We're suckers for the shady secrets of seemingly wholesome public figures, whether its the ShamWow guy's hooker dust-up or the Barbie creator's reported penchant for hookers and orgies. The latest such scandal comes from Canada, where Cirque du Soleil creator (and billionare) Guy Laliberté is suing to try to stop the distribution of an unauthorised biography that details his decadent, celeb-studded parties featuring drugs, wild sex and "busloads of prostitutes."The controversy started when Canadian news magazine Macleans published an exclusive excerpt from Ian Halperin's book, "The Fabulous Story of the Creator of the Cirque du Soleil." Halperin is a former street performer who used his contacts to gain access to Laliberté's world, resulting in such R-rated anecdotes as the following from the book:
One of his close friends, "Jake," recalls when Robert De Niro attended in 2001 while in town shooting the film The Score, which turned out to be legendary star Marlon Brando's last flick before he died. De Niro was known for dating beautiful black women. "I rounded up the hottest black strippers, prostitutes and models in Montreal and invited them to Guy's party," Jake reveals. "Guy likes to do anything and everything to please his guests.
Read more about the Cirque scandal and hear from author Ian Halperin after the jump.
Despite the splash caused by the article (and the fact that Laliberté allegedly required B-listers to sign confidentiality agreements to enter one of his parties)," Halperin claims that the sexy details are not particularly shocking to those in the know.
Halperin told Asylum, "He's complaining about the mention of drugs and sex but writing a book about him and not mentioning the drugs and sex at his parties would be akin to writing about Bob Marley and not mentioning that he smokes pot. Its common knowledge."
But the man Halperin calls more interesting, eccentric and powerful than anyone else he's interviewed (a list that includes Hugh Hefner, Steven Spielberg and Muhammed Ali) apparently doesn't see it that way -- immediately after its publication, he began pressuring the book's distributors to remove the tome from the stands, and has demanded that Maclean's print a retraction of their cover story, which they have refused to do.
Now the billionaire is threatening to sue the publishers, and Halperin told us he is planning to sue Laliberté for calling him a "crook" in a Canadian Press article.
So far, the scandal hasn't hurt the mainstream appeal of the Cirque, which has approximately 3,500 employees from over 40 countries producing 15 shows over 5 continents, including multiple permanent Las Vegas shows. But all this litigiousness seems to only spur worldwide interest about the scandalous figure's exploits.
According to Halperin, "He tried to get the book off the stands within 24 hours and that fueled world curiosity. Otherwise I think the book would have bombed."
