By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
21 Weeks To Oscar – Carlos & Joey & Cash, Oh My! (Part 1 of 2)
Lots of disclosure here… sorry, but it’s necessary…
I have been a non-participating member of Broadcast Film Critics Association for, I think, 5 years now.
I took fire from one of Carlos de Abreu’s many fake storefronts, HollywoodNews.com, in 2010, when they “investigated” a 2007 screening series Movie City News did in conjunction with BFCA by looking at BFCA tax documents which showed that BFCA “loaned” MCN $27,600. What the “reporter” was told by both me and Joey Berlin in separate conversations was that this money was paid out for a theater rental which we mutually decided to make an MCN event and not a BFCA event in 2007. Movie City News collected the cost of said rental from the studios involved and paid back BFCA back in 2008. The situation was positioned as something nefarious, as Carlos and his henchman (formerly good guy journalist Bob Welkos) tried to take me down personally as “Crackpot of the Month.” I believe this was the only time they gave out this “award.” Like most things Carlos, it was just a ruse towards an unstated end.
I was part of Carlos’ group of “consultants” or his “committee” for the Hollywood Film Awards in years past. This consisted of an occasional phone call and a couple lunches a season at either Orso or Crustacean for which he paid. The purpose of the contact was to solicit opinions about who would be the likely Oscar nominees in the year to come so he could then go solicit/choose them for his award show.
Carlos also asked me repeatedly to run his Hollywood Film Festival, which was and has been another false front, cover for the awards show on which he made his money. However, he wanted me to do it for no money and with virtually no budget. I tried, for a couple of years, to get LA Film Critics interested in taking over Carlos’ festival. They had almost no money, but were trying desperately to create a platform to promote films they felt were being lost to the distribution machine. But their position on Carlos was extreme and full of rage. They would have nothing to do with him. And they were right.
As years passed, Carlos stopped being funny to me and his con started making me sick to my stomach.
How could I write about what a con the Hollywood Foreign Press Association was – and is – with its eighty-something barely-employed writers puffing up with self-importance and raping studio coffers all year long while showing no semblance of journalistic integrity whatsoever, and be charmingly amused by Carlos who made up awards, chose winners by himself in negotiations with distributors, with no other purpose than to line his own pockets? I was being a hypocrite. So I stopped engaging. And Carlos has hated me for it – as he hates anyone who tells the truth about him – ever since.
I am old enough to remember the Old Hollywood way of things. I felt, for instance, that George Christy was a wonderful example of this. Anita Busch and David Robb felt he was embarrassment to entertainment journalism and worked hard to eventually force Bob Dowling to dismiss him from The Hollywood Reporter. What was his crime? He took up the back inside page of THR with pictures and florid writing about stupid Hollywood parties. And, in a long established con, acted in movies one or twice a year to get health insurance. That crime, which still feels rather benign to me, and Anita’s obsession with it, got him fired.
Likewise, I have had an have a soft spot for Joey Berlin and his work at the BFCA.
When I was actively involved with BFCA – through these screening series (which John Horn, then at the LA Times, also used to lie about me and the revenues from the series in the LA Times without ever interviewing me on the subject) – I got to know Joey. Good guy. He was still the muscle behind infamous quote whore Jeff Craig, who is a real person, but who doesn’t see movies. He has a series of junket people feed him opinions… which are almost always positive. The resulting output is Sixty Second Previews, which is syndicated across the country on radio. Joey was and is a hustler. But not a liar. Even then, he was drawing a salary of, I believe, $75k a year to run BFCA, when none of the other critics organizations were paying their presidents. (This may have changed in years since. I have been more concerned about the macro grotesquerie than the micro for years now.)
Pushing BFCA onto television was Joey’s primary goal at the time and continues to be, it seems, his primary focus for the organization. I am pretty sure that the year I got more involved was the last one in which there was no TV, just the event at the Beverly Hills Hotel, which had started to bring out the biggest names in the awards season. This lead to television and a lot more money in the pot.
I withdrew my efforts (and my vote) from BFCA a couple years later, as BFCA continued to expand its roster as the job of “film critic” in traditional media (aka, paying media) became an endangered species. While I was out making lists of the dwindling number of full-time critics jobs at the time, BFCA, which was an organization of junketeers, not of film critics, was expanding. Done. But I didn’t want to embarrass the group or Joey, so I just withdrew quietly, without informing anyone. I know it is impossible to imagine someone making a decision without blogging about it… but it happened.
I knew that Joey was taking a producer’s role and surely a salary. But he was also creating profile, opportunity, and even paying jobs for journalists/critics. BFCA was and is a more legitimate platform – even with fewer than 25 of what I would call real film critics on its roster – than HFPA or clearly The Carlos Awards. I felt no need to take him down. And there was no doubt that I could have taken advantage. As DP/30 was in its early stages, BFCA was offering money for pilot projects in a relationship with the Reelz cable channel. I didn’t get in line for the support or the handout.
The reason I am writing this today is that Carlos and his employee, Robert Welkos, went after Joey Berlin personally today. And there is information worth unpacking there. The concern is legit, especially for BFCA members. But when a con man goes after a hustler, there are always more questions left unanswered than not.
We are a little under a month from Dick Clark Productions’ version of The Carlos Awards running on CBS. The con man leap-frogged over the hustler on this one.
I have no idea what DCP and CBS have in mind to try to make Carlos’ one-man show appear more legitimate. Perhaps they feel no need for legitimacy in the current circus atmosphere of movie awards, following the lead of such “Come show up and win an award” shows as The American Comedy Awards, created by the legendary George Schlatter to fill a void and to make some money. They already moved the event from October to November, surely because the distributors told them to do so.
You have to figure that Carlos will personally pocket no less than a million dollars a year for creating this monstrosity. If it’s a hit, that number (whatever it is) will multiply. It is far from inconceivable that he will be making $5 million or more annually off of the show, which is based on his willingness to create something from absolutely nothing. Carlos doesn’t even know enough to have his own opinions. He is the cover of a magazine, writ larger… just as available for purchase to the highest bidder.
As for the BFCA… I am still unpacking this. First, I am seeking confirmation that the tax return, as stated, is accurate. And a response. And I am pained just trying to get my head around the numbers, talking to others who are associated, but not on anyone’s side of this issue. And that is why there will be a Part 2 to this piece. Because I am committed to speaking to this… it would be wrong to bury my head in the ground (or in my distaste for Carlos and his scummy ways), but I am not ready to have a strong opinion yet.
