« Late Entry Stat Of The Day (aka The Lost World Thread?) | Main | Must Not See TV Fails…. Excuses At 11 »
July 16, 2007
Twice The Crazy... Half The Journo
ADDED: 7/18, 12:18a - From WWD's Wed edition - EDITOR’S NOTE: A WWD article on Hollywood writer Nikki Finke, published on July 6, page 16, was pulled last week from the paper’s Web site, wwd.com. The article, by WWD features writer Jacob Bernstein, depicted Finke as a highly controversial but influential writer in Hollywood circles. The story reflected interviews with more than 40 sources and drew fair conclusions regarding the tone and nature of Finke’s ongoing coverage. However, the decision to pull the story from the Web site was based on confusion over Bernstein’s taping of a conversation he had with Finke.
As far as I can tell, this is sort of inane rationalization for a major publication pulling a story to avoid aggravation. It's even more ugly since there is no indication that Ms. Finke was not on the record, misquoted, or in any way defamed by any untruth in the article. She was just apparently unaware of (or confused about) how Mr Bernstein was taking his notes (by recorder). Unfortunate, but doesn't that mean that the on-the-record subject of the story was being as precisely quoted as possible?
This is the first time I have heard of a story being pulled for being "too accurate." (And smart assedness aside, I have never heard of a story spiked because the reporter didn't clearly inform the subject who agreed to be on the record that they were being taped.)
I wish I could offer more clarity, but given the late hour and the source of this information demanding that no follow up questions be asked, none is available. But it seems to me that regardless of their cowardly choice to dissapear a story, WWD stands behind the accuracy of their reporter's work. So I feel good about keeping it available to the world on this blog, the story now having evolved into being an evidenciary fact in a bigger news story about the media's willingness to censor itself... even if it does grossly overstate the influence of one of our finest young gossip bloggers.
===========================================
A July 6 story in Women’s Wear Daily story on Nikki Finke disappeared off the web after Nikki went on the attack. (The media is more scared of “Crazy” Nikki than almost anyone… such bravery in the fourth estate!)
I had no idea the story had run until I started getting shards of information about what had happened… then I got the whole story… and damned if, once again, Nikki didn’t go jihad against a story that was so over-the-top generous to her that if she were a studio, it would be the source of quotes from now to opening.
Maybe Nikki just realized how humiliating it was to have her “best friend” be the "source" telling everyone how important she was.
In any case, I am running the whole story here. I may have comments to make later. You can make yours as you like when you like.
Womens’ Wear Daily on Nikki Finke by Jacob Bernstein
Nikki Finke is not your average Hollywood entertainment journalist.
For one thing, she professes to have no interest in most of what appears in movie theaters. In fact, she barely seems to leave her house. “I hate cocktail parties,” she says. Plus, she adds “I’m an insulin-dependent diabetic.” For another, she’s not remotely starstruck. “I could care less about Brad Pitt,” she says dismissively. But what really sets Finke, 53, apart from the pack is her attitude toward the industry’s executives, whom she chronicles obsessively on her blog and whom she by and large seems to hate.
On Deadlinehollywooddaily.com, which she writes for the Web site of LA Weekly, Finke has suggested Rupert Murdoch is senile, called Barry Diller “an arrogant SOB,” and referred to Sumner Redstone as “a septuagenarian jerk.” Three weeks ago, she laid into HBO for its “lousy” “Sopranos” ending and advised readers to cancel their subscriptions to the station. “David Chase clearly didn’t give a damn about his fans,” she complained about the series’ creator. “He crapped in their faces. This is why America hates Hollywood.”
(continued)
Almost anyone writing like this would be ignored or laughed at. But when Finke sinks her teeth into something, people increasingly take notice. In February, she reported the discord between executives at DreamWorks and Paramount, which had co-financed “Babel” and “Dreamgirls,” both of which were awards season favorites. The suits at Paramount denied the story up and down, but a few weeks later, The New York Times ran a juicy interview with DreamWorks’ Steven Spielberg in which the director conceded all of the essential points laid out earlier by Finke’s article.
On the Friday of Memorial Day weekend this year, Finke broke the news that NBC entertainment president Kevin Reilly was about to be replaced by Ben Silverman, the producer of “The Office” and “Ugly Betty.” Her longtime friend Bernie Weinraub, who covered Los Angeles for The New York Times, says, “She’s the most important journalist in Hollywood today. She sets the agenda for what appears elsewhere.”
At a time when The Drudge Report, The Huffington Post and Gawker serve as global billboards for a reporter’s scoop, Finke has vaulted to the front of a new pack of journalists who lack the backing of a major news organization but manage nevertheless to wield a similar level of influence. And people in Hollywood are clearly playing ball with her, even if they won’t say so publicly. “I generally admire her,” says one well-known producer who takes her calls. “She does her homework and breaks news.” “I read her religiously,” says a studio executive, who requested anonymity lest he antagonize his own boss, who gets scorched by Finke.
But others see Finke as being emblematic of what’s most dangerous about the Web < a Walter Winchell in cyberspace who emotionally blackmails people into giving her information and uses her perch to settle scores with those she dislikes. “She’s a monster,” one Hollywood heavyweight says. “And people are giving her power and talking to her because they’re afraid of her.” As with everything, Finke’s response to this varies about as much as the time of day. “I’m just the messenger,” she says during one of many telephone conversations from her apartment in Los Angeles.
“It’s not my fault these people do what they do to each other. It’s not my fault they make stinky movies. I just report it.” During another, she says, “Would I like to cure Hollywood? Yes.”
___
Nikki Finke grew up well-to-do in New York, a Jewish debutante in an era when the term was practically an oxymoron. She attended The Hewitt School and then Wellesley.
