Yesterday, a number of us who blog about the Oscar race had an opportunity to see Milk for the first time. Jeff Wells of Hollywood-Elsewhere was among the first to post his reaction, and it included the following statement:
“I’ve been hearing iffy things about Milk for the last week or so, but I have to conclude that those who’ve been spreading the iffy stuff are by and large mean-spirited and, I feel, overly demanding.”
Too tired and not competitive enough to hammer out a full reaction of my own last night, I posted the following short response in Jeff’s comments section:
“Jeff, I was getting the same BS tips about Milk being a disappointment, and then I saw it today and happen to think it’s terrific, especially—but far from exclusively—Penn. The bad buzz actually only lowered expectations and made the movie all the more rewarding… but, still, you’ve gotta wonder where this stuff starts, and why it sometimes builds to the point that usually-credible people start circulating it to us.”
Well, Kris Tapley of InContention (and formerly of a Variety blog) read that and felt I needed a talking-to, which he gave me in a comment of his own:
“Come off the conspiracy theory shit, Scott. There are some people who genuinely have issues with Milk and their concerns aren’t totally unfounded. Just because they disagree doesn’t mean they’re somehow ‘wrong.’ Don’t puff yourself and your ‘tips’ into something their not.”
Okie-dokie, Kris: First, it’s “they’re not.” Second, I never insinuated that there is any “conspiracy,” or that those who have issues with Milk are “wrong.” (That’s why I began the sentence “I happen to think it’s terrific,” with the operative word being “I.”) And, finally, I was not puffing myself or my ‘tips’ (yes, you’re not the only one who gets them) into anything, but rather substantiating what Jeff was saying, which is to say that usually-credible people were out there talking about Milk… and they weren’t saying that it had weaknesses or flaws… they were saying that it was not good.
This morning, Sasha Stone of AwardsDaily (formerly OscarWatch), the original Oscar blogger who gave both Kris and me our first opportunities to write about the Oscar race online, felt compelled to share her analysis in response to something in the second of the two sentences in my comment (“but, still, you’ve gotta wonder where this stuff starts, and why it sometimes builds to the point that usually-credible people start circulating it to us”):
“I’ll take a stab at answering that, from a gal who’s been around the block shall we say: trust no one. Any good Oscarwatcher worth his or her salt must start there. You can’t trust anyone anyway but remind yourself every year: Nobody knows anything.”
Later in the piece, she goes on:
“You have to know your source—know their tastes and biases. If Roger Ebert wrote me an email (he only did that once during the Crash vs. Brokeback debacle) telling me a major Oscar contender was a turkey I would believe him. Why? He has nothing to gain or lose by telling me this unless he was telling to me to somehow slant my coverage. If he was telling me as a friend (I should be so lucky) I would trust it coming from him. If someone whose opinion I didn’t trust as much as Ebert’s, someone whose taste is radically divergent from my own (not to mention that of AMPAS) I would take it from whence it came.”
Setting aside the first insinuation that I am not a good Oscarwatcher worth my salt, allow me to respond to the second: Do you honestly think I don’t know that I need to consider my source(s) for information of this nature? Please. I understand the difference between a Milky Way and a turd, and what baffled me in this case—and was the entire impetus for me posting a comment on Jeff’s site—was why people who usually give out Milky Ways were circulating turds, informationally speaking. (Hey, it’s the Halloween season.) You don’t have to find Milk flawless to agree that anyone who said it was flat-out bad was wrong.
But the saga goes on. Kris then decided to try to pump a few more hits out of this pseudo-controversy by writing a post about it on his own site—and providing a convenient link to it in the comments section of Sasha’s—titled “Just Because I’m Paranoid Doesn’t Mean People Are Trying to Kill the Movie.” (For those of you who aren’t as sharp as Kris, he’s referring to me.)
Kris then employs his usual strategy of buttering-up Sasha a bit and then whining about one thing or another. Here are a few excerpts:
“For the most part, I really enjoyed Sasha Stone’s recent “State of the Race” column at Awards Daily. Stone’s been kicking around this beat for longer than she’d probably care to remember and she has a gift for thinking deeply about the insanity of an Oscar race. But I think she takes the issue of ‘tension’ this season slightly over the top by leaning a bit too heavily on the eagerly posted sentiments of a new-to-L.A. blogger trying to make his mark.”
