LatvianProstitutes(“…Mom?”)

Gawker posted a salacious piece of investurbative journalism today when they discovered that Variety had scrubbed their own negative review of Roy Scheider’s last film, Iron Cross.  It turns out the move came after the Iron Cross producers complained, seeing as how they’d paid Variety $400,000 to mount an Oscar campaign.

Iron Cross‘ presence on Variety‘s screening series, which is usually reserved for actual Oscar contenders and serves to give members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences a chance to see potential nominees in the theater before the voting begins, was a mystery to many in Hollywood. It was a tiny film by relatively unknown director Newton, and was notable only for the unfortunate fact that Scheider died while making it. But Newton and his fellow producers’ huge outlay to Variety certainly explains its presence, as well as the January Variety story touting the otherwise unremarkable picture as “a World War II revenge drama [that] has hit the screens with hopes of awards.” [Gawker]

I wish I could see what kind of puns Variety’s own writers could come up with for this.  “Iron Cropped?” “Roy (S)Hider?”  Anyway, was that really worth $400K? No one’s even heard of this movie. This was the biggest waste of a few hundred grand since Nic Cage’s dinosaur skull.  The one he bought, I mean.