“I was raised to be a vase on a mantlepiece and a corporate wife and I have rebelled against it my entire life,” says Finke, who had a marriage that ended in the early Eighties. “I don’t like authority and I don’t like people in power.” She started her journalism career at the Associated Press followed by a brief stint at the Dallas Morning News, then went on to spend much of the Eighties at Newsweek, based in Washington, and then Los Angeles. In 1987, she got scooped up by the Los Angeles Times, then went on to contract writing jobs at The New York Observer and New York magazine.
She delivered big scoops on Harvey Weinstein’s aggressive Oscar campaigning, Michael Ovitz’s Machiavellian business tactics and was also known for lots of interoffice drama. “She was legendarily late with stories and on a weekly that’s a problem,” says Lisa Chase, who edited her at The Observer. One week, Finke’s writer’s block was so bad Chase had her dictate her reporting into the phone as Chase transcribed it and turned it into a column. “But we got it done and it was great,” the former editor says. In 2000, Finke’s tenure at New York magazine ended. According to two sources at the magazine, they’d seen no copy from her in six months.
Her excuses for this, they say, evidently ran the gamut from the benign to the baroque, and included having been evicted from her apartment and having had her electricity turned off. Another week, a column was allegedly held up at deadline because back up documents were not sent into the magazine on time, one of the sources says. Finke’s alleged explanation was that they’d been held up by of a bomb threat at LAX. “We checked,” recalls the source. “There were no reports of a bomb threat.”
“I’m Calamity Jane,” Finke says, confirming the first two anecdotes. “I was being evicted and my electricity was turned off. I had no money.” She says she has no recollection of the incident involving back up documents. She continues, “I’ve had huge self-destructive streaks. There was a lot of drama in my personal life, and that sometimes spilled into the office. Some of it was people exaggerating, some of it was me.” She scored a book deal with Random House to write an account of the agency business, then never delivered the final product.
“She was a hell of a reporter, and she would tell us incredible stuff,” says the publisher at the time, Joni Evans. “She could dazzle you with amazing stories and they all seemed to be real. But getting it down on paper, she couldn’t do.” (“My agent has the manuscript now, and it’s going out next week,” Finke counters.)
In 1999, Finke got up and walked out of a job interview with Kurt Andersen and Michael Hirschorn at Inside.com. (“I thought Michael was kind of a jerk and finally I just said, “I don’t want to do this,” is the way Finke remembers it.) Shortly thereafter, she was hired by the business section of the New York Post. A few months into the job, she wrote a story about a legal dispute between The Walt Disney Co. and the family that owns the commercial rights to Winnie The Pooh. In court filings, Disney admitted to trashing files related to the case.
Finke’s article compared Disney’s actions to Enron and its accounting firm Arthur Andersen, which was then in the news for having shredded documents.
Massive complaints ensued from Disney and Finke was fired. In a statement, the Post said there’d been “serious inaccuracies” with a number of her stories. “It was bulls--t,” Weinraub says of News Corp.’s allegation. “I never knew her to make anything up,” says Lisa Chase. Finke sued Disney and News Corp. for libel and they agreed to settle out of court.
Still, victory didn’t help her job prospects. “It was a case where the cure was worse than the disease,” recalls Finke, who could not discuss the terms of the settlement because of a mutual non-disparagement clause. “Nobody would hire me. I remember going into Starbucks one day, and I thought, they have good health benefits. Maybe I’ll become a barrista.” Happily, a former L.A. Times colleague was now editing the LA Weekly. The paper gave her a column, though at first she had to work without a contract. Her targets still griped about what she wrote, but alternative newspapers usually encourage reporters to be indignant about anything involving a boardroom and a corporate jet, which made it a good fit with Finke’s ethos.
“These companies have shareholders,” she says. After lots of prodding her editors for her own Web site, Deadlinehollywooddaily.com, went live in March 2006, marking the real turning point in her ongoing saga. A blog is a pretty powerful weapon in the hands of a reporter with lots of opinions.
Suddenly her vendettas and her inability to deal with authority became assets. She has been particularly harsh on Weinstein, who’s had a difficult run since leaving Disney. And she’s been a constant thorn in the side of Brad Grey, the head of Paramount. Others who wind up in Finke’s line of fire sometimes explain her success by saying she’s right just enough that everyone has to keep reading her.
A few months ago, Finke reported that Grey went to a dinner party in
Hollywood, where he made a number of disparaging comments about DreamWorks’ David Geffen. It turned out Grey hadn’t even been there. Finke then changed the item, attributing the remarks to Redstone, whom she said was quoting Grey. “I was mistaken,” she says, “but it was [wrong] for maybe half an hour.”
When Geffen wound up in a war with the Clintons over disparaging comments he’d made about them to The New York Times, Finke reported Sen. Hillary Clinton’s mouthpiece Howard Wolfson was not long for the job. Several months later, he has yet to be fired. “That’s what my source told me,” says Finke, as if she bears no responsibility for reporting something that didn’t pan out. Still, the more surprising thing is how often she’s right.
“My problem, it’s a tragedy actually,” she says, “is that I’m a Cassandra. I’m a canary in a f---g coal mine.”
(A disclaimer: Included among the projects Finke has trashed was the movie “Bewitched,” which was directed by this reporter’s mother, Nora Ephron. Finke wrote it wasn’t going to succeed. She turned out to be correct.)
In her cartoon-like universe, Hollywood becomes an endless series of gods and monsters, heroes and villains, predators and victims. Tracking the site’s treatment of Finke’s heroes may provide clues about the identities of her sources. Several of her former editors named Universal Studios president Ron Meyer as a fountain of information for her over the years.Here’s how his contract extension was handled on her blog: “It’s not only a miracle. It’s certainly a footnote in the history books of showbiz…” Meyer did not respond to requests for comment.
“I haven’t talked to Ron in weeks,” Finke claims. Last month, she swatted at Page Six for a snarky item it wrote about former HBO head Michael Fuchs, who is said by some industry sources to be a confidant of Finke’s. The gossip column implied he was a bitter washout. “Not so,” began Finke’s refutation. “Fuchs is producing a TV series whose pilot script is being written now for HBO. It’s a dark one-hour comedy about corporations from the top down. Who better to know about this than Fuchs, right?”
