Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: A few people have found the magic formula in publishing twice.
Speaker 1: Janice Men is one of those people. As the new
Speaker 1: editor in chief of Yon Winners US Weekly in two
Speaker 1: thousand three, she put her Columbia journalism school trained brain
Speaker 1: to work on celebrity culture and ended up transforming the
Speaker 1: culture itself. She satisfied the thirst we never knew we
Speaker 1: had for Lindsay Lohan, for the real truth about the
Speaker 1: Real Housewives. She tripled circulation and generated billions in ad revenue.
Speaker 1: Then she left to transform another magazine, The Hollywood Reporter.
Speaker 1: It was a drab daily when Men took over in
Speaker 1: two thousand ten. It sucked up to the studios and
Speaker 1: basically nobody read it. Now it breaks news in every
Speaker 1: issue I must read for industry players. So when I
Speaker 1: was recently in l A shooting Will and Grace, I
Speaker 1: wanted to get Janice Men's take on the business side
Speaker 1: of TV trends. All these shows that are rebooting now,
Speaker 1: like Murphy Brown, I mean, now we'll see the ends.
Speaker 1: I think, like everything in Hollywood, they will exhaust it
Speaker 1: to the point where everyone rolls their eyes, but then
Speaker 1: you know ten percent of them will work out great.
Speaker 1: And Will and Grace is the prime example of that.
Speaker 1: It's like they never left and it worked and people
Speaker 1: are happy with it. If these things are cynically done
Speaker 1: thinking the audience still comes, but they don't put in
Speaker 1: the effort to make it good, then the audience isn't there.
Speaker 1: And I guess it's as simple as that. Right then.
Speaker 1: I watch a lot of other shows, but like Stranger
Speaker 1: Things and Black Mirror, I don't get it, and I
Speaker 1: wonder if that's what's leading people back to the Will
Speaker 1: and Gration would give me a net work half hour
Speaker 1: like it's familiar, it's comfortable, I think, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're probably a hundred shows I've watched one episode of
Speaker 1: at this point. I think that's probably incredibly frustrating if
Speaker 1: you're a show creator, because there's no runway for someone
Speaker 1: to fall in love with episode three where things get
Speaker 1: really good, and I remember there's this hilariously sad statistic
Speaker 1: about how long people listen to a song on like
Speaker 1: Pandora or Spotify or whatever before they hit fast forward,
Speaker 1: and it's three seconds. And it's like swiping right and
Speaker 1: left on tender. It's what everyone's fighting against in Everything right,
Speaker 1: Everything content, Catzenberg wants to do five minute contents from right, Yes,
Speaker 1: I want, I want something. While you're online at Starbucks.
Speaker 1: I got a show for you. It's five minutes long,
Speaker 1: right right, there's a coffee waiting for you at the
Speaker 1: end of that show. Correct in the arc of your
Speaker 1: career of the last several years, do you find you
Speaker 1: have less time to consume any entertainment problem? My god,
Speaker 1: I think I think the Janismen have like groovy screenings
Speaker 1: of movies at our house, celebrity friends or no. That
Speaker 1: is that is a very much not the case. I
Speaker 1: think there was always this running joke at The Holloway
Speaker 1: Reporter that one day someone should do the Janisman Film
Speaker 1: Festival showing all these movies that I have never watched
Speaker 1: while I was while I was editing. I can't sit
Speaker 1: here and embarrass myself on your Yes, but some of
Speaker 1: the greatest movies of our generation have somehow not made
Speaker 1: them in front of you. So I will often be watching,
Speaker 1: you know, The Godfather on American Airlines, and you know, like,
Speaker 1: this is really good good. This is one of the
Speaker 1: things I think is interesting about editing. I'm not adept
Speaker 1: at that many things, but I think I am adept
Speaker 1: at this, which is being able to hear what other
Speaker 1: people are saying about things to divine from that what
Speaker 1: the story is without ever actually having to see the movie,
Speaker 1: see the television show, but sort of understanding the trends
Speaker 1: or cultural meaning or business story or whatever behind the product.
Speaker 1: You became the executive editor of US Weekly in two
Speaker 1: thousand two. Yes, I remember when I was making films,
Speaker 1: mostly in the nineties. The studio they want a good push,
Speaker 1: and they want a lot of pr and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of insistence on you doing a lot of media
Speaker 1: to sell the movie, and you do magazines and you're
Speaker 1: terrified the writer might get you and they might not
Speaker 1: get you. And US was very kind of soft and
Speaker 1: very people ask whatever. And then when you took over,
Speaker 1: they kind of you kind of juiced it up and
Speaker 1: it became much more tough if you will, or what
Speaker 1: language would you use? When you took over us? The
Speaker 1: mission was to do what When I started this weekly,
Speaker 1: I think I was uh, let's say, thirty one years old,
Speaker 1: and um so I was an executive editor to this
Speaker 1: famous and someone's an infamous editor named Bonnie Fuller. She'd
Speaker 1: been this figure in publishing in New York in the
Speaker 1: nineties where she'd gone from Glamour to Cosmo, and it
Speaker 1: was always wanted another job and was always, you know,
Speaker 1: one of these New York Post staples where people were
Speaker 1: always leaking negative things about her. But she was considered
Speaker 1: a little bit of a of a publishing savant, and
Speaker 1: so she took over at US Weekly, hired me as
Speaker 1: your executive editor. And she had a very sort of
Speaker 1: aggressive story sense about her, and I believed in this
Speaker 1: whole crazy thing of like you stay till four am
Speaker 1: and you leave in the you know, the the sun's
Speaker 1: coming out, like literally, bread trucks were delivering bread at
Speaker 1: the places on the block and um. But she had
Speaker 1: she and Yahn you know, you know Yan Yawn does
Speaker 1: not abide by people with a large of ego. And
Speaker 1: they had these unbelievable clashes and he grew to really
Speaker 1: not like her and she grew to really not like him,
Speaker 1: and they would have these spectacular fights over stupid things.
Speaker 1: But for example, what was their editorial debate. You know,
Speaker 1: Jan has a ton of celebrity friends, right, and she
Speaker 1: was mean, Yes, and thought she was mean. And I
Speaker 1: don't know if I would characterize this as true, but
Speaker 1: he believed she was jealous of celebrities, you know, wanted
Speaker 1: to be one of them. And and that manifested itself
Speaker 1: in in like a harsher tone than he would have
Speaker 1: chosen Um. On top of that kind of a unwillingness
Speaker 1: to defer to his wishes. And you know, if you
Speaker 1: work for John and I worked for him for seven
Speaker 1: years and it was very peaceful. If you don't listen
Speaker 1: to Jan, he will let you know he is unhappy
Speaker 1: with you. And so they would have these these things
Speaker 1: sound so trivial now, but he had wanted some design
Speaker 1: change on the table of contents and Bonnie refused to
Speaker 1: do it. And it's something that you know, nobody in
Speaker 1: the world would have ever noticed, one way or another.
