INTELLECTUALS BE BEEFIN, Y'ALL!
Okay, the full email exchange I’m about to post below is a little long, and probably a lot inside baseball, but it’s still an interesting glimpse into how movie studios market themselves during awards season. The exchange was between the New Yorker‘s David Denby and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo producer Scott Rudin. They’re both pictured above, and go ahead, try to guess which one is the New Yorker film critic and which the movie producer. Hmm, is the New Yorker guy the one with the intellectual glasses and affectatious scarf, or the fat, bald Jewish dude with a five o’clock shadow looking uncomfortable in a suit??? OH I BET YOU’LL NEVER BE ABLE TO GUESS! (Seriously though, these guys could be on flash cards that said “NYC Film Critic” and “Movie Producer”).
Anyway, their beef stems from Denby’s decision to break embargo on his Girl with the Dragon Tattoo review. Basically, when films screen for critics, we generally have to agree not to run our reviews before a certain date as a condition of attending. Denby got to attend an early screening (hosted by the NYFCC, the organization Armond White used to chair), and agreed to an embargo date of December 13th (FYI, I still haven’t gotten my screening invite, but my embargo date will most likely be a full week after that). Denby and the New Yorker decided to break the embargo and run the review early, and Sony and Scott Rudin are reportedly “pissed.” The Playlist was able to get a hold of the ensuing email exchange between Rudin and Denby, and what ensues is an online dork fight of the inhaleriest proportions.
—
From: Scott Rudin
Sent: Sat 12/3/2011 12:08 AM
To: Denby, David
Subject:
You’re going to break the review embargo on Dragon Tattoo? I’m stunned that you of all people would even entertain doing this. It’s a very, very damaging move and a total contravention of what you agreed. You’re an honorable man.From: Denby, David
Sent: Saturday, December 03, 2011 11:19 AM
To: Scott Rudin
Subject: RE:
Dear Scott:
Scott, I know Fincher was working on the picture up to the last minute, but the yearly schedule is gauged to have many big movies come out at the end of the year.The system is destructive: Grown-ups are ignored for much of the year, cast out like downsized workers, and then given eight good movies all at once in the last five weeks of the year. A magazine like “The New Yorker” has to cope as best as it can with a nutty release schedule. It was not my intention to break the embargo, and I never would have done it with a negative review. But since I liked the movie, we came reluctantly to the decision to go with early publication for the following reasons, which I have also sent to Seth Fradkoff:
1) The jam-up of important films makes it very hard on magazines. We don’t want to run a bunch of tiny reviews at Christmas. That’s not what “The New Yorker” is about. Anthony and I don’t want to write them that way, and our readers don’t want to read them that way.
2) Like many weeklies, we do a double issue at the end of the year, at this crucial time. This exacerbates the problem.
3) The New York Film Critics Circle, in its wisdom, decided to move up its voting meeting, as you well know, to November 29, something Owen Gleiberman and I furiously opposed, getting nowhere. We thought the early date was idiotic, and we’re in favor of returning it to something like December 8 next year. In any case, the early vote forced the early screening of “Dragon Tattoo.” So we had a dilemma: What to put in the magazine on December 5? Certainly not “We Bought the Zoo,” or whatever it’s called. If we held everything serious, we would be coming out on Christmas-season movies until mid-January. We had to get something serious in the magazine. So reluctantly, we went early with “Dragon,” which I called “mesmerizing.” I apologize for the breach of the embargo. It won’t happen again. But this was a special case brought on by year-end madness.
In any case, congratulations for producing another good movie. I look forward to the Daldry.
Best, David DenbyFrom: Scott Rudin
Date: Sat, 3 Dec 2011 13:04:32 -0500
To: David Denby
Subject: Re:
I appreciate all of this, David, but you simply have to be good for your word. Your seeing the movie was conditional on your honoring the embargo, which you agreed to do. The needs of the magazine cannot trump your word. The fact that the review is good is immaterial, as I suspect you know. You’ve very badly damaged the movie by doing this, and I could not in good conscience invite you to see another movie of mine again, Daldry or otherwise. I can’t ignore this, and I expect that you wouldn’t either if the situation were reversed. I’m really not interested in why you did this except that you did — and you must at least own that, purely and simply, you broke your word to us and that that is a deeply lousy and immoral thing to have done. If you weren’t prepared to honor the embargo, you should have done the honorable thing and said so before you accepted the invitation. The glut of Christmas movies is not news to you, and to pretend otherwise is simply disingenuous. You will now cause ALL of the other reviews to run a month before the release of the movie, and that is a deeply destructive thing to have done simply because you’re disdainful of We Bought a Zoo. Why am I meant to care about that??? Come on…that’s nonsense, and you know it. [ThePlaylist]
The obvious question here is, why would a studio be against early word of mouth if early word of mouth is good? On what planet does a good review “badly damage” a movie? Sony acts like this is the end of the world, and Rudin uses the asinine old slippery-slope argument at the end there to explain why running an early review is such a horrible thing. Yes, Denby broke an agreement. It’s basically a calculated risk — he risks not getting invited back to future screenings in order to better serve his readers. It’s the old access vs. journalistic freedom conflict. But (a big but!), this is a movie, not the Watergate tapes.