“He’s really out of entertainment, he’s not really a source,” says Finke. She frequently complains reporters don’t acknowledge that she broke the news first when they follow her items up in their own publications. “They never credit me,” she says. This is surprising to her, she explains, because Finke contends she almost never personally insults other reporters in print, even when noting their inaccuracies.“
Very rarely will I raise their names,” Finke says. “I know what the process is like. It’s unfair to criticize individuals.”
Except of course when she does. Since January, Finke has dumped on the L.A. Times’ Kim Christensen, Chuck Philips and James Rainey; The New York Times’ Bill Carter; Variety’s Anne Thompson; The New Yorker’s Ken Auletta, and Portfolio’s Amy Wallace, all of whom she mentioned by name.
From time to time, Finke’s colleagues have thrown the book at her… then it’s war. Former Gawker editor Jesse Oxfeld made the mistake of calling her crazy for a piece that appeared about her last year. Which caused Finke to flip her lid, though there’s a strange logic to this since going ballistic on the people who call you insane generally makes them fearful about calling you insane again. Finke puts her reaction in the past, saying, “I made a mistake.” But she thinks the criticism itself stinks of misogyny.
“Women who have strong opinions are subjected to unbelievable attacks,” she says. Finke also professes to be hurt that the Web column hasn’t led to more job offers. “None of them want me,” she complains. “They don’t want me personally. They don’t want my reporting. I got one job offer and it was from Mediabistro.” But about this, she’s aware it might be for the best.
“I’m not good with bosses,” she admits. “And I love what I do now. I love this Web site. It’s the most fantastic and freeing thing in the world. I make my deadlines. I decide what I write. I have total control.”
Posted by poland at July 16, 2007 04:08 PM
Comments
She's totally insane. What I don't get is, I'm an insulin-dependent diabetic too and I still manage to leave the house AND go to cocktail parties. I don't really see that as an excuse to not leave your house, you just bring your medication with you. I wonder if she suffers from some kind of agorophobia or another type of panic disorder. That would be a shame, but I kind of take offense that she uses diabetes as an excuse not to leave the house, as if we should all just stay locked up and close to insulin at all times.
Posted by: Noah ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/nav-commenters.gif)
at July 16, 2007 06:39 PM
Also, I don't understand why people who hate movies and think that they are so above trivial entertainments feel the need or desire to write about them.
Posted by: Noah at July 16, 2007 06:40 PM
Thank you- I knew she was gonzo when she offered to take down the Bay Blog posting if I offered her dirt on Bay. Bribery? No thank you.
Posted by: Don Murphy at July 16, 2007 06:54 PM
Thanks for reprinting this, David... hilarious stuff!
Posted by: EDouglas at July 16, 2007 07:02 PM
She's obviously a very lonely woman. And her way of feeding on the poison around her is kind of sad. But a blog posting about her on this site is an example of that poison... bringing her up for the pleasure of bringing her up only makes her stronger, Dave. It affirms her rotten ethos.
Do what she can't do... speak no evil.
Posted by: Crow T Robot at July 16, 2007 07:10 PM
"Do what she can't do... speak no evil."
Agreed
No comment might make the problem go away quicker.
Posted by: Lota at July 16, 2007 07:12 PM
NO COMMENT MY FAT ASS!!!
First they came for the whatever and I said nothing
Then they came for the whoever and I said nothing
Then they came for me and there wasn't anyone to help.
Nazis suck
Posted by: Don Murphy at July 16, 2007 07:18 PM
That was funny, Don.
Posted by: jeffmcm at July 16, 2007 07:27 PM
Ah Don forgot the Peoples Poem. He must not have studied for that test.
Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Kommunist.
"When the Nazis (to take?) the communists,
I stayed silent;
I was not a communist."
then it was socialists & Trade Unionists & Jews and many others but the Americans often take out the first stanza since they don;t want to utter "Communist".
Hey I was a commie trade unionist...albeit a very conservative non-violent form...and I DO speak out.
But I should have clarified...what I meant by No comment.
I mean NO COMMENT on the "person" trying to get attention -- Nikki FInk will always attempt to do so. She seems to need more attention than an angry toddler.
I didn;t mean no comment on the Ill she promotes. She should stopped dead in her tracks on THAT but LA Weekly doesn't have the guts. If she becomes a liability financially maybe we will hear the end of the nonsense. maybe some nice libel suits.
If she were male I bet she would have been fired a long time ago.
I just don't like HER as a person getting attention. Any attention is good for pain-in-the-arses like herself.
Posted by: Lota at July 16, 2007 07:57 PM
[In February, she reported the discord between executives at DreamWorks and Paramount, which had co-financed “Babel” and “Dreamgirls,” both of which were awards season favorites. The suits at Paramount denied the story up and down, but a few weeks later, The New York Times ran a juicy interview with DreamWorks’ Steven Spielberg in which the director conceded all of the essential points laid out earlier by Finke’s article.]
So, in other words, she was right. Sounds like the Nikki I knew when our paths crossed (briefly) at the Dallas Morning News during the early '80s. Damn, but that gal can still piss people off just by doing her job.
Ah, yes, those were the days, my friend. Dallas in the early '80s. Nikki was cranking out good stuff for the DMN. Charlie Rose was doing a local TV chat show, interviewing people like Tab Hunter when they came to town to do dinner theater. And Bob Berney was operating an art house in the wilds of a Dallas suburb called Farmers Branch, showing Godard's Every Man for Himself and Wajda's Man of Marble to uncomprehending rednecks. And Phillip Wuntch, one of the great gents among American film critics, was letting his eager underling -- me -- review the likes of Friday the 13th, The Last Metro, Halloween II and Cutter's Way.
Gosh -- how come I'm the only person in this nostalgic reverie who never amounted to anything?
