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EXCLUSIVE: Comcast Wants NBCU Deal Done … A Hollywood trade reporter who'd been banned by Universal Studios three weeks ago for what it considered to be unethical journalism -- putting off-the-record remarks by the boss on the record -- has apologized in a handwritten letter sent to the head of the studio, both sides confirmed to me this week. The missive has prompted the studio to lift its ban on the journalist, thus bringing to a quick end one of the most talked-about incidents in reporter-studio relationships in recent memory.
See previous: Universal Bans Trade Reporter
Anne Thompson of the Hollywood Reporter confirmed to me today that she recently wrote a handwritten letter of apology to Ron Meyer, president and COO of Universal Studios, and both she and Universal confirm that the ban on her has been lifted because of it. Meyer had previously instructed his head of corporate communications to inform the publicity staff that Thompson was persona non grata to every executive there. Not only was no one supposed to talk to her, but she was barred from attending screenings and premieres, eating at the commissary, parking on the lot, or doing any other function at the studio that Universal has control over. Security would be called if she were found there.
The reason, Meyer told his people, was that Thompson had knowingly and deliberately burned him by taking off-the-record remarks he'd given her about the progress of a Stacey Snider-is-leaving-for-Dreamworks story and putting them on the record in her article. Meyer informed insiders that Thompson had admitted to him she'd done that and anticipated he would get mad about it, but refused to be repentant about it. Meyer complained to Thompson's editors. Then he banned her from the Universal lot.
Previously, when I called to get her side of the story, Thompson, who writes HR's Risky Business column, at first declined comment, and then told me: "His remarks were on the record." Yet she confirmed today that she wrote a letter of apology to Meyer for her actions. Universal sources also characterized her handwritten letter as deeply apologetic.
Meanwhile, I'm told the matter was, and is, a matter of intense concern to HR's newly installed publisher Tony Uphoff -- he took over January 1st -- and that he is still actively seeking (through numerous phone calls to executives there) to ... Read More »
Reporter Apologizes: Universal Un-Bans
DHD: I'm on assignment for a week
305,000+ page views since DHD's inception two weeks ago. I will be on assignment for a week so posting will be light, if at all. Think of it as coitus interruptus.
Universal Bans Trade Reporter
I'm told that Universal has banned a Hollywood trade reporter for what it considered to be unethical journalism: putting off-the-record remarks by the boss on the record.
Here's what happened, according to my sources:
Ron Meyer, president and COO of Universal Studios, recently instructed his head of corporate communications to inform the publicity staff that the Hollywood Reporter's Anne Thompson is persona non grata to every executive there. Not only is no one supposed to talk to her, but she is barred from attending screenings and premieres, eating at the commissary, parking on the lot, or doing any other function at the studio that Universal has control over. Security will be called if she's found there. The reason, Meyer told his people, was that Thompson had knowingly and deliberately burned him by taking off-the-record remarks he'd given her about the progress of that Stacey Snider-is-leaving-for-Dreamworks story and putting them on the record in her article. Meyer informed insiders that Thompson had admitted to him she'd done that and anticipated he would get mad about it, but refused to be repentant about it. Meyer complained to Thompson's editors. Then he banned her from the Universal lot.
I reached Thompson, who writes HR's Risky Business column, to get her side of the story. After declining at first to talk about the situation, she finally told me just this: "His remarks were on the record." But I understand Thompson privately thought of the matter as a misunderstanding stemming from her not calling up Meyer and asking for his permission to use his quotes before the article appeared in the paper. Also, the extent of the ban surprised her: she apparently thought she simply wouldn't be allowed to attend Universal movie premieres.
Cynthia Littleton, the HR's newly appointed editor, declined all comment.
This is a reaction Meyer hasn't taken since moving to Universal in 1995 and one that no studio head has ordered in recent memory. Meyer is supposed to be an Industry nice guy; Thompson is supposed to be a seasoned entertainment journalist. The rules of engagement are ordinarily clear-cut. Stay tuned for updates.
Universal: Like, Duh
Marc Shmuger, new chairman, Universal Pictures
David Linde, new co-chairman, Universal Pictures
New Epidemic: Pellicano Amnesia
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Here's my latest LA Weekly column, Two Tonys Is One Too Many for Mogul.
