MOVIE MAGS : Film Threat vs. Premiere--What War?

If it were a movie, it might be called “The Mouse That Roared.”

The foes? Two magazines that cover the movies: the low-profile, 2-year-old Film Threat--a product of Larry (Hustler) Flynt Publications--versus the high-profile, glossy, 6-year-old Premiere.

“It’s Dr Pepper against Coca-Cola,” pronounced Film Threat’s editor, Christian Gore, a Los Angeles transplant from Detroit.

Well, not quite. Earlier this year, Film Threat declared “war” on what it called Premiere’s “conventional, boring, smug . . . slickly disguised press releases.” It also charged that Premiere’s “demonstrated willingness to use weapons of mass publicity are a further detriment to the shriveling mind-set of the average moviegoer.”

The differences are notable.

Premiere, circulation 537,106, each month features a major star face on its cover (December has Julia Roberts) and articles about current movies, trends, stars, directors and set visits. It runs an annual list of the 100 most powerful people in Hollywood. It calls itself “The Movie Magazine.”

Film Threat, circulation 125,000, comes out every other month. Its cover features articles like “Mutants on the Loose” about decidedly less stellar filmmakers Alex Winter and Tom Stern, or an interview with Richard (“Dazed & Confused”) Linklater. Film Threat’s annual list, the Frigid Fifty, delineates the 50 most washed-up people in Hollywood. It calls itself “The Other Movie Magazine.” (Its very name suggests its point of view, says Gore: “There’s an angry young spirit of the punk rock scene that reflects a lot of our mood.”)

As evidence of the difference in how the two magazines cover Hollywood, Gore offers the fact that in the same month that Film Threat ran an article about Peter Guber paying $10,000 to have a personal signature designed as a logo, Premiere ran an item in which a numerologist analyzed the newly designed signature, without any mention it had been designed or how much had been paid for it.

But Premiere doesn’t seem to have broken a sweat. Publisher Susan Lyne feels “it’s a little weird” to watch a one-sided war. So far, “The Movie Magazine” has not dignified “The Other Movie Magazine’s” private war with so much of a mention of it in print.

But, she allowed, “It’s flattering to be taken so seriously--even if we’re being held in such contempt.”

But for Film Threat’s Gore, it’s a holy war: “Our readers will go to great lengths to humiliate our enemy.”