My favorite person to read during Oscar season is David Carr. Too tired of it all to press his nose up against the glass, he sees the dirt in the corner of the panes and keeps it all in perspective.
And then, his first two Hollywood missives of the season… well, he seems in real danger of getting NYTimes-itis. What’s that? It’s when New York Times reporters start to think that they are experiencing is the reality and not, primarily, a function of the obsession of execs and publicists to get ink in “The Paper of Record” and the willing-to-take-the-sarcasm-to-get-the-column-inches seduction that makes getting worked feel like your getting some good juice.
David Carr is, as far as I can tell, still David Carr… a talent unique enough for The Paper to not quite know how to get the most out of. (The idea of others pushing stories in The Bagger space utterly misses the point. No one goes there for comprehensive coverage… they go because they love The ‘Bagger.)
But the publicists? They have figured him out a lot better than they did when he landed on the scene a few years ago. Gossip schmucks like Roger “The Weinstein Controlled” Friedman are at home on whatever couch and buffet Peggy Siegel lays out for him. But a guy like Carr shouldn’t be within a sirloin’s throw from Ms. Siegel more than 2 or 3 times a year if he wants to keep his magical perspective.
When Carr writes, “profligacy remains the default setting for the silly season,” it is a function of what rooms he is being put into, not of the reality of what guys like Peter Bart, and yes, myself, are experiencing. Congratulations to the NYT breaking new ground by selling a massive 800x350 ad to Focus which rolls out to an 850xhalf-a-page. It is very possible that NYT is one of the few ad selling orgs that is up in revenue, in no small part because they are willing to run page eaters like that. But Variety lives and dies on Oscar ads and the buys are down, without question. A great big part of that is not only studios narrowing their buying range and budgets, but there being a whole lot fewer players in the game than in years past.
Gone are WIP, New Line, and Picturehouse. DreamWorks is no longer forcing Paramount to buy extra ads just for their pictures, as they have in past years, so Rev Road buys are part of the regular Paramount/Par Vantage push. Not buying in a hurry are Fox (Australia only… happy to let Searchlight run with Slumdog), Sony (Seven Pounds will or will not emerge on its own), and Disney (even with their publicity-heavy Wall-E push). Universal, in a move that does not effect Variety, has decreed that it would not make internet buys that were not connected to Traditional Media this season. Sony Classics is not spending like they did in the year of Capote, with little shot at a BP nod and lots of shots at acting nods, with or without big ad buys. The Weinstein Company keeps rolling the start date on potential ad buys back further into December, no likely to start spending unless The Reader gets critics awards traction (and I don’t mean NBR). MGM/UA is not buying for Valkyrie. IFC is not spending much on Che’ by Oscar season standards.
That is a significant drop in players who are playing from last years and years past. The core buyers are still buying. But when studios cut budgets by 10% and 20% on their awards budgets… well, a 20% drop in ad sales at Variety can mean layoffs and lots of them. And at The Hollywood Reporter, which has been aggressively targeted for destruction by Variety, a 30% drop could mean the end of the paper as we know it.
Yes, Paramount/Par Vantage will roll it out bigtime… but even they are cutting back some. And what The Bagger seems to miss is that these “private parties” are the most cost effective expenditures of the season. Cheap compared to say, the cover of Variety. Putting talent, who they have for a limited time, in front of as many voters and journalists as possible is the goal. Keep in mind the Oscar on Rachel Weisz’s mantle, which she won exclusively by being in person for a month in Los Angeles and charming the hell out of everyone she met. (She actually is that delightful… but that’s another entry.) Kate Winslet, who gave David the worst quotes I have ever heard from her – she works hard, but she does get tired – is another fantastic person in the room, when she really likes the movie.
Oscar season, even when spending actually was more profligate, is a lot about who those resources are used. Talent availability tends to be the most limited asset. In Peggy Siegel Land, talent flows like water from an open hydrant on a hot summer day. David is watching the kids, happily dancing around in the spray, cool and giddy, while he is missing the drop in water pressure in the fourth floor of the apartment building where the 90 year old is trying to get enough hot water for her bath. (The prior similar story was when Paramount execs, who are as likely as not to be chopped up, reconfigured or sold in the next 2 years, and others doing the cash flow bravado dance, were lying through their teeth.)
It’s a sophomore thing, even in his fifth year of covering this insanity. The Carpetbagger column is no longer a lark, but rather one of the prime places – perhaps the most prime slot - that publicists in this game target. Of course, Carr knows when someone is trying to reach around to milk him. He’s no innocent. But having been around this particular hoedown for a while, I am intensely aware of that moment when publicists figure out what they think your vulnerabilities are. Much of the pushback I get, especially from colleagues, is in response to my publicly expressed anger that comes from when I feel like we in the media are being played or “managed.” Most of the people in this game are happy to be in the room, managed or not. Such is my professional arrogance… I’m not having any of that… even when the “managers” are people I genuinely like.
Of course, the tricky part is that there is a large group of publicists who don’t want anything to do with people they cannot “manage.” And I’m not talking about people who are lunatics that are untrustworthy under any and all circumstances. And I‘m not saying that everyone other than myself is a puppet. All I’m saying is that there are not a lot of people with the ego strength of a Paul Haggis or an Ed Zwick or an Anthony Minghella who want to sit down and talk in depth even after you have told them that you are not a big fan of their most recent work. I walk that line very publicly and very explicitly. But all journalists in this realm of access chasing have to deal with the issues in this regard.
But I digress…
Money will be spent. Clothes will be leant. Celebrities will fly in private jets. Ads will be sold. But the illusion that the Oscar season is not currently under the same cloud that, say, sub-prime loans were a few years ago, is just that… an illusion. Studios are cutting back. ABC is trying to cut back. The Academy is quaking in its economic boots. Variety cut back on awards season staffing at the same time they tried to raise their prices significantly. LA Times also cut back, even without being able to raise prices. Other media that has spent heavily on the season is cutting back on travel, etc.
The Bagger is the most fun because he has been looking behind the curtain over these years without much at stake. And that changes a little each year. All I am saying is, make sure that when you pull back that curtain what you see is not yourself… because that is a scary moment indeed. And not nearly as much fun.
Read the complete post at http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/archives/2008/11/bagger_goes_a_l.html