt. (A great admirer of Donald Trump, Jon made a substantial contribution to help cover the legal bills incurred by Beverly Hills salon owner Gina Bisignano, who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Bisignano is friends with West.)
As Jon is like the Old Faithful of ideas, this interview has been (heavily) edited and sorted for clarity. He started out by talking about his quest to find real love, as well as his ambitious passion project of the moment.
***
JON PETERS It’s a thing called Oz, which we’re working on with Gavin Newsom, and it’s 300 acres that we’re going to convert into, like, Disneyland, but a rehabilitation center where we can take people off the street. And they’re there for a year and they get completely recycled. They learn to be gardeners, they learn to be pool men, they learn to be hairdressers. It’s going to be very much like the early days of Walt Disney. As a matter of fact, one of the projects that I have is working with Bob Iger on getting the plans for the first Disneyland. [A Disney source says Iger is not aware of a request for the plans.] Oz is my ultimate dream.
Where is it?
PETERS Well, it’s not yet, but the land is in San Bernardino. And you can take 2,000 people at a time for 12 months. Then they get recycled, and we put them back in and we work with the big corporations. Recycle the people. What do you do with them? You just leave them on the street? And you can’t put them in a 30-story building by themselves — they’ll die. So you’ve got to put them in a program.
Are you 12-step people? Are you friends of Bill? [A reference to AA founder Bill W.]
JULIA WEST Yes.
PETERS Bill?
WEST Yes. We’re in recovery.
PETERS When I met her, she said, “What do you want from me?” I said, “I want you to teach me how to love,” because she was so loving. And [I said,] “What do you want?” [She said,] “I want you to help me build my finances.” So she’s now financially independent from me, can leave any time she wants. And my kids are the same. Basically everybody’s got money. So we started listening to Dr. Joe Dispenza — you know who he is?
No.
PETERS Oh my God. Write that name down. That’s this whole visual. If you can see it, you can be it. His thing is, if you’re not actively participating in the future, you’re living in the past. And so we are, all of us, creating the future here. I was at one point so fucked up I could barely talk on the phone. And now I’m running, working 20 hours a day, building this company, working with the kids. And I was a major sex addict. Meaning it’s not about sex, it’s looking for love.
I get it.
PETERS I don’t know if you know, but Pamela Anderson came into my life again [in 2020], and I hadn’t seen her in 20 years. And she wanted to get married. And all of a sudden …
I remember. It was like, a five-minute proposition.
PETERS Yeah, 12 days. She came to visit me, and I looked at her and I started crying. I was like, I was in love with her [pointing to West], I wasn’t in love with Pamela. But that’s the addiction. The addiction takes you over. When I was with Vendela, we went to Mexico, and we were sitting having lunch and she said, “I’m really tired.” And I said, “Go downstairs, take a nap.” And then she went down, and I looked across the table and there was Miss Venezuela. And I ran over. “Hi, I’m Jon Peters, Batman, Superman.” I did my spiel, and it was horrible because I felt bad about myself. And that’s what happened with Pamela. Pamela wanted to get married and everything, and it was my disease. It’s called a trigger. It triggered me. And next thing you know, she was there and we never got married legally, it was some spiritual deal, but the minute she walked in, it was like I was still in love with her. It was the addiction. She’s not speaking to me now.
[Peters calls later after reading a positive review of Anderson’s new film, The Last Showgirl. He says he always told her that she was meant to be a movie star. “I used to say to her all the time, ‘You should be a [serious] actress! Forget this naked stuff.’ ”]
In a wide-ranging conversation, Peters also touched on an assortment of other topics.
On Former Producing Partner, Peter Guber
PETERS For years, every three or four months I call Guber.
Really?
PETERS Yeah. We don’t talk. He doesn’t ever take my call.
Why do you call him?
PETERS Because I miss him. I love him. He was my best friend in the world. I mean, if you see some of the pictures where he jumps in my arms and I’m holding a 200-pound man like this. (Cradles his arms.) He trusted me. I could have dropped him on his back. But unfortunately, [Guber’s wife] Lynda wanted to be his partner.
She’s Tara now, you know. (A yoga instructor, she has taken the name of a Hindu goddess.)
PETERS Yeah, she’s Tara. Yeah. But what happened is, you know this, I told you she tried to have an affair with me.
But also, Jon, he fired you.
PETERS Well, he didn’t fire me, because I worked for Sony. What he did is he went to Sony and he said, “Either it’s me or him, and he’s got to go.” That’s what he did. And [then-Sony America CEO] Mickey Schulhof flew me to New York and said, “You can’t be here, but you can stay if you work out of the house,” and I don’t want to do that. I wanted to do my own thing. And whenever my name comes up, he freaks out. So Tony Robbins calls Peter and said, “Look, I really like [Jon]. I think we could learn a lot from each other.” You know what he did? [He said,] “Don’t you dare talk to him. I don’t want you talking to that man. If you’re my friend, you won’t call him back.” He tried to bury me. He’s so jealous and angry at the fact that I actually have a life and he’s living with the enemy.
Who’s the enemy?
PETERS His wife. He told me once, and I swear to God, this is the truth, that he worked for the CIA, and they recruited him when he was 13 because he was so brilliant. And they sent him on these ops things. And he told me this wild story. I think it’s just because I would tell him about when I went to juvie and what it was like. I think he wanted to one-up me on a story. One time we were having lunch and I had ordered a salad and salmon and he ordered a cheeseburger. So we sat down, his cheeseburger came, my salad came. He changed his lunch to a salad. He had a cheeseburger, and he was so competitive that he changed to a salad. He was afraid I would live longer than him.
