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Does that adorable little Taco Bell Chihuahua rock your world, too? Discuss commercials you love in the Media area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y The Hollywood Inquisition Tabloid mud wrestling! The best little ass-kicking columnist in Texas The squirrel and the computer Bestseller Hell BROWSE THE
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the yadda-yadda__________________
In the hellish world of celebrity journalism, the ninth circle is inhabited by publicists.
BY CATHERINE SEIPP | There's a piece of missing information in the media flare-up about that cover profile of Jerry Seinfeld in the May Vanity Fair, and I suspect that the key lies with Seinfeld's longtime pain-in-the-ass publicist, Lori Jonas, now fired. The flap makes me reminisce about my own encounters with Jonas, who's prone to strange flights of micromanagerial fancy -- even in the through-the-looking-glass world of personal publicity. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Briefly, here's the back story: 1. Lynn Hirschberg, who wrote regularly for Vanity Fair under Tina Brown but never enjoyed the same closeness with the magazine under Graydon Carter, nevertheless was assigned to profile Seinfeld for the May issue. 2. Although Hirschberg is famous for turning celebrity profiles into celebrity vivisections (as in the memorable "The Fall of Jamie Tarses, As Scheduled" in the New York Times magazine a few months ago) her portrait of Seinfeld was basically a Valentine -- atypical for Hirschberg, but typical for a Vanity Fair cover. Not that there's anything wrong with that! 3. Vanity Fair now accuses Hirschberg of showing Seinfeld a copy of her manuscript before it was published -- which would be a major breach of journalistic ethics -- and has severed what was left of its relationship with her. 4. Hirschberg says she did not show Seinfeld her manuscript. 5. Jonas faxed Vanity Fair what the magazine took as evidence that she did. 6. Hirschberg responded that this "evidence" was merely papers she accidentally left in Seinfeld's car, not her story. 7. Jonas isn't Seinfeld's publicist anymore. I read about all this in Charles Fleming's "Naked Hollywood" column in last week's L.A. Weekly, which detailed the brouhaha after brief mentions of it appeared in the New York Post's Page Six gossip column and then in Variety. Then I talked to some people knowledgeable about the situation, none of whom would speak on the record. Now as anyone who's written about Hollywood knows, the world-unto-itself of personal publicists can be confusing and perilous, and I know from experience that even by the standards of this world, Lori Jonas is especially difficult. But so, say those who know her (I don't), is Lynn Hirschberg. "She's bad news," a studio publicist said to me the other day, indulging in a little shudder just at the mention of Hirschberg's name. "She's like Mike Wallace showing up at your door with a camera crew -- I mean, why even open it?" Well, I said, what about the fact that Hirschberg's stories are so much more worth reading than the vast majority of entertainment journalism -- in a different category entirely, in fact, than the banalities produced by the usual Hollywood hack? "I like hacks," said my publicist friend. "Banality is what they ought to be doing. Writing about Hollywood -- it's not the New England Journal of Medicine, you know. Glittering banalities," he added dreamily. "That's what we should all aspire to." Right. Anyway, I interviewed Seinfeld in the early '90s, when his new show had developed a loyal following but was far from the unprecedented critical and commercial hit it is now. Since Jerry and his pals spent so much time on the show sitting around in a coffee shop talking about dating, I convinced USA Today's Weekend magazine that it would be a fun idea to sit in a coffee shop with the comedian and talk about dating. Seinfeld showed up for breakfast at DuPar's in the Farmer's Market (his pick) with a friend, comedian George Wallace, in tow as well as Jonas. He ordered pumpkin pie and Wallace ordered an egg-white omelet, a cholesterol-conscious idea I'd never before encountered. Seinfeld had recently been prickly with a Los Angeles Times writer, so I was a little nervous. But he was very nice to me -- explaining later, when I asked about the Times interview, that he only gets impatient with stupid questions. My questions were far from brilliant, but he answered them pleasantly and openly. A brief sample: Me: What's the perfect date? Seinfeld: When a woman lets you know right off the bat that you don't have to dress up. Me: What was your most memorable blind date? Seinfeld: I was on only one. She was sweet, smart and sexy, and I couldn't stand it. I was so uncomfortable that it was not my choice. OK, so maybe this story didn't exactly separate me from the Hollywood hack pack. But I did my job, Jerry did his and USA Weekend did theirs, running it and paying me $800. Also, Jonas did hers, sitting so quietly during the interview I can barely remember her being there. In any case, certainly nothing came out of this interview that the subject would later regret. After Seinfeld and Wallace roared off in one of Seinfeld's vintage Porsches, Jonas and I stood in the Farmer's Market, chatting amiably about this and that for about 20 minutes. So when, about a year later, Woman's World paid me $400 for second rights to basically the same story, and I called Jonas to let her know and to do some extra fact-checking, I thought she'd at least begin the conversation with a friendly greeting. Instead, there was a stony silence of several moments. "Uh, Lori?" I finally ventured. "Are you there?" More silence. Finally she announced sulkily, "I don't want Jerry in Woman's World." Now admittedly, even in the world of housewife magazines, Woman's World isn't exactly aimed at the intelligentsia. It's not even one of the Seven Sisters; it's more like an ugly stepsister, the one who lives in a trailer park and spends every spare dime on collectible dolls from Franklin Mint and who the rest of the family doesn't really want to talk about. Woman's World budget-saving tips tend to be along the lines of "Stop Buying Snacks Every Time You Stop For Gas!" On the other hand, how much classier, really, is USA Weekend, with its own telltale collectible doll ads? I hadn't pretended that my original assignment was from GQ; why was Seinfeld's publicist? Would the star himself even care? As I explained helpfully to Jonas, "It's not like I'm reselling the story to illustrate a photo layout in Hustler, you know." This was a little disingenuous, of course. But at the time, the ultra-controlling personal publicity machine hadn't yet grown to its current monstrous proportions. A couple of years after that, I wrote a piece on the developing conceit that only the Jerry character on "Seinfeld" was Jewish. Weirdly, the series had begun insisting in various plot points that George, Kramer and Elaine were Upper West Side gentiles (yeah, right), perhaps in reaction to then-NBC chief Brandon Tartikoff's initial remark that middle America wouldn't be interested in the petty problems of four New York Jews. Jonas of course spun along with this like a champ. "It's not as if their names are Jewish," she informed me when I called. "Kramer?" I said. "Cosmo?" she said. This rather valiant attempt at disinformation does shed some light on Jonas' possible motive for insisting to Vanity Fair that Hirschberg had shown Seinfeld the story before publication. How, after all, would that benefit her or her client? Someone close to the situation suggested to me that Jonas may have wanted to hurt Hirschberg because she resented the journalist's friendship with her celebrity boss. I do remember Jonas making a big point to me during our Farmer's Market conversation about her personal closeness with Seinfeld. But here's a theory offered by someone I know who's done a million celebrity interviews. "There's exactly one reason a personal publicist would tell a magazine the star saw the story before publication," he insisted. "To prove to everyone that yes, her position is vital, because she vets everything for her client, just like a lawyer, and see -- here's proof!" The logic here is so nuttily perfect it could well be true. Meanwhile, I've grown very fond of that DuPar's in the Farmer's Market. I often reflect on the wonderful world of personal publicity when I go there for an egg-white omelet, which I figure lowers my cholesterol so much that I also get pumpkin pie for dessert.
Catherine Seipp's Hollywoodland appears every other Friday in Media Circus. Join the "Seinfeld" discussion in the television area of Table Talk. |
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