Why Katherine Heigl Can’t Change the Conversation
Note: The following is post a co-production with my best friend and partner-in-crime, Alaina Smith, who has previously authored/collaborated on posts about Dooce (alias Heather Armstrong) and “Does Maybe Gaybe Matter?”
In 2009, Katherine Heigl gave a series of interviews while promoting The Ugly Truth that were perceived as whiny and critical of those who had helped her become famous. In return, she was the subject of a harsh backlash from the media and colleagues. Annie wrote about the position she found herself here, questioning whether or not she was Hollywood’s “New Shrew.” Since then, things haven’t gotten much better. As an agent quoted in a June 2010 NYMag article explained:
“She still green-lights studio movies. And personality aside, she is a movie star. [But...] producers are telling us, ‘We can’t go back to any male lead she’s ever worked with.’ And that’s because she’s a goddamn nightmare. It’s a shame, because she’s talented. She has a shot at being Julia Roberts, but she’s headed towards becoming Jennifer Aniston — someone who works regularly, but who could have been a superstar.
Heigl in costume for The Killers
Heigl, her manager-mother, and the publicist who eventually fired her couldn’t seem to do anything counter her bitchy reputation. This June’s Killers wasn’t pre-screened for critics (a fate usually reserved for the likes of Saw 17 and other bombs), eventually earned a 12% rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and grossed $45 million domestic and $45 international on budget of $75 million. Add in 50% of that cost for advertising and promotion, and you’ve got a film firmly in the red. Heigl’s image - and perceived ability to open a film - went from bad to worse.
As Vulture explained, “As a whole, her post–Knocked Up movies have been competent, successful, familiar, and undistinguished — all of which you might say about Heigl herself. There will always be starring roles for pretty blondes who are delightfully ditzy and can chew their lips emotively on cue. However, there will also always be blondes like that, too.”
As Annie noted in her previous post about Heigl, we want our stars to be grateful for their success. Heigl broke that rule. She seemed to be just fine with the fame and fortune that came along with her explosive success as America’s new rom-com princess - but refused to embrace that role outside her screen appearances.
After her breakout roles in Grey’s Anatomy and Knocked Up, audiences thought she was a fresh new face. Heigl seemed to feel she’d put in time and was entitled to what she’d achieved (she’s been working steadily since she was 14). She also refused to pander to the minivan majority in her personal life - she shunned dating her co-stars for marriage to a singer, adopted a special-needs baby from Korea in 2009 with relatively little fanfare (by Hollywood standards) and lives in Utah when she’s not working.
Over the last few weeks, however, she began promoting Life as We Know It. This time, the media blitz included a mea culpa interview on Letterman and a fairly fawning article in the New York Times, entitled “The Unwilling Diva,” which was filled with quote after quote defending her professionalism and talent. While Heigl is on the offensive to prove her likability, willing colleagues, including her co-star Josh Duhamel - were rallied to defend her with compliments seemingly designed to tick off each black mark against her. Good on you, KatherineHeigl’s new publicist.
Playing Mom for Life as We Know It
Life as We Know It opened moderately well - it beat out Heartland fodder Secretariat in its first week - and has now grossed 28.6 million domestic on a budget of $38 million, and seems to have decent legs. Add in international grosses (which won’t be tremendous, but will probably come close to the overall domestic take) and you should have a moderate success.
As Anthony D’Alessandro reported over at Thompson on Hollywood, this was what Heigl needed. Life is not a flop - more importantly, it’s good for Heigl’s image. A movie about the trials and tribulations of parenthood, where a career gal’s brittleness is tempered by the twin forces of a rosy-cheeked baby and the love of a good man? A perfect way to “melt” a star who went from America’s princess to ice princess overnight.
D’Alessandro maintains that Heigl’s best move is to stick to small-budget rom-coms like Life in the future. But ultimately, Heigl’s un-likability stems not only from her perceived ungratefulness, but her constant effort to convince us she is *not* the shrew she plays onscreen. Since 99% of female roles in romantic comedy fall into the “beautiful but rigid and neurotic foil for the male lead” (think Jennifer Lopez arranging the cutlery on her TV dinner tray in The Wedding Planner), more of the same likely will not catapult Heigl to the next level of stardom.
And while Life and Heigl’s recent media appearances might have helped to work her way back into female audience’s hearts, it does very little to counter the sentiment that she’s not worth a big-star paycheck. As is, she’s just not blockbuster material, and certainly can’t demand the paycheck of Julia Roberts, who, even at age 42 and years from her halcyon days post-My Best Friend’s Wedding, still propelled Eat, Pray, Love to a worldwide gross of $166 million (on a budget of $90 million).
