Can you say “hatchet job?” I know for sure that Premiere magazine can. It had to be the phrase of the day when it decided to print its story, “Flirting With Disaster,” on alleged sexual and drug-related misconduct at New Line Cinema. I am often disgusted with the state of entertainment journalism, but usually it’s because we throw softballs in exchange for access to the talent that sells magazines, newspapers and TV shows. (And yes, some Web sites.) This time, it’s the opposite. What was Premiere thinking when it ran the results of John Connelly‘s eight-month “investigation” which added up to little more than a handful of gossipy accusations by unnamed sources that any reporter working this beat on a regular basis could have come up with over a three-day weekend? I can only guess they were thinking New Line wasn’t a major advertiser and that they were losing ground to Entertainment Weekly every month, so running an article that would get people talking about Premiere again was worth cheap-shotting the mini-major. Could that be it?
The funny thing is, I don’t even dispute the facts of the article. It could all be true. If it is, I feel terrible for the victims of sexual harrassment, but I’ve been doing this for a while, and I understand the subtlety of skewing an article that my editors might want to be negative. Premiere took every opportunity to increase the heat. Every turn of phrase that could tip the scales to the negative was made. The actual accusations were spread through story to make the events pervasive, rather than, even if they are true, isolated incidents, and the magazine quickly runs out of ways to tell the reader that the quotes are from unnamed sources. You have to ask yourself, “Why?”
The feature starts with the alleged story of a drunken 1992 party in Snowmass, Colo. A female executive of unknown name or rank, hanging out with a hard-drinking Michael Lynne through the night, says (through an alleged friend) that Lynne made an overly aggressive move on her, including an open-mouthed kiss. The way the story is written, it hints that more happened, describing it as “what she considered as one of the worst nightmares of her life,” but it doesn’t say that anymore than an unwanted kiss occurred. Not at all. It just lets the unspoken innuendo linger. The unnamed exec eventually, according to Premiere‘s eight-month investigation, “removed herself from Lynne’s inner corporate circle.” What does that mean? It sounds pretty damned bad for Lynne, but what is the specific accusation? What was the specific outcome? (The article doesn’t even make it clear whether she’s left the company.) And how much did that drunken night in Snowmass have to do with it? You can’t answer those questions from reading this article. You can guess at the answers, but that’s the evil of printed innuendo.
Premiere also tells the oft-told story about Michael DeLuca‘s semi-public sex act at Arnold Rifkin‘s Christmas party. While Premiere is covering its legal flanks by saying that DeLuca and his clearly consenting date didn’t know they were performing for a crowd, they print a comment from an unnamed producer who gets in the cheap shot that “maybe [DeLuca] thought it was a New Line party, not an Arnold Rifkin party.” Tee-hee. This would be called catty gossip, not journalism.
The other two specific claims of misconduct also happen in 1992. One has Robert Shaye found “passed out” on a couch. The quote from yet another unnamed source says Shaye was “sleeping off a drunk.” Yet Premiere chose to use the phrase “passed out,” which presumes a knowledge of the event that even their “source” doesn’t claim. The other follows “the incident at Snowmass,” and it again takes place on the road. This time at Cannes. Again, an accusation of a heavy come-on by Lynne, including a kiss (no tongue description on this one) and a rejection. Premiere leaves it with “although though no overt threat was made, the message became clear shortly thereafter that she should look for some other employment.” Are they accusing other New Line staffers of being complicitous in the illegal act of sexual harassment or not? These are the facts that these kinds of serious accusations demand, gang. Innuendoes don’t cut it when you are making these accusations. Premiere offers none.
In all, Premiere‘s eight-month investigation came up with two specific accusations of sexual harassment (both five-plus-years old and both within months of one another), one specific incident of dangerous drinking (falling asleep on a couch, also five years ago) and one mistakenly public act of consensual sex (not with an employee). Some story.
Of course, Premiere fills the pages with plenty more not-for-attribution shots at the New Line execs. A “former producing partner” who claims that he was mocked by New Line execs says, “I’ll never work with those bastards again.” Yet, he doesn’t have the cajones to use his name. Shaye is “his own worst enemy ” and “a tragic figure,” according to two other unnamed sources. Another person, identified only as “a former insider,” cleverly comments, “Women don’t leave New Line; they get carried out in body bags.” Is there any indication in this story that there is a real reason for this kind of extreme comment? No. In fact, right after Premiere quotes yet another unnamed former exec as saying, “There wasn’t a woman’s ass in my department that hadn’t been grabbed by Bob Shaye.” Premiere finally admits, “Not one of the women contacted by Premiere says she felt pressured to acquiesce or suffered any repercussions for turning down [Shaye’s] advances.” That must include the many unnamed sources. So why is Premiere burying that bit of reality, which must be a shock after reading the litany of accusations, after so much gossipy bile? Because they have no story and no controversy of they lead with it, I suppose.
There are more cheap shots, but that’s what they are. DeLuca supposedly giving out psychedelics to willing staffers on a retreat. Unnamed people “concerned” about DeLuca’s hard partying. (Concerned friends don’t go public to Premiere.) A producer complaining that Shaye was trying to have sex with Ruth Vitale with zero context, zero effort to prove the point and zero effort to get a denial from Vitale! It would be real journalism to find a studio or agency without a single exec against whom these kind of accusations cannot be made.
Premiere uses quotes from at least 24 unnamed sources in its story. There may be a dozen named sources in the story. None support any of the serious accusations. The worst of the attributed comments suggests a frat-like atmosphere. The horror. If there is a serious case of sexual harassment in the halls, offices or hotel suites of New Line, I would happily support any legitimate effort to expose and stop such behavior. But reading the Premiere piece is like reading a bit of red-baiting. If you have an Anita Hill or even a Paula Jones, run a story. If you have something on Michael DeLuca having a work problem because of his supposed partying or public sex acts, run a story. If you have a story on problems at a studio that is currently in trouble (take your pick!) due to drugs or sex instead of one escaping from trouble in the last year, run a story. But, if you spend eight months trying to gather dirt on a studio without regard to any of your sources’ willingness to go on the record and all you come up with are two five-year-old harassment accusations told by “a friend in whom the executive confided” and “a producer in whom this executive had confided at the time — and who spoke to Premiere with the executive’s approval,” hold the presses and stick to puff pieces on Uma Thurman and the close-up photos of Catherine Zeta Jones’ bare back and mouth. Some days I’m embarrassed to call myself an entertainment journalist.

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