Tweeting = The New Hollywood PR?
I’ve been thinking a lot about Twitter’s function in Hollywood of late. In part because I just finished reading P. David Marshall’s fascinating essay ‘The Promotion and Presentation of the Self: Celebrity as Marker of Presentational Media‘ in the inaugural issue of Celebrity Studies, which you can access in full (and for free!) (Imagine my tremendous surprise and delight when I reached the end of the essay and realized he had cited my earlier work on celebrity Twitter and the generation of authenticity . While I don’t always agree with Marshall (his understanding of the way that celebrity works is far more deterministic than my own — in his major work on the subject, Celebrity and Power, he theorizes celebrity as a means of generating self-surveillance and complacency in capitalist democracies) I admire his work tremendously . Along with Graeme Turner, Su Holmes, Chris Rojek, and Joshua Gamson, he was amongst the first to rigorously theorize the way that celebrity functions within society. In other words, his work helped make celebrity studies (and not just ‘star’ studies) legitimate, and it is an honor to think that I contributed to his thought process.
Tangent over — and back to Twitter. My thoughts on the ways in which celebrities generate clouds of authenticity around themselves and their disclosures remain static. While Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore may have tempered their Tweeting, the number of celebrities who have taken to Twitter over the past year has increased exponentially. Whether Conan or Tom Hanks, Elizabeth Taylor or Coach from Survivor, Twitter has firmly established itself as a means of extending one’s celebrity persona/image.
But Twitter and production information is another matter entirely. Hollywood observer Anne Thompson (an avid Tweeter herself) recently wrote a series of posts dealing with the ways in which Twitter is changing the way that publicity for films in pre-production, production, and post-production has been disseminated. Historically, such information was the provenance of the trades (Variety and Hollywood Reporter). When Entertainment Weekly debuted in the early ’90s, selling itself as a ‘trade for the mainstream,’ it began to trade similar information — but rarely were they exclusives or breaking news, in part due to the EW‘s weekly publication schedule. (Side note: if you ever meet me and get a glass of wine in me, make sure and ask me about my hilarious childhood devotion to EW.)
But with the trades in free fall for myriad reasons, most of the breaking trade news has migrated online — most prominently to Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily, but Anne Thompson’s ‘Thompson on Hollywood’, The Wrap, and even non-insider blogs like Cinematical are all now breaking trade news. Granted, Finke’s blog is probably the only one providing the sort of ‘inside baseball’ info traditionally organic to the trades, but the popularity of all of the aforementioned speaks to the growing fascination with production details outside of Hollywood. Put differently, ‘laymen’ — whether academics or just those independently interested in the industry — have become conversant in the trade language of Hollywood, and hunger for specifics concerning signing details, actor salaries, mergers, and weekend grosses.
Why are people more interested? Can we attribute it to increased levels of cinephilia? (Or DVD culture?) Not necessarily, no. When I was researching Entertainment Tonight and its start in the very early ’80s, I found dozens of articles trumpeted ET’s innovation and brilliance in their move to provide such information to the general public. Up to that point, no one was reporting how much stars were making, how much films were grossing, or how different television shows were faring in the ratings. But once that information was provided, the public came to view it as crucial in determining whether a show as successful — or whether they could call themselves an expert on a show, a movie, a star, or Hollywood more generally. If you provide stats, even if they’re ultimately somewhat meaningless, as reported weekend box office takes can be, people will begin to think of those stats as essential. Today, the general public is so versed in the parlance of weekend box office — and so assured that opening weekends determine the popularity of a film — that such stats turn into self-fulfilling prophesies. A #1 weekend ensures that the film will continue to draw consumers, not because the film was good, but because it’s so obviously marked as ‘popular.’ (Unless, of course, that film is G.I. Joe). (See also my summer piece on how box office speculations — and the discourse of ‘box office disappointment’ — unfairly doom pictures like Public Enemies).
So how does Twitter fit into this? As Thompson explains, more and more, stars, producers, and directors are taking to Twitter to break their own news, essentially obviating the need for trades altogether. Jon Favreau just Tweeted the (theretofore unannounced) news that Harrison Ford would be starring in his new picture; Tom Hanks posted a Twitpic of his casting session for his new film; Jerry Bruckheimer reports from screening of Prince of Persia at Wondercom. Jon Favreau posted a ton at the beginning of Iron Man 2, apparently got in trouble, but is now back at it, as evidenced by his Ford announcement.
