Film Critic Admits Being Paid in Studio’s Defense : Entertainment: Public TV’s Michael Medved testifies that Paramount paid him $200 an hour.
Film critic Michael Medved was paid $200 an hour to assist Paramount Pictures in defending the breach-of-contract lawsuit filed by syndicated columnist Art Buchwald, he testified Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court.
Medved, co-host of “Sneak Previews,” a weekly program carried nationally on public television, said he is a sometime “script doctor” who occasionally writes screenplays, although none has been turned into a film. He said he sometimes gives movie producers marketing advice.
For the record:
12:00 a.m. March 12, 1992 For the Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday March 12, 1992 Home Edition Business Part D Page 3 Column 3 Financial Desk 2 inches; 54 words Type of Material: Correction
Michael Medved--A March 7 story about the Art Buchwald vs. Paramount trial misstated some of movie critic Michael Medved’s testimony. Medved, who became a film critic in 1985, has not written screenplays since 1983. Medved sometimes tells studios or producers his opinion of movies after he has seen early screenings. He has not been paid for marketing advice since he became a critic.
In testimony before Judge Harvey A. Schneider, Medved estimated that he had spent more than 40 hours preparing for the case by reading documents and analyzing the 1988 comedy “Coming to America.”
He said he thought Buchwald’s and Bernheim’s contribution to the movie was “at best minimal” since many other elements--including the likability of the African prince played by Eddie Murphy--figured into the picture’s success.
Medved’s roles as an expert witness and marketing consultant drew criticism from Peter Rainer, a Times staff writer who is the president of the National Society of Film Critics.
“If you’re being paid as an expert adviser in a case involving a studio, it places you in a conflict-of-interest limbo that no critic wants to find himself in,” Rainer said. “It does present certain built-in problems.”
“I think it’s a remarkable admission,” Richard Schickel, a critic for Time magazine, told The Associated Press. “I don’t know of any respected critic who will participate--paid or unpaid--in the marketing of contemporary movies.”
But David Denby, film critic for New York Magazine, found “nothing wrong” with critics writing a screenplay “as long as they disqualify themselves from (reviewing movies from) the studios with which they are in negotiations.”
“Corruption only sets in when it becomes clear that the studio has no intention of producing the screenplay and is really just buying the critic off to get him on their side,” he added.
David J. Fox and Elaine Dutka contributed to this report.
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