‘Power Lists’ Have Clout With Insecure Execs

Though it was just an honest faux pas, you know it’s time to 86 the Hollywood “power lists” when the mug of an unknown actor winds up ahead of Mel Gibson’s.

In its current “Power Issue,” Entertainment Weekly accidentally ran a shot of a bit player named Brian Mulligan in place of Universal Studios Co-Chairman Brian Mulligan as the 31st-most-powerful figure in Hollywood along with his colleague Stacey Snider and their boss, Ron Meyer.

The opportunistic actor took the story to KABC-TV Channel 7 news, which aired a piece Monday night. The reporter joked that people are probably more familiar with the actor, who had tiny parts in the film “Armageddon” and commercials for McDonald’s and Mercedes-Benz, than the studio boss, whose face is relatively unknown even in Hollywood.

The case of mistaken identity underscores what many consider the arbitrary, silly and ultimately meaningless nature of the Hollywood power lists. The “who’s up, who’s down” rankings, ever more common over the last decade, serve as an imaginary scorecard that more often than not brings out the worst in executives and others who work in an extraordinarily insecure business.

The reality is that power lists--the three main ones being those of Premiere magazine, Entertainment Weekly and Vanity Fair’s “New Establishment”--are gimmicky marketing ploys to sell magazines. They also feed the insatiable egos of insecure executives, producers and other players who are in constant need of validation, of being told they are indeed somebodies.

This is the case even though they make boatloads of bucks in salary, bonuses and stock options and work in an industry that many outsiders crave to join.

Being on a power list results in no tangible benefits, yet even some of the highest-ranking executives and most powerful producers take them so seriously that they put their publicists into overdrive to have them included or bump them up a few notches.

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Some executives go to extraordinary lengths, retaining publicists at costs of $25,000 or more, to beg, plead and grovel with the magazines.

“I know of some executives who have had as many as three PR companies working at the same time to make sure they get on these lists,” said entertainment marketing executive Larry Solters. “If executives spent more time doing their jobs than trying to get on the lists, we’d have a lot better entertainment.”

They care how high or low they are ranked in relation to their friends and foes. They care about which co-workers they are being grouped with. And they obsess over what is written about them next to their photos.

“In this town, nobody knows who they are and they’re praying you’re going to tell them they’re someone important. They’re wildly insecure,” said Newsweek entertainment correspondent Corie Brown, who worked on Premiere mag’s power list for years.

Of course, if you ask the most notorious self-promoters in Hollywood why they care so deeply, every one of them will tell you they don’t give a hoot, nor do they even read the stuff.

Said Time magazine writer Kim Masters, who helps put together Vanity Fair’s annual New Establishment issue and is also a Premiere alum: “I’ve gotten calls from very high-level people or their representatives to say, ‘Why am I not listed, or what do I have to do to get listed?’ ”

Brown recalls how ugly the aftermath of publishing a power list can be. “What I found difficult is the heat you’d take after the fact. The executives themselves or their publicists would scream, rant and rave . . . they had no sense of humor about it. I was hated for some of my best lines.”

In the weeks and days leading up to the publication, the pressure mounts. “Publicists clear small forests between August and October sending out missives about their bosses,” said Maggie Murphy, the Entertainment Weekly assistant managing editor who oversees the list issue.

And every publicist is desperate to know in advance where the boss finally ends up, something staffers are sworn not to disclose ahead of time. “One publicist asked a researcher to cough if their client was below the number 50,” Murphy said.

To be fair, not everyone in Hollywood cares. Truly powerful executives such as Viacom’s Sumner Redstone, News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch and Time Warner’s Gerald Levin don’t lose any sleep over whether they’ll rank above Steven Spielberg. Anyone who’s built a fortune worth billions, as moguls like Redstone and Murdoch have, shouldn’t need a magazine to tell him he’s successful.

Then again, when Disney chief Michael Eisner didn’t like what was written about him in a power list two years ago, a source said he personally called a magazine reporter and complained bitterly.

One year, Barry Diller’s secretary called to inform a reporter that her boss didn’t care about being on a particular list. But if he were to be on it, she inquired, would he rank in the top three?

Often getting on the list isn’t enough. Veteran publicist Harry Clein recalls working hard to get a female executive on the Hollywood Reporter’s annual list of the industry’s most powerful women, only to have her complain that she was depressed because she wound up near the bottom.

Jockeying to get on the lists in recent years has given way to a new trend in which batches of executives are grouped together, presumably so feelings won’t be hurt. But a number of studio publicists report getting complaints from top executives demanding to know why they can’t get their individual rankings.

In Entertainment Weekly, the mugs of four MTV executives share one power position, as do three from Creative Artists Agency.

“Someday it’s going to look like one big high school class photo,” said a top marketing executive.

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A decade ago, when Premiere pioneered the power list, it was novel, dishy and revealing.

Today, they’re a dime a dozen. A number of publications, including The Times, put them out in one form or another. There are lists for the most powerful women, for executives under 35, for music executives and influential minority executives.

The Hollywood trade paper Daily Variety even considered creating one for those who have an alternative lifestyle--a gay power issue.

Although readership interest in Premiere’s annual power issue doesn’t necessarily result in increased newsstand sales, says Editor in Chief James Meigs, “we see very serious readership interest in terms of subscribers. The power list is one of the standouts of the year.”

Entertainment Weekly’s Murphy, however, says the magazine’s power list issue is one of the best-selling editions of the fall season. She adds, “I love that something Entertainment Weekly has done becomes the dominant topic of conversation” in Hollywood.

Meigs points out that general readers, not just those “inside the Beltway,” “are very, very interested both in what’s going on with the careers of the directors and stars they admire and with behind-the-scenes people.” He says the magazine is proud of publishing “a good, solid, deeply reported and extensively researched piece of journalism, and readers love the density of information.”

But for the most part, power lists have become tired, predictable exercises. Whatever novelty they once enjoyed has long disappeared. Every studio or record label head gets a spot reserved for them. The top names rarely change; they only get reshuffled each year depending on who did the most recent big deal or which star was in a hit movie.

Thus, Bruce Willis moves up because of “The Sixth Sense,” while Leonardo DiCaprio moves down because another year has passed since “Titanic.” Had the lists existed 20 years ago, no doubt Burt Reynolds would have cracked the top 10.

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While magazine editors can certainly make a good argument for publishing the power lists, Hollywood publicists consider them the bane of their existence. Each has scores of horror stories about the pressure they’re under to campaign for their clients.

God forbid, someone is left off a list or isn’t ranked to his or her liking. There’s hell to pay.

“I used to try to plan my vacations in advance so I’d be out of town when a list was coming out,” says a longtime publicist. “You can’t win. If your client is on the list, they want to be higher than last year and higher than their friends and enemies.”

“Everybody gets beat up,” said one top studio publicist. “They yell at you, even though it’s completely out of our control. It’s an awful and unholy process.”

Meigs says he and his reporters routinely tell publicists, “You’re welcome to send us all the information to help us, but arm-twisting isn’t going to have any effect.” But after publication, Meigs says, “when the phone rings, you take the call. People have a right to be heard.”

Journalists who put together the lists say the criteria they use is largely based on the person’s influence in Hollywood and/or whether he or she has the clout to make a movie happen.

“We do face-to-face interviews with most of the people on the list and others potentially on the list,” said Meigs. “We cross-reference and compile hundreds of opinions, and sift through what the town is saying about relative power.”

Some reporters who work on power issues say they love the assignment because executives willingly diss one another in hopes of currying favor.