Yet he refuses to acknowledge anything approaching failure, much less the prospect that he’ll run out of time before he can reverse his fortunes. Redstone frequently claims that he looks like a man less than half his age, and he’s open to the prospect of dating new women once Paula is out of the picture. “I intend to live forever!” he told me a week before the charity dinner, when I saw him at his home in Los Angeles. But surely he will someday die, won’t he? “I won’t! I’m telling you I won’t!” he shouted, and it wasn’t entirely clear he was joking. He compared himself with the title character of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the movie about an octogenarian who ages in reverse that was co-produced by Viacom’s troubled Paramount Pictures. “Your headline,” the old mogul suggests, “should be ‘The Curious Case of Sumner Redstone.’ ”

Maybe the more apt comparison is to King Lear. With his empire crumbling, his family fractured, his legacy in doubt, and his grasp of the true nature of his predicament not immediately evident, Redstone resembles a modern-day version of Shakespeare’s tragic hero. Only this one has no plans to exit the stage. Because Viacom and CBS have a two-class stock structure, Redstone, despite his debt crisis, maintained his absolute power by selling only nonvoting shares and retaining 81 percent of the companies’ voting stock through National Amusements. So while every other media conglomerate is suffering in the bad times, Redstone’s continued authority has magnified the problems for his public shareholders. Wall Street has given a name to the phenomenon: the Redstone discount.

If it were anyone else, the spectacle of an elderly man flailing in the face of such a public shaming might inspire a sense of pathos. But Redstone’s peers and competitors—even some of those he claims as friends—haven’t exactly been rooting for him. He is widely derided as a megalomaniac who takes credit for everything and blame for nothing, regularly throws his employees under the bus to save his own skin, and seems to take pleasure in humiliating them. Revealingly, hardly any of Redstone’s detractors are willing to be quoted on the record—a testament to his power. Those who publicly voice admiration often cite negative traits in the same breath. “There’s something about Sumner that nobody quite understands,” says former Disney chief executive Michael Eisner. “When it gets very tough, the bombastic quality disappears and the steely quietness takes over. I assume that’s the state he’s in now.” David Geffen, who co-founded DreamWorks SKG and is widely said to despise Redstone (with whom he has skirmished over DreamWorks’ fractious relationship with Paramount), sends me an email that doesn’t exactly ring with sincerity: “I’m sorry Sumner is having difficulties at this time. It’s a bad time for many people.”

News Corp. titan Rupert Murdoch, for one, seems to be particularly enjoying Redstone’s discomfiture. “Who would have thought a year ago that Sumner Redstone and his empire would ever have financial difficulties?” he recently gloated to one of his newspapers, Australia’s Herald Sun. Acknowledging the widespread dislike of Redstone, Oscar-winning producer Arnold Kopelson, a member of the CBS board and Redstone’s frequent dinner companion, says, “There’s a bit of schadenfreude going on.” A prominent talent agent trashes Redstone as “the most disliked man in Hollywood.” A former Viacom executive calls him “a scumbag,” while another claims he’s “the most egocentric human being you could ever run across.”

“There’s a group of people he says are his friends,” adds this former Viacom executive, “who would happily cut his heart out with a rusty knife.”

Redstone’s Mediterranean-style villa is a mansion by mortal standards, but no big deal in a neighborhood teeming with Versailles knockoffs occupied by the likes of Denzel Washington and Rod Stewart. The gated community of Beverly Park is a vertiginous climb from Sunset Boulevard, up a winding road that is itself chockablock with multimillion-dollar homes. After being cleared through the guardhouse by a uniformed private cop, I take a couple of right turns onto a tree-lined cul-de-sac, buzz No. 31, and wait for the gates to swing majestically open.

A few seconds after I park my rental car on the concrete apron, an olive-skinned brunette wearing a black T-shirt and formfitting black jeans—ornamented by a massive skull-and-crossbones belt buckle encrusted with hip-hop bling—emerges from the front door. She bounds down the steps, between twin pools filled with koi, and offers her hand.

“I’m Paula,” the future ex-Mrs. Redstone introduces herself. Her pending divorce had been splashed in the tabloids less than two weeks earlier, but she and Redstone are still living under the same roof.

She leads me into the high-ceilinged entry hall, where her husband-for-the-moment is standing and waiting, wearing an antic plaid sport coat. After I shake his gnarled right hand—nearly 30 years ago, Redstone barely survived a hotel fire that left his body badly scarred—he directs the Viacom public relations man to give me a quick tour of his adjoining study. “Why don’t you show him the aquariums,” he orders.

Redstone’s lavish collection of exotic fish is a P.R. staple of any audience with the magnate. Massive tanks line the walls of the study from which he oversees his companies, the sea life floating languidly in eerie contrast to the manic energy of Redstone’s daily telephone marathons with Moonves, Dauman, and his stockbroker in New York.

After the tour, I find the aging titan in his living room, poised against a backdrop of floor-to-ceiling windows with a commanding view of his money-green lawn and the canyons beyond. He sits in a straight-backed chair, uncannily alert, seemingly ready to pounce. “When you stop talking, I’ll answer you,” he says by way of interrupting a wandering question. Over the course of an afternoon—and subsequent conversations—he mounts a furious defense of his businesses and decisions. “National Amusements is in great shape,” Redstone declares. He says his company’s theater chain—which, unlike most competitors, owns rather than leases the majority of its real estate—is worth far more than the widely estimated $500 million to $700 million, despite depressed real-estate values.

When it comes to Viacom and CBS, he insists there’s “nothing wrong” with the companies—or at least nothing wrong with them that a resurgent economy can’t fix. “When the market crashed, we crashed with it,” he says, “so I have confidence that when the market and the economy turn around, you’ll see Viacom back at $45—and higher!” When his big selloff of Viacom and CBS stock—worth an eye-popping $233 million—was first announced, Redstone vowed repeatedly in the press that he had “no intention” of selling a single additional share of Viacom or CBS. But “no intention” was a phrase that Wall Street interpreted as leaving more than a little wiggle room. To me, he puts it this way: “I’d like to say, ‘I won’t!’ But these are public companies, and I have to be careful.” And then, unable to stop himself, he makes a grandiose promise that it’s by no means clear he can keep. “We won’t sell CBS or Viacom! We don’t have to!”