Nikki Finke

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“I Think A Lot Of People Are Very Relieved I’m Not In Journalism Now”

August 6, 2015 in Excerpts, Film | Permalink

it was like Godzilla vs. ...

“It was like Godzilla versus…

... King Kong.

… King Kong.”

It’s not yet certain that it will end for Nikki Finke the way it did for Muammar Gaddafi. Time will tell.

The facacta, constantly dying, yet often useful Hollywood journalist, has reached a settlement with former boss Jay Penske after a poisonous parting and is rebranding herself as a publisher of show-business fiction with Hollywood Dementia. She just did an AMA at Reddit and came across as shockingly normal. A few exchanges follow.

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Question:

Who is the craziest executive still working in Hollywood?

Nikki Finke:

Oh my. That’s an incredibly long list. The producer Scott Rudin probably is #1 followed close behind by studio chief Harvey Weinstein. I recall one time when the two of them were fighting: it was like Godzilla vs King Kong. I made one of them promise to give a donation to a charity if what I was reporting was wrong: it wasn’t, but they never made the donation, dammit.

I’d have to add Ryan Kavanaugh to that list. But since his company is going belly up (bankruptcy), he may not be around much longer. Which is a shame because who will Hollywood have to kick around now? He was a laughingstock, or should have been.

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Question:

Which scoop have you witnessed go beyond entertainment that possibly affected politics, world events?

Nikki Finke:

Well, I scooped the world about Ronald Reagan’s final weekend and death. And I used to report on U.S.-Russian strategic arms talks and summits between leaders. But when Benghazi broke out, and an anti-Muslim movie was blamed, I kept reorting on what was true and what wasn’t. Plus, I scooped that Oprah was leaving her syndicated show – and that was pretty earth-shattering, LOL. I couldn’t believe what a big deal that was.

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Question:

How’s your relationship with Matt Drudge these days?

Nikki Finke:

I’ve known Matt Drudge for seemingly forever. He was one of the true online pioneers. What’s amazing about Drudge is his reach into every facet of power in every field. He truly has clout. Media outlets like The New York Times beg him to pick up their stories. He and I both are finding the Trump phenom right now very stimulating and interesting for the media – if it lasts.

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Question:

Ben Affleck and the Nanny, yes or no? How about JLo?

Nikki Finke:

Thank god I’ve never done celebrity gossip in my long career. I have zero interest in it. I believe everyone is entitled to a private personal life. I don’t and won’t go there. But from a professional standpoint, Ben Affleck was one of the most humble actors/directors/producers I ever came to know in Hollywood. And that’s saying a lot. I remember the night he won the Best Picture Oscar for Argo, he called me from his car as he was leaving the ceremony. And even though everyone knew he was going to win, he was still gobsmacked about it, almost in shock.

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Question:

Hi Nikki! It seems like the journalism world is very cutthroat and competitive — do you have advice for young reporters just starting out about forming relationships with their peers? Is it sometimes hard to make friendships with people you’re competing against in media?

Nikki Finke:

When I was a young journalist, I found that the older journalists hated me. They threw shade because they knew I was working harder than them and scooping them which made them look bad to their editors. (No journo likes to hear, “Why didn’t you have that story?” from their editors.) It took me a few years to ignore them and that. You must have balls of steel to go with a thick skin. The only thing that matters is working your sources and getting as close to the truth as possible. Who cares if no one likes you for it? Isn’t that why people get dogs? In recent years I’m so used to getting bad press about how I “bullied” Hollywood that I was shocked when anybody had anything nice to say about me. I think a lot of people are very relieved I’m not in journalism now.•

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“Kasem Was The Voice Of A Less Algorithmic Time”