To my mind, there are two forces precipitating this move. First, as described above, the lay men (e.g. the vast majority of those following the likes of Favreau, Bruckheimer, etc.) is hungry for ‘insider’ information. And, even more importantly, he/she will feel more ‘a part’ of a product with which they’ve been intimate for a long time. In this way, providing ‘inside’ information from pre-production is basically a way of hooking ticket buyers early: if they get in at the ground floor, they’re be more likely to show up to see the top put on the skyscraper. Second, Hollywood is, without a doubt, in financial crisis. No matter how many hundreds of millions of dollars made by the huge blockbusters, it still takes a tremendous amount of money to get a film made — and part of that ever-escalating budget is P.R. Thus, if you can publicize your film for NOTHING to an audience of millions of self-selected fans via Twitter…..why not? The same logic holds for the celebrity using Twitter to promote their general image: why keep a P.R. agent and stylist on retainer when you can publicize yourself with little more than an internet connection and a free Twitter account?
So it’s a smart business move. But it’s inciting all sorts of anxiety, in part because it, like the dissolution of the trades, threatens to fundamentally change the way that Hollywood does business. Because Hollywood, as an industry, is much more than simply the people who actually ‘make’ the movies — it’s also composed of vast armies of agents, assistants, managers, and P.R. agents. And if you take away those middlemen, replacing it with Twitter, a tremendous amount of people will be out of work. In some ways, I think the seismic effects of the internet (and digital technology more broadly) can only be compared to the demise of the studio system in terms of wide-spread ramifications in the way that Hollywood does business.
Which isn’t at all to suggest that the P.R. agent and agency is dead, or that the trades (print or online) will be rendered obsolete. The number of actors, producers, and directors using Twitter to break news straight to the consumer is still proportionally minuscule. But the possibility is there — and it’s going to continue to cause anxiety. What interests me most, then, is that it took a platform as widely ridiculed as Twitter to make both the movement itself and anxiety over it visible.
The Politics of Twilight Web Traffic
Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart Caught in the Act — And now they’ll give me web traffic!
(Image from Pop Sugar; originally nabbed by X17)
FACT: Talk about Twilight, and you will get web traffic.
FACT: Passionate, angry, and upset fans may attack you based on your post, but you will still have web traffic.
FACT: Simply by posting the image above — the first “irrefutable” evidence of a romance between the two stars of Twilight — I will up my daily web traffic by as much as 1000 visitors a day. Some arrive simply to view the image, but many stay and read the article that surrounds it. I know because their comments continue to accumulate.
FACT: Academic blogs (like this one) may not be fueled by numbers of visitors, but for-profit ones most certainly are.
FINAL FACT: Twilight posts, sneak peeks, trailers, gossip, and speculation have turned into a self-perpetuating phenomenon: even if people don’t necessarily care about them, and even if there’s not really news, if you post it, the fans will come. And the fans will continue to come as more information is promised — as my friend Nick recently posited in our co-authored forthcoming article on celebrity twittering, “there can never be enough information on a star; therefore, more information is always needed.” The fan hopes for one crucial piece of info — a picture, a quip, a video snippet — that promises provide access to the authentic kernel of the star. In the case of Twilight, the revelation of the apparent Pattinson/Stewart relationship only further expands the desire for more information: now that we’ve seen them touching, can’t we see them kissing? Won’t that tell us everything we need to know? About them, our own hopes invested in their romance, and love in general?
Of course not. But the promise of fulfillment continues to guide the currents of web traffic. In many ways, the phenomenon isn’t that different from the dilemma facing magazine publishers every week: if a magazine puts Pattinson on the cover, as Vanity Fair did this month, they will come.
But with so much celebrity discourse and photo/video evidence available for free online, they may not buy. Which is exactly why Vanity Fair pulled the brilliant (if obvious) move of not only putting its Pattinson story behind a pay wall, but also leaking excerpts early and promising additional photos to further encourage ‘hard copy’ purchase.