Speaker 1: And she refused to do it, and he's screaming at
Speaker 1: her and in his office and he's his beautiful wood
Speaker 1: paneled office with you know, photos of his family, and
Speaker 1: and shortly thereafter she was being a contract renegotiation with him.
Speaker 1: This was like fourteen months into the job. She had
Speaker 1: only signed a one year deal and it ends up
Speaker 1: getting so heated that they have a cooling off period
Speaker 1: where they don't speak. So I go off on a
Speaker 1: vacation to Italy and yes, and and then you know,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, like Bonnie's desperately trying to reach me,
Speaker 1: and like she just is one of these people you
Speaker 1: can't get off the phone, and so I just wasn't
Speaker 1: responding to her. Was like my first real vacation since
Speaker 1: I had worked for her. And then suddenly I find
Speaker 1: out she'd just quit. And Yan tracks me down at Italy,
Speaker 1: and because John is John, he finds me in this
Speaker 1: tiny restaurant outside of Florence and the waiter comes over.
Speaker 1: He's like, I have a Mr. Winner for you on
Speaker 1: the phone, and Jan offers me the job and like
Speaker 1: I'm just like a nobody, and it's it's the whole
Speaker 1: thing started freaked me out. I could I do this?
Speaker 1: Why would I want to do this? Like I don't
Speaker 1: want to be public, I don't want to be criticized.
Speaker 1: And I saw how mercilessly Bonnie was treated in the press,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know if I was comfortable with that.
Speaker 1: And then what did he see in well, a solution
Speaker 1: and easy solution right there, I wasn't Bonnie, but also
Speaker 1: he and I got along well, I think yes, And
Speaker 1: also I was the one who kept the place functional
Speaker 1: well well amid Bonnie's chaos. And I think you you've
Speaker 1: probably seen this a lot of places where you know,
Speaker 1: where there is a very sort of um challenging number one,
Speaker 1: and there there was a number two. You know, a
Speaker 1: lot of the creative stuff and the ability to actually
Speaker 1: get people to do things was done through me, and
Speaker 1: then strength in your mind. Like I really liked John,
Speaker 1: like Johan so Yan is, like Jan is permanently eighteen
Speaker 1: years old or maybe even sixteen. He has so much
Speaker 1: enthusiasm for everything, and he's like brash and rash and impulsive,
Speaker 1: and I think for some people that can be very unsettling.
Speaker 1: But there's sort of probably no better feeling that if
Speaker 1: you suggest something to John, he's like that's great, and
Speaker 1: he like bangs the table and he's like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: that's genius. Let's do it. Let's do it. But then
Speaker 1: like just as easily you could say, you know, Joan,
Speaker 1: I had a second thought about that, maybe we should
Speaker 1: do that, and he's like okay, and like walk out
Speaker 1: the door, and like he you know, I think there's
Speaker 1: certain things. I think US Weekly he realized, wasn't necessarily
Speaker 1: his wheelhouse. It's not his baby, like Rolling Stone is
Speaker 1: his baby that he raised. And US Weekly was going
Speaker 1: to be the A T M. It's going to be
Speaker 1: the cash machine for him. And he you know, there
Speaker 1: was also part of this for John where I think he,
Speaker 1: you know, this is a man who who's Rolling Stone
Speaker 1: to find a generation and um and US Weekly was
Speaker 1: another generation that he was not as fluent in, and
Speaker 1: he realized that. But he had these moments of unbelievable inspiration.
Speaker 1: He became really obsessed with The Bachelor when it's when
Speaker 1: it came on ABC, and so you know, I know,
Speaker 1: oh yeahn and so I never watched one single episode
Speaker 1: of The Bachelor in my entire life, which is hilarious
Speaker 1: given how many times it would then appear on the
Speaker 1: cover of US Weekly. But Jan had this there was
Speaker 1: this one. There's one bachelor named Andrew Firestone, who was
Speaker 1: I think the second Bachelor to come along and yawn
Speaker 1: like he just this crazy whim He's like, I believe
Speaker 1: in it. Let's put him on the cover. And so
Speaker 1: you know, like all right, John, you know it's your magazine,
Speaker 1: and we put Andrew Firestone on and he was he
Speaker 1: was engaged to the win or and I can't believe
Speaker 1: remember all their names, Jen Scheft. And it became the
Speaker 1: highest selling issue of US Weekly in its history at
Speaker 1: that time. And so, you know, one of the crazy
Speaker 1: things was pre web metrics, and you know US Weekly
Speaker 1: didn't even have a website at this time. And this
Speaker 1: wasn't even that long ago. Was the thirteen years ago.
Speaker 1: You would live and die by these news stand sales.
Speaker 1: So you would put an issue out, let's say Thursday
Speaker 1: night or Friday morning, and so you would get all
Speaker 1: the scan data. And there these companies that do nothing
Speaker 1: but scan UPCs. They count the UPCs for you from
Speaker 1: the biggest retailers, and one of them is Walmart, and
Speaker 1: you know the other one is you know, some aggregation
Speaker 1: of maybe like Hudson News newsstands and airports and and
Speaker 1: then you can calculate a sales figure from them. And
Speaker 1: Yan who's like you know, Joan who I don't I think,
Speaker 1: would tell you he loves money and you know the
Speaker 1: things that come with money. He um, he was like
Speaker 1: addicted to it, like the news stand sales, because it
Speaker 1: was because it was a dollar. So let's every issue
Speaker 1: you sold over five thousand copies, which is amazing to
Speaker 1: think anyone can sell anything, you know, more than five
Speaker 1: thousand copies save publication. Every issue over that he sold,
Speaker 1: he made a dollar eighty five. And so you know,
Speaker 1: after like let's say, after a year of me being there,
Speaker 1: US Weekly had gone from losing money every issue where
Speaker 1: it would sell like around two hundred seventy five thousand,
Speaker 1: and Bonnie got it sometimes touching five hundred thousand. Then
Speaker 1: it started to as much as one point one or
Speaker 1: one point two million a week on the news stands.
Speaker 1: You can imagine what that cash looked like, your money,
Speaker 1: real money. So there's a sort of but you know,
Speaker 1: I think probably you and your audience remember this kind
Speaker 1: of exuberant I guess, in a rational exuberance at the
Speaker 1: time of around celebrity. That that is gone. Now it's gone.
Speaker 1: Write down death of death of Celebrity. You grew up
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, Yes, your family moved to Colorado, your father
Speaker 1: towards zoology, your mothers and I R s agents. You
Speaker 1: grew up in a pretty heavy academic people, pretty smart people.