You know how, in that New York Times article, Paramount studio boss Brad Grey issued a statement through a spokesperson that he was only “casually acquainted” with thug-for-hire Anthony Pellicano and had “no relationship” with him until the private detective was signed up by Grey’s attorney, super-lawyer Fields, to help in the Garry Shandling lawsuit against Grey. People for Ovitz, too, previously said that the ex-Hollywood powermeister’s only dealings with Pellicano were through the law firm, Gorry Meyer & Rudd, that represented Ovitz and his now defunct Artists Management, and it was they who elected to hire Pellicano, not Ovitz. (According to that account, Mike had declined to choose from among a list of investigators the firm recommended to him.)
Yeah, sure, nobody knew anybody. Really, amnesia in this town is becoming an epidemic now that the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles has heated up its investigation.
But, I've learned that, a few years ago, when Grey was still the head of talent management/production company Brillstein-Grey, he brought the William Morris Agency the idea of doing an original series with the working title Hollywood Dick based on Pellicano’s life and work. The Pelican was thrilled about the project and signed on as a consultant. With Billy Friedkin attached to direct, Brad and WMA pitched HBO, who passed. (Strange why this wasn't in the NYT's Grey article, though a Feb. 26th Los Angeles Times story made brief mention of it without detailing Pellicano's involvement.)
Oh, and then there’s the fact that Bernie Brillstein, Grey’s longtime partner, confirmed to me that the location of the old Brillstein Co., the forerunner to Grey’s firm (and where Grey was mentored from 1986 until 1991, when he became a 50-50 name partner) was just two doors down the hallway from Pellicano’s office in the same 9200 Sunset Boulevard building. Brillstein later took over Pellicano’s space in an expansion.
As for Ovitz, one mogul recalled to me that back in the 1990s Pellicano approached him and said, “Mike Ovitz has asked me to do some work for him.” The mogul said to Pellicano, “Be careful, Ovitz is a scumbag.” Later, the mogul ran into Pellicano, who remembered that conversation and said, “You were right. Ovitz is a scumbag.” ... Read More »
Bernie Talks about Brad
Given The New York Times Page One story linking Paramount studio boss Brad Grey to Anthony Pellicano, it's natural to wonder what Brad's longtime talent management and production partner and mentor Bernie Brillstein thinks of it. Here's what he told me this afternoon, all on the record: "I just want to say I read the article. There was no reason for the article. There was no conclusion. I can’t figure out why they even did it. There’s nothing new that hasn’t been said for the last two years. I have my own opinion of Garry Shandling. I’ve always said not good things about him. And now Linda Doucett is involved, it’s getting crazier and crazier. They were allegedly not the most rational people. And when I called her [one of the NYT reporters on the story, Allison Weiner] and said, 'Is there anything I can do to help you?’ She said, 'No.’ Because I could have given her some facts she didn’t have. I love Brad. I always will love Brad. And he needs no defending by me ever. He's a great guy."
Previously: Brad Grey on NYT’s Hot Seat UPDATED
Reiner Ruckus Scaring Actor Activists?
Kudos to Rob Reiner for not retreating into seclusion but instead meeting with the press club in Sacramento today re the brouhaha behind his handling of that California preschool ballot initiative. Reiner rightly tells the Los Angeles Times he "worries, tremendously, that the controversy surrounding him will set back his goal to offer free preschool for all California schoolchildren." But there's something even more troubling about it: will the beating given Reiner right now scare off actor activists, in particular Democrats, from ever running for political office? Here's a past column, United They Sit, I wrote on that subject, exploring why liberal Hollywood talent don't become Democratic candidates (but Schwarzenegger, Reagan, Eastwood, Bono, Murphy etc. did for the Republican party). Still applicable.
Old, Old News: Pellicano/Tabloids
Journalists for the Los Angeles legal newspaper Daily Journal write today about a tabloid reporter in the early 1990s surreptitiously taping Anthony Pellicano -- bugging the bugger, according to LAObserved -- while the PI fed, watered and overall negotiated with the night-crawlers of the news biz. (Actually, that was reported extensively two years ago by local TV news station KCBS and its then reporter Drew Griffin, who used the news break to leap to CNN.)