Posted by: Joe Leydon at July 16, 2007 08:08 PM
she might report an event correctly or be given correct information on occasion Joe but it doesn;t take away from the nonsense and bile she reports as fact on an almost regular basis.
There's too much mixing to know how much water is in the wine.
I don;t know anyone who can believe her--stuff always has to be verified.
So maybe in the 80s she displayed some journo integrity but this is 2007.
and I won;t forget the frequent dirty tricks hating against talent either--like when Charlize Theron was nom for an Oscar her mean-spirited article about how her Dad was shot--as if that event, long in CTs' past would or should have any f*cking bearing on her getting a nomination or a win.
Not to mention that it was personal and should have been off limits.
Not professional. Not funny. Disgusting.
Ignore her, she's earned it.
Attack her methods and disinformation.
Posted by: Lota at July 16, 2007 08:19 PM
So this chap is Carl Bernstein's progeny. Where's Ben Bradlee when you need him?
Posted by: Blackcloud at July 16, 2007 09:08 PM
you mean Ben post "Jimmy's world" of course.
But all this doesn;t matter since it's(above) just my opinion & the LA Weekly column really, at the end fo the day is opinion too.
Posted by: Lota at July 16, 2007 09:19 PM
Just sayin', fellas, if Kevin Smith's Dogma taught us anything it's that you can't kill a Shit Monster by throwing shit back at it.
Oh and that even a total biscuit like Linda Fiorentino can be lit badly.
Posted by: Crow T Robot at July 16, 2007 10:33 PM
Hey if she isn't a complete liar her book went "out" THIS week. Uh huh.
Posted by: Don Murphy at July 16, 2007 10:58 PM
Your taste for nostalgia cause you to inaccurately assume that the WWD reporting of her late reporting on a story that was in play (and reported on) for months was important. That is the magic trick... screaming "I wrote it first" no matter who wrote what when.
Nikki deserves credit for being the only person seriously reporting on agents (though I assume every "story" is someone's grudge) and she did break the NBC story a day early. Movie scoops? Almost none. (I'd say "none," but I haven't really been studying her.)
Posted by: David Poland at July 17, 2007 12:08 AM
And she can't complain about Dave putting this up because she did the exact same thing!
Posted by: KamikazeCamelV2.0 at July 17, 2007 01:30 AM
Finke can often be a bit over-the-top and constantly wants to remind us that she was first. But I also find the hateful reactions she gets over-the-top. She seems to have good contacts and reports on the industry in an interesting way.
She's often labelled as hateful or petty. But I don't see nearly as much outrage from people when it comes to someone like Jeffrey Wells, who is not only hateful and petty, but also outright misogynistic. And unlike Finke, he never breaks any original stories. In fact his column is little more than a string of links to other sites.
I think blogging in general lends itself to harsher reporting that can easily become over-the-top. And sometimes it can be too much. But Finke is by no means the worst of the bunch. And at least there's some interesting stories and reporting hear and there on her blog.
Posted by: Hejla at July 17, 2007 02:50 AM
I remember listening to Matt Drudge on the radio as I was driving home from Vegas a few years back. Anyway, Nikki Finke called in to report that Christopher Reeve had died. She talked for a while, did a fair job of sounding respectfully mournful, and then -- I don't think she knew she was on live -- she goes "you better credit me with this scoop, Matt" and hung up.
That was the first time I'd ever heard her name. I remember my girlfriend saying, wow, that lady must be a piece of work. Obviously her instincts were right.
Posted by: Paul Ransome at July 17, 2007 03:47 AM
Here is the original story that Jeffrey Wells had broken in last week
http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/archives/2007/07/senator_taking.php
Posted by: marychan at July 17, 2007 04:50 AM
I'm pretty sure everyone has given up calling Jeffrey Wells out though. And soon enough they'll do the same with Nikki.
You guys should have watched that Victoria Beckham Comes to America thing. It's the funniest one hour of television all year.
Posted by: KamikazeCamelV2.0 at July 17, 2007 05:23 AM
"In her cartoon-like universe,. . ."
She has her own universe! Wow, no wonder people pay attention to her.
Posted by: R Scott R at July 17, 2007 06:34 AM
Emotional blackmail. Can someone please explain.
Posted by: T.Holly at July 17, 2007 07:15 AM
I got it. And Cassandra. She's a Greek Chorus and a public forum. Please call out her and everybody's inacuracies, I will read you more, but only if you keep it under 100 words. How's that for blackmail.
Posted by: T.Holly at July 17, 2007 07:51 AM
A serious request: get rid of the red. Bad for work environments and makes everything you write feel longer.
Posted by: T.Holly at July 17, 2007 08:16 AM
David I heard a rumor that Finke served your ISP with a DMCA takedown notice. If she did SUE her- she doesn't own the copyright to the article, WWD does and they have the only standing to send such a notice. She would have had to swear in the notice that she owned it, which is perjury.
Posted by: Don Murphy at July 17, 2007 08:52 AM
Wow, one original story about Dimension abandoning a film. What a huge get for Wells. Doesn't really change my main point though.
Posted by: Hejla at July 17, 2007 10:19 AM
Wow, one original story about Dimension abandoning a film. What a huge get for Wells. Doesn't really change my main point though.
Posted by: Hejla at July 17, 2007 10:19 AM
I haven't heard a word from our ISP, so I can't imagine it's true, Don.
My guess is that she threatens that. I haven't heard from WWD either. But at this point, WWD has turned this from an infringement issue into a legitimate news story by bending to the hot wind of La Finke. To further try to supress the story would make it more so. I would be happy to spend a couple of years in court fighting for the First Amendment value of this story, which WWD clearly has no further commercial value... thus their own takedown.
On the other hand, I can imagine that C. Nikki is going that way. She hasn't tried to come right at me yet, which is unusual for her. Or perhaps she has realized that she is just damaging herself with every push now.
