The Hot Button by David Poland

Wednesday, 25 November 1998

RANTING & RAVING

READER OF THE DAY: From Roger Ebert: "'Access Hollywood' was simply using journalistic enterprise to compete once a studio had essentially released the Psycho trailer to the public. Once it's out there, it's out there. 'Access Hollywood' was not a signatory to the studio's 'exclusive' publicity game plan. By trying to enforce studio publicity rules, you are treating the 'Net as a publicity outlet rather than a journalistic enterprise zone. roughcut.com should have also distributed the trailer as soon as possible. Are you journalists, or publicist's helpers? Roger Ebert P.S. Here is an interesting question: Will you publish this message on your site?"
The answer is, obviously, yes. And yes, I know that this is old news, folks. But Mr. Ebert's e-mail got tangled in an e-mail screw-up of my own stupid creation (multiple accounts be damned!) and I just got it this week. Besides, it opens the door to a rant that I always like chewing on. (If you don't remember the saga, check out THB 10/17, No. 1)
Where are the lines? Are we journalists or publicist's helpers? And conversely, are we journalists or are we anti-publicist attack dogs? Personally, I am a First Amendment absolutist. I believe in the right to absolute freedom of words and, as a result, the press. (Screaming "fire" in a crowded theater is not speech, but rather an assault using words as a weapon. Likewise libel. Truth makes the freedom of speech an absolute. But the fear of words in this culture, on both sides of the political spectrum, is usually hypocritical and for me, almost always intolerable.) But like any freedom, there is a right to trade in -- in contracts verbal and non-verbal -- one right for other rights. In show business, freedom of speech is traded for access to movie stars and movie minutia every single day.
That is the place where I see "Access Hollywood," "Entertainment Tonight," E!, "Extra" and along with them, the industry trades, most of the newspapers in this country (who mostly rely on syndicates who have already been compromised) and The National Enquirer, The Globe, The Star and other low-end tabloids that thrive on the same feed that the studios provide them day after day after day. Where do you think all this "news" comes from every day? Did you really believe there were hard-bitten journalists out there tracking down insights into Cameron Diaz's high school prom date? Did you really think "Entertainment Tonight" got the "world premiere" of movie X's trailer because they earned it journalistically? Or that "Access Hollywood" got on the set of movie Z because their reporters were hard at work? Of course not. It's all part of the deal.
The trades live off the studios' advertising dollars. The competition between Variety and The Hollywood Reporter is mostly which reporter is better friends with more people (or who will frame stories in ways that more people are confortable with) and who will give them the "scoop" six hours before they give the same info to the other trade. Michael Fleming is the king of inside info now. If you are a producer and you want to get your story out, he's the one to call. He's not out doing stake-outs on street corners, canvassing the crowd for insight. He's an insider who has become that way by catering to insiders. I have no problem with that because I know it. He breaks the news. But is it journalism?
Did you ever wonder why the tabloids aren't loaded with stories "outing" the many gay movie and television stars who operate as fantasies in the movies and on air? (Though I don't approve of "outing" anymore than I approve of paparazzi surrounding someone's home.) It's because 80 percent of the celebrity stories in the tabloids are put there by publicists. It's a symbiotic relationship. Outing Major Star X is bad business, no more and no less. And no "real" journalism.
Unlike Ebert, I do consider "Access Hollywood" "a signatory to the studio's 'exclusive' publicity game plan." Not the specific exclusive for Psycho, but for other films. Every day. Every week. Like magazine covers, there is give and take between the studios and these shows, not even so much for on-air content, but for the promotion of that content. A trailer exclusive is valuable for the TV show because it can claim an exclusive. For the studio, the real value is in the 30-second spots and even the five-second bumpers that promote the entertainment news shows. For every exclusive showing of a trailer on one episode of one show, probably 10 times as many people have heard the movie excitedly mentioned in a promotion while watching some other show. All under the guise of journalism. That's a lot of value for almost no dollars spent by the studio.
If that's the arena of "journalism" that you operate in, I say you are not being a "journalist" who operates in earnest. If you sign off to one form of being whored, you tacitly agree to let others be whored the same way. If you are battling a competitor for "exclusives" all the time, winning and losing those dealings is part of the game you have chosen. Thus, when you lose and go around the other side's win, cloaking yourself as a journalist, it is, in my opinion, an abuse of the hard and unforgiving work of journalists who play by the real rules every day.
Time for some self-examination. I am certainly not pure in this regard. This daily column is my personal forum. I write what I want about whatever I want. When I step on toes, I take the punches, but I created The Hot Button specifically as a forum for one man's educated and honest view of the industry. However, when you see my byline on a junket interview, you should know that I'm out there being a bit of a whore. Sometimes the studios pay for my participation in the form of travel and accommodations. More often than not, they don't. But that's not a matter of honor. That's a matter of our being undervalued by the studios.
In any case, when I am invited to a junket, essentially the studio is saying, "We're going to give you access to these stars and let you see this movie early so that you can give us some free publicity. And as a bonus, you get to stay in a nice hotel. And as a bonus, your site gets to bask in the glow of the movie and its stars." They don't invite me so that I can be the first to rip the movie and ask the stars questions about their sex lives or drug usage. By choosing to accept the invitation, I have essentially agreed to those rules. And even if I could get away with it, screwing the studio and breaking those rules doesn't make me a journalist. It makes me a lying whore. That's why I tend not to go to junkets. (I attended about a dozen this year.)