But the Daily Journal claims today that the recorded conversations with Pellicano suggest lawyer Bert Fields didn't know about the PI's methods. I, too, was shown some tape transcripts back in 2004 pertaining to this. When I couldn't hear the recordings themselves -- none of the 250 microcassettes were made available to me but they were to KCBS's Griffin -- I didn't feel comfortable going with the story. At the time, I believed and still do that drawing any such a conclusion one way or the other re Fields/Pellicano from the oblique references on the tape was, and is, too big a leap to make. The tapes' owner just phoned me now to confirm that the FBI had demanded that tape and 69 pages of transcripts.
From what I read from the tapes, I thought back to Clifford Odets, the screenwriter of that extraordinarily prescient film The Sweet Smell of Success, and the opening scene when his cur columnist J.J. Hunsecker says archly, “I love this dirty town.” Deceased James Mitteager, a former New York City cop turned freelance writer turned Los Angeles bureau chief of the Globe and also a vet of the National Enquirer, made many of his tapes in the early and mid 1990s, during the beginning of the tabloidization of mainstream media. Think Michael Jackson's first run-in with the law, and the OJ Simpson murder case. When Mitteager died of throat cancer, the tapes were left to his wife, who then gave them to her husband’s favorite tipster, Paul Barressi, the adult film producer and occasional leg man for Pellicano. Barressi made a deal with KCBS to air them in 2004. At that time, Bonnie Fuller, the editorial director of tabloid publisher American Media -- National Enquirer, Globe, Star , Bonnie -- was voted the No. 1 “media icon” in a major online poll, beating out 94 crème de la crème candidates for having the most impact on the industry. The TV networks were adopting tabloid tactics, even paying for Michael Jackson news interviews. Doing so wasn’t just acceptable; it was then even admirable.... Read More »
No NYT Stocks UPDATED
UPDATING MY SCOOP POSTED ON SATURDAY, MARCH 11, AT 04:45 P.M.-->
No, that won't be an April Fool's Day prank by The New York Times. I'm told that, on April 1st, The Gray Lady confirmed today it's planning to drop its Monday-through-Friday Tuesday-through-Saturday stock listings on April 4th and to replace them with some kind of new package of interactive tools and market information web access. In the paper will be a very limited 1 1/2 pages 2 pages, trimming those thousands of stock tables to just hundreds the top 100 stocks in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index, plus market analysis, mutual fund information, charts tracking individual company performance and lists of foreign currency exchange rates. Plans are being finalized what to do on the weekends. The complete financial tables will continue to appear in the Sunday issue of the paper. Newspaper industry sources tell me that this could represent a $10 million savings to the NYT in newsprint costs and editorial space: "The way for papers to save money short of getting rid of people is to get rid of stock pages." For years, the nation's 900+ newspapers have run the AP's stock tables, so the trend is going to hurt non-profit AP's revenues. Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times announced that it would condense its tables to a one-page listing of the 1,300 most heavily traded stocks and a list of companies based in Southern California. In the past month alone, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Chicago Tribune, Newsday, and the Denver Post are just some of the papers that have eliminated their stock listings. But the NYT is the biggest newspaper yet to follow the trend: after the Gray Lady, comes le deluge. Could it be possible that the Wall Street Journal is next? Speaking of the WSJ, I'm told to expect another round of staff cuts through layoffs and attrition.
Brad Grey on NYT's Hot Seat UPDATED
The New York Times exploded with a Page One story for Monday about Brad Grey's alleged ties to Anthony Pellicano, target of that heated-up U.S. Attorney wiretapping investigation and catalyst for the breaking and increasingly broad scandal rocking Hollywood and L.A.'s high-profile legal community. It didn't go up on the NYT website until 7:30 p.m. PT. I reported its existence at 4:44 p.m. PT. (Truth: Unknown to the reporters, I'd followed their progress for 3 weeks; given that it was such a highly competitive beat, I didn't disclose their topic because I felt they deserved their scoop.) It almost doesn't matter what the article said; just the fact that the sitting chairman and chief executive of the Paramount Motion Picture Group has now been dramatically linked by name to Pellicano was a huge shock for Hollywood. Forget Blackberrys: phones were ringing on both coasts as major players gasped with their pals -- first at the news of the article's existence, then about the story's prominent placement. That's because, in Tinseltown, perception has always been more important than reality. After all, the NYT reporting duo of Allison Weiner and David Halbfinger had already published big news breaks about Michael Ovitz's and Bert Fields' connections to the case. As one Pelican flap insider told me: "The missing piece right now is not Ovitz or Fields. Ovitz is yesterday's news, and Bert is a 78-year-old lawyer. It's Brad, especially since he's a recently appointed studio boss." So the Industry chatter post-NYT story focused on: How is this going to play with Grey's bosses Tom Freston and Sumner Redstone? Can Brad do his job if he becomes the focus of the feds? Who at Dreamworks will step into his place? (This latter question is very much typical of the Industry types' lame attempt at humor.)
