Entertainment

CHICKS! FLICKS! KICKS!

HE refers to himself as “The Man Who Knew Too Much” — and just this once, the hype may be justified.

Controversial film producer Jon Peters’ planned kiss-and-tell memoir has thrown the movie world into an extraordinary state of panic, as A-list stars and celebrities struggle to avoid being tarnished by his scandalous claims.

Peters, who became famous by romancing Barbra Streisand and dating Catherine Zeta-Jones, Sharon Stone, Salma Hayek, Pam Anderson and Nicolette Sheridan along the way, announced last month that he was planning to write his biography — to general indifference, it must be said.

After all, why would anyone care about this one-time hairdresser, whose glory days are long gone?

He has had only one producing job in the past decade and was booked for driving under the influence of prescription pills after a crash two years ago.

This on top of the scandal revealed in the course of his divorce from his fourth wife, Mindy, who described him tearing out a clump of his son’s hair in a fit of rage, threatening to kill her and, on one occasion, dropping his trousers and playing with his genitals at the breakfast table in front of their children.

Bluntly, his star was falling, and he was regarded as a rather ridiculous figure.

But when a 30-page book proposal, put together by Peters, 64, and his ghostwriter, was leaked to an industry Web site, it immediately became clear why publisher HarperCollins was planning to pay $700,000 for a book written by a man regarded as a has-been.

According to reports in Page Six and elsewhere, the document included kiss-and-tells on all of Peters’ many internationally famous girlfriends, allegations about a booze-and-hookers spree with Jack Nicholson and a story that Barbara Walters once stripped to her underwear and tried to tempt him into bed.

Peters, who produced the blockbusters “Rain Man” and “Batman,” seemed to be fearless about creating enemies and the proposal’s many tales of bust-ups and fisticuffs made it a supremely entertaining read.

The document boasts that “not one, but two, of Jon’s girlfriends called him from Washington on two separate occasions whispering the breathless news: ‘I just f- – – ed the President.'”

Shortly after Page Six reported the salacious details of Peters’ proposal, he pulled out of his book deal.

Everyone, it seems, is threatening to sue him — even the people he likes. “All these people are my friends, they are legends, they are talents, and I want my book to be a celebration,” he bleated in an anguished letter to his publisher — which has also found its way into the public domain.

Although initially Peters said he would “retreat” and write the book privately, his friend Steven Nero told Page Six that he’d held a family summit at a Beverly Hills steakhouse — complete with his daughters and two of his four ex-wives — and they all decided he should go forward with the book.

Peters’ ghostwriter, Bill Stadiem, told Page Six that the producer is determined to complete the tell-all — even if he has to self-publish.

With so many of the people he has written about taking serious issue with his facts, Peters may well have to, as he’s being asked to prove that his outrageous life story is more than a tissue of outlandish fabrications.

Kim Masters, a Hollywood journal-ist who wrote a book about Peters, says: “Jon has great stories — but unfortunately he has a problem with sticking to the facts.”

So what is in the document? Peters tells the story of a movie career that began in an unlikely fashion — with a job at a beauty salon in New York, catering to strippers and hookers. Peters became a specialist in coloring and trimming pubic hair — a story he’s told hundreds of times over the years.

He went on to become a successful hairdresser — marrying a client, actress Lesley Ann Warren, setting up a chain of salons and moving in movie star circles.

The leaked document says that he “caught his wife in bed with Warren Beatty and chased him around the block.”

The two men later became friends, and Beatty used Peters as inspiration for his role as an oversexed hairdresser in “Shampoo.”

That they knew each other is not disputed, but did Beatty really sleep with his wife? Last week Beatty said Peters’ story was “amusing but totally untrue.” Warren added: “It’s funny and colorful, but there’s not an iota of truth in it.”

In the precis, Peters then moved on to his romance with Barbra Streisand.

“She confided in Jon that she’d had a recent life-imitates-art affair with Ryan O’Neal on ‘What’s Up, Doc?,’ and had just ended another with Kris Kristofferson, then at his hunkiest,” according to the proposal.

But Peters evidently wasn’t intimidated: “When it came to women, Jon was fearless and olympically competitive.

“He found Barbra totally hot. He loved her body, particularly her legs and derriere, and he was overtly provocative in telling her so.”

Streisand recently wrote on her Web site about the allegations he made in the book: “Just for the record, the claims and statements attributed to me in Jon Peters’ book proposal are either completely distorted or simply untrue.”

It is believed that Streisand — who has been friends with Peters for more than 30 years — is among those who have threatened legal action.

What is beyond dispute is that Peters has a hugely successful career as a movie producer behind him, and that he got a reputation for having a short temper and for being colorfully obnoxious.

