Someone Had To Do It…
… And who better than CNF?
In her piece, “And Then There Will Be None…,” Darling Nikki Finke spins the Nina Jacobson firing that she keeps insisting took all Hollywood by surprise (and where is the sisterly support of acknowledging that she “was told” about the maternity ward phone firing by reading Claudia Eller’s LAT piece ?) into a feminist issue.
(Note – Wed 10:10a – I am told…a cetain someone who wishes to remain anonymous would like it known that she failed to credit Anne Thompson and Sheigh Crabtree, who she allegedly took the information from, not Claudia Eller. Mystery Looney also now thinks that she is driving traffic to Drudge. And after hocking me to link to her on the MCN front page, she is now complaining… that I linked to her from the front page. If anyone sees a woman with binoculars hanging out around my apartment, please let me know. That is all. Sorry I can’t tell you who it is. Big secret. All of Holywood would be shocked.)
“Not since Dawn Steel learned she was ousted as president of production while on maternity leave from Paramount has a top woman movie executive found out this brutally she’d been axed in Hollywood. Even years later, when I sat down to interview her, Dawn still acknowledged…”
(But plenty of male execs have found out more brutally in the interim. Try reading about it in the paper, sis.)
“Which leads me to another thought: did these women have a better win-loss box office record than the men? Nearly all have greenlighted embarrassments as well as failures. Some were testosterone-heavy violence-fests. Others were chick flicks that not even gals wanted to see. A few were big fat blockbusters. Actually, their record seems no worse than their male counterparts. And that’s the point: Hollywood, like most industries, sets the bar higher for its woman executives: they can’t just be equal to men, they have to be better. So that may be why this woman’s world era is coming to an end. There’s no doubt the women were good. They just weren’t good enough to suit the men still in charge of them.”
Sherry Lansing’s last few years at Paramount were as bad as any man who ever lost that job (and she was replaced by a woman, whose job is threatened by another woman)… the films at DreamWorks that led to its sale can’t be much defended (and a woman – and not her husband – in charge of production at the continuing company, plus Laurie & Walter still under contract)… did Nikki forget Fox 2000 president Elizabeth Gabler… and isn
It’s kind of funny when I do my morning “blog browse” and half the blogs are talking about the other blogs and vice versa.
“Jacobson, 40, one of Hollywood’s most respected movie executives, was fired Monday morning by her boss, studio Chairman Dick Cook, when she called him from the hospital room where her partner was about to deliver their third child. Despite the record-breaking performance of Disney’s current release, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,” she was hearing rumors and wanted reassurance that her job was safe. It wasn’t.”
That sure sounds like Jacobson herself was surprised…despite rumors she’d be potentially axed last year, the fact that it didn’t happen plus Pirates 2 plus the awful timing is what has surprised many in Hollywood. Is that so hard to believe?
Ways to improve the Hot Blog:
– less Nikki Finke (for the love of god)
– more Eric Bana
– more Clive Owen
– more Heath Ledger
Anyone who expressed reservations about Shyamalan’s “scrunt” movie at the script stage obviously has her shit together. So that’s a shame.
Per Nikki’s point, things were no better for female artists or female moviegoers when more women were in charge.
“As of today, there’s only Gail Berman at Paramount, and Amy Pascal at Sony, in positions of real power.”
Only?
Even Anne Thompson, who usually plays the estrogen card, is pretty calm about it:
http://reporter.blogs.com/risky/
btw, am I late to the game or did the LA Times just out Nina?
You’re late to the game, Palmy. She’s been very openly out.
And Bucket… Nikki was actually on top of this breaking story. And I am pleased that she might be the condom on a non-story of this being an anti-woman thing.
I really have been trying to keep blog-on-blog browbeating off the Hot Blog… but I will have to try harder. It is the bain of our little part of the business right now.
“That
Life is filled with ironies…
I do hear you.