This is what I know about the behind-the-scenes of it all:
The NYT couldn't have written any story about Brad Grey without Linda Doucett. Fans of the old HBO series The Larry Sanders Show will remember her for several reasons: the former model played busty blonde secretary Darlene Chapinni, she was star Garry Shandling's real-life girlfriend; she was fired when they broke up; and she filed two lawsuits against him, Grey and the show. At the time, Shandling was an important ... Read More »
Sopranos Spoilers for Season 6
The Sopranos spoiling really began when Lorraine Bracco gabbed that, due to a planned “major plot development” in the Season 6 opener, HBO this month would not be having its usual huge premiere advance screening bash at Radio City Music Hall. Way worse was when, yesterday, the HBO website mistakenly posted a long summary of Season 6's first episode, "Members Only." Needless to say, it was yanked. But the truth is it’s not hard to find Sopranos spoilers out there for Season 6 after its insanely long 21-month layoff. There will be a total of 12 episodes airing this year and another 8 episodes – said to be “the final eight” by HBO – airing in 2007. Guest stars include Jerry Adler (In Her Shoes), Tim Daly (Wings), Frankie Valli (Four Seasons lead singer), Hal Holbrook (Men of Honor) as a scientist, Ben Kingsley (House of Sand and Fog) as himself (?), Julianna Margulies (ER) as a real estate agent, Treach (HBO’s First Time Felon), Ron Leibman (Garden State), Elizabeth Bracco (Analyze This) and Lord Jamar (HBO’s Oz). Lots of TV industry spoiling-for-a-fight speculation about whether James Gandolfini can knock off Teri Hatcher Sunday night. I say, nah. Look, Desperate Housewives wasn't on the air when The Sopranos beat all the broadcast networks and scored the highest ratings in HBO's three-decade history when 13.4 mil viewers tuned in for the one-hour premiere of Season 5. The girls get almost twice that. Meanwhile, for upcoming Season 6, the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly (the official magazine of receptionists which, with sister company HBO, is owned by parent Time Warner) packages a titillating look, guru David Chase gives interviews, the NY Times and the LA Times had early but still cagey reviews, www.Sopranoland.com offers some info, and individual websites glean a few more clues. So stop reading now if you don’t want to know what happens. Otherwise, fuhgeddaboutit:
That “major plot development”? Sorry, not going to say. Too good. But this sets up the usual tensions and retributions that keep The Sopranos so compelling. This time around, it's the last chapter of the life and times of a New Jersey crime boss. Season 6 opens, amid bohemian music choices like William S. Burrough's "Seven Souls" spoken-word piece, with a montage showing the two-year real-time gap between the end of the last season and the start of this one. (For those of you who've ... Read More »
April Fool's: No NYT Stocks
No, that won't be an April Fool's Day prank by The New York Times. I'm told that, on April 1st, the Grey Lady is planning to drop its Monday-through-Friday stock listings and to replace them with some kind of new web access. In the paper will be a very limited 1 1/2 pages, trimming those thousands of stock tables to just hundreds. Plans are being finalized what to do on the weekends. Newspaper industry sources tell me that this could represent a $10 million savings to the NYT in newsprint costs and editorial space: "The way for papers to save money short of getting rid of people is to get rid of stock pages." For years, the nation's 900+ newspapers have run the AP's stock tables, so the trend is going to hurt non-profit AP's revenues. In the past month alone, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Chicago Tribune, Newsday, and the Denver Post are just some of the papers that have eliminated their stock listings. But the NYT is the biggest newspaper yet to follow the trend: after the Grey Lady, comes le deluge. Could it be possible that the Wall Street Journal is next? Speaking of the WSJ, I'm told to expect another round of staff cuts through layoffs and attrition.
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