But there’s something slightly different at stake when it comes to internet traffic. Print journalists — especially those associated with long established magazines such as People, US Weekly, or Vanity Fair — love a high sell-through number, but they aren’t individually tasked with cultivating a sustained readership for a particular internet site. In the fickle world of internet traffic, readers are sometimes loyal, but rarely. If they are loyal, it’s often to a syndicater — a home blog that links regularly to sites of interest, such as Perez Hilton, Huffington Post, Jezebel, etc. Thus the impetus is both on the syndicater (to find links) and the satellite blogs (to get linked).
The ultimate goal: go viral. And while very few stories or pictures go as ‘singularly’ viral as, say, The JK Wedding Video or “Dick in a Box,” you still want your particular story to be widely linked. Some sites, including the Gawker Media Family, have historically based their pay scale on the amount of hits garnered, thus encouraging authors to post the most salacious, scandalous, or outrageous material possible in hopes of going viral. (Gawker has supposedly since ceased such practices).
Well-paid bloggers have a particular impetus to garner massive amounts of hits. Take, for example, Nikki Finke. As Anne Thompson recently reported, Finke is frustrated by the pressure to regularly pull in large numbers at her new home with mail.com, regularly forefronts what she names “shameless plug for Twilight traffic,” as evidenced below:
Of course, Thompson herself courts Twilight traffic from her new home at Indiewire — she’s posted her one-on-one (and admittedly adorable) video with Pattinson twice in the last week alone (while also hyping the new V.F. cover, including a sneak-peak excerpt). And while Lainey Gossip declares a general dislike for the saga, she nevertheless has cornered the market on on-set filming updates from her home base of Vancouver, B.C.
But Twilight fuels more than just blogs like Deadline Hollywood Daily, Thompson on Hollywood, and Cinematical. It also drives traffic to social networking and corporate sites; indeed, following the premiere of the New Moon trailer on the MTV Movie Awards, Finke declared the traffic stats “astounding“:
Summit Entertainment has a count of 4.2 million views for the New Moon trailer from MySpace, and another 1.6 million from MTV.com, so that’s 5.8 million combined views in the first 24 hours from its two domestic online launch partners. By comparison, the 3rd (and last) trailer for Twilight received 3.2 million views in its first 48 hours on MySpace, piddling compared to viewership for the sequel’s trailer.
The hype — and monetary potential — is huge. In a tight market, Twilight content has emerged as one of the few sure bets.
Which is also why Twilight drives the content of small and middling blogs, including this one. While I honestly did not write my post “Why Kristen Stewart Matters” with the intent of garnering massive attention, part of me certainly did know that such a post was more likely to get picked up by the likes of MovieCityNews, which had previously linked to several of my star-based posts. And yet, as I’ve explained before, I had no idea that a small blog post could spread — or be valuable — to as many readers as it did. It was Tweeted and re-Tweeted, Facebooked, posted on a dozen Twilight blogs, discussion boards, and Livejournals. When Lainey Gossip linked to me, the traffic went through the roof — over 12,500 hits in a single 24-hour period. I’m still regularly receiving new links to the original post (and the meta-post on Twilight hate mail that followed).
And then there’s the photos. One of the photos I posted of Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson has already garnered 40,000 hits. It’s nested in the piece, of course, but people get there via some sort of image search — which means that such hits do and do not count. Some stay and read the piece; most are just looking for a picture of them touching each other in magic hour lighting (see below).
KStew and RPattz's Money Shot (at least as far as my blog goes)
Of course, since I’m a non-profit blogger, hits have very little financial value. But what happens when I attempt to use my blog as a proto-academic achievement? How do I emphasize the reach of my posts and the blog in general? Are hits an appropriate measure? If they are, shouldn’t I just switch the entire topic of this blog to Twilight? Alternately, if I want to use advertising to pay off the student loans accrued while attending an academic institution that insists on paying its Ph.D. students beneath the poverty line while requiring us to pay up to $1000 per semester in ‘fees’ (n.b., I have no qualms in outing our university, especially since state law prevents us from unionizing and thus challenging exploitative labor practices), hits certainly do matter.
