One item I skipped over recently that I don’t want to ignore forever was the recent New Yorker profile of Nikki Finke, complete with an illustration of her from “Love and Rockets” cartoonist Jaime Hernandez. Finke’s response was a nasty — even by her standards — megasnark smack down of the article which basically had her bragging about how she hates the venerable magazine these days, how she, various industry types, and Harvey Weinstein supposedly manipulated the content of the article, and how she claims to have played editor David Remnick and writer Tad Friend in a way that the legendary Finke could, of course, never possibly be played.
Maybe it’s my lingering demi-illness throwing me off, but am I to understand that I’m to applaud Finke for doing the same thing she regularly attacks people for doing with regard to manipulating the press? Or is it okay to manipulate, but not to be manipulated? Does it only take one to tango? Or is it just cool to be as nasty as you can possibly be? It sure seems to work for her commenters. It’s as confusing as the time she counseled me not to be a “hater.”
Of course, when we’re dealing with someone as apparently mercurial as Finke, the levels of double and triple meanings in a post like hers are so deep as to basically cancel themselves out. While it’s level of absolute metaphysical truth is impossible to discern, personally, I think Friend’s article does a pretty good job of capturing the appeal and power of Finke and the sort of inherent meanness of so much of the business side of Hollywood which, all to often, Nikki Finke seems to celebrate.
First came “Quiet” – basically a month-long party/community in an underground compound on the west side of New York with overt fascistic overtones. Harris recruited roughly 100 artists and creative types to live there 24/7 for an indefinite period (it turned out to be a month). He would provide all the food, (legal) party favors, a firing range and plenty of weaponry (blanks only, I’m told), as well as a fake church and real interrogation tactics borrowed from the Cold War-era East German secret police.
