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September 08, 2009
Army Archerd...
What can one say about Army Archerd? He WAS the Old School.
He was the only daily columnist in the film business when I decided there was a hole in the big picture and became the second one just over 12 years ago. The Hot Button was my response, in many ways, to Variety, starting with Archerd. I grew up reading Variety. I loved reading Variety. Army was always right there, telling us what the glam crowd was up to, floating ideas that needed floating, loving Hollywood like no one else.
From reading this man for years, I knew things I wanted to be when I "grew up" and things I didn't want to be. But I learned to respect the man who wrote many things I would not be interested in writing myself. The same is true of George Christy, who is celebrating his 25th luncheon here in Toronto this weekend, and who got railroaded out of The Hollywood Reporter by an overzealous Anita Busch. Yes, he was blurring the line. But he worked for a trade that blurred that line every day. To give Anita credit, she wanted to break that mold. But Christy was an unnecessary casualty... a relic of the way the industry operated for decades... and in that, charming in all of his glorious eccentricities, including the ones that were journalistically iffy.
But I digress...
Archerd was, indeed, a blogger before the word "blog" was invented. He wasn't about venom. He was about syrup. But you know, that is the secret truth of most of those who work the venom side. They are in the business of scoops and filling column inches... and no one does that on rage alone. And Army Archerd did it without irony. Will we ever see that from a journalist again?
And by the way... by all accounts, he was also a very good and kind man. God bless anyone who can walk away from decades in this business and still have that said of him or her.
Posted by dpoland at September 8, 2009 11:42 PM
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