Several commentators have speculated that Heigl needs to be in a good, serious, well-respected movie - and have a good, well-respected director talk positively about her. Heigl’s upcoming projects have promise, and represent strong departures from the types of character she has previously played. As if to say: “So, America, you’re not sure if you can stomach me as a romantic heroine? How about a bounty hunter? Or a English nurse who goes back in time to 18th-Century Sexy Scotland?”
Heigl "acting" at repentent in the photo for her Times mea culpa
However, Heigl has persisted in making the worst mistake anyone in show business could ever make: having a family member as your manager, agent, or publicist. Tom Cruise proved this to be forever true when he fired inveterate publicist Pat Kingsley and hired his sister, leading to the Tom-Kat/Couch-Jumping/MattLauer-arguing fiasco, but it certainly holds for Heigl as well: your mom is in no position to give you objective career or image advice. Also, as many have averred, it remains to be seen whether she actually can act.
So, Heigl’s got her work cut out for her. It’s far, far more difficult to rehabilitate an image one than to ruin one. Her recent film and appearances aside, Heigl has not successfully erased negative public perception - nor has she re-established herself as “greenlight” star.
She needs an addition to her picture personality that will force people to reconsider their already formed opinions, and she needs a makeover - not just a new haircut, but a new “stars, they’re just like us!” persona. Right now, we’re still willing to read about her, but usually because we’re waiting for the next incriminating thing to come out of her mouth. It’ll be fascinating to see how, or if, her image can evolve. If not, it’ll be yet another testament to the difficulty of changing the narrative of star image once it’s been set in motion.
Twitter is Ruining Celebrity! (And Other Anxieties)
For whatever reason, last week seemed to be a tipping point for celebrities on Twitter. When Jim Carrey tweeted “Tiger Woods owes nothing 2 anyone but himself,” then criticized Woods’ wife, Elin, posting “No wife is blind enough to miss that much infidelity…Elin had 2 b a willing participant on the ride 4 whatever reason,” it was enough to prompt two separate articles, one from EW, the other on Jezebel, with the shared thesis that ‘Twitter is Ruining Celebrity.’
Here’s Jezebel’s explanation:
I’m just suggesting that certain people reconsider how goddamn annoying they can be. Because it turns out that plenty of high-profile people are not that smart, at least not all the time. Or at least not without the intervention of lots of people whose job it is to make them look good. And sometimes I would just rather not know how far short they fall.
If you’ve ever met a public figure you previously admired, you know it can seriously undermine whatever drew you to them in the first place. When I was pounding the pavement as a media reporter, there were plenty of writers and editors I met who more than lived up to fangirl expectations with their sparkling in-person insights. Then there were the ones that sloppily regurgitated conventional wisdom, or were giant social climbers or total leches. Still sorta ruins it every time I encounter their byline!
Twitter is like that, all the time.
The article then (rather hilariously) details how annoying/banal/mildly offensive some of these celebrities can be: Susan Orlean, who writes good pieces for The New Yorker, is a piss-poor and annoying Tweet author; Margaret Atwood is way too verbose; Kirsty Alley defends mild racism.
And, of course, there’s the whole John Mayer saga, exacerbated by his Twitter presence. Conclusion: when it comes to the Internet, some people should consider shutting up. Or, more specifically, some celebrities should consider shutting up — lest they shatter our illusions of celebrity and its function altogether.
So let’s be clear: these authors aren’t worried about overexposure. God knows the vast majority of celebrities who have taken to Twitter are already throughly, and arguable over, exposed. What seems to be at the crux of this anxiety — and what I find quite interesting — is this anxiety that the ‘authentic,’ unmediated sharing of Twitter will make the celebrity TOO real, TOO authentic…..too much like a real person. (You can see this anxiety invoked in the quote pulled from the Jezebel article in which the author compares Twittering to meeting someone you admire in the hallway — when you meet him/her in the flesh, she becomes an *actual person,* with blemishes, bad breath, bad jokes, whatever).
Undulating beneath both articles is an unstated assumption about celebrities: namely, that they are IMAGES, not people. We are attracted to the ideas — of race, of gender, of relationships, of Capitalism, of America — that they represent, not who they actually are. As I tell my students over and over again, it doesn’t matter who a celebrity is in the flesh, or what he/she ‘truly’ believes, or whether he/she is ‘actually’ a nice person. All that matters is how he/she is mediated — sometimes more successfully than others — and whether the public finds that image salient.
Some Twitter celebrities do a fantastic job of further extending their well-pruned image through Twitter use. Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, Conan O’Brien all come to mind. (Importantly, all three use Twitter somewhat sparingly: their Tweets become fetishized, heavily retweeted, and are rarely all that banal. Each one seems to perfectly fit with the stars established image, as when Bieber tweets “a cool thing about 2day is that North Tonawanda, NY has 32k people in it…just like my town. Maybe the next kid with a dream is there.” It’s cheesy and sincere, but so is Justin Bieber….or, more accurately, so is Justin Bieber’s image.
