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I think this will be bad for both Revvy Road and The Reader, good for Doubt. the two R movies with Winslet won't be able to get any press without this affair also being mentioned and that stink will follow both films all through awards season, making it that much harder for either film to gain traction in a crowded race. probably bodes for this years R.Road turning out like last year's R.Road turned out, awards-wise, maybe better with a couple crafty noms.

The vitriol here makes no sense, David. The story is the story. It happened. Who cares whether Rudin obviously went through Goldstein to get it out there? There is no editorializing in the piece, no apparent agenda.

Sometimes I feel like you see journalistic ineptitude for its own sake. You came back to this piece a full day later when no one bit the "typing monkeys" remark. Why?

Oh, Kris... you want to be a “real” journalist... get some standards.

And learn how to count hours.

The story was never as important a story as it was reported to be. It was driven exclusively by self-interested players serving up gossip. Journalists gave up their responsibility to think past the whispered press releases. And the result is a series of 180 degree turns in the non-journalistic soap opera of "Who's On Top?"

It's ALL be editorializing because it's ALL been 100% biased. When, as a journalist, you give your imprimatur to someone's position by publishing what they tell you without working it for any real sense of truth, you are editorializing.

Wake up.

As for the secondary piece, it is not insignificant that the town’s top gossip of the moment hung a source out to dry and that the source went on to another person who was willing to run their spin on the story as news without exposing them. That is the closest thing to news in all of this. Point to Patrick in the, "I wanna be popular" battle.

Your standards are way too low. You’re a smart guy, but you still think it’s personal. It’s not personal. It’s never been personal. You want to work for US Magazine, then this is the stuff that passes for news. You want to be a good journalist, then learn to get past what turns you on, because what turns you on IS personal, not professional journalism.

Many of us walk the line these days. But if we forget where the line is, we are lost for sure.

You're WAY off base here. There's no way to even come at this because I can already see the rebuttal staring me in the face, and it's off base too.

But I'd love to ask your insight into how you'd have handled this differently. To me, this particular example has nothing to do with standards. Nor have I made it personal, yet your immediate reaction is that I have.

Really weird, David. Really weird.

By the way, Scott Rudin taking his name off a movie IS a big story, no matter how small you'd like it to be. But the day I read positive copy in here in reaction to news broken elsewhere is the day pigs fly.

How angry will DP get at me for suggesting that most of what he writes is not journalism as much as it is meta-journalism?

I have no idea what you think you know here, Kris... what I am "WAY off base" about.

How do I handle it when I get these calls? It's real simple. I ask hard questions and I seek the truth of WHY something is happening, as opposed to blindly printing that something is happening without having any real idea of why. Who, what, where, and when mean NOTHING without why.

And Scott taking his name off the movie means nothing to anyone who isn't looking for something to write about. Do you think that the quality of the movie, cutting for 3 more weeks, is going to be significantly different? (This is not to say that SR's opinion is not valuable, but he has been offering opinion to Daldry for months... if one epiphany is missed, how significant do you think it will be?)

Do you think that if the movie is good that people will dislike it because of Rudin withdrawing his name over a December turf war?

Do you think that more than 5% of the ticket buying public knows that Scott exists... with due respect to his great ambitions and skills? (I would ask the same of all but a half dozen producers in this era.)

Yes, the withdrawal is now news. But context still matters... and that reporting is not being done by many people, certainly not Patrick. And if you think talking to 42 West means you KNOW what happened... well...

Again, weird. And you somehow miss my point about what is and isn't a big deal here. The quality of the movie isn't the only news quotient here. It's not like Rudin has walked away from many films of this caliber.

Maybe you should stop making this into something it isn't instead of accusing others of as much.

I wouldn't be so quick to write off "Reservation Road," Locke.
It has terrific source material, an enormously gifted director (Sam Mendes) and Leo DiCaprio reuniting with his equally chameleonic "Titanic" costar in a performance that's already generating rock-solid buzz. And there's the currently voguish "Mad Men" vibe working for it.
Plus, it doesn't carry the Weinstein Company's instant-flop stench.
Any Weinstein movie is automatically guilty until proven innocent these days. I'd be a lot more worried about "The Reader."

Duh! Of course I meant "REVOLUTIONARY Road."
Stayed up late watching the Troopergate reports and am working on four hours of sleep.

All I wanna know is, what's a "parking lit attendant"?

Your degree of insight is noted, Kris.

Are you trying to convince me, blog readers or yourself of your/this story's importance?

Of course, the "importance" of the story isn't really my point at all.

The line between giossip and news is getting blurrier and too many people simply don't care. And how we get the information is not a non-issue, anymore than it was with Valerie Plame. And the Traditional Media spreading spin as news is something you and anyone else who claims to have integrity should be very, very worried about.

As hysterically fun as Glenn picking out a typo is, he lost his job to the mindset that has now replaced critics with gossips as well... Patrick Goldstein running "reviews" from Avi Lerner and the kids in the neighboorhood.

You always get all holier-tnan-thou on me when I call someone out on something you already decided is important, Kris. But if you want to fight my position, fight my position... don't run this lame scam that it's all about me and who "broke" the story (see: phone rings... principle in the story tells the writer what to write... writer writes it because they learned in journo school that a principle who leaks must have a vested interest in not lying... excapt, in a case like this, we already "reported" the first two sets of lies and now we are "reporting" the third.).

Come on, David. As typos go, that was a pretty funny one.

And believe me, I understand just what it was I lost my job to. It was, in part, what you're talking about=exactly. But it had as much to do with a mindset that has no conception of what you're talking about as much as anything else. Don't get me wrong, sir—I admire your passion. And I understand what gets you steamed about the old boy network of sources and journalists and whatnot. But let's try and take a look at the forest for a minute. It's in flames. And picking fights about the putative significance of Scott Rudin's non-credit on "The Reader"...well, I suppose it's a form of diversion, at the very least.

God save us all.

Parking lit attendant = A English Lit grad who goes to Hollywood intending to work as a scriptwriter, but winds up parking cars?

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