Movies turn press agents into evil, conniving sultans of spin

“The first time I saw ‘Sweet Smell of Success,’ ” recalls Bobby Zarem, “I thought about suicide. I thought, ‘Good God! Is this the life I’ve carved out for myself?’ ”

A corrosive portrait of the toxic, borderline sadomasochistic relationship between J.J. Hunsecker, an imperious New York City newspaper columnist (Burt Lancaster), and Sidney Falco, a craven press agent (Tony Curtis), “Sweet Smell,” written by former press agent Ernest Lehman, remains the standard against which all screen depictions of publicity reps are measured, and the picture isn’t pretty.

Zarem, 66, a New York publicity institution who promoted such films as “Saturday Night Fever” and “Dances With Wolves” and has represented such stars as Cher, Dustin Hoffman and the Rolling Stones, first saw “Sweet Smell of Success” in the mid-1970s. Nearly 30 years later, another film featuring a publicist, “People I Know” starring Al Pacino, is eliciting similarly grave reactions from publicists who have seen it.

“People I Know,” which opened Friday, is a bittersweet chronicle of 24 hours in the life of Eli Wurman, an aging, pill-popping New York publicist and former civil rights activist who’s coordinating a benefit for a group of Nigerian immigrants facing deportation. This coincides with a request by a movie star client (Ryan O’Neal) to help him out of a predicament involving a high-strung model-actress (Tea Leoni). As the plot strands dovetail, Wurman realizes that he has subordinated his ideals to the shallow, ultimately meaningless duties of his profession.

Not coincidentally, Wurman bears more than a passing resemblance to Zarem. Like Zarem, Wurman is a Georgia native with an Ivy League education, a devotion to liberal causes and a fondness for profanity. For all the surface similarities, however, the film’s writer, playwright Jon Robin Baitz, who has known Zarem casually for several years, says, “There’s no denying that there’s a lot of Bobby in the character, but it’s not him. For me, everything is autobiography, so his descent is as much a projection of my own onto this husk of a man.”

Although there have been numerous movies about Hollywood and show business over the years, from “Sunset Boulevard” to “The Player” to last year’s “Full Frontal,” surprisingly few have involved publicists.

This year, however, brings several publicists to the fore: In “Phone Booth,” a current modest box office hit, Colin Farrell plays a deceitful New York press hound. In “A Mighty Wind,” a new Christopher Guest comedy set in the world of folk music, Larry Miller and Jennifer Coolidge are bumbling publicists whose deficiencies are mined for laughter. And in “Jersey Girl,” due in November, Ben Affleck stars as a publicist trying to pick up the pieces of his career.

What this signifies, however, is up for debate.

“The public doesn’t care about publicists, just like they don’t care about somebody writing ad copy,” says Warren Cowan, who has represented stars including Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, the Beatles and Michael Jackson during a six-decade career. “Of the thousands of movies that have been made, maybe 10 of them have had publicists in them, if that.”

“Phone Booth” screenwriter Larry Cohen, however, sees the recent trend as a sign of the times. “We’re in the age of public relations,” says Cohen. “Every time you watch the news, there’s some other corporation that’s been caught putting out defective products or stealing or falsifying the books, and a PR man is out there trying to put a spin on it. So I thought a publicist was a perfect character for today.”

The new crop of screen publicists does differ from its predecessors in at least one respect. “What’s unusual about [‘People I Know’ and ‘Phone Booth’] is that publicists are the lead characters,” says Mark Pogachefsky, co-founder and co-president of the Los Angeles publicity and marketing firm mPRm. “Normally the publicist is the sidekick. I think another thing that’s interesting about publicists is that they’re incredibly all-purpose. They can be the villain, the good guy, the confidant -- anything you want.”

Malleable as they are, publicists are typically portrayed as lying manipulators with lack-of-respect complexes to rival Rodney Dangerfield’s. Beyond Curtis in “Sweet Smell of Success,” memorable examples include Lee Tracy in the 1933 Jean Harlow comedy “Bombshell”; Lionel Stander and Jack Carson in the 1937 and 1954 versions of “A Star Is Born,” respectively; Edmond O’Brien in “The Barefoot Contessa”; and, more recently, Billy Crystal in “America’s Sweethearts.”

As with most stereotypes, there is both truth and distortion in these portrayals. “In the movies, we’re always put upon,” says Tony Angellotti, owner of the San Fernando Valley-based Angellotti Co., whose clients include “Jersey Girl” writer-director Kevin Smith. “So whoever has been writing these movies does seem to get that publicists are among the most harried and anxious and traumatized of all the people who work in the entertainment business.”

Why is publicity so stressful? “Whether in business, politics or entertainment, anybody who has to deal with image, and what that image can mean to a client’s financial well-being, is inviting a certain level of anxiety into his life,” says Angellotti. “Because you cannot control the press. If you could, you wouldn’t be a publicist, you’d be a deity.”

If publicists cannot control the press, there is little doubt that they can influence it. In the “Sweet Smell of Success” era, columnists, especially the almighty Walter Winchell (the inspiration for Lancaster’s J.J. Hunsecker) held sway over the lowly press agent. But Liz Smith, who has written a syndicated gossip column for more than 30 years, says those roles are now reversed, especially when access to celebrities is involved.

“The Tony Curtis character in ‘Sweet Smell of Success’ was a column-planter, and there’s no such thing anymore,” says Smith, whose column appears in the Los Angeles Times and other publications. “Now press agents are often larger-than-life creatures who think that they’re shaping people’s careers. But mostly what they do is try to keep them away from the press. So somebody like me, who writes a column, has to beg and plead for everything. There’s some kind of myth that people are lined up outside the door trying to get into my column. Not if they’re important they’re not. They have some press agent like Pat Kingsley or [Stephen] Huvane, whose modus vivendi is to put his client first on the cover of Vanity Fair, and if he can’t get her there, he wants the cover of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and so on down the line.”

Huvane, a managing director of PMK/HBH Public Relations, boasts a client roster heavy on top-tier actresses, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Julianne Moore and Jennifer Aniston. Kingsley, chairman and chief executive of PMK/HBH, regarded as perhaps the most powerful publicist in Hollywood, represents Tom Cruise, Sandra Bullock and Al Pacino.

“It isn’t that the power has shifted from the press to the publicists,” says Kingsley. “It’s just more of a level playing field. I think the tabloids and magazine TV shows have changed the way we reach audiences.”

Regulating access to stars and brokering magazine covers are not especially cinematic activities, which may explain why today’s gatekeeper publicist has yet to turn up on movie screens and why amoral climbers like Sidney Falco and bedraggled relics like Eli Wurman are so compelling. Even though most publicity nowadays is accomplished in well-lighted offices, there are a still a few old-school types like Zarem.

As outrageous as some on-screen publicist behavior may be, Zarem, an alarmingly candid raconteur who would no doubt be summarily muzzled if he had a publicist of his own, delights in relating his own Falco-esque anecdotes, suggesting that his revulsion on first viewing the film has developed into a kind of grudging respect.

“Several times over the years, somebody would say, ‘Why don’t they remake “Sweet Smell of Success” and make it about Bobby?’ ” Zarem says, laughing. “And someone else would say, ‘It was! There’s no need to remake it.’ ”