Tribute Brad Grey 1957-2017

Looking back on a 30-year relationship with the talent manager turned Paramount chief who died May 14 of cancer, Kim Masters recalls his humor and ruthless ambition.

- Kim Masters

There is a version of intimacy that develops over time between reporters and a select few who become their sources.You don’t hang out. You don’t go to each other’s houses. Instead, you talk on the phone, often with the understanding that everything is off the record. You analyze the news of the day. You joke. You observe the town with a shared sensibility; you develop a shorthand.

Maybe the source’s motive is that he (usually he) wants to swap information, smite his enemies or keep you close so you don’t smite him. You never know exactly how much candor you’re getting, but you know the exchange requires a degree of trust. These people put their career in your hands. That was the relationship I had with Brad Grey long before he became chairman of Paramount.

In this era of internet immediacy, perhaps I should have slapped together a remembrance as soon as we learned of his death. But like many who knew him, I was too shocked to formulate thoughts. He died so suddenly, so young at 59, and had seemed in good shape just recently. My first impulse was to call him and demand, “What the hell, Brad?”

He had known he was sick for a long time but told almost no one. It seems his higher-ups at Viacom didn’t know. (Viacom declined to comment, but CEO Bob Bakish said publicly that the news was “shocking for everyone, ourselves included.”) I hear Brad may have confided only in Bob Daly, his friend and discreet adviser, and confidant Lorne Michaels.

I told Brad once or twice recently that he sounded tired, but he deflected that. On a couple of occasions, I thought that he was slightly slurring his words, and I wondered whether he might have had a drink to cope with the stress of Paramount’s terrible box-office run and the growing threat of being fired. But he was still shrewd and funny, and I didn’t think much of it, which obviously was how he wanted it to be.