Billionaut Guy Laliberté’s Wild Life

A few choice exceprts from Ian Halperin’s new book, Guy Laliberté: The Fabulous Story of the Creator of Cirque du Soleil. The unauthorized biography recounts the drug, sex and hooker filled parties thrown by the Canadian billionaire, who is set to fly to the International Space Station in September.  The excepts were published in the Canadian weekly Maclean’s.

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. He wants them to have the time of their lives at his parties. If he knows a special guest likes Italian wine, he’ll have the most expensive bottles flown in. These are bottles you’d never be able to get at a liquor store in Montreal. Guy pays attention to detail in everything he does. And he spares no expense.”

“Everything was permitted,” says “Abby,” a stripper from Las Vegas who was a regular at his parties. “I tripped out for four days. There were tents, campers, and rooms set up for everyone to sleep in. During the party there were rooms available for people to have sex in. A lot of orgies took place. We also did lots of drugs. It was quite the experience.”

“Essentially it was give and take with the police,” journalist Esmond Choueke says. “Guy would let them in if they promised to behave and have a good time. Lots of cops party hard when they’re off duty. It was a brilliant strategy on Guy’s part to make sure the place didn’t get busted, since there was so much sex and drugs. He needed to do something to ensure a SWAT team didn’t descend on his home in the middle of the party. It would have created headlines all over the world. He managed to avoid that.”

Nevertheless, says a close friend of Laliberté’s, “By 2003, there was a lot of heat on Guy to tone it down. He moved the party to the Saint-Hubert airport and in recent years has just had close friends over for the Grand Prix weekend. He got tired of dealing with all the crap involved. Because of previous complaints he made sure no drugs were in the open and he put a tight rein on how things were organized. It was a far cry from his parties a few years back when everything you can think of was totally out in the open.”

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