It's funny, because I have had a video on YouTube taken down in the last week courtesy of Spike & Mike... can't imagine they own the copyright either. (Not worth fighting that one... my goal was achieved, which was to get Cox & Combes the attention they deserved for "Washington.") And oh the irony of Spike & Mike now being in the game of limiting access to great animation.
Posted by: David Poland at July 17, 2007 10:37 AM
Was doing the interview, in the first place, part of her self-destructive streak? Personally I think it's a journalistic travesty for you to repeatedly refer to her "as crazy." And BTW, this red shit sucks.
Posted by: T.Holly at July 17, 2007 10:43 AM
Hejla - People tend to feel that crazy, male or female, is better left unadressed to stew in their own insanity. People who have no engaged have no idea how bad it is... so they dip their toe in... and soon find themselves screaming in their sleep.
But make no mistake... the hateful are hated... and always more than they realize. They are also in deep denial about how outrageous their behaviors are. They always see themselves as crusaders against a greater power. Classic sociopathic thinking.
But people find it very hard to manage the problem. It's that these people are also willing to attack anyone at anytime - in public - and in a town of relatively quiet manipulation, that is very empowering.
Posted by: David Poland at July 17, 2007 10:47 AM
She doesn't give a shit about Hollywood, she's reclusive, she hates authority, people respect her, she has power and she comes after you directly if she doesn't like what you say about her. That's David's idea of crazy.
Posted by: T.Holly at July 17, 2007 10:47 AM
I know you're right Dave, but Jeez, can you get a little distance from it, and report on it without getting so mudslinging and personal?
Posted by: T.Holly at July 17, 2007 10:51 AM
You don't sound like you think I am right, T Holly. It sounds like you dig the rage machine.
This is the magic trick of it all. You are now defending the person who does nothing but sling mud and get personal... who has built herself on a mountain of it... who has gone after people behind the scenes - not right at anyone, ever - maliciously. And somehow, you have determined that I am mudslinging by commenting pretty gently on it.
What you don't know is how the Rage Monkeys (Nikki is not alone) throw others into a tizzy... how it is hard to handle them, not because they are right, but because most of us are too civilized to use their tools of relentless bile when the stakes are (in the end) so low... how Nikki works far too effectively against the First Amendment while claiming to define it... and in the end, how completely uninterested in truth she is.
Rage Monkeys live to sell this Us vs Them shit. The issue of working in this industry is far more complex than that and those same Rage Monkeys not only know it, but live off of it. You can't be a professional and a rebellious teen at the same time. It leads to nothing but hypocrisy.
With due respect to you and whoever you are, you have no idea. You write in response to this woman as though you get it. Like anything as ugly (spiritually) as dealing with Nikki, you have no way of knowing until you have been there. And no one I know who has been there - and it's a lot of people - walks away with any variation in perception, aside from thinking her column is of value or not of value. But they all are happy to call her "Crazy Nikki."
You want to smack me down for being one of the few who is willing to say what "we" all know out loud? Well, go to town. I have to live with my choices. You don't. I have been very tolerant of Nikki. Too tolerant. And I know I will be too tolerant in the future as well. I don't want to be in the business of debunking a gossip columnist every day. But now and again, the crazy drips over the side of the tub and I feel compelled to get out the mop.
For that, I cannot apologize... because it is the right thing to do. I only feel guilty about not really exposing her for all she is. Most people I know just figure that someone else will eventually throw the bucket of water at her and she'll melt away. It's a shame that a human has been reduced to that, but she has done the reducing herself (with the help of "friends" who think they are helping her).
Posted by: David Poland at July 17, 2007 11:46 AM
"I'm pretty sure everyone has given up calling Jeffrey Wells out though. And soon enough they'll do the same with Nikki."
Unfortunately, KCamel, Jeff Wells still has the most bizarrely co-dependent/mutually abusive relationship with his readers of anyone out there. They hate him and he hates them but it all persists.
Posted by: jeffmcm at July 17, 2007 12:02 PM
One small disputation, David: I think a lot of us know how Rage Monkeys "throw others into a tizzy." You find them in every field, every line of work. I'm worked for newspaper editors that I would describe -- and I don't throw this term around lightly -- as psychotic. (As in, literally throwing things at employees. And no, I'm not exaggerating.) And in academia? Don't ask. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that everyone on this thread has had to deal with someone at some time in the workplace who is/was a frothing rage-a-holic. A rage-a-holic with a lower profile, no doubt. But a rage-a-holic nonetheless.
Posted by: Joe Leydon at July 17, 2007 12:08 PM
One slight problem with your theorem, David... most people don't know who Nikki Finke is, let alone give a shit about her. You and Nikki and Wells are all medium-sized fish in a pretty small pond, while the likes of myself are tiny guppies who watch from the edge of the pond and wonder what this shit is that we're going to be getting ourselves into when we mature.
The only person who should be giving a fuck about Nikki Finke and her actions is Nikki Finke. By constantly trying to "expose" her, you are giving her and her positions a patina of legitimacy. Thus, I respectfully request you just stop talking about her. She's like a troll on a bulletin board; the more attention you shower unto her, the more she will crave it and she'll just become that much worse.
Defang her by ignoring her. Let her sell crazy someplace else. We're all stocked up here.
Posted by: Edward Havens at July 17, 2007 12:13 PM
Er... in my above post... that should read "I've worked for newspaper editors...," not "I'm worked..." I don't want to give the impression that any editor I'm working for now is anything but a sweetheart.
Posted by: Joe Leydon at July 17, 2007 12:18 PM
You speak in such convoluted code that I almost believe you. I don't want to seem ungrateful (except for the red), and I'm sure it's troubling and compromising for you, or anyone in your position, to try to report on a situation you are at the center of it and fearful of reprisal from inside the circle and from the subject herself, but tell me you'll try, in the future, to be more informative about it and I'll leave you alone for a while.
Posted by: T.Holly at July 17, 2007 12:18 PM
I didn't mean that as a threat.