What is this strange obsession Dave has with Nikki? Could it be… oh, I don’t know… maybe…. suppressed sexual desire? If so, don’t be ashamed, Dave: Nikki somtimes has that effect on men. Whenever she walked down the hall at The Dallas Morning News, she frequently left grown men reduced to panting adolescents in her wake. I mean, you remember Gregory Hines and his tongue in Mel Brooks’ “History of the World”? Yes, that bad.
You’re an odd man, Joe.
Hey man, I’m not the one with the Nikki Finke obsession. I mean, geez, you’d almost think she was Rachel McAdams.
What you guys seem to keep failing to grasp, that I believe is David’s ire is – “Borderline Nikki” has much more influence and cultural capital here in Los Angeles than many would like to admit.
Frankly, because she outcrazies the crazies that run this freakshow of an industry and that scares the shit out of them.
The fact that she used to be hot, makes it all the worse.
When Dave is posting about Nikki he is really posting some inside baseball shit. If you don’t want to understand or hear how someone’s personal biases and media manipulation can have an effect on the content and business practices of these conglomerated companies – well then go read Wells site, where you can discuss how much a man’s baldness affects his box office.
Nobody calls Nikki on her shit. Kudos to Dave for having the balls to do it.
I think, since you asked, that you need to spend less time worrying about Nikki Finke, both her blog, and the traffic it generates.
David, I’m really not sure what point you’re trying to make here. On the one hand your innitial post seems to attack Nikki Finke for what you call ‘spinning this into a feminist issue,’ while you on the other hand follow that up by posting about how you’re pleased that she is showing that this is not an “anti-woman thing.” Well, which is it?
If you read through Nikki’s entire piece you quickly realize that she isn’t spinning this into a feminist story about the Nina case so much as she’s simply using the oppurtunity to point out the changing status of female exetuvies in Hollywood.
In fact she goes on to say that many, if not all, of the women who are no longer at the top did in fact greenlight a lot of bad movies, box office dissapointments and outright flops, just like many of their male counterparts. Her point is just the basic idea that women executives are held to a higher standard than executives who are men. Given that Hollywood is a business dominated by men whether it be writers, producers, actors or executives this really isn’t a crazy assertion. So why all the condescension?
You write, “But plenty of male execs have found out more brutally in the interim. Try reading about it in the paper, sis.” You seems to ignore a basic point here, you can’t simply compare men and women as if they are coming from the same background when in fact women are professionally disadvantaged and there is a strong history in which women are seen as unfit because of biology, pregnancy, taking care of children…etc. Surely, then you can see why she mentions what happened to Dawn Steel. It’s a question about the difference in context for men and women. And as Nikki herself writes, Nina was the one to call Cook from the hospital not the other way around and Nina was the one to ask about her job.
Furthermore, this following comment, “And if Nina Jacobson were to replace someone at, say, Warner Bros
My point, Hejla, is that there is no indication of this event marking a change in the opportunities for women in this industry. There is no indication that this switch was in any way about gender – or for those who have thought about it, sexual preference.
And I find that keeping this kind of count – which is not written about nearly enough regarding women directors or non-caucasian execs, by Nikki, me or everyone else – is divisive and distracts from the real issues.
Personally, I felt I could feel the angry subtext in Claudia Eller’s story… but she never crossed the line. In addition, Nikki’s piece was factually inaccurate.
The count is, really, two women down. Both went down to men. Both went down to marketing execs. And that shift is far more significant to me that the issues of women vs men.
But really, I posted this not to focus on Nikki, but to elicit a discussion with people like you, Helja, who may disagree, but have something to say. I have to acknowledge that a bunch of readers see nothing but a Nikki issue here and recognize the significance, but that was not the purpose of this entry.
Will someone just post a real picture of Nikki Finke somewhere and get it over with?
Her name may sound really hot and sexy and porn star like. But that she is not.
How do you know that? Alls I’m saying is I’d like a peek!