Editing David Geffen (section)

== Cultural references ==
While Geffen has produced music, he has also been the subject of several songs, documentaries and books.

[[Joni Mitchell]] and Geffen were close friends and, in the early 1970s, made a trip to Paris with [[Robbie Robertson]] and Robertson's wife, Dominique. As a result of that trip, Mitchell wrote "[[Free Man in Paris]]"<ref>{{Cite web |title=News Archive - Your link to SouthCoast Massachusetts and beyond |url=https://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/12-96/12-07-96/b01ae065.htm/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041001000211/http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/12-96/12-07-96/b01ae065.htm |archive-date=October 1, 2004 |access-date=March 23, 2011 |publisher=SouthCoastToday.com |df=mdy}}</ref> about Geffen.<ref>Tom King, ''The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New Hollywood'', p. 192, Broadway Books (New York 2001).</ref> Geffen can be heard on [[Barbra Streisand]]'s ''[[The Broadway Album]]'', released in 1985. The track "[[Putting It Together]]" features Geffen, [[Sydney Pollack]], and Ken Sylk portraying the voices of record company executives talking to Streisand.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Album of the Month for BarbraNews.com by Steven Housman |url=http://www.barbranews.com/albummonth.htm |access-date=March 23, 2011 |publisher=Barbranews.com}}</ref>

Geffen is the subject of several books, most recently ''The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New Hollywood'' (2001) by Tom King, who initially had Geffen's cooperation, but later did not. An earlier biography was ''The Rise and Rise of David Geffen'' (1997) by Stephen Singular. He is also a featured character in ''Mailroom: Hollywood History From The Bottom Up'' by David Rensen, in ''Mansion On The Hill'' by Fred Goodman, in ''Hotel California'' by Barney Hoskyns, and in several books about [[Michael Ovitz]].

He was the subject of an ''[[American Masters]]'' [[PBS]] television documentary titled ''Inventing David Geffen''. The documentary was directed by Susan Lacy and was first broadcast on 20 November 2012.<ref name="About: Inventing David Geffen" /> In the first series of [[The West Wing season 1|''The West Wing'']], the actor [[Bob Balaban]] played a character reported to be a thinly-veiled version of Geffen, as he pressured a sitting president to come out more strongly for [[Gay rights in America]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Shannon |first=Jeff |date=19 November 2012 |title=Inventing David Geffen: The Art of Self-Creation |url=https://www.rogerebert.com/streaming/inventing-david-geffen-the-art-of-self-creation |access-date=27 April 2024 |website=Roger Ebert |language=en}}</ref>