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Scathing Reviews of Junkets

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TIMES STAFF WRITERS

Ron Brewington has a job that would make avid movie fans envious.

On almost any given weekend, the freelance reporter and film critic can be found ensconced at some swank, four-star hotel chatting away with major movie stars such as Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington after first attending free screenings of their latest films. Furthermore, his air fare, lodging and meals are all paid for by the studio showing the film.

Brewington is a press junket veteran, one of dozens of entertainment journalists who regularly jet across the country--and even to exotic locales--where they get an early peak at films opening soon at the local megaplex and conduct brief interviews with the actors, directors and producers of those movies.

For many reporters working for small publications, TV stations and online outlets, the movie press junket is a godsend.

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“I’m a little guy from Harlem,” said the L.A.-based Brewington, who writes for the L.A. Watts Times and Screen Scene magazine. “Where do you think I would ever have an opportunity to sit with some of the greatest actors in our generation?”

But Brewington and other veterans of the junket circuit today find themselves under attack. Media critics brand them “blurbmeisters” because the studios often splash quotes from their pieces in movie ads. And Brewington is among six journalists cited in a recent lawsuit filed by a group called Citizens for Truth in Movie Advertising against the major studios.

By providing air fare, ground transportation, hotel accommodations, meal expenses and gift bags to reviewers, who then give glowing reviews of their movies, the studios are “perpetrating a fraud on the movie-going public. . . ,” said attorney Anthony Sonnet, who filed the suit in Los Angeles Superior Court. “We want the movie industry to play by the same rules as everybody else. There are actually Federal Trade Commission rules that when endorsements are used for the purpose of promoting a product, the company using the endorsement must disclose all the financial participants. The movie studios do not do that.”

The 150-member Broadcast Film Critics Assn. recently drew up an amendment to its bylaws that states: “Any attempt to influence a review beyond providing information is a violation of BFCA standards. ‘Quotes’ may only be provided from reviews that have been, will be, or are intended to be broadcast or printed and cannot be altered in any way without the expressed permission of the reviewer.”

Joey Berlin, who heads the critics association, believes the public is getting the wrong impression of what journalists do on these junkets or even how the junkets are conducted.

“A lot of people suggest that by [a studio] giving you an opportunity to talk to talent that they are buying you off, but my job is to get access to these people and report whatever they have to say to my listeners,” Berlin said. “How can we get people to understand that we are hard-working, ethical people and that we are not just a bunch of whores?”

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As the debate rages, even Hollywood is now poking fun at the press junket, long one of the staples of movie publicity.

Today, Sony Pictures will roll out “America’s Sweethearts,” starring Julia Roberts, whose plot is set at a press junket in a glitzy retreat in the Nevada desert. Co-scripted by comedian Billy Crystal and Peter Tolans, the story drips with cynicism about junkets.

The celebrities depicted in the movie, who are portrayed by Catherine Zeta-Jones and John Cusack, lie straight-faced and unabashedly to the press. The journalists, meanwhile, are presented as simpering and feckless, the sniveling, unctuous lackeys of the harried studio publicity head, played by Crystal.

In a touch of realism, director Joe Roth has even used some real-life entertainment journalists in his film, including Philadelphia TV critic Patrick Stoner, reporters Byron Allen, Lisa Joyner, Jeff Michael and Sam Rubin, and Tucson television critic Jim Ferguson. Ferguson is another of the reviewers cited in the lawsuit, which claims that these reviewers “furnish endorsements for the [studios’] motion pictures.”

Ferguson’s blurbs are often splayed across movie ads. A recent Warner Bros. ad has Ferguson proclaiming the movie “Cats and Dogs” to be “a doggone funny film filled with holiday fireworks.” Ferguson did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Brewington bristled at suggestions that a quid pro quo exists with the junketeers trading positive blurbs for free trips.

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“We’re journalists,” he said. “We’re just doing a job.”

Brewington, who used to work for American Urban Radio Network, is routinely quoted in studio advertisements. Dimension Films’ ads for “Scary Movie 2” has him calling the raunchy, R-rated comedy “absolutely hilarious!”

Brewington says he has panned many movies. “I didn’t like Martin Lawrence’s latest movie” (“What’s the Worst That Could Happen?”), and he said he found Eddie Murphy’s “Dr. Dolittle 2” only “borderline” funny.

Even the Negative Coverage Is Positive

The studios do not require participants in their junkets to write positive reviews. But they do expect them to write something.

“When the studios bring journalists out, it guarantees coverage,” said Keith Woods, who teaches ethics at the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit center for journalism studies in St. Petersburg, Fla. “Even if the coverage is negative, it’s a positive for the studio. It’s publicity. That’s what the money is being spent on.”

The junkets “still provide an efficient way to get journalists from around the country to very high profile movies where the availability of movie stars is limited,” said Rob Friedman, vice chairman of Paramount Pictures’ motion picture group.

Bob Thomas of Associated Press, who has covered entertainment since the 1940s, credits his father, George H. Thomas, publicity director at Warner Bros. during the 1930s, will more or less creating the press junket when the studio staged a glittering, cross-country train trip replete with searchlights and cars filled with movie stars to promote the film “42nd Street.”

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“That was in 1933 at the depth of the Depression,” Thomas recalled. “It really attracted a lot of attention. Later, Warner Bros. did a number of junkets, especially Westerns, to places like Dodge City and Reno. They would take all their major stars, including [Humphrey] Bogart, Bette Davis and Errol Flynn, put them on horses, and they would parade through the streets to the movie theater. That sort of died out during the war [World War II], when it wasn’t practical or even proper.”