On Career Advice for J.Lo
PETERS With Jennifer Lopez, I want her to go to Nashville. I want to open a club for $25 or $30 million called J.Lo’s, and I want to put up $50 million. I’ve already got the investors to do it. Build J.Lo’s and have her do a country and Western album, all with duets.
Then people will say she’s copying Beyoncé.
PETERS It doesn’t matter. You cannot be the only one in the genre. If the material is good, it’ll be great. You have to do good work in order for things to work. When I went to open a beauty shop, [people said,] “You can’t be there. There’s a beauty shop on every corner.” And I said, “Watch me,” and I did, and I blew it up because we were good. The bankers think it could do a million a week, that club. A hundred thousand square feet, three floors, top floor —
You’ve got the whole thing fully visualized.
PETERS I do everything in my head. Everything. Everything. Every movie, everything. I see the stories. I see the stuff.
On Dana White and Ari Emanuel
Peters says he learned Brazilian jiujitsu, which he says led him to an association with UFC CEO Dana White. He says he was working on a project with White that TKO CEO Ari Emanuel vetoed.
PETERS He nixed it. It was like, “I don’t want Peters to be involved in our company.” And I was there before he ever even came in. I was there before he ever even knew what that was, because I’ve always been a fighter.
And Ari nixed it?
PETERS Yeah. Well, you know what? Money does strange things. And Ari is what he is. He’s just not a very nice guy. A very angry guy. And he’s married to a girl that [my daughter] Caleigh went to school with, a young girl. [Emanuel, 63, is married to 35-year-old Sarah Staudinger.] It’s amazing how everybody hates this guy so much. I said to Dana, too, I said, “Dana, be careful that he doesn’t pull a Peter Guber on you.”
On Donald Trump
PETERS I got into an argument with somebody who called Trump a crook. And I said Trump uses the system to his advantage as every good executive should and does do, period. And if you think, no matter how sweet this lady [Kamala Harris] is, [that she’s] going to do anything, when Trump has four years of dealing with these gangsters all over the world — he knows how to get it done. And you can’t replace genius. He’s a genius. He’s created himself, the biggest guy in the world, and he really wants to do good for people. People keep saying to me, “Oh, he could just stay home and be rich.” No, it’s not enough. He wants to make a difference. And I understand. I do too. That’s what Oz is about.
Have you met him?
PETERS Oh, sure. I’ve known him a long time. Are you kidding? Oh, a long time. I have some funny stories about him, me and Marla Maples and all.
I’d love to hear those.
PETERS Yeah. I was friendly with Marla Maples, and I took her to Disneyland, but I was still dating my ex-wife Mindy. So I wasn’t with Marla. We were divorced, but we were friends and she would say, “OK, come pick me up.” And I was with Marla at Disneyland, and one of [my] kids was sick. So I said, “You know what? I’ve got to go; I’ve got a driver coming to take you home,” and I left her there. [She told Trump,] “Jon Peters left me at Disneyland.” She dumped on me with him. [In terms of women,] he could put them in an apartment, but I could put women in a movie. And so I always was ahead of him. You know what I mean? And he knew it, and I knew it, and we knew it. But I think he’s a genius. I do. I think he’s what we need. And I hope we don’t get that lady because we’re going to end up in the shitter. Again, because we need a globalist, not a local person.
When was the last time you saw Trump?
PETERS We were supposed to have lunch with [Mike] Tyson and [Tyson’s wife] Kiki and him, and I was going to donate a hundred grand. And when he found out it was me, because of the Marla thing, he canceled the lunch.
On the Trump Assassination Attempt
PETERS I believe it’s the government. If you look at the facts, and I’ve studied it, it’s Biden.
If so, they did a very sloppy job.
PETERS Yes. Well, because it was set up by the government.
They picked that kid?
PETERS They hired him, yes.
They could have done better.
PETERS No, that’s the point. They find a guy who believes that Trump is the enemy and the devil. You’ll see. It is Biden and that whole sick group. Now, another thing, when Biden was deciding to leave [the presidential race], they were buying out his contract for $100 million. Because he’s broke, he has no money. Now the donors put up enough money to buy him off, to pay off his notes, to give him money, and then he decided to leave.
They may put a hit on me [because of the Trump assassination project], not in the form of a bullet but in the form of the IRS. … The story begins with Trump as a little boy and Biden as a little boy. And you start to see how Biden was obsessed with Trump, who was always movie-star good-looking and rich. … Oliver is an amazing writer, and I’m a good storyteller. … I haven’t pitched it to anybody, [but] Netflix would be a perfect, perfect place. [Stone says, “I am not working on an assassination movie or any other project with Jon Peters.”]
On His Ability to Spot — and Date — Stars
PETERS [When I went on] Joe Rogan’s podcast [in September 2022], I wanted Joe to ask, “What is it about you? You’re nice-looking, but you’re not Elvis.” It’s because I am a dream weaver and what I did with Barbra, when I did her hair, I said, “I’m going to tell you your whole life for the next five years.” I had just seen some show with Bette Midler, who I loved, but she was not Barbra. And Barbra was down and out. I said, “We just met. You’re the best. You’re the best! Go back to work!” … I found A Star Is Born, and I saw it as Gone With the Wind. And that’s how I did the poster, with two people, naked. I get the visions.
When I got to the Rogan show, the first thing they said was, “Do you want a shot?” They give you — he takes, before every show, some shot that gives him a jack-up. It’s legal, but yeah, so he gives me that.
You took it?
PETERS Sure. I was ready to roll, man. I came to fight. And so we went in, and next thing you know, he gives me a joint. And I smoked that, too, so I don’t remember a thing I said.
This story appeared in the Oct. 30 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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