In defense of the critics’ ‘Choice’ and their choices

What does membership in the Broadcast Film Critics Assn. mean? If you read John Horn’s Dec. 14 article, “A Rising Star on Hollywood’s Awards Circuit?” you would get the sense that it means a career of quote-whoring and graft-grabbing all in pursuit of creating a big awards show so we could suckle Hollywood’s teat just a little bit more.

Not so.

A significant percentage of BFCA members do go to junkets on the studio dime. A much smaller percentage of members give what often seem to be overly generous quotes for use in ads for overly terrible movies on a regular basis.

However, if you look up the website of Erik Childress, the Chicago-based writer whom Horn quoted as an expert on over-the-top quotes in his story, you will find that the two critics held up by Childress for the most scorn are Peter Travers of Rolling Stone and the New York Film Critics Circle and Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. Neither is a Broadcast Film Critics Assn. member.

The real faces of the Broadcast Film Critics Assn. are guys like George Pennacchio of KABC-TV Channel 7 and Sam Rubin of KTLA-TV Channel 5. Neither is a hard-core critic. But both have a lot of air time, report on movies and offer opinions. Don’t they deserve a national association of their peers?

Ironically, Rubin, Horn and Thomas all work for the same media conglomerate, the Tribune Company [which owns the L.A. Times]. And the BFCA’s “Critics’ Choice Awards” will this year be aired on the WB, in which Tribune owns an equity interest. Could someone accuse Horn of promoting the BFCA as a challenger to the Golden Globes as a way of supporting the Tribune Company’s investment in the awards show? Yes. But given Horn’s long history of integrity and the unreality of one division of this huge company trying to influence another division, especially a journalistic one, it would be absurd.

The point is, we now live in an enormously complex media culture. Conflicts of interest are an unavoidable reality. So it is up to each reporter or critic to earn the respect and trust of his or her community. Calling someone out for saying that “Troy” was “Hollywood’s best epic in years” will get laughs. But outside of America, “Troy” was the fourth-highest-grossing film of the year and the 19th highest grosser of all time. Perhaps one man’s American quote whore is another man’s international aesthete?

My initial motive for writing this Counterpunch was to respond to Horn’s negative assertions about the screening series that I produced this year. But the simple juxtaposition of Horn stating in one paragraph that Paramount chose not to participate in the series and then, just two paragraphs later, writing about Movie City News’ screening of Paramount’s highest-profile property of the year, “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events,” tells you just how fair the story was.

If my entire reputation were attached to this year’s screening series, then I would be a fortunate man indeed. We showed 15 films from 11 distributors, including not only probable best picture Oscar nominees “Sideways” and “The Aviator” but also little-seen gems like “The Assassination of Richard Nixon” and the academy short-listed documentary “Born Into Brothels.”

This series was a happy service to the industry and to the films. For my four months of work and weekly hosting of the events, neither I, my company nor the BFCA will earn a nickel. It is a shame that Horn felt a need to try to tear it down with only the claim that, like every other independent screening series in L.A., including Variety’s, the studios are charged for the cost of the screening room.

I’m not exactly a Baudelaire orphan and Horn is no Count Olaf, but his story was an unfortunate event indeed.

David Poland, a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Assn., is co-publisher and editor of MovieCityNews.com and author of the daily column the Hot Button. He lives in Los Angeles.