“She then quotes Scott Feinberg, an Oscar blogger who seemed to think people with a measured response to Milk had somehow lost their credibility because they didn’t leap at the hero worship of the tale and felt the film didn’t resonate as deeply as it might have.”
“To begin with, it’s clear Feinberg made the comment to elevate his status a bit. ‘Look, people send me tips.’ That kind of thing. But beyond that, we’re not at the stage of rival publicists killing this film… yet. And while I’m sure Wells understands that, I’m not sure that Feinberg does.”
“I think we as bloggers have to be careful to understand the context of our work and how that context can be dismissed with a quick quote here and there. That is a lesson I truly hope Feinberg learns sooner rather than later, for his sake and, certainly, for the sake of the LA Times, who rather hastily threw him an editorial voice after behind-the-scenes plans for the upstart fell through.”
Okay. I’ve had just about enough of the patronizing BS of Kris Tapley—incidentally, who the hell is he? We’re about the same age, we both started covering the Oscars in the same place, we’ve been doing this for roughly the same length of time, and—acknowledging something that he won’t—we both know our stuff, which is why we’ve both had opportunities to contribute to the web sites of mainstream outlets. The difference is that Kris has lost perspective and actually believes he’s a big-shot now, and that everyone else is merely a peon whose opinion is less worthy than his own.
Kris didn’t like that my web site was also generating attention on other Oscar sites and being taken seriously within the industry, and he particularly didn’t like that I periodically emailed the other Oscar bloggers links to interesting pieces/or scoops of mine (just like they did to me), so he removed a link to my site from his blogroll. Eventually, he restored a link to AndTheWinnerIs, but he has never linked to The Feinberg Files, even though I linked to both InContention and Red Carpet District (R.I.P.). But, hey, nice or not nice, that’s his right.
What’s really perplexed me is what I ever did to Kris that led him to completely blacklist my name or anything to do with me from his site—except to snidely note, as one of his news-recap items the week I was hired to do a new blog, that “The Los Angeles Times have hired an east coast outsider and called it awards coverage. Well, we wish him well.”
Look, Kris obviously has a problem with me, although we’ve never met and I’ve never done anything to him. I’ve kept this between Kris and me until now, but his complete eruption over a two-sentence harmless observation that I shared on Jeff Wells’ site is absurd and rather pathetic. It makes me wonder if we’re dealing with a Captain Queeg type of personality here… maybe Dan White is more fitting. (Kidding.)
But you’ve gotta admit that it takes some chutzpah for Kris, of all people, to be this condescending to anyone. “The Los Angeles Times have hired an east coast outsider and called it awards coverage” … “A new-to-L.A. blogger trying to make his mark” … “It’s clear Feinberg made the comment to elevate his status a bit” … “while I’m sure Wells understands that, I’m not sure that Feinberg does” … “That is a lesson I truly hope Feinberg learns sooner rather than later, for his sake and, certainly, for the sake of the LA Times, who rather hastily threw him an editorial voice after behind-the-scenes plans for the upstart fell through.”
Oh, and on that last point, Kris: I’m sorry you lost the mainstream post that your “west coast friends” helped you to get. I’m sorry that you’re upset that a mere “east coast outsider” like myself got one instead. I’m sorry you got your facts wrong about how I got my job. (Feel free to call my editor if you want to dispute that.) And I’m sorry that you’re so insecure about yourself that you have to constantly belittle and (try to) pick fights with others. You know you’ve gone off the rails when not only publicists (on both coasts) complain about your cockiness and rudeness, but Sasha herself felt the need to post a comment on your Variety blog criticizing you for it… although I noticed that was deleted pretty quickly.
The bottom line is that you and anyone else purportedly concerned with determining why people have a problem with Oscar bloggers don’t need to write massive posts about two sentence comments… you need to look in a mirror.
Anyway, Kris, thanks for the warm welcome to the west coast. I genuinely look forward to meeting you. Who knows, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship!
Note: The ‘Comments’ section has been disabled because I don’t care to discuss this further. (And, yes, I have corrected a misspelling.)
