Nikki Finke [Entertainment Journalist]

By: Julian Chavez | June 24, 2010 | Ten by Ten

Deadline.com first began in March 2006 as Deadline Hollywood Daily, the 24/7 Internet version of Nikki Finke’s long-running LA Weekly print column “Deadline Hollywood.” Her site was purchased by Mail.com in 2009 and rebranded Deadline.com, which then launched Deadline New York, Deadline London and now Deadline TV. Influential industry leaders and key decision-makers across many fields track Deadline.com many times a day. Its scoops regularly receive more reader comments than all of the entertainment industry news sites combined. Nikki Finke’s journalism career has included years as an Associated Press foreign correspondent in Moscow and London, a Newsweek correspondent in Washington D.C., and Los Angeles, and as a Los Angeles Times staff writer covering entertainment and features. From 1995 through 2000, she was West Coast editor and Hollywood columnist first for the New York Observer and then New York Magazine. She joined LA Weekly as its Hollywood business columnist in 2002. Her many reporting honors include Entertainment Journalist of the Year from the National Entertainment Journalism Awards, one of the “100 Leaders You Can Learn From On Twitter” in the journalist category, one of new media’s “Top 10 Entertainment Game Changers” by The Huffington Post, and one of Time magazine’s “Time 100” finalists. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair and Esquire.

What inspired you to work in the entertainment business?
First, I don’t “work in” showbiz. I report on showbiz. Nothing “inspired” me. Truth be told, back in high school, I got tricked into starring in someone’s student film that was a rip-off of pics by both Ingmar Bergman and Luis Buñuel, and I loathed every minute of every week I acted in it. And then, in 1984, I was a Washington D.C., correspondent for Newsweek, and on Friday nights, we’d sit around watching TV in the bureau and waiting for our story read-backs from the [New York] headquarters. Well, I wasn’t much of a TV watcher, but Miami Vice had just debuted, and it aired on Friday nights, and I was hooked. That’s when I started thinking that something interesting might be happening in primetime. Next thing I knew, I was transferred to Newsweek’s Los Angeles bureau, and in between reporting on the crack cocaine epidemic and the Chernobyl nuclear accident, I found myself also covering the TV biz and talking to Brandon Tartikoff almost daily. Well, Miami Vice had been his “MTV cops” concept. So I’d come full circle. And I eventually became a full-time entertainment business journalist who’s looking for an ocean-view condo in Malibu.

In one or two sentences, how would you describe the current state of the industry?
I’ll do it in a few words: “Twi-hards” and Taylor Lautner and zombies and mash-ups and franchises and reboots and Zac Efron and superheroes and J.J. Abrams and Judd Apatow. Every weekend at the box office is the good, the bad or the ugly. Meanwhile, only a lucky few people are in demand and working while everyone else has a suicide hotline on speed dial.

In your opinion what constitutes great storytelling?
Uh, I don’t spin stories. I report facts and tell the truth, and do both with a great deal of snark. I like to say, paraphrasing Jessica Rabbit, that I’m not mean; I just write that way. But in movies and TV, it’s all about the character arc for me. What is bad storytelling is anything described with the word “paradigm.” Total B.S.

What contemporary artists do you admire and why?
You’ve got to be kidding. I don’t care about content; I only care about the process.

Please list your top five films of the decade and why?
Of the decade? No way. Almost every time I see a movie these days, I want those two hours of my life back. My taste in movies is very all over the place: from Legally Blonde to Cronenberg’s Crash to A Beautiful Mind to Cloverfield. But The Godfather I and 2 still have no equal. I can’t believe how many Gen X-ers or younger have never seen these. Today, those pics would have been done in 3-D and Johnny Knoxville would have popped out of the bed along with a live jackass.

What do you consider your greatest career achievement?
Surviving. Very few mainstream media outlets want to tell the truth about Hollywood. So the fact that I am surviving and my Web site thriving and the readership widening is a minor miracle. I’m very, very grateful.

What do you consider your greatest career failure?
Anytime I took a job just because it paid better. Inevitably, it meant making journalistic compromises I couldn’t stomach.

What do you believe is the biggest problem currently facing the entertainment business?
The continued takeover, vertically, horizontally and every nook and cranny, of infotainment, by the handful of Big Media companies — too much power in too few hands. It’s also why everything in movies today is a remake, a reboot, a three-quel or a flop. You have to be a multi-Oscar winner or gross more than $500 million at the box office before they’ll allow talent to do anything original or creative. Sucks. 

What new technology currently having an impact on your industry are you most excited about and why? What technology are you most afraid of and why?
Excited? Definitely not by 3-D or CGI or Blu-ray or HDTV or Fusion Camera Technology or even the Blackberry. Now, invent something that silences people in movie theaters — I might be impressed. Also, it offends me that everyone is supposedly eager to watch entertainment on mobile platforms with increasingly smaller screens. The new iPhone 3G S is somewhat intuitive but more of a toy. The Kindle looks like it’ll fry in the California sun. I don’t need an iPad. I embrace technology, but that doesn’t mean we need to upgrade all our technology just because we can. I still love those old black-and-white movies starring Bette Davis.
 
What is the best career advice you’ve ever received, and who gave it to you?
I rarely receive good career advice, because too many well-meaning types tell me to “tone down” my cynicism so I don’t piss off the showbiz people in power. Never. (Hey, no one puts a gun to the heads of people to read me, right?) Instead, I try to give good career advice. It wasn’t said to me specifically, but I was covering the Reagan administration when Nancy came out with her “Just say no” campaign. So these days I keep giving people career advice to “Just say no.” Boss asks you to demean yourself writing about a celeb divorce? “Just say no.” Invitation comes for some boring Hollywood event that will waste your time? “Just say no.” Mogul requests you to remove a reference to him as a putz? “Just say no.” 

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