Speaker 1: You go to Columbia School Journalism, so when you're there
Speaker 1: at this, I'm not going to say to be kind
Speaker 1: US magazine. In my mind when I was doing a
Speaker 1: lot of magazine, cars was one of those things on
Speaker 1: in a pile of other such magazines at the hair salon.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't like a real serious thing. What did
Speaker 1: you decide you wanted to do? I just don't like
Speaker 1: the mean stuff. Necessarily, you show sunny wrapping around us weekly.
Speaker 1: So there were things like people smiling. You know. This
Speaker 1: captured the imagination of young urban women and women who
Speaker 1: made a lot of money. It was the iPod of publications.
Speaker 1: It was so cool, and all these other publications followed
Speaker 1: and couldn't quite be the same. I felt like it
Speaker 1: could be read on two levels. One like you're just
Speaker 1: a celebrity fan, you actually care about what Jessica Simpson wears,
Speaker 1: And the other part of it was a tongue in
Speaker 1: cheek look at celebrity and you could sort of read
Speaker 1: it as a smart person and be entertained. So taking
Speaker 1: away the ickiness of being the person who goes to
Speaker 1: the grocery and buys the star or inquirer. The cool
Speaker 1: person's like celebrity publication and like so when I when
Speaker 1: I worked at People Magazine, like I would have never
Speaker 1: read that I was. You know, I started there when
Speaker 1: I was twenty three, and it was just so middle brow,
Speaker 1: Middle America. You know, it wasn't quite still talking about
Speaker 1: it was there was nothing cool about. It was very
Speaker 1: like catching up with Lonnie Anderson, you know, and yes,
Speaker 1: and and you know, and so that this whole other
Speaker 1: generation of celebrity who were coming up through music, through
Speaker 1: music videos, through reality television. You know. The first year
Speaker 1: that I started US Weekly, I think that was the
Speaker 1: first year American Idol came on air. And so it
Speaker 1: was this whole explosion of reality TV. So this intimacy
Speaker 1: that you know, that's when people started to call celebrities
Speaker 1: on their first name basis, like Brittany justin Jessica, you know,
Speaker 1: and the whole thing was like some like giant cotton
Speaker 1: candy machine. What did you learn at Columbia School of
Speaker 1: Journalism that you employed when you started working at US Weeknight.
Speaker 1: I mean, something tells me there's things you learned to
Speaker 1: Columbia School of Journalism that you employed when you took
Speaker 1: over Hollywood Report. But what about well, That's weekly. You know,
Speaker 1: one of the things. Was employing journalistic practices a ridiculous
Speaker 1: category to be able to do that kind of celebrity
Speaker 1: news credibly was I was a big part of US
Speaker 1: Weekly reaching did the staff did you and the editorial
Speaker 1: staff did you all sit there and oh god, I
Speaker 1: can't believe, like you're writing things about people and you
Speaker 1: have a degree of contempt for the people you're writing.
Speaker 1: Think about who were the big US Weekly figures Paris Hilton.
Speaker 1: There was a show on MTV called The Hills which
Speaker 1: all young women were obsessed with Dawson's Creek. Jennifer Lopez,
Speaker 1: She's like the platonic version of an US Weekly star
Speaker 1: at that time. She loved it, she read it, she
Speaker 1: played along with it. She's out there getting photographed reading
Speaker 1: US We symbiotics, totally symbiotic. And that's the thing that
Speaker 1: was laid bare when you work at a place like
Speaker 1: US Weekly is the sort of push pull of needing
Speaker 1: to be in the press and the desire to never
Speaker 1: be in the press. And US Weekly was for the
Speaker 1: people who very much desired to be in the press.
Speaker 1: And it's like the bonfire of the vanities. People who
Speaker 1: really made that deal with the press, they thought I'm
Speaker 1: gonna just tear off a little piece of me and
Speaker 1: throw it on this fire, and that you consume me
Speaker 1: because it's really because because I wouldn't get this attention otherwise. Yes,
Speaker 1: you certainly aren't going to love because of my work, Right,
Speaker 1: John and I would have these funny conversations where he
Speaker 1: was trying to understand, like who is an US Weekly celebrity?
Speaker 1: And he would say, you know, I just want to
Speaker 1: see more Danny DeVito and Michael Douglas in US Weekly
Speaker 1: because they're his friends. You have to arm wrestle with
Speaker 1: him about that. I mean, there were times I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't care, so put in like both we throw
Speaker 1: in the occasional picture of Danny DeVito and Reappearlman and
Speaker 1: you know, and and that that makes you unhappy. And
Speaker 1: he would literally come down and be like I love
Speaker 1: that photo. I said, so do I. And that was it.
Speaker 1: It was It was just it was just a generational
Speaker 1: shift of um how a certain group of women. And
Speaker 1: Lindsay Lohan is the other prime example, right, like who
Speaker 1: was that a big fixture of the US Weekly era.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's almost forgotten now. There was a period
Speaker 1: when she first started to kind of go off the
Speaker 1: rails where people were very dismayed because Lindsay was enormously
Speaker 1: talented and the whole Patti Duke thing and the parent
Speaker 1: trap thought, she's this young, precocious, very talented girl. Little
Speaker 1: of a sudden that just kind of goes away and
Speaker 1: she becomes this tabloid fadder. Did you see that? Did?
Speaker 1: Sometimes it was I can't even tell you how strange
Speaker 1: the Lindsay Lohan stuff is. Like she she directly called
Speaker 1: people on staff all the time. Um, you know, she
Speaker 1: her mother and you know, like the yeah, the original
Speaker 1: manager in Gustina that you know would call people on staff. Um,
Speaker 1: Like like Lindsay was that she was among I'm assuming
Speaker 1: other addictions, was completely addicted to the attention, right. And
Speaker 1: I think if you're a celebrity, and if you're a
Speaker 1: young celebrity in particular who was raised as a child star,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, like there are a lot of
Speaker 1: celebrities who are just sort of bottomless pits of narcissism,
Speaker 1: right of need and also not exercising the best judgment
Speaker 1: at the time. When when do you realize at us
Speaker 1: weekly that it's time to go? Yeah, I mean so
Speaker 1: it's you know, there was I think anyone who does
Speaker 1: these contractor contract jobs at some point every time you
Speaker 1: sign one, like a little part of you dies. You're like,
Speaker 1: I'm here for another, you know, two years or three years,
Speaker 1: you know, being held hostagen, counting down the days on
Speaker 1: marking X is on the calendar. And so I never
Speaker 1: really cared about the celebrities, suff do I think anyone
Speaker 1: I worked at the time would know I didn't care.
