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Shawn Robbins

NIKKI-ISMS | Nikki signs first look deal with HBO | Nikki and Penske make up, she will return to reporting on the entertainment industry

By Shawn Robbins, in Box Office Discussion

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Can someone link the epic Nikki bitch slapping session from the other day? When she pwned Variety et all.

Neo said I can't post the entire article (BOOOO!) but here is the the tail part of the article, and really the best part- NIKKI'S response and assessment of the reporter who interviewed her, LMFAAOOOOO:

    [*]And finally, Finke's kicker:

    "I don't think for a minute these people like me," Finke told me. "They talk to me because that's how the game is played. They'd like to ignore me, but they can't. The best way for them to think of it is: I get bitch-slapped today, and someone else'll get bitch-slapped tomorrow."

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That person—or people—according to Finke's blog post, are David Remnick, Tad Friend, and most of the New Yorker's working masthead. But before we get there, let's do a quick rundown of the language used in Friend's piece:

    [*]Finke portrays many of the town's leaders as jackasses who golf at exclusive preserves

    [*]Jeff Zucker, the C.E.O. and president of NBC Universal, is "one of the most kiss-ass incompetents

    [*]"Stick it where the sun don't shine, you asswipe," she recently counselled a CBS publicist.

    [*]Nikki wrote it like the runaway bride was a whore."

    [*]In October, 2007, Finke posted a story about Jeff Robinov, Warner Bros.' president of production: "Warner's Robinov Bitchslaps Film Women."

    [*]"I did call Peter ‘Ovitz's buttboy'"

    [*]"Then you see a comment-maybe from someone who's in an insane asylum-saying, ‘When I worked there, he shit in the kitchen sink and wiped his ass with $100 bills.'"

    [*]Nikki's response was that I was a pussy.

    [*]"New Line was left holding its dick"

    [*]"starts whining like the pussy he is,"

    [*]A source of Finke's says, "Somehow I've become like the poster child for her-I'm her bitch."

    [*]Ray Stark once told Finke, "Girlie, if you ever fuck me, I'm going to personally come over to your house and give you a hysterectomy."

    [*]"You make me sound like a wuss!"

    [*]bitch-slapped today, and someone else'll get bitch-slapped tomorrow

And that wasn't even a thorough search. This thing's full of awesome Finke-isms. But the bottom line is that the juciest stuff in the profile about Nikki—she changes posts on the fly, she can be shifted by her sources, some people are afraid of her, some not so much, she's a rebel, an outsider, comes from money, lives a mysterious life, is kinda kooky—are things we already knew or could've guessed. The best part of this story, of course, is Nikki's reaction.

Hollywood Manipulated The New Yorker the title of her post proclaims. How does she go after the New Yorker? Her full assessment, in its most basic form is

As I expected, it's an amusing caricature, only occasionally true but hardly insightful. Still, I'm relieved that The New Yorker didn't lay a glove on me.

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Ah, but there's more. Finke argues that Friend's reporting was mediocre, and that he and the New Yorker got totally played by Hollywood. Back to the bullet points, one more time:

    [*]Her time was wasted.

    [*]The best stuff she gave Friend wasn't even used.

    [*]She spoke with Friend on piles of pre-conditions only.

    [*]Friend's work was "no better" than David Carr's NYT profile on her.

    [*]She found Friend "easy to manipulate."

    [*]She enjoyed "bitchslapping" New Yorker EIC David Remnick "throughout but especially during the very slipshod factchecking process"

    [*]The New Yorker "bent over" for Hollywood.

    [*]Brad Grey's flack Steven Rubenstein got every reference in the story to him deleted.

    [*]Harvey Weinstein had "----" replaced with the word "jerk" on his quote.

    [*]More on Hollywood "had their way" with the New Yorker, and then this Eminem-esque kicker: "You, too, can make The New Yorker your buttboy. Just act like a ---- and treat Remnick like a putz and don't give a fuck."

Jesus.

I contacted Tad Friend, David Remnick, and deputy editor Pamela McCarthy at The New Yorker for comment on Finke's rebuttal. None of them replied. The New Yorker's PR director, Alexa Cassanos, did:

No, no comment from David or The New Yorker. Thanks for checking though.

I figured I'd fire one Finke's way since she's having such a great morning. What'd she think of the New Yorker's silence? Also: what she thought of the article's assertion that she could be "(positioned)..to some degree."

I have no idea what that sentence means. I do know that in the 3rd graf of the story it reads, "she's very, very, very accurate, extraordinarily so..."

And that, right there, is the Nikki Finke story: playing her own press as hard as the subjects she covers try to work her, and when occasionally caught in the middle, celebrating the nihilism of her bloodsport with a hearty "who cares?" Finke is Shiva, a force of destruction, kinda crazy and overly obsessive, caring only about how respected and powerful she is, and taking it by brute force. She's playing her game by rules she makes up as she goes along, elbows out, and occasionally tossing around doublespeak to back her transgressions and fouls. It's really quite fun to watch even if, as Finke might suggest, you have no reason to give a fuck.

http://gawker.com/53...d-david-remnick

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