Which is all to say that content — ‘professional,’ ‘journalistic,’ academic, gossip — is motivated by trends and results. It’s not necessarily rooted in what’s happening in the industry (although Twilight and its production company, Summit, are certainly indicative of currents in the industry as a whole) but in what audiences are most motivated. This is why some shows with small but vocal (and motivated) fan bases can compel certain shows to stay on the air: not because networks are necessarily sympathetic to pleas of ‘it’s quality TV,’ but because they recognize the potency of the show’s fans. And Twilight fans, like those of Gossip Girl and Vampire Diaries, are female, between the ages of 12 and 40, and ready to spend. On spin-offs, for info, for premiere tickets, to see sneak preview footage. They pay with actual dollars, but they also pay with their time: through internet searches, repeat trailer viewings, and gossip site searches.
Richard Corman’s famous “Peter Pan Theory” stated that you should always pitch a movie to a 19-year-old boy in order to get the broadest audience. The enormous summer gross of Transformers 2 certainly proves the thesis true. But Twilight, whose four books have dominated the New York Times best seller list for the last two years (and, with New Moon, is poised to become one of the top advance ticket sellers of all time) is proving that the cross-mediated text — and its enormous potential for exploitation — should cater to the girls.
Nikki Finke vs. The World
Nikki Finke, as imagined by The New Yorker
I’ve previously posted at length on Nikki Finke and her divisive role in New Hollywood — see also Alisa Perren’s nice take on the strife (and lack of public attention) around the war between Finke, Variety, and industry bloggers David Poland (The Hot Blog), Sharon Waxman (The Wrap), and Kim Masters (The Daily Beast).
My earlier post was incited by a short by succinct article on Finke by The New York Times. Yesterday, The New Yorker went live with a new article, available here (don’t worry, it’s not behind the pay wall), that has incited a bit of a Hollywood shitstorm, most of it fueled by Finke’s own incendiary rebuttal.
The article was authored by Tad Friend, a NYer staff writer who often pens the “Letter from California” or “Letter from Hollywood” section of the magazine. The article, available on newsstands today, is part of the magazine’s annual “Money Issue” — and explains why the piece takes the tact that it does, reporting on Finke’s leverage within the industry of Hollywood (as opposed to, say, a gossip columnist’s leverage in celebrity culture).
For me, there are several salient points of the article:
1.) Nikki Finke is not, or at least is no longer, a journalist. She feels no need to heed journalistic ‘ethics,’ however one defines them.
2.) Nikki Finke is not a gossip columnist.
3.) Nikki Finke does not care about movies, per se.
4.) Nikki Finke cares about power, reputation, and melodrama.
In other words, the comparison between her and the “unholy three” gossip mavens — Friend enumerates them as Louella Parsons, Hedda Hopper, and Sheilah Graham — is, like the New York Times‘ comparison to Walter Winchell, off the mark.
We love to tell stories — and write profiles — by evoking the personas of others: George Clooney is the new Cary Grant (I did that one myself); Lady Gaga is the new Madonna; Angelina Jolie is the new Elizabeth Taylor. Journalistic profiles especially take this tact: either by photographing the celebrity/persona in a manner evocative of other historical figures (one of Annie Leibowitz/Vanity Fair‘s favorite traditions) or dropping specific allusions throughout the article.
But such comparisons leave much to be desired, especially as all four of the classic gossip columinsts were working in classic Hollywood — and the stakes, not to mention the ‘rules’ — were incredibly different. Winchell dealt with New York cafe society and, to some extent, Hollywood; the others were concerned with the studios and the stars employed by them.
By contrast, Finke writes about money, agents, deals, and massive media conglomerates with international holdings across film, television, print, new media, and hardware. The old school columnists wrote for the public at large; Finke writes specifically for the industry — and does not deign to modify her style to an Entertainment Weekly/Tonight-style industry news.
Finally, Finke is ridiculously brazen. So were the other columnists, but none would have dared to have posted the following:
I’m too superficial to read The New Yorker because it’s so unrelentingly boring. Even the cartoons suck these days. So back in 2008, soon after the writers strike ended, I said no when The New Yorker first approached me to cooperate for a profile. Fast forward to this summer, when the mag was desperate to liven up this week’s dullsville “Money Issue” with some Tinseltown mockery.