Speaker 1: I didn't care about I would not, would not personally
Speaker 1: sit around and talk about Jessica Simpson and Nicholas And
Speaker 1: it was sort of you know, total grind for seven years,
Speaker 1: like grind where you make a lot of personal sacrifice,
Speaker 1: like you were like twice a week, you come home
Speaker 1: after midnight and sometimes you come home at two am,
Speaker 1: and um, like you always like you know, I started out,
Speaker 1: and I started that job, and we used you know
Speaker 1: trios if anyone remembers the Palm trio and then it
Speaker 1: becomes an iPhone by the end, and like you are
Speaker 1: just always working, like I don't care how much money
Speaker 1: I'm going to get paid, because I made a lot
Speaker 1: of money and I don't need to make more. I
Speaker 1: think to be able to let go of money anxiety
Speaker 1: different points in your life is incredibly liberating, right, that's
Speaker 1: what they tell me. Yeah, And so then you know
Speaker 1: I went in. So this was after two thousand, two
Speaker 1: thousand eight, there's a terrible financial crisis. Um, yawn in
Speaker 1: two thousand seven. You know something, I'm sure he wishes
Speaker 1: he could take back where he bought the fift of
Speaker 1: US Weekly that was owned by Disney at the time.
Speaker 1: He bought it back for three million dollars he has
Speaker 1: he had. Then he gets an offer from Hurst to
Speaker 1: buy the company for six seven hundred million dollars and
Speaker 1: he doesn't take it, and then you know, boom two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight and the whole world false and the
Speaker 1: multiples at which you could trade a successful publication go nowhere. Right,
Speaker 1: Like if it was whatever beginning at the end, it's
Speaker 1: the beginning of the end, and it's like you're in
Speaker 1: a hole and you can't get out and and so
Speaker 1: so there was that part of it, um, And I
Speaker 1: don't know, I just didn't feel like doing it anymore.
Speaker 1: The year off. I took a year off here with
Speaker 1: your family, yes, and like it was great and we
Speaker 1: just now I have three I had two at the time,
Speaker 1: decided that we wanted to move to California, which was, um,
Speaker 1: you know, because why not, right, And and you're in
Speaker 1: New York. I'm in New York. We live and we
Speaker 1: lived on Lafayette Street, Lafayette and Prince and soho in
Speaker 1: New York, I know, and we it's the greatest. Now
Speaker 1: I wish we miss New York. I do miss New York.
Speaker 1: You know, my wife wants to move here. Really well,
Speaker 1: if your kids, I mean to never have to put
Speaker 1: a mitten or lose a hat. And you sound like
Speaker 1: my wife. Yeah, you can't stand in the winter, yes,
Speaker 1: I mean yes. And I don't know if you read
Speaker 1: the under a play spaces totally. So we used to
Speaker 1: do like having a fourth child, Oh my god, I
Speaker 1: mean no. There were times in New York where the
Speaker 1: weather was so terrible and we like and we would
Speaker 1: do things like should we just go to Target in
Speaker 1: Jersey City and walk around because there was like nothing, Yes,
Speaker 1: right near where you are, And that's our day because
Speaker 1: otherwise I'm gonna look at stuff. Yes, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: blow my brains out if I sit at home and
Speaker 1: a second longer. So um, and you know there was
Speaker 1: and there were just these days where like we had
Speaker 1: these two young boys at the time where they were
Speaker 1: just like, you know, the Nintendo d X or whatever
Speaker 1: or DS was new at the time, the handheld and
Speaker 1: they had and I'm like, I can't have them play
Speaker 1: video games all day long, right, and my kids with iPads,
Speaker 1: Like we were gonna you're gonna watch an iPad for
Speaker 1: it's the electronic leash. We we give them the iPad
Speaker 1: for this one so we can bathe the other one
Speaker 1: totally right. It's just like sit down and be calm.
Speaker 1: It's like, yes, moralizing modern parenting. So you know, New
Speaker 1: York is a tough place for a little kid. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's the best and worst place for a little kids.
Speaker 1: And then you know, you move out here and I
Speaker 1: don't know if you know, there was a semi controversial
Speaker 1: story about that The New York Times wrote about the
Speaker 1: l A Times and how basically how lame l A
Speaker 1: is and you know, all these people like Bill Simmons
Speaker 1: is outraged on Twitter and people are you know, I
Speaker 1: think it's like the New York Times, you know, constant
Speaker 1: theme of l as a stupid place to live. But
Speaker 1: like it raised like it raised some good points that
Speaker 1: like l A has l A's not you know, as
Speaker 1: The New York Times argued, not like a real city
Speaker 1: with a real center, like it's the chicist suburb in
Speaker 1: the world. New York is a mountain range where there's
Speaker 1: an equivalent height to these mountains. Of all industries. There's
Speaker 1: publishing and banking, politics, and and and the and law enforcement,
Speaker 1: and in tech and design, and he said, the entertainment
Speaker 1: has its place among those. I go to parties on them.
Speaker 1: I'm standing in line at Saranac at the famous mansion
Speaker 1: at Tanglewood. Were at a fund base therefore the for
Speaker 1: Tanglewood with James Taylor and his wife, and we're there
Speaker 1: in some tweety looking kind of moynihan esque. Guy turns
Speaker 1: to me. We're in the buffet line, he says, and
Speaker 1: what do you do for a living young man? I
Speaker 1: was like, four time, And what do you do for
Speaker 1: a living young man? He said? And I thought, I'm
Speaker 1: in heaven. So we're gonna have a real conversation over
Speaker 1: dinner because you don't know who the funk I am.
Speaker 1: And blah blah blah and and and and in l
Speaker 1: A one mountain dwarfs sold the other mountain completely and
Speaker 1: I find that frustration. And I think one of these
Speaker 1: was really interesting to me here was just how deeply
Speaker 1: intertwined social and business are here, right, Like so you
Speaker 1: don't escape like any of the same people, you know,
Speaker 1: which is why your friends aren't we and you work
Speaker 1: with them, yes, um and whereas and I think, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things I miss about New York, like
Speaker 1: you can go you know, when I was at Michael
Speaker 1: Wolf's book party two weeks ago in New York waiting
Speaker 1: for my car to pick me up in the lobby,
Speaker 1: the dormant and the porter of the building. It was
Speaker 1: at Michael Wolf's publisher's houses, man named Stephen Rubin, the
Speaker 1: dormant and the porter like knew everything about the book.
Speaker 1: We're trash and Trump were like totally like you know,
Speaker 1: knew the day's news was. They were totally on it.
