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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Sunday, April 19th, 2009 - 4 Comments »
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UPDATE: Battle Of The Gossips

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!
Has the world gone INSANE?!?!?!
Is ANY sense of shame gone?
3:56p – (Un)Trustworthy Trades: Rumor-Monger
“(Mike Fleming) today posted the rumor that film label Fox Atomic may be closing. No matter if it turns out to be true: this is irresponsible.”
5:19p – EXCLUSIVE: Fox Atomic Shutting Down
“I’ve just confirmed that Fox Atomic will cease to operate as an independent production division.”
Are any of you who defend this NUTCASE as a legitimate journalist paying any attention? Are the studios paying attention?
Are you people who feed the gorgon getting it? Will you ever open your eyes?
And let me note this before the apologists start sharpening their swords, as usual… I have been in business for more than six years. My business hired more people in the last eight months while others have been laying people off. We are not a business the size of Variety. But we were not a business the size of Inside either… and I still have a thriving business and Inside has been out of business longer than MCN has existed. My job is not directly threatened by Nikki Finke, unlike many other people in this game who have a boss to answer to and quarterlies to worry about.
This is an issue of principle, not personal animus. Nikki has been aggressively abusive to me in private conversations all of this town, but so what… she can get in line.
But this is where we are… people will not think past their gossip-loving brain-dicks or thrilling at the prospect of building a monster that they think they can control and use to their own ends, as though the trades and feature-laden magazines were not full of enough opportunities to be whored out… and as a result this whack job without a moral compass feels comfy writing that someone else is a piece of shit for running gossip at 4p and then claims the same story as an exclusive at 5:30p.
“Shitty to report rumors when no one has been told.” Apparently, everyone was notified in that hour and half, right?
PS – The follow-up to this was The Strike Queen running excerpts from a 4p Variety story as her own news at 4:40… and then running an “Update” that was also right out of the Variety story.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!
People have to stop whining about The Evil Internet and deal with the crap that is right under our noses. The medium is the medium, but it is individuals who poison the well for everyone else.
Love Nikki all you like… but let’s not delude ourselves into believing, for even a second, that this has anything to do with journalism.
==================
4p Sunday – Little has changed in a month away from the daily journo-whoredom grind.
This afternoon, La Finke is SCREECHING about Variety’s Michael Fleming “scooping” her on the official closing of Fox Atomic… but she knew… she just didn’t tell… because even though she runs true and false gossip on a regular basis, she is a virgin media princess when someone else beats her to it.
Stupider even… Fox Atomic has been all but officially shut down for a year already. The division of the division has had their name on product for three years… and released just six movies, including a whopping total of ZERO last year. Woo Hoo!!!
Was there hope that the Peter Rice perk division (for not going to Paramount) might turn itself around under Debbie Liebling? Sure. Then Miss March made under $5 million and 12 Rounds did $11.3m. Game over. (Did you think that a mid-September release for Jennifer’s Body was a sign of belief in the product? Did it occur to you that Juno started its run at film fests in August ’07, five months after production ended… and that Jennifer’s Body finished shooting more than 11 months ago? Should I mention that I Love You Beth Cooper finished shooting over a year ago as well… and that the Heroes phenomenon is over, making a Hayden Pants sell brutal on any outlet other than Perez Hilton?)
Fox Atomic has been a walking corpse, much as Paramount Vantage now is, for well over a year… and this fighting over who gets to pronounce the corpse dead first – and Fleming did a nice job of making it sound a lot better a situation than it has been – is pathetic… especially from someone whose primary ability to “scoop” is based on running rumors of who is being fired next and then squealing “Toldja” like the pig (moral, not physical) she is.
And those of you in the talent community that think she is your friend, does it bother you at all that she slams the work of people who write, direct, and act in movies… that she hasn’t even seen? Fake journalism… not even good gossip.
Maybe we should ask Patrick Goldstein what the kids in his neighborhood think? Or even better… maybe Slate can hire some freelancer to extol the virtues of media piracy because that’s what he wants.
My city screams…

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4 Comments »

4 Responses to “UPDATE: Battle Of The Gossips”

  1. anghus says:
    April 19, 2009 at 7:57 pm

    Chapter 47: In the Finke of the Night
    By David Halbringer Poland
    She sat in front of her computer, hunched over as usual. No doubt the amount of time she spent online was having an impact on her posture. Her skin had taken on a gray palor.
    So many of her posts were filled with anger and lies. Her ascension into power slowly drove me mad. But there was something there, underneath the thinning hair and sunken eyes. There was passion. And i realized after three long years that it wasn’t rage i was feeling towards Nikki, but a yearning to be with her. To rub the knots from her carpal tunnel laden arms. I wanted to take her from the dark and dingy condo where she sat channeling that awful feeling of inadequicy that constantly drove her every action.
    If only i could get her out of there and into a movie theater. There i would be able to rekindle that love for film she once had. But first, i would have to reconcile my own feelings. The first step towards admitting my love for her would be to realize that all these angry posts i had made was not an effort to malign, but to merely get her attention.
    Next
    Chapter 48: With this Blog, I Thee Wed

  2. Jeffrey Boam's Doctor says:
    April 19, 2009 at 8:35 pm

    DHD vs MCN

  3. Wrecktum says:
    April 19, 2009 at 10:10 pm

    I thought Fox Atomic was shut down two years ago. Shows how much I know.

  4. jesse says:
    April 20, 2009 at 7:50 am

    This is sort of a side topic, I guess, but what’s with saying that of COURSE Atomic’s movies are in trouble, just look at their release dates?! Can I get a “huh?” there? I get the general idea that if a studio is high on a movie, they want it out there faster, not to hold onto it for months. But on the other hand: Dave, are you really comparing the Jennifer’s Body release with Juno? I know it’s Cody’s follow-up to that film, but it’s a horror-comedy — does that really warrant comparison to the pre-selling of Juno at awards-baiting film festivals?! Horror movies seem to do especially well in January, February, September, and October. It doesn’t seem like a danger sign to me that this one is, indeed, coming out in September.
    I’m not saying it won’t be a hard sell, because horror-comedy doesn’t seem to do well very often. Or even that the movie will be good, though I’m definitely interested in it. But saying that obviously the product is weak because it’s releasing a horror movie in September seems like kind of a stretch, eh?
    Same goes for I Love You, Beth Cooper. Doesn’t a summer release actually indicate some confidence, even if it’s been finished for awhile?
    Again, this isn’t really about Atomic — I just find it weird to pre-dismiss movies based on release dates that aren’t even that weak

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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