Posted by: T.Holly at July 17, 2007 12:24 PM
I will write what I write as I see fit... as I have for the last decade.
And Ed... if Nikki means nothing to you, that is fine. Frankly, the conversation of Nikki tends to be aimed at people who never comment in here... but are nonetheless here.
It has always been my position that if I see what I feel is a problem, I will write about it... whether it is a studio, a movie, a journalist or whomever. I try to be fair. I try to be honest. And I offer a lot of opinion which can be disputed as anyone else with an opinion sees fit. If I spent my time worrying about who would like/care about/read what I wrote, I would write very little indeed.
Posted by: David Poland at July 17, 2007 01:17 PM
"Three weeks ago, she laid into HBO for its “lousy” “Sopranos” ending and advised readers to cancel their subscriptions to the station. “David Chase clearly didn’t give a damn about his fans,” she complained about the series’ creator. “He crapped in their faces. This is why America hates Hollywood.”
LOL... if that episode is her idea of an artist selling out, Finke must have David Lynch and Vincent Gallo flicks on permanent shuffle in her DVD turntable.
Posted by: Crow T Robot at July 17, 2007 02:47 PM
She didn't think of it as a 'sell-out' thing but as a 'pretentious artist' thing.
Posted by: jeffmcm at July 17, 2007 02:58 PM
"I will write what I write as I see fit... as I have for the last decade." hmmm "I make my deadlines. I decide what I write. I have total control."
Did DP ever answer NF's comment about her box office figures that she left here for him when he was travelling?
Posted by: T.Holly at July 17, 2007 03:24 PM
"And Ed... if Nikki means nothing to you, that is fine. Frankly, the conversation of Nikki tends to be aimed at people who never comment in here... but are nonetheless here."
Understood.
"It has always been my position that if I see what I feel is a problem, I will write about it... whether it is a studio, a movie, a journalist or whomever. I try to be fair. I try to be honest. And I offer a lot of opinion which can be disputed as anyone else with an opinion sees fit. If I spent my time worrying about who would like/care about/read what I wrote, I would write very little indeed."
I think you misinterpreted. I'm simply saying that trying to shame Ms. Finke into changing her ways, or whatever it is you think you can accomplish, is a truly Quixotic effort. Even when she is wrong, she is never wrong. It's always the other person, or someone else from whom she got her info, who is wrong. But keep attacking that windmill if you really think you can knock it down.
Posted by: Edward Havens at July 17, 2007 03:25 PM
You know you all saw it, I'll save it for Friday's Box Office Hell faceoff.
Posted by: T.Holly at July 17, 2007 05:58 PM
I know that Nikki will never be shamed into anything. She has no shame.
And I didn't see Nikki's thing... was it the $2 million variation on the $150 million Transformers week?
Posted by: David Poland at July 17, 2007 06:16 PM
P.S Cute attempt to equate, T Holly. Perhaps you'll post that in Nikki's comments section, where her readers freely take her to task every day.
Posted by: David Poland at July 17, 2007 06:18 PM
It was your July 29 post.
How amusing that MCN now includes my weekly tracking as part of its own. Unfortunately, MCN is not reporting my numbers accurately. The 3-day projected total I gave for "Die Hard 4" should be $25M to $30M. It's simple math: I said pic was supposed to make 5-day total of $40M-$45M, and it had already taken in $15M its first two days. MCN refuses to correct the error. Why?
(FYI: The tracking numbers and analysis I post weekly come from my own reporting. I confer with: top film financing guys, Wall Street analysts, marketing and/or distribution experts, agents, and studios.)
Posted by: Nikki Finke at July 1, 2007 11:35 AM
Posted by: T.Holly at July 17, 2007 06:35 PM
Nikki Finke is ridiculous. Part of me thinks that she's not worth talking about, but another part of me feels that if we talk about her enough we'll all realize what a joke she is and she'll go away. But, I guess she'll just continue to blackmail her way to the top, using what information she has to gain more information. She is truly one of the worst gossips on the web and does more to hurt perceived integrity of all internet journalists and columnists.
Also, I'm still stumped as to how being an insulin-dependent diabetic would prevent her from leaving her home. It makes zero sense, which leads me to believe that in addition to all her other wonderful qualities, she is also a liar.
Posted by: Noah at July 17, 2007 06:43 PM
RE: Nikki's FYI, what's the difference if she's lying anyway, right? Haven't people helped you, David, and don't they help you everytime you talk to them? The difference comes down to tactics, ok, fine. Maybe someday, someone will write a big article about it. Gotta go now.
Noah, everyone's different and everytime I go to her site expecting gossip and scoops, I'm disappointed because it's pretty straight ahead, just better written. Where's the joke? It's a big planet, get along.
Posted by: T.Holly at July 17, 2007 06:54 PM
Well, looking through the archives, T Holly, the chart, like Nikki's projections, were posted before Thursday numbers came in. As Nikki changes her copy instead of adding or correction, I have no idea when she posted what currently exists on her site.
As it turned out, the Thursday numbers were unexpectedly low, so my projection of how that would suggest 3-day totals were $3 million low as well.
I was travelling and my first notice of this was a typically nasty note from Nikki, as opposed to a simple request to change what had evolved into a minor error. This was the start of an e-mail barrage of insults, threats, lies, and other made up notions of reality that went on until I finally cut off communication on Monday.
As a result, I didn't go out of my way to make the change on, again, a completely transient piece of copy that wasn't even on MCN's home page come Sunday.
For the record, had I made the change, the high estimate of "Nikki's Pals" on Die Hard would have still been the lowest estimate on the chart ($30m) and her range would still have been off by between $8.4m and $3.4 million. The next furthest estimate off the actual weekend was $1.6m.