Or further indict the publication for collusion/hypocrisy:
I found Tad Friend, who covers Hollywood from Brooklyn, easy to manipulate, as was David Remnick, whom I enjoyed bitchslapping throughout but especially during the very slipshod factchecking process. (Those draconian Conde Nast budget cuts have deflated the infamous hubris of this New Jersey dentist’s son.) But I wasn’t the only one able to knock out a lot of negative stuff in the article without even one lawyer letter, email, or phone call. I witnessed how The New Yorker really bent over for Hollywood. NYC power publicist Steven Rubenstein succeeded in deleting every reference to Paramount’s Brad Grey. Warner Bros and Universal and DreamWorks and William Morris/Endeavor and Summit Entertainment execs and flacks and consultants also had their way with the mag. (They were even laughing about it. When I asked one PR person what it took to convince Tad to take out whole portions of the article, the response was, “I swallowed.”)
Or, for that matter, drop the C-bomb — first by putting the word in Weinstein’s mouth, and then by appropriating it herself:
At Harvey Weinstein’s personal behest, his description of me as a “cunt” became “jerk”. (Then the article would have contained two references to me as a “cunt” in addition to its four uses of ”fuck”. Si Newhouse must be so proud…) And so on. Now remember, readers: you, too, can make The New Yorker your buttboy. Just act like a cunt and treat Remnick like a putz and don’t give a fuck.
Of course, all of this is, as my former adviser and secret gossip aficionado Michael Aronson pointed out, part of Finke’s own plan to a.) direct massive amounts of traffic to her site and b.) reify her image. She’s already known within the industry as cutthroat and crude — the article, and her response to it, simply amplify that image, making it available for (quasi) popular consumption.
Finke will never be Perez Hilton, but she does live and report on Hollywood, which has enjoyed a long and spirited feud with New York. Indeed, as Anne Thompson, Finke, and others point out, Friend’s “Letter from Hollywood” only highlights how out of touch even a reporter tasked with knowing the business really is. He’s an outsider — and will remain so. A tourist on sunny vacation, believing what’s whispered in his ear as truth.
Interestingly, I think both Hollywood (embodied by Finke, Thompson, Variety, and all the other industry bloggers and journalists) and New York (represented here by The New Yorker) are suffering from inferiority complexes, perhaps rooted in the fact that neither industry (Hollywood or New York Publishing) have figured out how to monetize their old media forms in the new media environment, perhaps best evidenced by Variety‘s plans to move back to a pay wall, The Hollywood Reporter going from a daily to a weekly, and today’s announcement that Conde Naste was eliminating Gourmet. Even Finke, who sold her site to mail.com for a reported $10 million, gets relatively little traffic — granted, most of it is very loyal, but we’re not talking huge ad dollars.
This brings us back to Alisa Perren’s interesting observation about the non-hoopla over the ‘brawl’ between these entities — sure, Finke, Thompson, Variety, and all these other players hate each other; sure, Ari Emanuel colludes with Finke and alienates other parts of Hollywood; sure, Finke said she ‘bitchslapped’ the editor-in-chief of one of the nation’s long-established high brow weeklies.
But does any of it matter when T-Mobile’s Sidekick service is down, one of the Real Housewives of Atlanta’s ex-fiance was murdered, and there’s sweet zombie movie in theaters? This is great gossip for those of us interested in the machinations of Hollywood and media more generally, but rather banal for everyone else. That’s why Finke is not Winchell, Hopper, or Parsons: those columnists had loyal audiences numbering in the millions. Their subtle insinuations may not have always been legible to those not ‘in the know,’ but their gossip about clothes, romance, and betrayal was still readily consumable and spurred discussion in circles outside of The Ivy.