Deadline got ahold of the email Sony sent pleading with other critics to respect the embargo, which read in part:
By allowing critics to see films early, at different times, embargo dates level the playing field and enable reviews to run within the films’ primary release window, when audiences are most interested. As a matter of principle, the New Yorker’s breach violates a trust and undermines a system designed to help journalists do their job and serve their readers. We have been speaking directly with The New Yorker about this matter and expect to take measures to ensure this kind of violation does not occur again.
First off, early word of mouth, if it’s good, never hurt anyone. Secondly, one really good step to take to keep this from happening again is to not have every studio release all their actual good movies (what they think are good movies, anyway) during the same two-week period at the end of the year. The last three weeks of December will see the release of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Mission Impossible IV, Sherlock Holmes 2, Young Adult, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Shame, Tintin, War Horse, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and We Bought a Zoo, among others. All those movies will be competing with each other for similar market share. Meanwhile, Fast Five made $86 million in April opening against Prom and Hoodwinked Too!. If you were an adult looking to see a movie at the end of April, those were the films you had to choose from. But go ahead, Sony, keep protecting this brilliant system you’ve created for yourselves. When it fails, I’m sure it will be the good review that came out a week early’s fault.
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If Rudin was serious about punishing the Denby, he’d do what Lisbeth Salander did to her guardian in the book by by incapacitating him with a taser, torturing him, and forcing him to watch the recording of her rape, threatening to make the recording public, and tattooing “I am a sadistic pig, a pervert and a rapist” in large letters on his abdomen.
Or, what I suspect Denby calls “the number 6″.
i was really hoping this would degenerate into playground name-calling- Fat Beardy Baldy V Fat Beardy Baldy
also- you’ve missed a ‘be’ in the final sentence
Vince you won’t get an invite. You are way too likely to make the whole thing just a list of rape jokes and they know it. You insensitive misogynistic ass. That being said, I can’t wait for my favorite part of the books, where the dude played by Daniel Craig has a special project. Throughout the first two thirds of the story there’s various sequences of him going to hardware stores and buying seemingly random shit. This is followed by several shots of him building something. Sometimes he’s woodworking, sometimes welding. What’s he building? Intrigue, that’s what. Then finally, he takes the girl with the dragon tattoo into his workshop and there’s something there under a sheet. He pulls back the sheet and it appears he’s been building a chair, but not just any chair. He kicks the chair and it starts rocking and with every rock, a massive dildo pops out of the seat of the chair. He’s built a home-made fuck-rocker! He just stands there, beaming with pride and we think the tattoo lady is going to be repulsed, but she likes it just as much as he does. Best part of the book.
Denby looks like he’s used to being scolded for doing things too soon.
Two huge dorks, millions of dollars at stake and not one fucking person knows the real definition of “embargo”. UGH. You’re not Germany and Libya guys, you’re two fat dorks schilling a movie that will eventually make a bizillion dollars.
If Rudin was a proper Jew, he’d retaliate by sending Sony security staff armed with live ammunition to board the New Yorker offices, killing a few of the magazines young Turks in the process.
OH YEAH, POLITICAL ALLEGORIES UP IN THIS BITCH!
Bravo, Morty. Bravo.
Live and let live, I say. Let he who has never been castigated for an early release send the first angry email.
*magazine’s
I see what you’re saying, but that’s not really the point is it? You do have to hold people accountable. If the system is broken, that’s a separate issue from what’s at issue here. The long and short of it is, Scarf Dude agreed to something, and then that agreement didn’t serve his interests anymore, so he decided to breach the agreement.
The alternative is that contracts/agreements don’t matter if one party to the agreement is a cockface.
On the other hand, if Sony really gave a shit about concentrating buzz around the opening date, they wouldn’t have shown us giant pictures of Rooney Mara’s nipple six months ago.
But then again, “concentrating buzz around the opening” is what I call foreplay with your Mom.
Scott Rudin is the Sgt. Donny Donowitz of Hollywood.
What WittyPhase said … the point is David Denby is a liar. Complaints about “the system” are not a legitimate defense. Denby violated basic professional ethics and deserves to be called out for it.
And if for nothing else, he deserves to be strangled with his scarf for referring to “the Daldry.” What an asshole.
Alt. banner caption: Men who hate women
There is never an excuse for cockfacery. Unless the other guy is James Franco.
From: Scott Rudin
Date: Sat, 3 Dec 2011 13:04:32 -0500
To: David Denby
Subject: Re:
…blah tl;dr…
PS: Go back to Scarf Town, pussy!
We’ve secretly replaced Scott Rudin with David Cross in a fat suit. Let’s see if anyone’ll notice.
The only damage I can think of is that an early good review opens the door for others, some of which may be bad. Its a lot like farts.
Alternate banner caption: “Pictured: Shitfaced cockmasters”
“…so we are in agreement: After the introductory fart-snifter sampler, next month’s New York City Film Critic Circle meeting will be followed up with a ceremonial de-ascotting & hog-tied horse-dragging for Mr. Denby. All members in favor, give me an ‘AZOOGAH!’”
