Movie Reviews from
By John Ruch
© 1997 CM Media, Inc.
High-Pressure Zombiefication
of Movie Critics (column, 1997)
Last week I harped about certain obscure quasi-critics who’ve made a career providing movie ads with meaninglessly positive quotes (“The action film of the year!”).
The Nov. 27 issue of the public relations newsletter “Media News” detailed some of the creepier ways major studios try to put words into (or take them out of) critics’ mouths. The general idea is it’s way to unpredictable to let a critic say what they want and then quote them if it’s positive.
Take MGM/United Artists, which, according to “Media News,” sent a sheet of 11 studio-written positive blurbs for its film “Larger Than Life” to selected critics. The critics were asked to sign their name to any blurb they liked. Interviewed by “Media News,” MGM/UA publicity VP Susan Pile said the scheme was a “mistake” and that a regional PR firm she would not name was responsible and had been fired by the studio.
More ominous, though, is when studios try to prevent critics from saying something. In the same issue, “Media News” reported early results from a survey of critics and reporters conducted by “The San Jose Mercury News” entertainment writer Glenn Lovell. Of 70 respondents, “nearly one-third…said they have been ‘black listed’ for not playing by the studio’s publicity rules.”
Lovell himself was blacklisted by Disney (which puts out more films than any other studio)—cut off from screenings, interviews and press junkets. The reasons given by a Disney publicist? “Overall tone” of Lovell’s coverage and “an incident in which he snubbed the mother of a studio honcho at a screening.”
On the plus side, that’s one less stooge for the noxious press junket system. Junkets generally work like this: A movie studio transports friendly reviewers to a big city, puts them up in a nice hotel, feeds them, and gives them a sneak preview of a new movie. Afterwards, there’s an exclusive interview with stars and/or the director.
It’s a system of mutual but unequal exploitation, with the studio being the largest beneficiary: Post-screening critic interviews are perhaps the biggest source of those empty ad blurbs.
In the star interviews, critics’ questions may be dulled by a sense of obligation to the studio, or by something more. In “Media News,” Lovell describes “the written waivers and pledges that specify where a story may run and which sensitive areas must not be broached. If you want to do a round robin interview with Woody, you’ve got to promise not to ask about Mia; if you want to talk to Emma, you can’t mention Kenneth, etc.”
This sort of high-pressure zombiefication was apparent in the junket interview for last summer’s action movie “Bulletproof,” a tape of which Universal kindly sent us. Five unnamed critics (perhaps from the shadowy American Urban Radio Network) got to ask stars Adam Sandler and Damon Wayans a total of 69 questions, all thoroughly inane, ill-prepared and star-struck.
No fewer than four questions were spent asking the duo what they thought of basketball player Dennis Rodman’s then-topical “wedding” prank. Then there was this incredible “question”:
“So both you being a dynamic duo here, give us your best pitch for the movie, if you were, you know, wanted to really promote it here. Tell us what you want to tell the audience out there. ‘Bulletproof’—go. Hey, you’re both comedians, let’s hear some, let’s hear some good one-liners.”
There’s a critic with his priorities straight—about as straight as the Elephant Man’s spine. Another critic asked the sole question to almost have substance about the very violent film—watch how he twists out of it before it becomes too critical:
“Is there any concern about the fact that maybe to some people the violence level, not that it’s all the way through, but in some spots that maybe it might get a rating that would prevent people who like your humor from seeing it?” What was going through his head when he decided to back out of the question? Fear of having to pay for his own hotel room? The wording of a signed pledge?
In case you’re wondering, I don’t think I’ve ever been blacklisted (and the bosses nixed junkets long before I arrived here). Why not? I’ve certainly done a lot to deserve it, especially from Disney.
Could be that the studios just don’t care. Aside from a few major national newspapers and magazines, it’s TV that studios really pay attention to. “Overall, the two-minute electronic sound bite is the way to go,” “Media News” quotes Lovell. “It can be easily monitored and controlled, especially if, like Disney, your holdings include a TV network.” Or just a TV show—Paramount TV puts out “Hard Copy” and “Entertainment Tonight.”
Could also
be that our local movie PR firms are generally ethical. The main firm, handling
most studios except Universal, is
But all of that could change on whim. Because the prevailing notion remains that film criticism exists to sell you movies rather than help you understand them.