The question, then, is if Nikki Finke swears up a storm and no one, or at least relatively no one, really hears her, does it even make a sound? I suppose the answer would be yes: posts Finke writes and deals she scoops have real ramifications on the types of media that we consume. But I’m still dubious as to whether or not Finke is a gossip so much as a power-hungry, popularity-obsessed instigator. She doesn’t make public appearances, but that simply ups her rep. Again, I’m tempted to make the comparison to Lew Wasserman, who eschewed publicity and, like Finke, had but one or two photos of himself in public circulation — and still controlled Hollywood for much of the postclassical period. But Wasserman was an agent, actually making deals and profiting off of them — and Finke is just writing about them and calling names. Which doesn’t necessarily make her less influential — of all people, I celebrate and appreciate the tremendous power of discourse — but does, in some ways, put her in perspective.
Friday (Sorta Star) Links
Don’t know if this will become a regular feature or not, but here are a few things I’ve found interesting of late:
- Alex Cho has a new column on Lady GaGa and queer performativity over at FlowTV — and it’s excellent.
- Disagreeing with some of the points in this post by Jonathan Gray over at Extratextuals on the new Mad Men marketing campaign, but interesting nonetheless.
- Oh look! My dream job! At Middlebury! I especially appreciate the transparency that Jason Mittell (with his department’s blessing) is applying to the job search process — so intimidating for young ABDs such as myself, but this makes me feel less freaked out.
- Speaking of liberal arts colleges, Whitman just made the Top Twenty at Forbes’ rankings, which use a unique algorithm to account for student satisfaction, class size, happiness, etc. Whitman not only beat out several of its usual small liberal arts foes (Carleton, Kenyon, Middlebury) but several of the ‘big ivories’ as well, including Dartmouth and Cornell. Those of you who attended Whitman with me (or before or after me) know exactly why this is gratifying: Whitman has long prided itself on a holisitically satisfying college experience, but is generally shafted by traditional rankings due to its obscure location (and the fact that it’s in the West, which is more of a drawback than one might think), as the U.S. News and Report rankings (and others) are often heavily weighted towards the opinions of other administrators, some of whom are locked in their regional bubbles. We don’t say it’s perfect for nothing. (The only thing I’d chage would be to put a taco truck on Ankeny). I couldn’t be more proud to be teaching there next Spring.
- Anne Thompson has moved her industry blog from Variety to Indiewire — she hopes to use it more editorially now that she’s free from Variety control, and I’ve definitely seen signs of snark surfacing. She recently posted on her ‘essential cinema bookshelf’ — the books that everyone in the industry should read — a list that includes my advisor Tom Schatz’s Genius of the System, which is the only ‘academic’ book on the shelf.
- The Sports Guy, who I secretly love, recently posted an extended column using dozens of quotes from Almost Famous to recap the NBA season. Brilliant.
- Finally, it’s a few weeks late, but I really enjoyed Alyx Vesey’s take on the new ‘Fabric of Our Lives’ commercials (including one with Zooey Deschanel) over at Feminist Music Geek. Now those commercials seem to be popping up everywhere — including my computer screen.
Three days until the beginning of my comprehensive exams…I’ll probably need to blog to blow-off steam.
Quick Post: Brad Pitt on the cover of Wired
Just want to point you in the direction of Anne Thompson’s recent blog post on Brad Pitt’s recent appearance on the cover of Wired -
Brad Pitt on the cover of Wired
To summarize, Thompson points out that apart from Vanity Fair, there are few ‘homes’ for celebrity faces in the magazine industry — and fewer still that allow stars demands. Thus Pitt turns to Wired — with nary a mention of the film he’s promoting — in order to up HIS visibility and hence the film’s. In Thompson’s words,
Truth is, with Premiere gone, there aren’t many classy monthly magazine covers left for male stars of Pitt’s stature. And he’s already done the good ones. Tabloids like People, Us and In Touch have taken over the supermarket racks. Old media moguls like Tina Brown and Bonnie Fuller are jumping into the online fray. (Tabloid queen Fuller is joining Mail.com owner Jay Penske’s HollywoodLife.com.) Gone are the days when uber-press agents like Pat Kingsley batted off cover requests like flies while demanding deal terms like photographer and writer approval. Pitt doesn’t even pay a PR rep anymore.
The post is brief and definitely worth a read — plus it confirms/supports much of what I’ve been pondering in my blog posts on the fate of industry journalism, Tom Cruise, and the current state of stardom.