AZOOGAH! AZOOGAH! AZOOGAH!
“The jam-up of important films makes it very hard on magazines.”
A writer should be more familiar with the power of innuendo.
Wait…. peeps really read The New Yorker? I thought they were just used to fill coffee tables in the Doctors office.
First off, this article. If you cannot see that an agreement is an agreement, then you are blind. Denby went into the screening knowing that he would be embargoed until Dec. 13th. PERIOD. By walking into that theater, you agree to this. It is written in nearly every email I receive dealing with a a film screening from a press rep.
Good or bad isn’t the issue. It’s that he broke an embargo, period. You’re simply not supposed to do that.
Additionally, these embargoes are largely setup to PROTECT print media. They can’t post stuff until their print format can, which puts them in odd windows. If a print medium, like THE NEW YORKER can’t follow an embargo meant in part to protect THEM, then that’s disgraceful and makes the system crumble.
Additionally, if this was a bad review, would you have a problem? If you do, then you may want to go ahead and show us the money you receive for writing that kind of nonsense. If you have a rule like this, it has to apply to all review, good or bad. You cannot allow “good” review to run early while holding back a stemming tide of bad review until the film releases or you simply give the OK. That sets a bad precedent.
You may disagree with the way the studios go about things, but you have to think beyond yourself when dealing with these issues. The embargo is there to level the playing field. Otherwise, people might simply live-blog a film.
Stinky Pete, the reason the poster with Rooney Mara’s nipple was released earlier this year was a genius move on two counts.
First, the sheer controversy of it started buzz. PERIOD. Early buzz is fine. And in this case, it was damn cheap. They didn’t even have to print them and distribute it! Partly because no theater would use it without cutting it down.
Second, it was a great move because a lot of the material in the book and the Swedish film was dark. Some people questioned whether Hollywood would dull it. Give us a poster with Rooney Mara’s pierced nipple clearly visible, and a lot of that discussion went away. They were basically saying, “Yes, we WILL be edgy America.” Everything else since then has further enforced that idea.
I understand honoring your agreements, and speaking for myself, I wouldn’t have broken that agreement. I’m simply pointing out that the system is kind of idiotic, and Rudin claiming David Denby has somehow harmed the film by posting a good review early is ridiculous.
Also, you really think the embargo is meant to protect news outlets? Please. The studios are trying to force word of mouth into the time frame when it will help them the most. *I* wouldn’t have a problem with him posting a bad review against the embargo, because *I* am a reader. His first commitment is to the reader, not the studio. But I could understand if the studio was pissed over a bad review.
Wow. And here I figured this post was way too boring to generate any comments. It seems this really gets everyone’s pierced tit in a wringer.
@Vince The harm that has been caused by running the review early is that it peaks the interest in the movie a week too early. There are people that are going to see this movie no matter what but for the people that are indifferent, having the review in the New Yorker a couple days before the release of the movie will generate that additional interest in someone deciding to see the movie.
I feel this is a good time to remind everyone Denby was briefly addicted to jerking off to internet porn, as he stated in his autobiography I’m sure no one other than a handful of reviewers read. Look at that face! You KNOW it was some gross stuff, and I’m sure the scarf was involved. I can’t believe Rudin didn’t use that against him. It shows a graceful restraint rarely seen in fat white rich people. Rudin wins! Granted, the crippling internet porn addiction makes Denby more of a relatable figure. Maybe it’s a wash.
After the first email I’m disappointed the guy didn’t go full-out Mark Antony the whole time.
“The needs of the magazine cannot trump your word. AND YOU ARE AN HONORABLE MAN!”
@Duke of Nuts You’re assuming that people who are indifferent on a movie are actually going to read a movie review in the first place. They are going to look at that number or letter to see if the movie is good or bad. With the amount of trailers that are out there for the movie and the already present fan base, this is nothing but stupid old Hollywood crap.
I believe in honoring your agreements, but I also think that practices should grow with the world around them. This can be applied to anything, but it is really clear for the entertainment industry. They are lucky that someone doesn’t already have a copy of the movie to share to anyone they please.
Denby’s decision to break this embargo is disingenuous in the extreme. He knows only too well how much money is spent on film marketing and how to-the-moment each new piece of information is fed to the public in a carefully paced building of interest. He knows that every person involved with the film has worked incredibly hard to ensure that the public hits the peak of anticipation on its release. Why do you suppose that opening weekend is considered more important than overall revenue?
By breaking the embargo you have completely thrown this off. If it was simply a case of not crowding your readership with all the Christmas release films at one time then why not break embargo on something a little less high profile.
Congratulations, you got your publicity. I hope they never trust you to attend another of their screenings again.
I’d read the review, but the New Yorker app on my iPad keeps crashing.
“You broke the embargo! Okay, fine, Denby dat way. How Rudin.”
Not to be “that guy” but isn’t the issue that once the movie comes out the reviews in the New Yorker, which effectively act as advertisements, would be advertising a different movie?
More like New Porker amiright?
Wait, I thought “the beef of the week” was when Rocco nutted in iambic pentameter from Chanel’s chin to forehead. The man has range as a thespian and I think that should be recognized.