One has to figure that Nikki Finke reported the vast majority of her wet, sloppy kiss of bile on the lips of Arianna Huffington before The Huffington Post launched this morning.
Did she actually wait to read the first day’s materials before writing: “This Web-site venture is the sort of failure that is simply unsurvivable, because of all the advance publicity touting its success as inevitable. Her blog is such a bomb that it
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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
It’s very self important. Will she put the effort and diligence that others put into their sites? Probably not. Thats why its going to fail. But Finke can’t wait til its more than a day old before she bashes it? I sense some jealousy.
nikki is out for blood on that. what happend dave? she get left off the blog roster on that site?
I stopped reading Nikki Finke after she spoiled the ending of “Million Dollar Baby” without so much as the slightest gesture of warning to readers. (I can’t even remember what she was writing about now in that column, just that she all but ruined a really good movie for me, for no good reason at all.) This indifference to quality is a sign of a Hollywood reporter who has lost interest in movies themselves, and now cares only about showbiz status and gossip. Which is a shame, because Finke’s obviously smart and well-connected and capable of writing well. But all she seems to want to be is the snarkiest of them all…
On the NYTimes, you make a good point contra blogs as part of their structure, but let me offer this anecdote as a counter-example. A friend of mine helps edit their science section. When I last saw him, I asked him (in light of Jayson Blair and Judith Miller) how much fact-checking he does on stories. He said except in unusual circumstances, he relies on the writers he works with to do their own fact-checking; mostly, he works on assignments and co-ordination with other departments (such as graphics) and the big picture questions. This might sound alarming, but in fact that is how reporting mostly works. And it’s not a bad thing, for the most part, because the vast majority of reporters, especially at a place like the NYTimes, are honest and hard-working and not easily duped. What’s more, the pace at any daily tends to be so brutal that no editor could possibly fact-check every fact in every story even if he wanted. What’s more, the NYTimes has a number of great reporters (like Andrew Revner on climate change) who can only write on crucial topics when their stories reach a certain level of newsworthiness. This focus on newsworthiness is part of what makes the NYTimes a great newspaper, especially when an egomaniac like Howell Raines isn’t screwing with it, but it does mean that the vast amounts of light that Revner could shed on this on-going issue is mostly shut off. If he was allowed (and wanted) to start a blog on the issue, he could quite possibly make a real difference in how well this story is reported, which at present is not well at all.
the ny times will never get back its credibility after that fiasco.
The Arianna site will have to have better writers and better stories for it to succeed. Right now its like a poor cousin to Jeff Wells Hollywood Elsewhere.
wells is completely hit or miss.
Wells is notorious for pissing out spoilers without warning when he doesn’t like a movie.
If you’re interested, the Nikki Finke piece led to an internal LA Weekly fight between Marc Cooper and Ms. Finke.
His first piece is here – http://marccooper.typepad.com/marccooper/2005/05/huff_puff_and_p.html
The ongoing saga is here – http://marccooper.typepad.com/marccooper/2005/05/nikki_finkeum_r.html
I think Wells is decent some of the time. He puts too much of his own thoughts in his pieces. Theres nothing wrong with it. It just clouds his judgements sometimes. And the guy hates comic movies.