Speaker 1: And like that doesn't happen in l a typically right
Speaker 1: in New York. You go to Duncan Donuts, that person
Speaker 1: is on it, right And in New York when things
Speaker 1: are not kosher, they go nuts and people are like
Speaker 1: my congressman is who, yeah, my stated something min is
Speaker 1: who total school board politics is all that matters. Where
Speaker 1: does my kid go to school? That's the extent of
Speaker 1: their garden. I mean, it's it is so everything is
Speaker 1: so hyperlocal here. I mean it's hyper like you know
Speaker 1: that do do you know that app next door where
Speaker 1: you can sort of see what like you just talk
Speaker 1: to your neighbors within like a two block radius and
Speaker 1: that like that to me, epitomizes l A And it's
Speaker 1: like that you don't even need to yeesh. It's it's
Speaker 1: kind of a thing out here and you don't even
Speaker 1: need to talk to anyone beyond your two block radius.
Speaker 1: And it's it's American West, Yeah, it is. It is
Speaker 1: entirely like it's the conception of the American West. What's
Speaker 1: right in front of me? Totally? Do I care about
Speaker 1: what's coming on over there? What do I care about? Completely?
Speaker 1: Like like like the man, you will And it's like
Speaker 1: it's also like nimbism. So so you take the year
Speaker 1: off and re acquainted with your family, have another baby,
Speaker 1: be acquitted with your husband, and have another baby, and
Speaker 1: when the time's up, you know, you have a copy
Speaker 1: of the Hollywood Reporter your hand and going man if
Speaker 1: I could get my hands on this operation. What I
Speaker 1: would know Originally were going to move to Marin County
Speaker 1: like I I sort of had, like my husband, I
Speaker 1: really loved Marin County. We had we had been on
Speaker 1: a house, and of course, because it's Morin County, we
Speaker 1: were immediately outbid and um. And so then right around
Speaker 1: that time, my favorite Page six had run an item
Speaker 1: about my apartment being for sailors selling. And so then
Speaker 1: there was this executive who had been at Condonas who
Speaker 1: was sort of notorious and legendary named Richard Beckman. And
Speaker 1: so Richard Beckman had and he was an ad sales guy,
Speaker 1: and he had been the publisher of Vogue and Vanity
Speaker 1: FAIRN and UM. And so he had connected with this
Speaker 1: um private money outfit called Googleheim Partners, and they had
Speaker 1: acquired this group of sort of sad trade titles and
Speaker 1: included Billboard, ad Week and The Hollywood Reporter, The Red
Speaker 1: and the Green. We used to quote, oh, how funny,
Speaker 1: okay when we first came to when I first came
Speaker 1: to Hollywood, my friends would say, you gotta subscribe to
Speaker 1: the Red and the Green. That's so funny, Okay. I'd
Speaker 1: never heard that that's great. So the so Richard Beckman's
Speaker 1: desperately trying to reach me after saying page six, this
Speaker 1: is like a scene out of Working Girl and she
Speaker 1: finds out something, you know, something in page six and
Speaker 1: like Chase when Melanie Griffin's character chases it. And it
Speaker 1: was funny. I have a publicist friend, uh named Alison
Speaker 1: Broad in New York and she she knows Beckman from
Speaker 1: just from being in New York. And she said, I'm
Speaker 1: sure he wants to talk about the Hollywoo Reporter. I'm
Speaker 1: like the Hollywod Reporter. That is such a piece of crap,
Speaker 1: Like I've never even looked at that in my life.
Speaker 1: And um, so I go, I go, and I meet
Speaker 1: Beckman at the Bowery Hotel in the restaurant downstairs, and
Speaker 1: people someone who's jokingly call him like Barnam Bailey and
Speaker 1: Beckman like the show comes to town. And he's British
Speaker 1: and like wild, you know, gesticulation and enthusiasm. But he
Speaker 1: had this idea. The investors had put him in charge.
Speaker 1: They made him the see you of these titles and
Speaker 1: said you know you can do anything, you want anything,
Speaker 1: and and um, but he said, I wanted to be fabulous.
Speaker 1: It has to be fabulous and you know which you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think he literally may have said, promised
Speaker 1: me fabulous and so and he said I wanted to
Speaker 1: be glossy, glossy. I wanted to be like, you know,
Speaker 1: I can't remember what he said, like maybe it's like
Speaker 1: vanity fair and meat to the economist or and this
Speaker 1: and that and all his little yes and so, I
Speaker 1: like trying to sell my husband in l A. I
Speaker 1: was not having it. So for several months we talked
Speaker 1: about this and then like and it was really interesting
Speaker 1: to me. I just saw immediately what it should be.
Speaker 1: He gave me these blank books of paper, this glossy paper, oversized,
Speaker 1: and I just sat there and I put post its
Speaker 1: on every page. I'm like, this is like you'll have
Speaker 1: this kind of story, this this, this is okay, Like
Speaker 1: I got it. That's it. I don't think about it anymore.
Speaker 1: And to me, like I sort of knew. I knew
Speaker 1: it would succeed, which everybody thinks your thing is going
Speaker 1: to succeed, but you know, I had a very good
Speaker 1: feeling about it. And you know, we ended up moving
Speaker 1: to l A. And it was just like we moved
Speaker 1: here July tenth. One of the things I know I
Speaker 1: had to do was hire people with publishing experience from
Speaker 1: New York, which does not exist in droves in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles and certainly not you know not at the time,
Speaker 1: and hired an art director, creative director, photo director, and
Speaker 1: whtorm this woman Jennifer Laskie, because she really really did
Speaker 1: a great job. Yes, Jenni, Yes, Jennifer Laski is a genius,
Speaker 1: and so this show's go magazine as far. Yes, so
Speaker 1: Jennifer Laski. And this is how like you never know
Speaker 1: what's what someone is really capable of. So Jennifer Laski
Speaker 1: was a sort of freelance photo editor out of New
Speaker 1: York and US Weekly used to do these really like
Speaker 1: hokey things that you know, we're going to be the
Speaker 1: last gasp to save publishing called book eazines, where you published,
Speaker 1: you create like little fan things for you saw them
Speaker 1: in the grocery. So she was the photo of the
Speaker 1: ones for Twilight, and so she would like sit there
Speaker 1: and look for pictures of Rob Pattinson and Kristen Stewart.