Celebrities are ‘ruined,’ then, when they become too much like people — and disclose so much, and in such an uncontrolled fashion, that their images are impugned. We want the celebrity image to cultivate the crucial tension between the extraordinary and ordinary — between the knowledge that the celebrity eats food and the also goes to premieres and buys expensive clothes. But when the ordinary overwhelms the extraordinary, it creates an imbalance in the celebrity image. The celebrity image becomes imbalanced via his own disclosures, whether linked to bathroom habits or preference for ‘chocolate’ men. To stick with the metaphor, such imbalance causes the image to fall, causing a rupture….and the unseemly ‘real’ person behind the finely wrought celebrity image seeps through, causing disgust.
When you get down to it, celebrity twitter exposes are desire for celebrities to be ‘just like us’ as a fallacy. We don’t want them to be just like us. We don’t want them to Tweet just like us. We want them to be a simulacrum of ‘just like us.’ Put differently, celebrities should represent our ideal what a ‘real’ person is like, but we can’t look at that representation too closely, or ask it to Tweet….lest it reveal the hollowness beneath.
I’m not suggesting that celebrity culture — or our fascination with it — is hollow, or worthless. Rather, that the anxiety over Twitter (and other new media means of over-disclosure) are highlighting the disparity between what we think we want from celebrities….and what we actually want.
Jen Tries So Very, Very Hard to Get Dirty
Biggest post-Oscar celebrity news: the long-anticipated Jen/Gerry W Cover. Here’s the sneak preview that went viral earlier today, prompting blog posts from both Lainey Gossip (here) and Jezebel (there). And while Lainey did a nice job of pointing out how posed and awkward Gerald Butler looks, she failed to touch on the real juice of the story, passed along by Jezebel — the entire thing was shot by Steven Klein, the man responsible for the (in)famous W Magazine shoot for Brad Pitt and Angelina, pictured (in part) in all its ridiculous glory below.
Recall, please, that this particular spread was published when Aniston and Pitt were still together, way back in 2005. Jolie and Pitt were purportedly posing in simple publicity for the forthcoming Mr. and Mrs. Smith. (It’s widely believed that this particular photo shoot was part of what prompted Jennifer Aniston, in her post-break-up interview with Vanity Fair, to declare that Pitt lacked “a sensitivity chip.” What’s more, as Jezebel points out, Klein is a good friend of Pitt. And so the plot thickens.
So here’s what we know:
1.) Jennifer Aniston is attempting to add much-needed life to her image following the abject failure of Love Happens.
2.) The Bounty Hunter, starring, of course, Aniston and Butler, opens NEXT WEEK. Aniston has been cultivating — but not actually confessing to — the suggestion of a romance for months, through formal appearances (Golden Globes gross-out posing, see below) and ‘gotcha!’ paparazzi photos that effectively suggest that she and Butler have been privately vacationing (read: her publicist and his publicist agreed he should be photographed with her in Mexico).
2.) In that film to succeed, Aniston understands that she needs a viable romance, preferably, but necessarily, with her co-star (See, for example, the hoopla over the ‘supposed engagement’ leading up to the release of The Break-Up). No matter how much John Mayer emphasizes his respect for her, she still doesn’t have a cute relationship to flaunt for the gossip mags and thus keep herself visible. It’s simple old Hollywood logic, and she (and her publicists) knows it well: the more she insinuates the possibility of a relationship with Butler, the more curious people will be to see their chemistry, and more the film will gross.
3.) Aniston is also attempting to diversify her image ever so slightly. To my mind, this is the most transparent attempt to ‘Angelina’ herself that we’ve seen. First off, the film they’re promoting is basically a vanilla version of Mr. and Mrs. Smith (just check out the trailer — it’s like Brangelina Lite… far less sexual gravitas and far more stilted attempts at bad humor).
Secondly, there’s the shoot itself. Oh, look, Jen’s such a bad girl! She’s stealing money! Getting arrested! Role playing, how dirty! (Side note: all images below are screen shots from the W website, as images from the actual spread have yet to be put online — thus the blue lines, which allow you to see how and where to buy the clothes she’s wearing).
Even look at the specific articles of clothing depicted below, all of which she’s wearing in the cover shot. We’re used to thinking of Jennifer Aniston naked and wrapped in the American flag, as she appeared last year on the cover of GQ. But Aniston in quasi-burlesque lingerie? What’s going on here?
