Rushfield Babylon

Over , I have some important thoughts about why American audiences are turning their backs on Superheroes and the historical development of this genre.  Among other profound theories offered, I posit that Superhero films are ironically a victim of Christopher Nolan’s success:

But the series that took the entire genre apart, Christopher Nolan’s Batman films, turned the jaunty superhero world into something dark and sinister.

It was a brilliant maneuver. Just as the world was beginning to suffer from hero fatigue, Nolan knocked the chess pieces onto the floor and recast the game with a new set of rules. And it was a wonderful success. The Dark Knight,the series’ second installment in 2008, became the nation’s third highest grossing film of all-time, behind only Avatar and Titanic.

But looking at what stands today, one can wonder whether in remaking the game, Nolan effectively killed it for all but himself. While it bankrolled Nolan’s success, the film industry still isn’t prepared to follow him into the darkness in anything but cosmetic ways. The director might have succeeded at castingBatman as a $200 million cerebral art film, but that is just not a road international entertainment conglomerates are going to walk down very often.  

Please read the rest .   There will be a test.

Am coming very very late to this party.  So late that I should just let sleeping rabid dogs lie and get on with my life, but alas, the thoughts as ever haunt one’s dreams, and if we don’t release the demons from within, we’re doomed to repeat them..on a weekend no less.

Watchers of Finkedom are accustomed to extraordinary events.  Things that would have been unimaginable a decade ago erupt across our ken just about once a week.  But even by the breathtaking standards this week’s eruption of Mount Nutjob was one to behold.

For those who don’t follow this (and first of all, bless your hearts. May you prosper and multiply) this week, Nikki continued what now seems to be a series of pieces attacking her company’s departing employees.   The piece, if you care to read it, purports to tell the story of Lynne Segall, who until this week was the ad director for MMC, Nikki’s parent company.

Part of the reason we’ve been so slow getting to this, is at this point, we’ve got a bit of a staffing problem here at NikkiLeaks HQ.  As much we’re nose to the grindstone on the trail of the Finke, we don’t come close to having the manpower to tackle the truckloads of crazy that our favorite fake journalist dropped off on our loading dock this week.  Even now, days later, we can’t do more than chip a snow cone off the iceberg without flying in back up.   So to put the big things on the table and we hope, deal with this and move on with our lives in reasonably short order, we’re limiting ourselves to a mere ten points about this extraordinary week.  After which, we pledge the shut the hell up.

So here we have, in no particular order, my ten thoughts on the Nikki of the Week:

1. Disclaimer: Lynne Segall, the subject of this smear, is a friend from my LA Times days.  In my experience with her, I know Lynne can be extremely aggressive both as a promoter of your brand, and internally, seeking ever new ways to do her job (selling ads) ever more effectively.  In my time, she’s proposed all sorts of things to me and I know to others.  But the thing always was, proposing things was her job; saying yes or no was our job as editors.  And I never heard of a case when she was told that something would cross an ethical boundary that an editor wasn’t comfortable with, that Lynne persisted beyond that.  She was in the most passionate advocate that the LA Times could hope for and in my experience, she would never do anything to damage the companies with whose financial wellbeing she had been entrusted.

2. David Poland deals with the critical issues here far better than I could, which is why I felt in no hurry to respond to this.    This about sums up the whole affair:

But what kind of person tries to kick someone as they leave a job? A piece of shit. The same kind of piece of shit who writes nary a negative word about a failed Paramount executive as she is in bed (figuratively) with his boss.. until he is dumped… at which point she shits all over the guy in print, never, of course, mentioning the man who hired him in a fit of brain damage in the first place. The same kind of person who roots for a network exec to fail, never taking into account the many, many people whose livelihoods depend on his success.

Writing based on a Friends List and an Enemies List – especially from the list of someone else who is on your Friends List – is not journalistic integrity. It’s water carrying.

3. When Nikki writes a sentence such as “But let me also ask: at what cost to journalism integrity?” is she not slightly scared, just a tiny bit, that the hand of God will turn her to stone where she sits? 

4. For instance, just glancing at the site,  two posts immediately preceeding the Lynne slam were a rewritten press release on a Parks and Recreation book tie-in and the rewritten press release of a PR hire.  

5. The post on the Parks and Recs book, begins with the phrase, “Here’s a novel concept.”  If Deadline’s internet license can’t be revoked for journalistic malfeasance, surely there is some statute against using punny openers left over from the Dubuque Courier’s society column.

6. Nikki ends her piece with the following quote from an unidentified “one of her pals.” She claims the pal said, "It’s just in Lynne’s DNA. You’re all about editorial integrity, and she’s all about ad dollars." Now, I’m not just going to come out and say she made that quote up ("piping" is the journalistic term) but I am going to say that I do find it odd that over and over so many people tell Nikki off the record what an upright journalist she is, and you just about never see a quote from anyone saying that anywhere on the record.  Why when she comes under attack, for instance, does her boss Jay Penske, or none of the people who work for her, or people whom have dealt with her in Hollywood, ever stand up to say, you know, I’ve worked with the Finke and she’s a stand up reporter if I’ve ever seen one and you can take that to the bank mister.  
7. I’ll go one further, if anyone who has done business with Nikki Finke wants to send me an on the record quote defending Nikki Finke, to be used with their name attached, I will print it here, in full, without commentary.  Jay Penske, the floor is yours.  And if I don’t print any, you may take that to mean that none is the exact number I’ve received.

8. Having now made a habit of smearing her employees on their way out, who in their right mind would go to work there at this point.  In particular, who would take Lynne’s job.  Now I don’t begrudge anyone who does.  We all need to eat and Lord knows I’ve taken paychecks from some morally questionable institutions in my time.  So no hard feelings to her current staff at all.  But anyone who comes on now, now that all of this is out there and more, when your reputation is smeared as you running away screaming should expect only moderate sympathy from the pages of Rushfield Babylon.

9. And for that matter, once again I must ask, Jay Penske, who bankrolls this treatment of people, how do you live with this?  How do you justify to yourself that this is okay, or the price of doing business?    And for that matter, don’t you think at this point, with Nikki’s traffic sinking below that of TVLine, that you could do without the abyss in your life and not have it on your hands that you are disgracing journalism?  Your site will do fine without her.  They’ll still be able to report agency moves and casting announcements just fine…

10.  Unrelated, but I’ll throw it in to round out the list: if that wasn’t Nikki in The Daily’s picture of her, why hasn’t she sued yet, as she swore she would?  Word is she certainly tried…

So much more could be added.  And in time, added it shall be.

Goes to this sentence:

How effing hot is Chris Hardwick as an emerging name/brand in the nerd-geek footprint? Sizzling.

(full disclosure: Chris Hardwick is fantastic.  I support the sentiment, while honoring the hypical bombast.)