Speaker 1: And but I remember her taste. I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: like she was finding like the coolest photos of Rob Pattinson,
Speaker 1: and she had great taste. And so we had a
Speaker 1: prototype done by let's say, August Writer on my birthday
Speaker 1: and um, so we took it out to show studios
Speaker 1: and they're all, you know, you'll never be able to
Speaker 1: pull this off, Like all this media that covers Hollywood
Speaker 1: is doomed. It's you know anyway, what I'm saying is
Speaker 1: there was a ton of skepticism and also a ton
Speaker 1: of skepticism about can us weekly lady come and do
Speaker 1: this very different thing? And you know, I think, um,
Speaker 1: if people who are here, remember the Hollywood Reporter was
Speaker 1: not just failing, it was like flat line, I mean
Speaker 1: like already underground and sort of it had a sadness
Speaker 1: all around it. So it was definitely like bad news bearers,
Speaker 1: Like you have the staff who has been misdirected or
Speaker 1: not directed for years. They're losing, but it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: there for right and so like they like there's an
Speaker 1: inertia that's set in where they don't know, like they
Speaker 1: don't know what's good from bad because nobody tells them.
Speaker 1: They don't care. They're burnt out. They need leadership, yes,
Speaker 1: and so like I kept the staff like all these people.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure you'll remember this era of Hollywood were
Speaker 1: like like the so called trade presses, so beholden to
Speaker 1: the studios Premiere magazine, Yes, and it just becomes press
Speaker 1: release central, right, and like you well, I mean in
Speaker 1: my own case, I do a movie with my ex wife.
Speaker 1: We do this movie The Marrying Man and the and
Speaker 1: the Susan Lyne is the head of Premiere Magazine and
Speaker 1: you realize that the PR department of the studios are
Speaker 1: just faxing her the articles what to right. Most of
Speaker 1: what happened that was painted as misbehaving stars on the
Speaker 1: set of a movie, much of it was having honest
Speaker 1: creative differences. When you walk in what really disting, which
Speaker 1: is the how they would reporter under your tutelage and
Speaker 1: when you were there under your leadership, is you go
Speaker 1: to that level where you become a real honest magazine. Yes,
Speaker 1: you're not like like like Premier Magazine was a shitty magazine.
Speaker 1: If someone called me up and they said to me,
Speaker 1: and I was like a child, that was my I
Speaker 1: was in my career infancy when someone said to me,
Speaker 1: what do you think that Premier Magazine is gonna do.
Speaker 1: They're gonna take your word for it, you and this
Speaker 1: woman who you're dating, or they're going to do the
Speaker 1: bidding of the studio that releases thirty movies a year
Speaker 1: and advertising. Of course you're gonna get crushed. Where does
Speaker 1: the spine of it becoming a really, really smart magazine
Speaker 1: come from? It is so fascinating to me, And I
Speaker 1: think you see this in so much political coverage, the
Speaker 1: way they would self censor themselves, Like people come in,
Speaker 1: they come big, go interview someone and they say, oh
Speaker 1: my god, like you wouldn't believe this crazy thing someone said,
Speaker 1: and then you get the story and it's not in there.
Speaker 1: And I remember this happened several times that I would
Speaker 1: say to the person, like why is that not in there?
Speaker 1: Protecting well, I just don't think they would like it.
Speaker 1: I'm like, who cares, Like why do you care? Like
Speaker 1: they said it like then they said it, probably because
Speaker 1: they want you to use it right and and not
Speaker 1: not like not like crazy gotcha stuff, but like Hollywood
Speaker 1: had gotten into the heads of these reporters where they
Speaker 1: were protecting them but not even supporting them, were financially
Speaker 1: supporting the publication or whatever, and and you know, I
Speaker 1: also remember this one time, like, like, you know, I
Speaker 1: was the new editor and there's this one reporter there
Speaker 1: and I'm sure you must remember when Nikki Fink was here,
Speaker 1: and you know, and so Nikki Fink is is trying
Speaker 1: to reach this reporter at the office, um no doubt,
Speaker 1: to try to report something terrible about us. And so
Speaker 1: I was trying to reach this reporter and the reporter
Speaker 1: we're in a news meeting. The reporters like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: Nicky's calling. I have to run out. I'm like, why
Speaker 1: are you like giving power to someone like that? Like
Speaker 1: what is wrong with you? And so they were all
Speaker 1: kind of like it was like a collective self esteem problem.
Speaker 1: Who is the executive at Warner Brothers who green lit
Speaker 1: bringing TMZ to TV? Do you know what it's like
Speaker 1: to walk down the carters of Warner Brothers and we
Speaker 1: down one hallway and there's all the people producing films
Speaker 1: and television that I might be in. And you go
Speaker 1: down that whole way and there's Harvey Levin, who they're
Speaker 1: making money off of. Who's out there trying to kill me?
Speaker 1: Was it Peter Roth? I mean, who brought TMZ to
Speaker 1: Warner by them and going like, shame on you, why
Speaker 1: did you do that? And why are you Because what
Speaker 1: they realized was, here's head a Hopper, here's Army Archard,
Speaker 1: here's Walter Winchell, here's Luella Parsons, the old dinosaurs, and
Speaker 1: and and and and rowing a Barrett. When I was
Speaker 1: a little boy round on TV, and the studios would
Speaker 1: would work really really hard to control and manage their
Speaker 1: stories about out of wedlock babies and and and and
Speaker 1: and interracial marriages and abortions and alcoholism and sanitarium there
Speaker 1: I'm using all the language of that period, and their
Speaker 1: drug addiction and there this and their d u I
Speaker 1: s and there, and their divorces and their spousal abuse.
Speaker 1: And they would try to bury all that, and then
Speaker 1: one day some guys wakes up of those because why
Speaker 1: are we breaking our ass trying to protect these people.
Speaker 1: Let's make money off of the fornicating prayer ile idiocy
Speaker 1: of the stars. Why are we protecting the stars? Let's
Speaker 1: just lay it out there. Janice men started her career
Speaker 1: as a crime reporter for the local paper in Westchester
Speaker 1: County on the same beat at the same time in Baltimore,
Speaker 1: was screenwriting phenom David Simon. Then in both found their
Speaker 1: calling men at People. Simon at the TV show based
Speaker 1: on his book Homicide. They offered me the chance to
Speaker 1: write the pilot, and I said, maybe wisely, maybe not wisely,
Speaker 1: because I didn't know what the hell I would have
Speaker 1: been doing. I said, get somebody who knows what they're
Speaker 1: doing to do this. I'm a I'm a newspaperman. But
Speaker 1: maybe unwisely when I saw, uh, the per episode royalty
Speaker 1: that went to that guy. Yeah. Eventually Simon agreed, and
Speaker 1: the rest is TV history. Here the rest of that
Speaker 1: interview at Here's the Thing dot org coming up, Janice
Speaker 1: Men and I discuss me too, and Woody Allen. This
Speaker 1: is Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: For nearly twenty five years, Janice Men has been at
Speaker 1: the white hot center of celebrity journalism, covering stars and
Speaker 1: the business of selling them. So she's seen the sexism
Speaker 1: and discrimination in show business up close, edited dozens of
Speaker 1: articles about it, and Janice Men worries that the Harvey
Speaker 1: Weinstein moment is being squandered. Her concern is this that
Speaker 1: powerful men who could be pushed to solve structural problems
Speaker 1: are getting a free pass because of the focus on
Speaker 1: individual sexual harassers. I'm afraid of revolution without a successful outcome. Right,
Speaker 1: And this is the thing that I find frustrating about
Speaker 1: Times Up and me Too and all this stuff, this
Speaker 1: culture or of victimology among women, right that like, women
Speaker 1: have no agency, they have no ability to control these
Speaker 1: situations or get out of them. And I understand there's
Speaker 1: a power and balance and you felt indebted walk out
Speaker 1: the door, and like there's certain things where you're reading them,
Speaker 1: and some of its generational, I think, but the season
Speaker 1: sorry thing I'm reading and I'm like, Okay, where's the
Speaker 1: bad part, where's the bad farm? Like what? Like that's
Speaker 1: it's done? And like I like and and let's focus
Speaker 1: less on disease and sorry, And I don't want you
Speaker 1: to ignore that because because because men need to learn how.
