I'm amusing myself contemplating the rogues gallery of connections, and the potent punch of one petite flack, and her curious power in LaLaLand . . . yes it's the Katie Couric of publicists, Kelly Mullens, as cute as a button and as pernicious as, dare I coin it, a Blond Widow, and maybe that's the title of the bio-pic's screenplay? . . . well at least the first draft anyway.
The casting suggestions are already in full swing I'm sure, but who could you possibly get to play Grazer, but Grazer? Well, maybe Seth Green if you starved him for a month, put his finger in a light socket, and used a ton of hair gel to cement the effect.
Let's have a virtual look at Ms. Mullens' address book.
Now that's what I call a CV . . . and I'll bet she's really something when the lights dim too, or to paraphrase Loudon Wainwright III "that Little (Blond) Riding Hood, she really does it to me".
Hey all you editors and publishers out there, maybe you can have one of Ms. Mullens' clients (and what a line-up we're talking about) guest-edit your opinions page . . . who knows what pro quo you might be able to get for a little quid?
I harken back in these ethically challenging times to the sage pronouncement of Mark Saylor, one of the great journalism-to-PR-with-no-qualms-crossover-artists in recent memory, and a former colleague of Mayer-Mullens (not that the distance between journalism and PR is the chasm it once was, morally or ideologically . . . no Snake River Canyon Knievel jump required), when he said, without dropping a stitch of irony mind you, that some of his clients may have "made mistakes or done wrong things, sure, but there's nothing I'm doing that I have the least ethical qualm about."
Says it all really.
I always get a touch nostalgic about my old home town and the tragicomic goings on in the industry . . . at least it affords me the opportunity to channel Richard Meltzer in the process of forming a response. In the famous words of someone, you couldn't make this shit up . . . well maybe you shouldn't anyway.
The casting suggestions are already in full swing I'm sure, but who could you possibly get to play Grazer, but Grazer? Well, maybe Seth Green if you starved him for a month, put his finger in a light socket, and used a ton of hair gel to cement the effect.
Let's have a virtual look at Ms. Mullens' address book.
- Judith Regan in her lawsuit with News Ltd., Murdoch, Ailes, Giuliani, et. al.
- AFTRA in their who's-selling-out-the-rank-and-file dispute with SAG (hey, we're all one union aren't we?) over the AMPTP contract
- Isaiah Washington in his struggles with Grey's Anatomy, T.R. Knight . . . and homophobia of course
- Cruise-Wagner and Valkyrie, or National Socialism meets Scientology and gets 'clear' . . . way clear, as it turns out, of a film that anyone will want to see. I understand that the cringe factor is quite high, and definitely not up to the comedic standards of "Mein Führer, I can walk!" . . . my lone script note was for the eyepatch to move from left to right several times during the course of the film, like Marty Feldman's (Eye-Gor's) hump in Young Frankenstein
- Quarterlife, and I never thought that after 30 Something I'd ever feel sorry for Zwick and Herskovitz, but how far one can descend from the brilliance of Blood Diamond to the depths of 20-something blog standard
- The McCourts and their stumbling, fumbling acquisition of the easy to buy but harder to sell the increased price of DDogs and seat license Dodgers . . . and you thought that O'Malley's land grab, rape of the inhabitants of Chavez Ravine half a century ago was venal . . . then a lawsuit with the Angels over who can use the letters LA (I hear they'll be taking Water & Power to (Mc)court soon . . . but watch out for Hollis Mulray!)
- R. Kelly and god knows what manner of depravity, was it Zappa who said "she's only thirteen, and she knows how to nasty", or is it the Firesign Theater's invocation of the great Morman leader Get'em Young that seems the more appropriate reference here?
- Paula Poundstone, and this one is better left alone really, but just for fun, see either Michael Jackson's playroom or the curiously aggressive female gym teacher and the pubescent pupil genre of cliches and celebrity nightmares where short haircuts and pantsuits are not optional . . . note to Ellen, we understand it signifies that one of you is playing the traditional male role, but do you really think we needed the extra visual aid to figure that one out?
- Tommy Lee and our collective cultural roll to the tattooed and pierced bottom of it all
- Brandy and the spin of her how-to-drive-like-a-man-slaughterer habits into a small fine and an apology to the victim's family
- And all this before the Andreas Martinez (yes there are red-headed people with Latin surnames who nonetheless look Irish), Grazergate, Sunday Opinion (are there any other kinds?), Allan Mayer-42 West-Fleishman Hillard-Universal Music, David Hiller, Chicago Tribune owned "substance-free" LATimes, editorial-news-PR-advertising-publishing-ethically challenged-everyone's in bed with everyone-no Chinese firewall-conflict of something if not interest (and who's really interested anyway), wacky, wonderful world of information we live in
Now that's what I call a CV . . . and I'll bet she's really something when the lights dim too, or to paraphrase Loudon Wainwright III "that Little (Blond) Riding Hood, she really does it to me".