When Steven Spielberg directed “The Color Purple,” he had a clause put in his contract to state that Peters — a producer of the film — should never be allowed on set, such was his loathing for him.

Peters did, however, have a string of hits, grossing more than $6 billion — among them “Flashdance,” “The Witches of Eastwick” and “Rain Man.”

Peters is supposed to have asked Dustin Hoffman: “Are you playing the retard or the other fella?”

The pinnacle of his producing career was probably Tim Burton’s 1989 movie “Batman.”

In his proposal, Peters says that he courted Jack Nicholson to play the character of the Joker by taking him “on a whore- and drug-fueled global joy ride to see the ‘Batman’ sets in London,” using Steve Ross’ (then president of Warner Films) private jets.

Madam Alex, a notorious madam, Peters’ “dear friend” and a “mentor of Heidi Fleiss,” supplied the girls for the pair, the proposal notes.

Peters says that he “turned staid Claridge’s Hotel into the Playboy Mansion, with strippers, hookers, masseuses, coke dealers and more.”

An attorney representing Nicholson says his client denies this happening — although Nicholson has previously tolerated various Hollywood tell-alls that associate him with cocaine and hookers.

Not surprisingly, Catherine Zeta-Jones is also embarrassed now by her previous association with him.

After she came to Hollywood but before her marriage to Michael Douglas, she caught Peters’ eye.

The document talks about his “torrid shock-the-neighbors romances with Catherine Zeta-Jones, hot out of Wales . . . Jon adored her. She fitted his special talent of finding budding actresses and nurturing them into superstars.

“He was planning to marry her, until her entire family flew in en masse from Wales to meet him — and he got cold feet.”

She remembers it a bit differently. Sources say that Peters asked her to marry him long before meeting her family, and that she turned him down flat.

Peters’ success with the Batman movie also attracted a very famous fan — Michael Jackson. Late one night, Peters was awakened by his phone ringing. At the other end of the line was a strange, whispery voice: “I love Batman.”

It was Jackson — and he asked if he could visit Peters that very night, then arrived at Peters’ Beverly Park mansion in his helicopter.

The proposal says: “Jackson became obsessed by Jon, who spent some of the weirdest times of a weird life at Jackson’s Neverland estate.

“The parties Jon gave for his [daughters] became the hottest ticket in town, because Jackson loved to perform for Jon.”

Much of the proposal is about Peters’ relationship with best friend Peter Guber, with whom he ran his firm Guber Peters and, later, Columbia Pictures.

Peters claims that Lynda, Guber’s wife, poisoned Guber’s mind against him. This, he says, is why Guber “betrayed” him by firing him from Columbia in 1991.

Guber denies it: “After four decades in this industry, I will stand by my reputation, and Jon Peters should stand by his. I find it surprising that any publisher would be interested in his work of fiction.”

Informed sources in Hollywood say that Streisand and Guber have sent Peters “cease and desist” letters, threatening to sue if he goes ahead.

Masters, who co-wrote the 1996 book “Hit & Run: How Jon Peters and Peter Guber took Sony for a ride in Hollywood,” is not in the least surprised by how things have turned out.

She tells how Peters’ and Guber’s profligate reign as the heads of Columbia Pictures ended up costing its parent company, Sony, some $3 billion.

Among the extravagances were Peters’ use of the Sony company jet to fly flowers to the supermodel Vendela, whom he was wooing.

Masters has interviewed Peters and found him an unreliable rogue.

“He was hugely entertaining, but it was very hard to discern what the truth was,” she says. “I don’t think Jon is regarded with a great deal of affection, because there is a very dark side to him.

“On the other hand, he is extremely engaging and I can see how, if you were sitting in a room with him, you would think that there might be a book in it. When he is telling you the stories, you get the feeling that it must be true. I would say he certainly believes them all to be true himself.

“When I was writing my book, he was determined to convince me that he had squeezed Sony for $100 million. I asked him to give me some proof . . . We met some kind of financial adviser and he kept on flashing a piece of paper which was supposed to establish this.

“The problem was that the piece of paper never seemed to hold still for long enough for me to see it. It was quite ridiculous, a pantomime.”

She adds: “My experience of Jon is not that he is a kiss-and-tell man at all. When he did our book, he was concerned not to make Barbra Streisand mad. He was happy to tell some stories, but they have remained friends.

“Jon has missed being listened to, and it still bothers him that Peter Guber, who was his best friend and then fired him, is still listened to in the business.

“The problem for Jon was that no one was listening to him anymore.”

Well, they’re certainly paying attention now.

©The Daily Mail