Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [215]
“They are bullies,” said Rachel Grady, who with her partner, Heidi Ewing, runs Loki Films, which produced The Boys of Bakara and Jesus Camp, the latter of which was nominated for an Academy Award. “Oprah and her producers feel like everyone owes them for the privilege of being on their show, and they expect you to work for free for the honor.” Loki Films was called in the summer of 2006 to produce the ABC prime-time special on Oprah’s school in South Africa. “We were to do the job but not be given credit for our work,” said Grady. “So we asked for double the money. They [Harriet Seitler and Kate Murphy Davis] gave us a contract that said they could fire us without cause at any time. They also refused to speak with our lawyer because they said it was better for their budget that way. ‘Besides,’ they said, ‘we usually end up firing everybody anyway and having to do it ourselves.’ That’s the way they put it.…
“I think Oprah’s school is a wonderful idea, but having worked in that poor country I think it’s crazy to spend $40 million on one school when $75 million could probably eradicate poverty throughout all of South Africa. But Oprah lives in such a gilded cage she no longer has a grip on reality. We had to fly to Chicago three times at her request.…
“When we realized that we would have to give up six months of our lives for her, get little money and no acknowledgement for our work, plus we had to sign a nondisclosure contract swearing that Oprah’s name would never pass our lips—please! That’s when we said we could not accept the job on those terms. Harriet Seitler went off on us. ‘You are just two little girls in a room in New York City,’ she said. ‘We are Oprah Winfrey. We are Harpo. You need us. We don’t need you.’ ”
Liz Garbus, another documentary filmmaker and daughter of famous First Amendment attorney Martin Garbus, also encountered problems when her film Girlhood was featured on an Oprah show titled “Inside Prison: Why Women Murder.” The two young women featured in the documentary—Shanae and Megan—agreed to appear on condition that Oprah not mention the drug addiction of Megan’s mother. Promises were made and then mauled. When Oprah asked Megan on-camera about her mother’s addiction to drugs, Megan walked off the set, providing what one producer later called “good television”—the show’s first priority.
“I’ll say what I want to say,” said Oprah in an unguarded on-camera moment, and with the exception of her celebrity friends like John Travolta and Tom Cruise—neither of whom she ever questioned about Scientology—she spared few others. She drilled Liberace about his palimony suit and how much he was worth, how many houses he owned, how many cars he drove, how many furs he bought, and how much he spent on jewelry. She quizzed Robin Givens about getting beaten up by her former husband, boxing heavyweight champion Mike Tyson: “Is it true that he would hit you until you would vomit?” She asked Kim Cattrall of Sex and the City, “Are you dating? Is it hard because people expect you to put out?” Looking askance at Boy George, the cross-dressing British pop star, she asked, “What does your mother say when you leave the house, honey?” To Jean Harris, who murdered her lover, Dr. Herman Tarnower, the creator of the Scarsdale Diet, Oprah asked, “Do you think that one of the things that hurt you [in the trial] was that you were perceived on the witness stand as being this cold bitch?” To Richard Gere, she said, “I … read that you live like a monk, except for the celibacy part.” She interrogated Billy Joel about the drinking problem that had landed him in rehab: “What’s with all the car crashes?” After Lance Armstrong had radiation therapy for testicular cancer, she asked, “You want more children? Got extra sperm?” When Oscar de la Renta appeared on her show and introduced his adopted son, who was