Wednesday, 16 February 2000

RANTING & RAVING

Geez, am I tired of ranting and raving!

Tuesday became one of those days that just wouldn't end, as I started with one hour of sleep before the Oscar nomination show, where I juggled a too-brief Yahoo! Chat, KABC radio and a quick guest spot with my radio partner, George Pennacchio, on Channel 7 locally. Oh yes, then I got to write 1000 words for the column, read some charmingly abusive e-mail and then find that Harry had added a full explanation to his site, inspiring another 400 or 500 words. And more e-mail. And then, finally, a 4-hour nap. Which was followed by 3 hours of e-mail reading and responding, a lunch break at 4, a movie at 5 and another movie at 7:30. Then I got take-out (from the glorious Zen Grill) so I could handle more of the e-mail.

I think that qualifies as a long freakin' day.

I also face another problem. I want to offer a fair airing of the mail about Harry's List, but almost all of the mail that really attacks me was about my lack of integrity and so forth and I feel as though I'd be stacking the deck by running them amongst letters of praise. I'll tell you what...how about a moratorium for today's column on Harry List mail. If you have an opinion about what should or should not run, please write and let me know.  I'm sure that this decision will bring some mail about me being gutless and unwilling to take the heat in my own column. But I am willing. I just need to know (show of hands) if any of you want to see the stuff.

Next...

There are others beside Harry who incur my Oscar-time wrath. The Academy being amongst them. Those Websites requesting Oscar credentials were sent a letter saying that who got credentials would be based in a large way on how we covered the nominations. I know that the Academy is under the gun with a massive number of Internet sites making requests for the first time and no way to separate the wheat from the chaff. Truth is, I do expect that the publicists at the Academy have some sites that are on the upper list already. And honestly, roughcut.com is probably amongst them because of our relationship with Yahoo! and thus, our ability to go live on the 'Net to the biggest possible Web audience this side of AOL. But I kind of object to the bait and switch. Especially when, in the end, some Websites who did a nice job with today's nominations will simply be aced out because of space. I would have covered today's events for the first time regardless of the competition. And the Academy staff did very well by me, especially after I made a last minute request for a phone line. But someone at the Academy should become a geek for a week because it wouldn't even take that long to see which sites do wide coverage and which ones don't, which ones do the kind of coverage they want (which probably does not include this story) and which ones do not. I hate it when they make us scramble for the cheese.

The issue of whether Jeff Wells and I have some sort of feud came up again today. Let me clarify. There is a uniqueness to the connection I have with Harry and Jeff. Like myself, they are building their presence on the Web and in the media greatly based on their personalities. So, when there is something I jump on as an issue and it came from one of them, it appears much more personal than when I make a negative comment about, say, a piece from The Hollywood Reporter...to everyone except for the reporter from The  Hollywood Reporter. (Of course, I almost never get a letter saying, "That was such a nice thing to say about Jeff!")

Which brings up the double irritation with Jeff on Tuesday. First, he dumped out the already-published Harry's List story, despite doing some really good work, because he feels the fact that the list was wrong makes it a non-story. Ironically, Jeff and I had previously discussed the idea that Moriarty's comment that the Academy had made a big mistake by putting their stuff on computers this year was too far back in the story. And as it turned out, that was, indeed the story. Harry had gone one step deeper into the Website and found something for which he mistook the value. I think Jeff should have re-written, as I don’t think this is a story that should be forgotten. Without the traditional media picking up on it, it is already becoming an apocryphal tale and many of the letters that came to me today stood by the idea that there were just a couple mistakes made within the offending piece. This should be remembered. Jeff's reporting would help it be remembered accurately. (For another set of eyes, you might also want to read Roger Ebert's piece on the incident.)

Then Jeff got me rolling with what he did write. Jeff apparently suffers from what many of us suffer from: Big Story Malaise. "For me," he writes, "the Oscar beat is sheer ditch-digging drudgery." So as we all obsess on the Oscars or the big summer movie or the big Christmas movie or whatever, we bitch and moan. That's not what got me. It was the next sentence:  "Except for the after-parties. Snagging invites and getting sloshed with the winners ...now there's a tradition worth respecting." No, he's not kidding.  And that's where it becomes symbolic. Jeff wants to enjoy what he enjoys but feels no sense of hypocrisy in swiping at the process that creates that opportunity. "I hate those f**king cows... I want them all dead... where's my ice cream? No, Sorbet won't do! I want ice cream. And if you say `cow' one more time, I'm going to go ballistic!"

It's not so different from what a lot of us do all the time. I rant on about publicists, but when I want them on the radio show, they are my best friends. (The nice thing about spending too much time with publicists is that you find out that some of them are actually quite enjoyable to be around. Especially when drunk or exhausted. And god, they wear great clothes!)

Anyway, I'm boring myself. Click on to the next page for Readers on Oscar.

PAGE TWO: "ROTDs Go Oscar!"