Monday, December 5, 2011
NOT SINCE JAMES MADISON HAS AN EMBARGO BEEN SO HOTLY DEBATED: So, critics and select awards groups have already seen Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, but under the terms of an embargo date--reviews were not supposed to be published until December 13. However, David Denby of The New Yorker broke the embargo with a review that published online today and is available in the issue arriving on newsstands and in mailboxes beginning today. Unsurprisingly, this has provoked a pissing match between Denby and producer Scott Rudin. Frankly, I don't understand the big deal--Dragon Tattoo is all-but-certain to be a big financial success regardless of reviews given the momumental book sales (though the fact that it's apparently a very hard R may cut into that), and the film that was shown was the finished film, not an incomplete work print.
As always, I think our friend Linda Holmes sums up the sides of the debate best and I agree with her. Don't agree to the embargo date and then break it. But setting embargo dates to begin with is a challenge. Breaking embargos is less frequent in the film world than in the book world, but often a book will be embargoed till a certain date (i.e. the Harry Potter books, big politicial books) and those embargoes are almost always broken with few, if any, consequences.
ReplyDeleteIf you agree to an embargo in exchange for early access to a movie, you agree to the embargo. Denby's just wrong.
ReplyDeletewhat are the long term consequences? clearly, Denby will be shut out of future screenings, but since the New Yorker magazine as a whole is complicit, Anthony Lane must bear some responsibility, and since his reviews are actually good, the rest of us have to suffer. Damn you David Denby!
ReplyDeleteIf Denby's second reply begins with "Scott, you ignorant slut," then I want to read the rest of this conversation.
ReplyDeleteThe stakes could not be lower.
ReplyDeleteDenby's wrong, but... don't you feel like a big piece of this getting publicized is Rudin wanting people to see how good the review is? Doesn't make what Denby did correct, but...
ReplyDeleteJudge Spaceman rules that Denby must close his eyes and randomly select any page of Dragon Tattoo, and then Scott Rudin can do to him whatever is done to any person on that page.
ReplyDeleteI love Anthony Lane's writing as humor or as essays, but Denby's reviews are actually better as reviews.
ReplyDeleteI disagree. A respected writer for a respected publication has just offered us proof that neither the man nor the organization can be trusted to keep their word. It's a handful of sand thrown into the gears -- a bonanza for the contract lawyers, but not so great for keeping the machinery running smoothly.
ReplyDeleteNever mind that every other publisher now has to decide whether they keep to their word or allow the New Yorker an unearned "exclusive."
I don't get that from Rudin's tone or text. I think he's just really pissed off that they went out of their way to get the movie screened early, and this is the thanks they get. I hope Sony takes every opportunity they can in the next few years to make life exceedingly difficult for the NYFCC and the New Yorker.
ReplyDeleteCall me old-fashioned, but I just can't abide a man going back on his word, and then offering such lame excuses for it. If the former weren't insulting enough...
Whatever the other consequences, one does get the feeling Denby is off Cameron Crowe's holiday card list.
ReplyDeleteAnd especially because Fincher's film is based on an obscure book that's never been adapted before...the nerve of Denby to spoil the plot!
ReplyDeleteCould the man who made Elizabethtown follow it up with something worse?
ReplyDeleteAllegedly, there have been some plot tweaks made in the final act, though nothing specific is mentioned in Denby's review.
ReplyDeleteRudin is a publicity master...I do think there's an element of gamesmanship in the way he's playing all of this...
ReplyDeleteI also think Linda Holmes' discussion of the whole "it's okay to give our film an award immediately but don't you dare write about it til we tell you too" element is very well-said. (I still agree with the majority that Denby is in the wrong for breaking an embargo he promised to uphold, but I think there are other factors at work here.)
ReplyDeleteSomewhere in the universe, I just heard Crowe whisper, "Challenge accepted."
ReplyDeleteIt's law-school exam season, so... contracts and/or first-amendment hypo: could Rudin/Sony have gotten an injunction against the New Yorker?
ReplyDeleteGiven that the magazine had already gone to press and shipped by the time Rudin/Sony could have gone into court, I think even if they have a contract that would permit/mandate injunctive relief (and I doubt they had a written agreement with Denby) they lose on the balancing of equities thing. Once you get past injunctive relief to damages, it gets even dicier--partiularly since the review is generally positive (though not an unqualified rave), how do you prove damages, absent some sort of liquidated damages agreement, which I'd be shocked if exists in writing and (depending on how substantial it is) is likely small enough to be a non-entity for Hearst or big enough to be set aside as unduly punitive.
ReplyDeleteIf the magazine had shipped, you're probably right. If the magazine had just gone to press and not shipped, I'd take that argument. It's probably relatively easy to prove that breaking the embargo would cause irreparable harm that would be difficult to compensate with damages. The point of the embargo was to make the reviews part of the marketing campaign -- the flood of reviews two weeks ahead of the movie would build tracking, instead of spending it and dissipating it a month ahead of the release. The point isn't that the review was good (the studio knew that most of the reviews would be positive); it is that a million generally positive reviews one or two weeks before opening are far more important than a trickle of positive reviews over a longer period of time -- the latter being exactly what Denby's early review would cause. I think that a good lawyer could convince a judge that the equities are not on the side of the party who knowingly scuttled a huge marketing push just so that it didn't have to have to decide which worthy film to omit from its holiday issue.
ReplyDeleteMatt, do you think the existence or nonexistence of a written agreement matters? It seems like it'd be pretty easy to show the contract exists, especially since it doesn't seem like Denby denies the existence of the embargo condition. (And I bet there are emails from Sony to Denby offering the screening and stating the embargo condition.)
ReplyDeleteI don't know that they need it to be enforceable, but in terms of a presumption of irreparable harm and any liquidated damages, it would certainly be hugely helpful if there was at least a terms of use sort of scenario that expressly mentioned those things in addition to the embargo date.
ReplyDelete