As Ed Douglas (and MCN staff, often asked to make changes while I am travelling and not near a computer) can attest, if someone just asks for a reasonable change on something like a human being, I am more than happy to make the change as quickly as possible, no only on MCN, but then cut and pasted on the blog as well. I believe in the truth, even in the silly game of projections. But I also believe that giving a screaming child what they are screaming for is the best way to insure future bad behavior. And I don't think she, her pals, or you as a reader paid much of a price in this situation.
Posted by: David Poland at July 17, 2007 07:05 PM
T-Ho... if you don't care whether someone who says they are a truth-telling journalist is lying, I can't argue the issue.
But I would like to borrow your car, your ATM card, and your wife/girlfriend for an evening if that's ok. Nothing'll happen. Swear!
Posted by: David Poland at July 17, 2007 07:26 PM
I know David needs my defense like Don Murphy needs more money, but he's not joshing: On the few occasions when I have e-mailed him to warn him about an error on the site -- and I haven't been nasty, or nyah-nyah-nyah!-ish in my tone -- he's been very quick to correct the error.
On the other hand: I dunno, maybe it's just me, but I can't help feeling this vibe of sexual tension between Nikki and Dave. Almost as bad as the vibe between Nicol and Jeffmcm. It's practically Shakespearean, like Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing.
Posted by: Joe Leydon at July 17, 2007 07:28 PM
Or between you and me, Joe? Except you're more in the Falstaffian mode, methinks.
Posted by: jeffmcm at July 17, 2007 08:00 PM
"I can't help feeling this vibe of sexual tension between Nikki and Dave"
c'mon Joe you know she aint his type (i.e. young starlet with PT & TA).
"Or between you and me, Joe? " careful Jeff. The Don might see that statement as 'blog cheating' in a sense.
'what God hath joined let no other poster tear asunder'
if you do get a bell from your ISP Dave just take down your prefacing/opinion bit *before* the actual article and you should be okay unless it's WWD insisting on the take down.
Instead of talking about other journalists something more interesting...have you heard anything or seen anything of Coraline? It would be nice to hear about that.
Posted by: Lota at July 17, 2007 08:39 PM
Posted by: David Poland at July 17, 2007 09:42 PM
I ended up meeting the guy who runs Bay's website today a nice guy named Nelson. He saw my own thread on my board about the Finke fiasco. He told me that HE asked her to remove the Bay Blog entry as it came from his site. He proved to her he was who he said he was by posting HOW ABOUT THIS BITCH? on bay.com. And she offered the same bribe to him- give her dirt about Bay and she would take it down. Journalist no, See You Next Tuesday for sure.
Coraline is based on a book by my pal Neil Gaiman, produced by my friend Bill Mechanic and directed by the amazing Henry Selick. It will be released by Rogue and because of that, will make $12.00 USD domestic.
Posted by: Don Murphy at July 17, 2007 10:35 PM
moral relativism, don
Posted by: T.H.Ung at July 17, 2007 11:32 PM
"Perhaps you'll post that in Nikki's comments section, where her readers freely take her to task every day."
Wait... there's a comments section on DHD? Or are you being facetious? Beause if she did have a comments section, I'm sure she woudn't get away with half the stuff she does/says.
I remember for a while, I was convinced she was posting links to her column on another message board I frequent but people are so tough on errors there that I think she slinked away with her tail between her legs.
Posted by: EDouglas at July 18, 2007 04:40 AM
thanks Dave for the link...tho I didn't see anything on it about the movie unless I am picking the wrong buttons.
I like Neil Gaiman, Bill Mechanic and I like Henry Selick (too bad more people didn;t see Moongirl).
I certainly hope it makes more than 12USD!
Maybe I should send a checque directly to Mechanic to cut out Rogue if they won;t do a proper job getting it out.
Posted by: Lota at July 18, 2007 06:28 AM
TH Hung
moral relativism?
bribery, blackmail and angling for dirt are usually negatives. even in Lucretia Borgia's time they were negatives.
Posted by: Lota at July 18, 2007 06:44 AM
He wasn't brided to take it down from his site? And Don wasn't brided to take it down from his site, too? No I'm not starting any rumors, I just have a big brain when it comes to understanding cause and effect.
Posted by: T.H.Ung at July 18, 2007 08:09 AM
HUNG
This site is not ESL. We were BOTH told that IF we bribed HER she would take it down. Never mind the fact that it was automatically copyrighted by someone else. Never mind the fact that the person who wrote it no longer wanted it up. SeeyounextTuesday KEPT the posting up UNLESS myself or Nelson offered her dirt on Bay. This is gangster behavior.
Nelson took the original down not because someone offered him a hot bride, but because Bay told him to. It was never even on my site so I got no Brides.
Your BRAIN is smaller than your vocabulary and quite damaged.
Posted by: Don Murphy at July 18, 2007 08:37 AM
Person attacks aside, you sound extremely threatening. Are you saying you only opened a comments thread on your site and provided a link, but didn't actually print Bay's letter?
My English is fine, I read perfectly well between the lines of your righteous indignation. The facts are that you guys removed it under pressure.
Posted by: T.H.Ung at July 18, 2007 08:52 AM
I know I'm late to the party on this but why would anyone think it's a personality flaw to not go out of your apartment? Some of the best writers out there are shut-ins. JD Salinger, Don Delillo, Cormac McCarthy. Not saying Finke is any of those but since when did shunning the shallow ponds in THIS town become a bad thing? Oh and yeah, must be nice to be Ephron and Bernstein spawn. "Here you are, sir. This is your job handed to you on a silver platter." It was a (mostly) fair story though it did concentrate too much, I thought, on Finke's private life details as if to say, "she's crazy folks - see, she couldn't pay her rent." And it smacked, to me, of payback. She writes about others so lets get her. Eh.
Posted by: bipedalist at July 18, 2007 08:59 AM
HUNG
1- It is personal attacks,not person, your english is shit
2- FUCK YOU my righteous indignation is towards liars and morons
3- FUCK YOU I never removed it I never had it up- why would I post a slam that peripherally attacked me on my own website you subliterate cretin?
