By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
On embargoes, cricketeering and spoilage: a roundup
On the same weekend as the Chicago Tribune’s film critic Michael Wilmington tucks it in after 14 years (after a recent demotion or dimunition in duties), there have been other conversations about changes in the reviewing scene, including an overview by Salt Lake Tribune movie cricket Sean P. Means about how embargoes on review dates affect his job; the New York Times’ public editor Clark Hoyt finds defenses for that paper’s review of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” several days before the publisher’s release date, and Village Voice writer Nathan Lee weighs in wittily on spoilers on the Times op-ed page. Means alludes to the recent fracases about why some established writers are offered opportunities younger, or newer rivals do not get. “[A]n embargo is a big sledgehammer being held over my head by a movie studio – and the ever-present threat that it will strike me down,” Means writes, while mentioning the Baltimore Sun-New York Times decisions to review “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” before its official pub date. Times public editor writes, “Rick Lyman, the books and theatre editor, said, “Our feeling is that once a book is offered up for sale at any public, retail outlet, and we purchase a copy legally and openly, we are free to review it.”I’ve heard suspicions when The Times has reviewed previous books before their official release dates that the newspaper has some bookstore somewhere wired to slip it copies ahead of time. Lyman said that isn’t the case. He said “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” was purchased at a chain store in Manhattan’s Chelsea district by an employee of The New York Times Company who was shopping for something else and saw the book for sale. The Times has purchased other news making books ahead of their release dates at other stores in New York and other cities.” Hoyt asserts, “I think it’s important to remember that there was never a contract or an agreement between The Times and Rowling or her publisher. The publisher set the release date unilaterally as part of the brilliant marketing campaign that has propelled the entire Harry Potter phenomenon. Neither The Times nor any other newspaper had an obligation to help enforce the release date. If anything, Kakutani’s favorable review and the controversy around its timing has just created more buzz and anticipation – if more is possible – on the eve of the launch of what is sure to be this year’s best seller.” But back to Means and the world of the movie cricket. While there is a gentleman’s agreement between most publicists and journalists about what runs where and when, in order to insure future access, Means writes that “movie critics like [himself don’t] have a contract with movie studios. But the studios do have the power over what movies they screen, and to whom… The weapon the studios have to keep critics in line is the threat that embargo breakers would not get invited to future screenings… There is a caste system in all this. National critics, like Roger Ebert or anyone at The New York Times, may get to see a major film before a regional critic (like me). On the other hand, I and my counterpart at the Deseret Morning News, Jeff Vice, because of the size of our readership, often get invited to screenings while other Utah critics are shut out. As with so much in modern life, though, the Internet is changing the rules of the game.” More Potter byplay follows, in the form of the gun-jumping on the latest Potter movie, but Means concludes, “Some studios are cracking down hard on embargo breakers, particularly those critics who primarily publish online. It’s all a power game – both the critics and the studios want to control the flow of information, and each group needs the other to get what it wants.” Less insider-baseball is Village Voicer Nathan Lee’s revelation of a cricket’s inner vandal in a consideration on the Times’ op-ed page about a reviewers’ responsiblities regarding spoilers: “As the final volume of J. K. Rowling’s series goes on sale and Potter-mania goes through the roof, I wonder what would happen if some budding book critic, one of those lucky few to mistakenly receive an early copy in the mail, entered a bookstore… and spoiled the most anticipated finale in the history of anticipation with a shout: “Harry Potter dies!” My guess is he’d be instantly killed.” Lee notes he doesn’t know the real ending of the book. “Personally, I couldn’t care less about the fate of the neurotic boy wizard. Professionally — as a film critic who might be assigned to review the movie version someday — I hope he croaks.
I’m a sucker for bleak endings… I’m that terrible thing, the film critic armed with spoilers who isn’t afraid to use them… [T]here isn’t a single frame of The Number 23 I wouldn’t mock in great, guiltless detail for the simple reason that I find it extremely silly… I’m confident that my readership does not include humorless scholars of the Joel Schumacher oeuvre. To spoil or not to spoil involves larger questions about the role of the critic, the needs of the reader and the changes to both caused by the scale, speed and outlaw spirit of Web-based commentary… Reviewing a marginal art film in the pages of an alternative weekly presents a specific set of problems, but the same issues arise for the book reviewer of a newspaper or an essayist for Artforum: Who is the audience and what are their expectations? How do I best convey what they need to know? Does the work of other critics modify what I can “safely” discuss? Am I writing for those who already know the work or am I attempting to cultivate a new audience? How long should a work be available to the public before the question of spoilers is irrelevant? … The critic who says too much isn’t the problem. The problem is that we don’t trust critics to say exactly what we need to know.” More lucidity at the link.]