June 20, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Viewed from inside the airtight world of Casey Kasem’s American Top 40, you can almost understand why the host famously melted down for having to do a “goddamn death dedication” after coming out of a “fucking uptempo record.” You see, Casey’s syndicated parallel United States was meant to be a respite from the real and often-confusing society we actually live in, a place where no unsettling sounds could be heard, a program that could turn every living room into a panic room, a sanctuary safer even than the green room at the Charlie Rose show. As the channels decentralized and multiplied, and the vernacular grew franker, he steadfastly refused to say the word “sex” on the radio or play versions of rap records that contained the N-word. And even as the very medium that made him famous collapsed, with digital killing both the radio and video star, Kasem fought to keep the barbarians of the new normal at the gate. From Alex Pappademas’ excellent Grantland postmortem of the man who only counted backwards:

“In 1989, Casey and Jean Kasem entertained Nikki Finke — then a sharp-toothed, young Los Angeles Times reporter — in their seven-room Beverly Wilshire Hotel apartment, from which the Kasems were organizing a housing-crisis march. ‘The boss sits in a marbled-to-the-max kitchen,’ Finke wrote. ‘The boss’s wife toils in a satin moire-draped dressing room. The publicists make phone calls from the exercise gym. And the typists pound their keyboards on a priceless buffet table that seats 12.’ Later, Kasem is described as ‘more likely to be listening to a speech by Malcolm X on his cassette player than music by Miami Sound Machine.’

It’s hard to square the image of Kasem edutaining himself via the words of Brother Malcolm with, say, the story — mentioned in this Washington Post obit  — about Kasem agreeing to change his show’s chart methodology in the early ’90s in order to mollify affiliates who wanted nothing to do with hip-hop even as it became a commercial force. Kasem began basing his list on airplay data from the country’s biggest Top 40 stations rather than the sales chart in Billboard; it was probably a choice he was forced to make, but the truth was he had never sounded entirely comfortable back-announcing ‘O.P.P.’ or ‘Rump Shaker.’ You can only hurdle so many generation gaps before your ankles start to give out.

Still, Kasem provided a point of entry to the bewildering world of popular music for a lot of people, and young people in particular, who went on to love music more than he ever did. He was one of the least rock-criticky people who ever played records for a living, but he undoubtedly turned countless people into rock critics, trainspotters, trivia banks, and maintainers of eccentrically ordered personal Hot 100s. What we’re mourning when we mourn him, beyond that, is the passing of a time when a ranked list of popular songs still seemed capable of revealing something about what songs actual people actually liked.

In the time it took me to read one Billboard.com article about Casey Kasem’s now-widow throwing meat at her stepchildren, I watched Jason Derulo’s ‘Wiggle’ dethrone Ed Sheeran’s ‘Afire Love’ onBillboard’s Twitter-powered ‘Trending 140’ chart, which ranks ‘the fastest moving songs shared on Twitter in the U.S., measured by acceleration over the past hour.’ Now that paying money for recordings has become the jury duty of pop-music appreciation, we measure twitches of interest, flicks of the eye, spambot-team efficacy. Kasem was the voice of a less algorithmic time, and that’s a hard thing not to feel a pang about — whether you have kids, or pets, or neither.”

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3 Quick Thoughts About The Oscars

February 25, 2013 in Film, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

  • Every year I hear people complain that the Oscars aren’t glamorous anymore, and you’ve got to be kidding me. Who are on TV shows and the covers of celebrity magazines these days? “Housewives,” reality-show contestants and general miscreants who have done anything and everything for a little fame. The whole point of having more than just a few people controlling just a few channels–the very crux of our digital revolution–is that the information wouldn’t be controlled, that would we have a more democratic society, that there would be more opportunities for everyone. It’s about the elevation of the ordinary, the usurping of the accepted order. For the most part that’s a good thing, but some small things have been sacrificed. If everyone is a star than no one really is.
  • The only position more thankless than Oscar telecast host is Presidential debate moderator. But people will continue to do these jobs because they seem prestigious even though the 24/7 nature of the news cycle has made both passé. 
  • If presented with the opportunity, Nikki Finke would fart into the open mouth of a sleeping baby. She is a horrid person, and as endless numbers of angry live-blogs about incredibly unimportant events pop up on our screens, we are all a little bit like her. Maybe a lot. Of course, that is also a more diffuse media and democracy at work.

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