As Roth knows-and we movie critics know even better-the scoundrels in the ad departments of the Hollywood studios make a habit of pulling good quotes like rabbits out of the most unlikely hats. The flap over the studio-invented Manning was like Proust’s madeleine to me, setting off memories of all the times my words had been twisted beyond recognition. This is why I couldn’t be too shocked that two guys at Sony had simply invented the quotes they wanted see in their ads. This has been going on for years; it’s one of the oldest cons in the Hollywood books.
I’ll never forget the summer day in 1978 when I opened the Sunday New York Times to find a full page ad for the Chevy Chase-Goldie Hawn comedy “Foul Play” adorned with the bold quote “Good Fun! -David Ansen, Newsweek.” They’d spelled my name right, but I had no memory of saying anything positive about the movie. Finding a copy of the magazine, I discovered that what I had written was “[director Colin] Higgens’s concoction is all in good fun … but [its] frenetic eagerness to please is about as refreshing as the whiff of an exhaust pipe on a hot city afternoon.” A minor change of emphasis, wouldn’t you say? First thing Monday morning, I phoned Paramount, registering my complaint. The quote was removed from further ads. (There is actually a law on the books in New York prohibiting such misrepresentation. As far as I know it’s never been used in a case of movie ads, but it lends a nice weight to one’s argument.)
The simplest trick in the ad man’s book is the one word quote. “Astonishing!” “Brilliant!” “Thrilling!” “Beautiful!” Invariably you are meant to assume that the ripe adjective is describing the movie itself. But it’s just as likely that it was the star’s shoes that were “beautiful,” the book the movie was based on that was “brilliant,” a single sequence that was “thrilling” and a particularly egregious bit of miscasting that the critic found “astonishing.” A good rule of thumb: any word preceded by … and followed by … is no more to be trusted than a campaign promise by our current president.
Slightly less flagrant, but equally annoying to a writer, is the habit of quoting the headline to your review as if it were the review itself. Usually it’s the editors who come up with the heads, which are required to be punchy, but seldom sound like the critic’s voice. Thus, though I genuinely liked and praised “Moulin Rouge,” it was a little embarrassing to be quoted saying “‘Rouge’ Can, Can, Can.” If I actually wrote like that, I’d have been out of a job years ago.
The studios are like big childish bullies: they can’t stand not to have things their way. They are so used to manipulating reality for their own ends that they feel they can get away with twisting your review into the one they want it to be. Do they actually believe that critics are so flattered to see their names in print that they won’t mind? (Well, there are some “critics” like that, but we’ll get to that later.)
One movie that surely didn’t need any critical endorsements to succeed was Steven Spielberg’s original “Jurassic Park,” probably the most eagerly awaited “event movie” of 1993. “Jurassic” was the very definition of “critic-proof.” Not only that, it got a lot of rave reviews. So I was particularly perplexed that the folks at Universal felt the need to get overly creative with my words. There were nice things I’d said about the film (it was a mixed review) but this wasn’t good enough. Instead of quoting from a reviewer who had genuinely loved Spielberg’s movie, they had to convert me into an enthusiast. “It has the spine-tingly magic of Spielberg’s best work” gushed the ads. Yes, I’d used those words to describe moments, only to go on to say that the parts were greater than the whole, which couldn’t disguise its clunky B-movie roots. They singled out the word “visionary,” which I had used in praise of other Spielberg movies, but not this one.
Miramax recently spent a whole lot of money promoting “Chocolat” and Juliette Binoche for Academy Award nominations-a campaign that succeeded in making the movie a major Oscar contender. I was enlisted in the cause. “Juliette Binoche is extraordinary,” I said, except I hadn’t said anything specifically about her performance at all. (In fact, I felt she was far more extraordinary in Andre Techine’s “Alice and Martin” the same year.) What I had said was that the filmmakers had put together an “extraordinary cast”; hardly the same thing. Once again I reached for the telephone.
Some studio publicists play fair. If they’re going to make alterations in your words, they call to get your approval first. As long as it doesn’t distort the meaning of the review, I’ll usually say OK. And if I object, they’ll honor my request not to be quoted. Recently Disney called with a proposal: they wanted to put billboards in front of theaters all over the country reprinting my review of “Pearl Harbor”-that is to say, the first paragraph of my review, which was the only favorable one. (Eight others followed.) As I had no desire to appear to be the official endorser of this bizarrely artificial Hollywood romance, I declined the offer. But I was grateful that they’d at least asked.
Long before the fictional Mr. Manning appeared, critics’ quotes have been debased by the ubiquitous “blurbmeisters” whose glowing reviews usually adorn movies before they’ve opened. Much has been written about these hacks-mysterious “critics” whose work no one has ever found in print or on the airwaves-who generously supply the studios with glowing advance words for movies they, in some extreme cases, have not even seen. The studio tactfully suggests the sort of wording they are looking for, and these enthusiastic men and women-who have been wined and dined at press junkets-oblige. “The best blah-blah of the year” they screech (even if it’s only February). Below the quotes are names and publications printed in such tiny letters you would need a microscope to read them-and a detective to figure out where they came from.
Sony Pictures was embarrassed when the Manning hoax was revealed and vowed to seek out the evil-doer. But for all the public gnashing of teeth, the studio’s true feelings were revealed when it finally punished the two offenders; the guilty parties were given suspensions, which basically amounted to a month’s unpaid vacation. To any real critic, this was more insulting than the actual crime itself. Sometimes, when I write a sentence that could look tantalizing if taken out of context, I have to stop and ask myself: they wouldn’t dare, would they? But you can’t write that way, with an ogre looking over your shoulder. The studios will do what the studios think they can get away with. Que sera, sera.
Not too long after I discovered the “Foul Play” misquotation, I opened another Sunday Times and found that in a small ad for “The Left-Handed Woman,” an art house film by the German writer director Peter Handke, I was quoted with the one-word accolade “effervescent.” This time I thought I’d entered The Twilight Zone. Any one at all familiar with the dour, astringent work of Handke knows that the least likely adjective to describe anything he touched would be “effervescent.” Odder yet, I had not reviewed the movie. Stranger still, I had not even seen it (and to this day, still haven’t). I could hardly wait to get my hands on the phone that Monday morning, but a genuinely embarrassed publicist beat me to the punch. Apologizing profusely, he explained that the marketing department had used my name in a mock-up for a potential ad and had filled in a gibberish word, which some employee had decided must be the word “effervescent.” Somehow, the trial ad had slipped through and made the early edition of the Times before the mistake was caught and the ad yanked.
It’s reassuring to know that not everything in the movie business is based on malice and deception. Honest stupidity plays a part, too.
