Wednesday, 9 June 1999

Last weekend's Words Into Pictures conference was like an incubator for my thoughts on the Internet and the movie business. I got to hear writers, studio executives and journalists discuss the issue. We all got to fight a little and we all got to agree a little. But what I came away from was a renewed sense that I'm not insane, I'm not bending to the influence of the studios and I'm not just cranky because someone got more attention than I did. My standards are my standards. And that makes them right for me. It is certainly fair for others to hold other standards. But my concern these days is not an argument over standards, but a degradation of any standards to the point where there are none at all. And so I rant.

I have no problem with anyone having an opinion, whether it be completely stupid or more insightful than anything I could come up with. But when "real" news media picks up on the opinions of others, there is a tendency to raise the significance of these opinions to the level of news. Gossip is not news. Consumers of the news tend to forget that Drudge "broke" the Monica Lewinsky story because he was fed it by someone at Newsweek, where a real reporter had done the hard work and the editorial staff, rightly or wrongly, didn't feel it was ready to go to print. That is not to say that there wasn't news there or that only major news organizations can cover the news. But it is a clear example that being first is not always the same as being a reporter. To me, reporting is about putting the pieces together and clearing the picture. Reporters don't always get to do that, much as policemen don't often get to "solve crime." But a real reporter knows the difference between taking notes and really working a story. The relaxation of that standard, really pushed to its limit by the speed of the Internet, is a danger for the information business. Being first has always been the orgasmic part. It is incredibly seductive. But when you start floating around in the quagmire of "Here's the news...I'm 80 percent sure it's right this time," the whole thing is up for grabs.

There is a reason why Harry Knowles didn't name his site Ain't It Cool Gossip. Over the years, as I have wrestled with AICN conundrum, people have written and said, "We don't really take him seriously. We know it's a goof." Well, that's all well and good. But across the country, newspapers from The New York to the Los Angeles Times have started openly using AICN as a source of "inside" information And when they do, suddenly unsourced stuff from AICN is in turn being picked up by the TV networks as news legitimately vetted by major newspapers. When's the last time you saw The New York Times quoting The New York Post's Page Six gossip page for its news content? Page Six has a better accuracy rate than AICN. And they get their information the exact same way. People forget that when Ain't It Cool News reports "news," it always comes from a source or a friend of a source who is either trying to spin or control the story (those would be the reports from writers, directors and official studio people pretending, or not, that they are going outside of the structure to give AICN a scoop) or it's from someone who has broken a confidence (whether a screening participant who agreed not to talk about the movie after seeing it or some at a studio with a grudge or who gets aroused by the game of it all).

Is that news or is that gossip?

The "burn it all down" mindset of a lot of jaded, angry journalists loves gossip most of all. Right or wrong, we are so tired of being fed a daily dose of freshly whipped up excrement by "the system" that gossip is a true joy. I am no different in this regard. But very few of us have ever worked for outlets that would allow us to make that gossip into news. And for good reason. (In some cases, not for good reason, but rather to kiss studio butt, but I digress.) There is a threshold for what a legitimate outlet calls news. But when an AICN beats us at our own game, that is, getting the news first from sources that used to call us first, the bar gets lowered. Make no mistake. Entertainment Weekly's News & Notes section is now in direct competition with Harry Knowles, quite specifically for tips from insiders who get to make this choice: They can call EW and start the ball rolling on a story that may or may not make it into the magazine and that will have a reporter assigned to check it out OR they can send it to Harry, who will put it up with whatever bias he receives it and that spin will then be read by hundreds of journalists who will pick it up and run with it, pre-spun. Don't get me wrong. I am not a huge fan of News & Notes. I think it has a New York-myopic view of Hollywood and they often wants reporters to spin a story in too pre-determined a way. But would I rather have Albert Kim or Harry Knowles at the reins? I'll take Albert every time.

So, why does this matter?

There are two overall reasons I find the trend so disturbing. One is about how it affects journalism and the other is about how it affects the movies being made.

For journalists, the problem is simple. It makes us all suspect. I respect the audience for movie news enough to know that they (a.k.a. you) can separate much of the wheat from the chaff. But the more the two sides integrate, the less any of us can expect to be able to tell what is news and what is not. And it's not just AICN or other Websites at issue. In the search for a quick fix, people have started reporting tabloid news, both British and American, that hasn't met any standard greater than the fact that it was published. Some of my colleagues have brushed this concern aside, claiming that we are in the throes of a revolution. And I don't completely disagree. Many of you have wondered in e-mails to me why this column doesn't get more media attention. Well, one of the answers is that this column could not run in almost any mainstream media outlet. They rely on the studios too much to have someone sharpshooting from the tower (I try not to let it be made of ivory). The Hot Button exists because of the Internet. So, I know first hand that revolution is intoxicating. However, if the revolution results in anarchy, it's a revolution that will eventually fall to even stronger dictatorship.

Studios have already tightened their nets around the information that they most value. I don't blame them. The average cost of a studio movie is almost $60 million these days and the average cost in P&A (Prints & Advertising) is about $40 million. That's a $100 million bet that each studio is making almost a dozen times a year (figuring that the cheaper films aren't quite the gamble). Who wouldn't protect that investment? And thus, the great anarchistic rush of tearing it down. There is an argument to be made that the public is being "brainwashed" by promotion and advertising and that any attacks are just a fair correction of the completely commercial efforts of the studio mill. But why fight fire with fire when you can use the refreshing cool of the water of truth? To tax a metaphor, "fire against fire" burns everything down over time. The water of truth can put out one fire while it creates a sense of safety that everything else isn't going to burn on a whim. Some would say that safety sucks. Well, it can suck. Often does. It can get stale and boring and worthless. But that concern defines the mission on which I suggest we embark. There is plenty of excitement in the simple truth. Emphasize that! Tell that story! Maybe it's positive and maybe it's negative and maybe it's right or maybe it's wrong, but it's not the spin on either side.

Which brings me to how all this effects the films themselves. This is more complex because making movies is infinitely more complex than writing a news story. At Words Into Pictures, Bill Mechanic of Fox acknowledged that Fox is now choosing not to test screen a number of their films every year, mentioning The Fight Club by name. Why? To quote Mechanic, "We're going back to the way it was before. We don't use research...I'm not going to submit (The Fight Club) to having someone making up their mind for the public." To paraphrase the late, great Cliff Worley, "If that's a fact, tell me, is he lying?" It's not even that a screening review will infect many actual films. It's the "buzz" that infects journalists who spread the infection across the world. Of course, even at Words Into Pictures, journalistic colleagues who have other perhaps-legit disagreements with Mechanic, were too busy focusing on things he said that they disagreed with to give the issue of test-screening reviews any more than a shrug. But it's not just a shrug to studio chiefs and ultimately, not to the talent. Why? Because testing is, when used properly, an important tool to tune up a movie. (A point that Peter Bart was quite eloquent about.) If the tool becomes part of the promotion, it is no longer the same tool, is it?


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