Hey all you editors and publishers out there, maybe you can have one of Ms. Mullens' clients (and what a line-up we're talking about) guest-edit your opinions page . . . who knows what pro quo you might be able to get for a little quid?
I harken back in these ethically challenging times to the sage pronouncement of Mark Saylor, one of the great journalism-to-PR-with-no-qualms-crossover-artists in recent memory, and a former colleague of Mayer-Mullens (not that the distance between journalism and PR is the chasm it once was, morally or ideologically . . . no Snake River Canyon Knievel jump required), when he said, without dropping a stitch of irony mind you, that some of his clients may have "made mistakes or done wrong things, sure, but there's nothing I'm doing that I have the least ethical qualm about."
Says it all really.
I always get a touch nostalgic about my old home town and the tragicomic goings on in the industry . . . at least it affords me the opportunity to channel Richard Meltzer in the process of forming a response. In the famous words of someone, you couldn't make this shit up . . . well maybe you shouldn't anyway.
It's just another chapter in The Dazed of Our Lives.
yours,
downandunder
1 comment:
A friend responded by email to my down and under blog entry on publicist/fixer Kelly Mullens by suggesting that the topic didn't rise to the level of other more serious issues in the world.
Here's my response . . .
I understand your critique about the lack of gravitas in my expanded commentary on Grazergate, one particular publicist in Hollywood, and her many internecine relationships throughout the media.
On the surface of course, these industry issues do not rise to the level of seriousness one will find in world-shaping events like the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia and Russia's response in invading Georgia, the upcoming US presidential nominating conventions and the subsequent election, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or probably even the olympic games being held in the world's most populated country and one still engaged in severe political repression of its own people and others by an oligarchical regime, but I was attempting to engage readers in what was hopefully a humorous while lightly vitriolic analysis of the erosion of ethical standards of behavior among those who are a major part of the industries who feed us all our information.
Now of course, Kelly Mullens and her ilk are not shaping the issues of hard news per se, just "entertainment journalism", if that's not an oxymoron, but if the information we receive can be so easily spun, manipulated, and compromised through back-room relationships that go for the most part unseen by the public at large, and if the blurring of the lines between the news, editorial, and advertising divisions of any media organization can be further manipulated by publicists, agents and managers, who would be termed lobbyists if they operated in the arena of governmental affairs, then I do think that a discussion of ethics is a serious enough topic to undertake in any area of public life.
What we are willing to tolerate in society on one level, we will excuse on another, and it's my belief that integrity, transparency, ethical conduct, and what one might call basic fairness or doing the right thing are the foundations of our society as a whole, if indeed it is to remain one that is, for the most part, open, free, and democratic. As such, the health of these standards inform everything we do as human beings and consequently have a greater effect than one might imagine on the larger issues of our day, whether those events involve our participation in foreign wars that have been sold to us by the media in much the same way that entertainment is marketed, or our collective acquiescence to a powerful and decidedly non-democratic political regime in the form of accepting their role in a nominally non-political event, but one that involves billions of dollars in corporate profits and political prestige, at the expense of tens of thousands of political dissidents and prisoners, not to mention whole countries that have been invaded and virtually erased without condemnation, more or less the threat of boycott by our own "democratic" governments.
In the end, I was just having a bit of a rant with what I hoped would be seen as colorful manipulations of language, while trying to expose the broad range of very dirty topics, and clients, that this one media fixer is and has been involved with over the recent past, on issues as broad ranging as the manipulation of the opinion page of what once was a major newspaper, child endangerment by high profile public figures, tabloid political journalism and dirty tricks, film industry promotion and spin, the marketing of a sports franchise rapidly making the national pastime available to only the wealthiest of our citizens, union politics, manipulation of potential criminal activity on our roadways by currying special favor for those with celebrity status, and the unseen power of certain brokers in the media industry in general. Granted, none of these topics may compare in weight to larger events on the world stage, but perhaps they are in some small way worthy of a column.
I hope on some level you were amused at least by my stylistic homage to wise-cracking, acerbic critics like Otis Ferguson, Manny Farber, Hunter Thompson, and Richard Meltzer. A pale imitation of the works of my heroes, I'm certain, but a bit of informed amusement for me, maybe for a reader or two. We'll keep working on it in any case.
downandunder
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