Entertainment Weekly will continue to get access for softball cover stories no matter what hardballs are thrown in News & Notes because they have become the top magazine for the promotion of films. (And nowadays, News & Notes will throw at people's heads just because it amuses them and because they can get away with it. I don't consider that real honorable either.) "Access Hollywood," "Entertainment Tonight," "Extra" and E! will always get access because they deliver millions of eyeballs, and, because when push comes to shove, they almost always play the game. (I work for TNT, and with the exception of one in-house corporate edict that lasted a week, I have never heard from any "higher ups" at Turner or Time-Warner asking me to adjust my content. Not that anyone tends to be all that overt anywhere. "I never told her to lie." But ET is a Paramount show on the lot. "Access Hollywood" is owned by Fox and NBC. "Extra" is a Warner Bros. product. And E! is owned by Disney. Draw your own conclusions.)
Likewise, [David's bi-weekly column] Working Hollywood is designed to be a place where talent can tell its story. It's not set up to be a hard ball column. When there was an Internet report of post problems with Deep Blue Sea (still, I believe, a false alarm), I got e-mail calling me on my Working Hollywood story. Well, my Working Hollywood story was just a trip to the set. It wasn't an analysis of the screenplay, nor was it a guarantee of a good or great movie. It was a set visit almost a year before the movie will come out. Judging the movie will be best left to the time when the movie is close to complete and the studio starts really selling it. Then I can judge the marketing. Then I can judge the movie. Then I can write the rest of the story.
Which brings me to others who lurk with me on the 'Net. We draw our own lines every day. The studios embrace (and reject) each of us differently, but the only rules that we have to follow are our own. But do I consider us journalists? Not for the most part. I write daily news-based column, but I am acting as a opinionated columnist, not really a journalist. Jeff Wells at Mr. Showbiz kind of combines opinion and journalism, but he tends to use his considerable journalistic skills to prove personal theories. As a result, we disagree a lot (after a couple of years at EW, I know I can find sources to stand on the opposite side of any opinion that anyone has), but he is carving out a unique and valuable niche of his own.
And regarding Harry Knowles, I don't consider running e-mails from almost exclusively unnamed sources journalism. There is almost no editorial judgement at play. The reason Harry scares the studios is that he plays by no rules. But freedom and the ability to scare people by printing unsubstantiated in-house gossip does not inherently equal being right. It's fun and sometimes it's dead-on, but shouldn't the standard be higher than that? That's the battle I focus on every day. The consequences are very real. Harry has drawn a lot of studio people onto the 'Net, checking to see if their project made his site, like some kind of psychotically inverse version of George Christy's "The Good Life" in The Hollywood Reporter, but he has also created a paranoia and a sense of info-entitlement on the part of writers who have been on the beat for a while that has made Hollywood more closed to truth-telling than ever. The studios have gone to the mattresses.
And what's the upside? Do you really think studios are adjusting their productions because any of us think that so-and-so would be better casting? Or that Director X is the wrong guy? Of course not. And like bad children who have proven, thanks to "Access Hollywood" in this case, that we (the citizens of the 'Net) cannot contain ourselves (oooh, that freedom is intoxicating, isn't it?), the studios will control their materials more tightly as to not give us a chance to abuse their plans. Does that make them right? One could argue both sides, but does it even matter? We are defining a new medium. And first, we must create value of our medium for the studios. Then we can bend the rules. After the power shifts to us and, importantly, to you as 'Net readers. If the only way we can muster power is to go around and abuse the big bad system that feeds us, does that make us journalists? Or does that just make us feel empowered when we are not?
ROGER'S RESPONSE: "I realize that there is a fuzzy area involving these matters, but I feel that criticism and promotion are activities which must be separated as widely as possible. Last week, for example, there was wide (and legitimate) interest in the Star Wars Episode I trailer. We wanted to discuss it on our show. Lucasfilm said, 'Yes, but only if you play it complete and uncut.' We said, no, we will not simply show a 130-second commercial on our show. We had to be prepared not to show it at all, and we were. They relented. We showed parts of it, with voice-over commentary.
"As for review deadlines, I observe them. My reviews do not, generally speaking, appear until a film's opening day. However, on occasion something will come up like the grouping at the Toronto fest of several films that led me to write a piece on the 'New Geek Cinema.' I mentioned Thursday, Very Bad Things and others. Not to 'review' them, and not with a star rating, but to discuss them. I often print an opinion about festival films, but do not write the actual review until opening day. I consider myself a journalist covering a festival.
"I also pay my own way to junkets. In some cases, journalists are asked to sign some kind of agreement about what they will or will not ask a star, as the price of access. I always refuse. Of course, I am comfortable with the possibility that I will not get an interview. Those whose livelihood depends on it must play the game by the publicist's rules. I understand this. My only suggestion would be, when limits are imposed on an interview, the piece should mention those limits. (i.e., 'Mr. Star agreed to talk to the press only after they signed an agreement not to ask him about his recent drug bust or divorce.')"

E ME: Well?!?!?!