Field Guide #5: Reporters
Like traffic on the 405, they're a fact of life in the industry. They're also easily steamrolled
This is the final entry in my Field Guide to Hollywood series. I earlier wrote about Actors, Writers, Agents and Executives.
We have arrived at the end of this week’s tour of the people you’ll meet in today’s Hollywood and how to deal with them. Inevitably, perhaps, we turn the field goggles to that peskiest of personalities: the reporter.
Insecure, marginalized, impoverished while at the same time brimming with pomposity, the reporter on the Hollywood beat is a hard figure to love. If the poobahs and chieftains could put it to a vote, they would no doubt prefer that 90 percent of the whole class just go away — and before they are done they might yet get their wish.
But in the meantime, if you’re going to climb the rungs of power in Hollywood, reporters, like passing through West Hollywood at rush hour, are something you’re going to have to learn to navigate and live with. If you can’t, they have the ability to really mess up your evening.
For starters, you can think of reporters as a kind of writer, similar to those screenwriters you deal with, just with three times the attitude and one-third the job security and income (which is really saying something).
At the root of the reporters condition, always remember that they are the survivors of a nearly dead profession, even if the trade variety here still ambles on. The ones who are still working have seen almost their entire peer group wiped away, and are reminded daily that their continued employment is generally dependent on the whims of some billionaire owner or another. If your billionaire sneezes — or more likely, realizes that they really, really don’t like losing even a little money — your career will be gone with the wind.
Now take that insecurity and put it in ringside seats to observe the most glamorous and obscenely luxurious industry on Earth.
Then hem in the profession with all sorts of conflicts of interest and ridiculous busy work to attend to (booking photo shoots, making sure you’re posting insightful stories to ride search such as “What time does the Super Bowl start”), making it all but impossible 19 days out of 20 to do anything resembling actual journalism. See what sort of mood that puts you in.
As one whose business is dealing with them advises, “With trepidation and humility. Be mindful that their industry is contemplating mass extinction, and understand the PTSD and survivors’ guilt of those still fortunate enough to be gainfully employed. Approach them with ever greater levels of respect, patience and compassion.”
Actually, I’d say it’s the combination of crankiness and envy, Stockholm Syndrome and contempt that makes reporters covering this beat such a rich psychological train wreck. Also factor in that almost none of them historically make the leap to the so-called big leagues, stuck in trade-land purgatory forever, whether by choice or by fate. But deal with them we must, so let’s have a look at five types of reporters you’re likely to meet on the Hollywood beat.
1. The Players
At the top of the ladder are those who imagine they have leapt out of the reporters’ camp entirely. These long-time veterans have studio chiefs on speed dial (and have been on the beat long enough to remember speed dial). They imagine themselves not covering the poobahs, but advising them, almost like consultants, and some enjoy talking about how fast someone important returned their call, often earning the eye-roll of colleagues and observers.
The great yearning of every reporter is to be taken seriously, but with these people, the need to be part of the poobah club borders on desperation. They affect hard-nosed, no-nonsense business savvy, but are actually the neediest people in the industry, desperate for any sign that their lifelong obsession with the studio elites is reciprocated. Indeed, you might find them begging for Golden Globes tickets, or complaining about their seats at screenings, in the background.
The players are generally so into their own narrative that they are beyond hearing anything that’s not about them. A few ounces of flattery and pretending to have read their last piece will go a very long way. In olden times, Nikki required the loan of vacation houses to satisfy her sense of self-worth. These days, a dinner invitation will get you everywhere with them.