Today, most medium- and large-scale films from the major studios merit a junket. Junkets are so prevalent on any given weekend that studios even register them with the Motion Picture Assn. of America just to avoid scheduling conflicts. The average junket costs $200,000 to $300,000, although studios often split the costs with rival studios when two or more events are staged on the same weekend.

Chris Pula, former head of marketing for Warner Bros., said “there are so many movies released each weekend that the . . . writer has to write about not only your movie but five others. So if you write publicity notes that don’t shill, that aren’t riddled in hyperbole, you can actually control subliminally the message in publicity. They’re copying your stuff down verbatim.”

Some junkets can be hugely expensive: A junket for New Line Cinema’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy was held last May in a castle near Cannes, France, for $2.5 million. Some 250 reporters from around the world were able to rub shoulders with stars Elijah Wood and Ian McKellen.

“I’ve seen tons of stories from that junket, both electronic and print and online, everything from the E’s and the ‘Access Hollywoods’ to saturation in the online community to traditional print,” said Steve Elzer, senior vice president for corporate communications for New Line. “In terms of the success of the event, it’s been extraordinary and very effective.”

The junket can also be effective for the reporters. If a TV reporter in, say, Peoria or Tulsa is having a one-on-one chat with Bruce Willis or Jodie Foster, viewers back home come away impressed that Bruce and Jodie know their local newscaster well enough to call him by his first name. Of course, many celebrities haven’t a clue who is interviewing them. For that reason, some television journalists tape their names to their vest pockets or to the soles of their shoes so the celebrity won’t forget to say the journalist’s name during an interview.

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Studios pick up the tab for an estimated 50% to 75% of reporters, raising questions about the appearance of a conflict of interest. Those who accept the free flights, lodging and meals say their outlets can’t afford to send them on junkets every week. Other journalists and their employers opt to pay their own way.

The Los Angeles Times and other major newspapers such as the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and Newsday do not usually send writers to junkets. Sometimes out of logistical necessity individual reporters will conduct interviews in Los Angeles or New York at the same hotel but separate from the assembly line process of the junket.

All-expenses paid trips for groups of reporters used to be common in many industries. Airlines and hotel chains, for example, would lay on junkets when they opened a new air route or resort. Trade groups would organize so-called fact-finding tours to get their point of view across. But tougher ethical standards have drastically reduced such free travel except in the movie business.

John De Simio, who ran many a junket when he headed publicity at Castle Rock Entertainment, scoffed at suggestions that an unstated quid pro quo exists between studios and junketeers.

“You can’t spend what [the studios] give you,” De Simio said. “A hotel room? What is that? Is that real income? No. A meal? You have to eat. You can’t turn around and convert that meal into money. And the promotional items? Please. Is anyone going to be swayed by a T-shirt? These are professionals.”

Rotating Stars and Roundtables of Critics

Still, many reporters decline the offer.

“My paper pays for everything,” said Frank Gabrenya, film critic of the Columbus [Ohio] Dispatch. “My hotel as well as plane fare and expenses, so we take no money from the studio.”

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“I think it’s an ethical decision,” added Ron Weiskind, movie editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “I don’t know that the readers know we pay our own way. But there can be no question that you’re not being compromised or feel that you are being compromised.” Junkets may seem like cushy jobs, but not to veterans of the junket circuit.

On a typical junket, studios invite up to 200 print, broadcast and online journalists from around the country and even overseas to fly to Los Angeles or New York, attend screenings, and then sit down for brief interviews with the stars, directors and producers of the movie.

The print and radio people are usually lumped together in groups of eight to 12 at roundtables where they pepper a star with questions for about 20 minutes before the next star takes his seat.

The drill for TV reporters is even shorter: They get only four or five minutes for a one-on-one interview. The studios provide two cameras and a crew to tape those interviews, then hand the tapes to the reporter so he can take them back home and show them on the air.

The first five or six times you do it, “you can’t believe you are sitting down and talking to Paul Newman,” said Jenny Peters, a Los Angeles-based freelance entertainment reporter who has attended countless junkets over the past 12 years. “But you do it 40 weekends a year and then it’s work.”

Gabriel de Lerma, who writes for various Latino publications, said some weekends he does four or five movies at a clip.

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“It’s an exhausting job,” he said. “I call it ‘industrial journalism.’ Imagine talking to people from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. I remember a few years ago, the last star to come to our table was Sigourney Weaver. We were so exhausted we didn’t care about anything she said. We told her, ‘Talk about whatever you want.’ ”

The junkets are just as grueling for the stars, who face up to a dozen reporters hurling questions at them in 20-minute bursts.

“Some actors don’t want to do roundtables,” said publicist Pat Kingsley, whose clients include Tom Cruise and Jodie Foster. “I don’t think the press gets much out of them.”

Almost every journalist attending a junket feels there is an implicit threat that if they misbehave they will be blacklisted from future junkets.

“We blackballed someone for a short time,” said former Warner Bros. executive Pula, who declined to identify the person. “It was during the movie ‘Blink.’ He came up to Madeleine Stowe” and made an offensive remark. “I don’t think there’s anybody who’s been banned from a junket for any length of time because it’s inefficient. It’s cutting off your nose to spite your face.”

The junket is more about getting publicity, period, rather than guaranteeing good reviews. “They will never penalize somebody for writing a bad review,” de Lerma explained. “They don’t care about what you write as long as you write a piece. They get mad if you go to a [junket] and don’t write a piece.”

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