Leaving LA
Leaving LA
Being a studio PR is a horrible no-win job and you just end up taking flak from all sides
It used to be one of the best jobs in Hollywood. These days there can’t be many worse jobs in the world than being a studio PR.
This week’s Variety reports, under the headline “Flight of the Flacks”, news of the latest departure from Tinseltown’s top-floor publicity department.
http://media.guardian.co.uk/marketingandpr/comment/0,,1828689,00.html
It used to be one of the best jobs in Hollywood. These days there can’t be many worse jobs in the world than being a studio PR.
This week’s Variety reports, under the headline “Flight of the Flacks”, news of the latest departure from Tinseltown’s top-floor publicity department.
David Lux, who has left 20th Century Fox, is the third corporate-studio PR person to leave in the past six months, following hot on the designer heels of Paul Pflug from Universal and Stacey Ivers from Warner Bros.
You’d call it a brain drain if it weren’t for the fact that (with no disrespect to Lux, Pflug and Ivers – who might profitably form a legal practice with those names) nobody with a brain would have taken on this thankless task in the first place.
It’s a horrible no-win kind of job that ought to come with its very own tin hat, emblazoned with the logo of the multinational corporation you represent.
Ostensibly you’re charged with buffing the corporate image, but in reality you just end up taking flak (hence the nickname) from all sides – studio executives, film-makers and the media.
The problem is that the studios no longer wield the power that they once did. No longer can they keep their actors under control by signing them to exclusive contracts and running every aspect of their lives, from their drug habits to their seedy sexual peccadilloes.
They’ve reaped what they once sowed because, having used the wiles of spin to create their superstars – the Cruises and Pitts and Depps, the Kidmans, Robertses and Jolies – they can no longer control them.
Nor can they rely, as they once did, on tame hacks to sit on damaging stories – not without sacrificing some more expendable B-listers in exchange.
Looking back over the history of Hollywood, characters like Russell Birdwell and Howard Strickland had so much power they could cover up any kind of trouble in an era when studios ran celebrities’ lives.
Now the relentless drive to make money – coming from corporate boardrooms that regard film-making as a trivial sector of their global enterprise – has completely taken over from the art.
Power from the talent
The art of film-making is kept alive only in the independent sector, while accountants run the studios, and the art of publicity has long since died in Hollywood, replaced by bullying demands that will no longer be met by the press.
The PR talent, like the film-making talent, is in the independent sector where Pat Kingsley, Stan Rosenfield et al strut their stuff, because their power comes directly from the “talent” and the studios dare not interfere. But no amount of money could tempt them to be sucked into the studio system.
So the frankly thankless task of being a studio PR chief is entrusted to those who clamour for a vicarious taste of the celebrity lifestyle. They sacrifice their independence and their lives to be on call 24/7 to the execs whose idea of film-making is to remake last year’s hit with next year’s hot new star, and bump up the special effects budget.
Meanwhile, the craft of publicity, like the craft of film-making, faces extinction. The egos of a thousand wounded press agents still litter the road to the colony.
While researching my book in LA recently I interviewed Michael Levine, the PR behind Cameron Diaz, he told me that the only way to succeed in this environment was by having a “maniacal rage” to get through it.
I know the feeling.