4- FUCK YOU- Bay took it down because he thought better of it.
What kind of pressure could there have been, you uneducated, dumb board troll?
I mean really, how about saying Double Dragon sucked or something? At least you'd make some sort of sense, you underdweller.
Posted by: Don Murphy at July 18, 2007 09:24 AM
But Don: Double Dragon was fun.
Posted by: Joe Leydon at July 18, 2007 10:24 AM
I thought money bought happiness?
Posted by: mysteryperfecta at July 18, 2007 10:47 AM
[And Phillip Wuntch, one of the great gents among American film critics, was letting his eager underling -- me -- review the likes of Friday the 13th, The Last Metro, Halloween II and Cutter's Way.]
I haven't said anything about this for the long while that I've noticed you posting on this board, Mr. Leydon, but I grew up in Dallas reading your reviews as a kid and followed you into the Houston papers when my family moved down the I-45 in 1989. My best friend Phil and I followed your reviews religiously from our homes in the rather conservative Spring, Texas and that's what drew us from the suburbs into downtown to, say, our first times going to the River Oaks 3 and seeing movies other than, say, "Look Who's Talking, Too." For awhile there, we just went to every single last movie that you gave a good review to. Phil's now an actor/theater director in Minnesota, I ended up becoming a film journo/critic (an awful one) and am now a screenwriter (an awful one) and another of our (younger) high school buddies who would occasionally tag along with us (more Phil, than me) was Lee Pace, who is now an actor as well (a great one).
One question - did you switch to the Houston Chronicle at some point?
Posted by: SJRubinstein at July 18, 2007 11:00 AM
SJR: Many thanks for the kind words. After the Houston Post shut down, I did some free-lance feature writing for the Chronicle, then reviewed films for The Houston Press (for about 1 1/2 years) and KPRC/Channel 2 (four years). If you click on my name below, you can visit my blog and see what else I've been up to. (Well, I don't include the arrests, but that's because none resulted in a conviction.) Once again, thanks for the kind words.
Posted by: Joe Leydon at July 18, 2007 11:33 AM
Bipedalist, I don't think it's a personality flaw that Nikki doesn't leave her apartment. I think it's a personality flaw that she is blatantly lying about her reasons why, instead of owning up to it. I've been a diabetic for most of my life and it has never prevented me from doing a single thing, so that is just a flat-out lie and I find it somewhat offensive being a fellow diabetic. It makes it seem like diabetes is a handicap, instead of the annoyance that it truly is. And this seems to me to be fundamentally wrong for a "journalist" the fudge something like this, especially one that takes filmmakers to task for not always coming clean. She is not crazy because she doesn't leave her house, in fact I don't know if "crazy" is a good word for her at all. Instead, I would say she is unethical, hurtful and mean-spirited.
Posted by: Noah at July 18, 2007 12:05 PM
It's funny, BiP (maybe not so)... people go on about things like Nikki's alleged agoraphobia (though I don't think the guy who is also diabetic was making fun of her, but noting that diabetes does not mean being chained to your bed) or Harry Knowles' weight or whatever personal thing there is to go on about. These are easy vulnerabilities.
I don't care about any of Nikki's personal habits. I only care about her destructive, reckless behavior towards me, other journalists, and others in the industry in which I toil. And I care even more about the journalists who give in to the pressure and empower it by hiding from it.
The same way that I give her no negative marks for whatever she does personally, I also don't give her positive marks for those proclivities or for "being a rebel." She is no rebel. And she is certainly not a speaker of truth to power. She is abusive to some in power, which turns a lot of people on. But as it is not a part of a bigger search for truth, it is as lame as attacks on the down and out. Her turn on is that she speaks for others who are angered at the power of others.
Here she has you smacking down Jacob Bernstein, who I am pretty sure you have never met and probably never heard of before reading all this, and attacking him for being his parents' son. You don't know if he is a good man or bad, hard worker or ne'er-do-well, or even what alleged flaws there are in his piece. You are even willing to call the quite positive piece "payback" because of your own bias and Nikki's skills at shutting down a public discussion of the piece... which you might have noticed has a direct on-the-record attribution for pretty much every single story and the unnamed quotes are pretty balanced. Moreover, if you talk to anyone who has dealt with Nikki in the past, you will see how tame the piece really was. (I will privately guide you to one of our mutual, pretty mild friends who will never mention Nikki in print again if they can avoid it, lest they ever have to speak to her again.)
YOU are what Nikki's method of operating thrives on. She is a propagandist of the most dramatic form. She not only spins truth (90%) into lies (10%) daily, in print and off-line, but she seeks to shut down the free flow of discourse in order to control and give power to her spin.
And it’s not as though there is another side of the story waiting to be told out there… that my bias is somehow leaking all over this. You will have to go a long, long way to find someone who has dealt with Nikki and who doesn’t feel this way… which is not to say that some of the people who feel this way aren’t terribly amused and impressed by the fires she starts and willing to help her start new ones that work for them… so long as they aren’t being burned by them.
The only victims in all of this is Freedom of The Press and Jacob Bernstein, who cannot speak for his work because he is an employee of a company that is trying to get out of The Sea of Nikki safely. And oh yeah… Truth is the ultimate victim.
You know I like you a lot, BiP. But you also know you are one to want to believe that The Devil is just a poor, misunderstood angel that will change if given enough love. I’d like to believe it too. We are not unalike in that way. But I am much more likely to trust that a large crowd of others who have lived through the experience of The Devil are not making shit up or are “just jealous” or seeking payback. That doesn’t mean I might not still be crazy enough to see if I can triumph over evil, even if it is likely a self-destructive act. But when I go to take the thorn out of the lion’s paw, I do not forget that a lion is a lion. Kind at heart and vulnerable as the lion might be, it still eats other animals to survive.
Shall I send over a copy of Grizzly Man?
Posted by: David Poland at July 18, 2007 12:20 PM
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)