The most fascinating attempt to associate Aniston with dirt is, well, quite literal. The ‘Behind the Scenes’ tell-all, Chris McMillan, Aniston’s long-time stylist, ‘best friend,’ and the man behind ‘The Rachel,’ highlights the dirty details of the shoot, both figurative and literal:
This is not exactly Jennifer as we know her.
We got there and the storyboards were kind of Kim Basinger in9 1/2 Weeks. Which is even better, because then it started getting good.
How did you arrive at this particular look for Jennifer’s hair?
Well, Steven [Klein] was talking to Jennifer for about an hour and a half while she was doing fittings and her hair dried into this naturally curly head of hair. So we just refined it from there. But it’s not her typical blown-out hairstyle. It’s a little rougher, we liked seeing the flyaways.
What about day two of the shoot?
At the end of the first day Steven came up to me and goes, “Could you please ask her if she could not wash her hair tonight and just show up tomorrow?” I mean, she was rolling in the dirt, it was windy and she had hairspray in her hair.
She said yes to that? Dirty hair?
Yeah, we left her hair dirty. It just created a nice chunky texture. The key to Jennifer’s hair is no matter what you do with it — straight, frizzy, dirty — it looks like it actually grows out of her head. She’s someone for whom her hair doesn’t wearher, she wears it.
This is a rhetorical gold mine. Main points: Jen conflated with sex star; Jen with a ‘new look’; Jen ‘spends all day rolling in the dirt’; Jen ‘game’ for dirty hair. Adds up to: Jen, crazy, dirty, up for anything girl! In other words, not the staid, always-the-same-blown-out-hair, sartorially and stylistically conservative girl, dumped by Brad for exotic sexpot.
I’m also struck by the visual similarities to another Brangelina photoshoot, also in the Arizona desert, only for Vanity Fair, that was published after the pair came out publicly as a couple -
Now, you might sense an abundance of vitriol directed towards Aniston, and you would be correct. Long time readers (read: those who have read for the 9 months that I’ve maintained this blog) will know that I harbor general disdain for her. Part of disaffection is certainly subjective — there’s just something about her, and about the stock character that she plays, that grates against me. (Note, however, that I really love her in both The Good Girl and Friends with Money — in part because those characters are so different from the recurring-Rachelness of her mainstream fare, but also her role in Friends with Money seems so much more honest about what it feels like to be a woman in her late 30s surrounded by other women with marriages, money, and oscillating levels of happiness).
It’s not that I dislike Aniston for playing the publicity game. Obviously, judging from my general admiration and fascination with The Brange, I don’t dislike those who manipulate their images. Rather, it’s that Aniston is so transparent about that manipulation — but not on purpose. She’s not ridiculously bad at it, like, say, Lindsay Lohan, or ridiculously obvious about it, like Heidi and Spencer. She’s trying play at the level of Pitt and Jolie, and she fails. The efforts of her — and her team — are derivative (again, see the photoshoot….five years too late). A for effort, but a solid B overall.
And here’s where I make a big inflammatory claim and piss people off: I think they’re B level because she’s actually a B level star posing as A-level. Once a television star, always a television star. Not only has her beginning on Friends limited the extent to which she can successfully stretch her star persona (Rachel-like character = success; un-Rachel-like; no-go), but also the limits to which she can successfully manipulate her image. She’s beautiful, yes; she has an incredible body, of course. But is she special? Can she use specialness — that uniqueness that distinguishes the most enduring of movie stars- to elevate her above and help us forget the way she plays the game? I don’t think so. In the end, we see her manipulations so vividly because her star shines so dimly. She’s not a bad star, or an unsuccessful one. But she’s not one for the ages, no matter how dirty she gets her hair.
The Oscars, Star-Studies Style
Even Feather-Haired George is Guiding You to My Other Post
Here’s a push to go check out my new post on the Oscars and stardom over at my other blogging home, Antenna.
I also just collected a massive amount of links for my students as they prepare to write/discuss The Oscars for class this week. Check them out below — and add any of your own in the comments section.
- Gawker’s General Wrap-Up
- Ye Good Olde People Magazine Best Dressed Section
- Another Best Dressed Section (More Clickable) Plus the Worst Dressed.
- Lainey Gossip was there and has some good dish/commentary.
- What Dudes Say When They Have to Watch the Oscars
- Inside the Oscars’ own ‘Kanye Moment’
- Roger Ebert’s Recap
- On the Oscar-Winning Short Animated Film Logorama (including the film!
- The Wins for Precious (Or: Mo’Nique Speaks)
- The Endlessly Snarky Hollywood Insider Nikki Finke’s Live-Blog (comments = hilarious)
- Look at how this year’s Oscar Ratings Stack Up (fascinating graph):
- Schmalzy self-coverage of the Vanity Fair Post-Party
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.