Speaker 1: And I say this to my daughter, who's twenty two,
Speaker 1: I said, they remember when she was like fifteen. I
Speaker 1: remember sitting to her down and I said to her, Remember,
Speaker 1: I said, it's not only that men will say anything
Speaker 1: to get you to do what they want. Because men
Speaker 1: will say anything to get you to do that. I said,
Speaker 1: some of them are very good at it, right, Like
Speaker 1: from a very young age, how do you teach girls
Speaker 1: to not feel disempowered in these relationships they have when
Speaker 1: they go into work and with boys and with men
Speaker 1: and people at a higher level. Men they've been painfully
Speaker 1: silent on these issues, and it's sort of women losing
Speaker 1: it over this stuff and scaring men to death and
Speaker 1: so how but it's but how do you actually move
Speaker 1: this conversation to something productive where you actually create a
Speaker 1: path for better gender representation and positions of power and
Speaker 1: making it making a very striking kind of bold move
Speaker 1: that's going to have some residents. For example, I mean,
Speaker 1: if this is off the top of my head, the
Speaker 1: famous movie star is on the set of the film
Speaker 1: and she says, I'm not going to come to work
Speaker 1: tomorrow right until you have the head of the studio
Speaker 1: come down here lunch with me. I'm gonna shut down
Speaker 1: the film to have Bob so and so come down.
Speaker 1: What are you guys gonna do? I don't feel comfortable
Speaker 1: working for your company. Yes, you had Rattner here, Brat
Speaker 1: rat Pack or whatever. Tell me what you're going to do.
Speaker 1: What are you actively doing to make me for and
Speaker 1: really get the people who have the juice. Who's in charge?
Speaker 1: What do we do? You can you can get all
Speaker 1: the z s and sorry as you want when we
Speaker 1: get the people that are in charge of the networks
Speaker 1: in the studios to probably you know you saw Gal
Speaker 1: Wonder Woman. She you know she did that right, She
Speaker 1: said Brett Ratner couldn't be a part of Wonder Woman
Speaker 1: too or whatever, and so she got him off the film.
Speaker 1: But I think fundamentally there's such a power structure and
Speaker 1: see this in the pay inequity stuff that is becoming
Speaker 1: sort of an all consuming topic here, like, but all
Speaker 1: of it sort of tied into the same thing about
Speaker 1: who has power and who has the ability to exploit
Speaker 1: that power, And it is a male female thing, but
Speaker 1: it's also is the sort of culture of the town.
Speaker 1: But the real thing is there's something uncomfortably pornographic about
Speaker 1: the kind of endless outing of the sexual story masturbatory.
Speaker 1: You can out mental the end of time, like you
Speaker 1: could do it every day. You can have a news
Speaker 1: channel devoted to this um. But the Hollywood thing is
Speaker 1: particularly frustrating to me. And you know, Amanda hasn't New
Speaker 1: York Times wrote a scathing story about the Times Up
Speaker 1: movement the other day about how it's all just activism
Speaker 1: and not action, right, basically taking the actual hard questions
Speaker 1: about Hollywood and power and abuse and turning it into
Speaker 1: a fashion moment. It's not, it's not. It's not really
Speaker 1: going to get us anywhere. I really want to see somebody.
Speaker 1: I keep saying, you've got to convict Harvey. If Harvey
Speaker 1: is a guy who got mossad agent is trying to
Speaker 1: bury all the people who he raped, let's get him
Speaker 1: in jail. My mistake has been that I thought that
Speaker 1: certain things went without saying. If Woody Allen is guilty
Speaker 1: of what they claim he's guilty of, you don't think
Speaker 1: I want him punished for that in whatever way. But
Speaker 1: put yourself in this position, which is it's the sentencing
Speaker 1: phase of a horrible crime, and his mother is sitting
Speaker 1: there in the front row for him in the car.
Speaker 1: It's her son. They're my friends. My impulse is to
Speaker 1: help them, to understand them, and to support them. If
Speaker 1: men that I know, Jimmy Toback is one. If men
Speaker 1: that I know are guilty of some crime, I don't
Speaker 1: even to skate on that because I'm an actor. We're
Speaker 1: trained to think about alternatives, what might have happened, what
Speaker 1: might you have done to have When I see men
Speaker 1: by their own hand destroy their lives and ruin the
Speaker 1: lives of their wives and their children, and their name
Speaker 1: is shipped for the rest of them, I find that
Speaker 1: very disturbing and very very painful. But Harvey Weinstein, he's
Speaker 1: the low hanging fruit, and you've got to prosecute him,
Speaker 1: and you've got to convict him, so everybody understands there's
Speaker 1: real consequence. Just talking about it in the press and
Speaker 1: talking about on Twitter and and and retweeting articles from
Speaker 1: Ronan this and this one and that one and all
Speaker 1: the people who are supportive. I said, that's not going
Speaker 1: to get it done. You need to have a trial.
Speaker 1: But the Woody thing is so complicated, you know, and
Speaker 1: he is his worst character witness, right, all the circumstantial
Speaker 1: and is like, you know, it is never going to
Speaker 1: prove to you. And people who don't believe he sexually
Speaker 1: assaulted his daughter that he did it, and and um,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't help, It doesn't help, It doesn't help. Well,
Speaker 1: those movies don't help. They do not help. And there
Speaker 1: I think there are people who think on that fact alone,
Speaker 1: he should go away. He needs to, you know, never
Speaker 1: work again, because he made movies that today could be
Speaker 1: viewed as incredibly yeah, totally creepy. One of our really
Speaker 1: fine reporters, Stephen Galloway, had interviewed Woody Allen for the
Speaker 1: cover of The Holly Reporter that sort of set all
Speaker 1: of this off, and what he said creepy things in
Speaker 1: the story, like including in the way he talked about
Speaker 1: his wife, Sunny, which was you would describe it as
Speaker 1: sort of highly narcissistic, and how Sunny kind of serves him, Yes, totally.
