Paramount Pulls Ads in Dispute With Trade Papers : Movies: The studio is outraged by Variety’s review of ‘Patriot Games’ and a Hollywood Reporter series on the marketing campaign for ‘Juice.’

Paramount Pictures was pleased this week after “Patriot Games,” starring Harrison Ford, opened to nearly $19 million at the box office, but the studio won’t be taking out congratulatory ads in Hollywood’s two daily trade publications to trumpet the figures.

The studio’s decision came after executives expressed outrage over a review of “Patriot Games” that appeared last week in Daily Variety. Paramount felt the review went beyond what the studio sees as the function of a trade publication review--assessing artistic merit and box-office prospects--and attacked the filmmakers for misrepresenting the British-Irish political struggle.

At the same time, Paramount executives are still fuming over a series of articles that ran last January in the Hollywood Reporter. The series raised questions about whether the studio ran an exploitative marketing campaign for the urban action film “Juice.”

Paramount’s actions raised questions in Hollywood about whether the studio is being too sensitive to criticism of its most expensive summer movie and retaliating for aggressive coverage of the industry by the trades.

A studio spokesman said the decision to temporarily stop buying trade ads was approved at the highest levels of the company by Stanley R. Jaffe, president and chief operating officer of Paramount Communications Inc., and Brandon Tartikoff, chairman of Paramount Pictures.

The studio has not purchased ads in the Reporter since February. When a special farewell issue to Johnny Carson was recently published by the Reporter, Tartikoff--former head of NBC Entertainment--paid personally for an ad.

“They solicited us as a studio but we decided not to (buy an ad) because there was no reason to,” a Paramount spokesman confirmed. “It wasn’t because we don’t love Johnny, because we do.”

Paramount spokesmen insisted the studio was not retaliating against either publication, but was merely engaged in a continuing review of whether buying “congratulatory” or “milestone” ads in the trades--a common practice followed by all major studios to tout box-office revenues--is an effective use of advertising dollars.

In the case of Daily Variety, Paramount was unhappy with a June 3 review of “Patriot Games” by Variety film critic Joseph McBride. The movie follows CIA analyst Jack Ryan (Ford), who is targeted by an Irish Republican Army splinter group after he foils an attack on British royalty. Both “Patriot Games” and Paramount’s 1990 “The Hunt for Red October” were based on Tom Clancy novels.

In his review, McBride called the movie “fascistic” and “blatantly anti-Irish.” He said Clancy’s views were “shallow and unabashedly biased toward the British.”

“This film has little time for such distinctions or for the nuances of the Irish cause,” McBride wrote, “taking the side of the British occupying forces and their CIA allies against what it continually labels as ‘terrorists.’ ”

Producers Mace Neufeld and Robert Rehme, who also produced “The Hunt for Red October,” have said in previous interviews that they took great pains not to let the film become mired in the ongoing dispute over Northern Ireland.

Everything from the cinematography to the film score drew McBride’s wrath. He said that if producers Neufeld and Rehme “don’t raise their standards next time out” (Ford is under contract to do two more Clancy films), Paramount’s “Jack Ryan tentpole may collapse prematurely.”

“We took it as a personal insult,” said Rehme, who has worked 40 years in Hollywood.

McBride refused to comment, saying the review spoke for itself.

A restrained Paramount spokesman said: “We were unhappy with the review. It attacked the politics of the film. It attacked Clancy.”

Paramount said reviews in the trade press should try to assess the “commercial prospects” of a film as well as its artistic merits because the audience is composed of people who make decisions about booking films. “It is not the Washington Post or the L.A. Times telling moviegoers this is what they want to see,” the spokesman said.

Paramount’s ire at the Reporter came after a series of articles about its marketing of “Juice.” The stories noted that in the aftermath of violence at theaters showing “Boyz N the Hood” and “New Jack City,” Paramount airbrushed a gun from the hand of a young black man in an advertisement for the movie.

“Our chief complaint was we were accused of being exploitative in the marketing of the film,” the Paramount spokesman said. “And we were critical that their reporting was inaccurate and overly negative.”

Robert J. Dowling, publisher and editor in chief of the Hollywood Reporter, said he believed it was a “fair story.”