In this exclusive excerpt from Barry Avrich's book 'Moguls, Monsters and Madmen: An Uncensored Life in Show Business,' the Canadian filmmaker reveals the pain and ingenious roadblocks he overcame to get his 2011 documentary finished (and why his mother thought the studio head was going to murder him: "Can't you pick another dead one so at least he can't kill you personally?").

Canadian filmmaker Barry Avrich, 52, always has had a passion for documentaries about difficult men. He has profiled subjects including Rolling Stones promoter Michael Cohl, writer Dominick Dunne and famed Canadian lawyer Edward Greenspan and now is working on a film about the Bronfmans. A particularly tough subject was Lew Wasserman, the legendary MCA chairman. "He put his hand on my shoulder with his thumb in my neck," recalls Avrich, "and said, 'The film won't be made, whether I'm alive or dead.' " But Avrich persisted, and three years after Wasserman's 2002 death, he premiered The Last Mogul to strong reviews. Wasserman was his most difficult subject until Avrich tried to make a documentary about Harvey Weinstein, the colorful co-founder of Miramax and The Weinstein Co. As Avrich recalls in this excerpt from his forthcoming memoir, Moguls, Monsters and Madmen (ECW, May 10), Weinstein, 64, used both charm and an iron fist to sabotage the project — and when that didn't work, he secretly conspired with IFC Films, which bought distribution rights, to turn Unauthorized: The Harvey Weinstein Story into a semi-authorized story.