Speaker 1: And so then you know, ron and Pharaoh had put
Speaker 1: something on Twitter which I saw and he said, I
Speaker 1: loved Janiceman, but what what the hell was she thinking?
Speaker 1: And because Rona didn't feel like Steven had pushed Woody
Speaker 1: hard enough on this alleged sexual assaults of his sister,
Speaker 1: and like we say to Rout and okay, write something
Speaker 1: about it then if you want, and you know, he
Speaker 1: wrote this very well argued, well written essay about how
Speaker 1: Hollywood has skated over the Woody Allen issue and does
Speaker 1: not believe and which is so funny to think about now,
Speaker 1: but does not believe accusers, and you could see the
Speaker 1: winds of change coming. That story took off huge, and
Speaker 1: it was just came as enormous thing to the New
Speaker 1: Yorker piece. Let me ask you this because we're gonna
Speaker 1: run out of time. At one point, I was supposed
Speaker 1: to go to Columbia School of Journalism. I was gonna
Speaker 1: do a program with you, and you couldn't make it correct.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be on the panel? Was you? Me and
Speaker 1: Nick Denton? Oh my god? And I was told then
Speaker 1: your schedule change and you couldn't come. And when you
Speaker 1: dropped that, I dropped. I said, I'm not gonna go
Speaker 1: with I'm not I was not a fan of Denton
Speaker 1: and that operation when they went bankrupt and that whole
Speaker 1: thing happened with Hulk Cogan. What did you think about that? God?
Speaker 1: You know, okay, so obviously there were so much schaden
Speaker 1: freud in the ether about that, right, and then you're like, uh,
Speaker 1: Peter t. Eels bank rolling this, and you know, and
Speaker 1: then you like Charles Harder and I started to get like,
Speaker 1: then you started to feel sort of icky about it,
Speaker 1: and then you come around to like and so Nick
Speaker 1: dn and I always have gotten along, and for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: they never went out thest the terrible things about me,
Speaker 1: but they never went after me as one of their
Speaker 1: characters that they like to torture. And so um, I
Speaker 1: think people feel kind of wistful about some of their
Speaker 1: stuff now because sometimes, like whatever moment we're in with
Speaker 1: this Trump moment, like one of the things that I
Speaker 1: find refreshing is like people will just say anything now
Speaker 1: and do anything right, like any sort of polite veneer
Speaker 1: on the truth. You can just blow it away, right,
Speaker 1: And I think that was one of the things Gawker did.
Speaker 1: And so you see some of what they reported on
Speaker 1: like Louis c. K. Right, I saw a lot of
Speaker 1: references to that when the Louis k staff out, Yes,
Speaker 1: and Gawker was the first to sort of get into
Speaker 1: that story. And so like a really good Gawka writer
Speaker 1: could write about the absurdity of all of it, right,
Speaker 1: And so I missed that. But you know, it's scary.
Speaker 1: It's had a very severe chilling effect where you believe
Speaker 1: a journalistic organization, a single attorney can bankrupt you. You know,
Speaker 1: I think these decisions that were probably treated much more cavalierly,
Speaker 1: and that's the wrong word, but much more boldly. In
Speaker 1: an operation, you're made to scrutinize them much more. And
Speaker 1: you know there was UH and this under this threat
Speaker 1: of like a Charles Harder or one of these attorneys.
Speaker 1: And you know Charles Harder as you saw with Harvey Weinstein,
Speaker 1: and he did it with one of our journals of
Speaker 1: the Holly Reporter, Kim Masters. They create this whole strategy,
Speaker 1: and they did it with Lisa Bloom where you no
Speaker 1: longer you no longer undermine the story, which you can't
Speaker 1: somebody's can't just speak, you undermine the journalist. And you
Speaker 1: know with UM, with Kim Masters, she was reporting on
Speaker 1: Roy Price at Amazon his whole sexual harassment of a
Speaker 1: showrunner who was involved with the Man of the High
Speaker 1: Castle and UM, and they created this fake story that
Speaker 1: they said to Matt Belanie, who was the editor took
Speaker 1: over for me UM, that Kim Masters had been UM. Well,
Speaker 1: you know she was soliciting money from Roy for her
Speaker 1: show on casey r W. She has a show on
Speaker 1: Case r W called The Business about Hollywood. And you
Speaker 1: know when he said no, that's when she decided to
Speaker 1: go after him. So then you can set up this
Speaker 1: whole delicious intent argument that can get in people's heads.
Speaker 1: And so Kim, Kim, who would like never she is
Speaker 1: like the most straight arrow journalists of all time. So
Speaker 1: Kim no. So that So you know, they said it's
Speaker 1: in an email, and so they go through this like
Speaker 1: weeks of stuff where then finally, you know, the Holy
Speaker 1: reporters attorneys and Matt have to say, give us the email.
Speaker 1: Oh well, well let's we'll get us. You will get you.
Speaker 1: Of course it doesn't exist, but by that time they've
Speaker 1: seeded all this sort of doubt. Yes, and and it's
Speaker 1: one of these things where, um, I mean, it's sort
Speaker 1: of what Roger ailsood with Gabe Sherman being able to
Speaker 1: sort of say the person as an agenda. You know,
Speaker 1: it'll all come out and core how this person has
Speaker 1: had it out for me us And you know a
Speaker 1: lot of newsrooms and Kim had a terrible time. She
Speaker 1: shopped that story at multiple other outlets. People were scared like, well, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, if the Holly reported did in front of
Speaker 1: there must be something wrong, like why would we run it?
Speaker 1: And had to go from place to place to place,
Speaker 1: and finally this outlet that's a you know, very um
Speaker 1: well regarded upstart called The Information that Comes out of
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley. It is self funded by by this woman
Speaker 1: who has family money on her own. She was the
Speaker 1: one who ran it and when someone else did it
Speaker 1: validated it. They weren't sued. Then it became a story
Speaker 1: to cover. And that was just one example of a
Speaker 1: story I know. So you can see how you know
Speaker 1: a thousand other stories probably every week, a ground into nothingness.
Speaker 1: You're this raging lee smart woman, and you should make
Speaker 1: movies and TV because we need smart women. God, television,
Speaker 1: maybe not movies. Movies are such a long process, and
Speaker 1: absolutely we're thank you for having That was Janice min,
Speaker 1: the visionary turnaround artist behind US Weekly and the Hollywood Reporter.
Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to here's
Speaker 1: the thing, the company, the conchol