When the Buzz Becomes a Sting

Joe Singer received a phone call recently from an agent in Hollywood who was irate because he heard that the producer had sent out a script for his next film project, “Everest,” to a star and never sent one to the agent’s client.

Singer said he tried to explain that the story was unfounded. “You’re hearing a rumor and calling and screaming at me about a star that I don’t even think would be appropriate for the movie!” Singer told the agent.

Producer Mace Neufeld, whose credits include “Patriot Games” and “The Saint,” is developing a script with Michael Douglas based on the Nelson DeMille novel “The General’s Daughter.” But before Douglas ever commits to the final script, Neufeld is sure he’ll read somewhere that Douglas is set to star in the movie.

“I’m sure I’ll get a call from Michael saying, ‘Where did this come from? I haven’t even read the script yet,’ ” Neufeld said.

Whether it’s reading about casting decisions that haven’t materialized, fending off stories about their films being in peril if they re-shoot a scene or watching helplessly as secret test screenings on a film-in-progress are critiqued on the Internet, filmmakers complain that today’s movie-making environment has become an ordeal similar to working in a fishbowl.

And they’re not happy about it.

“The public is way too aware of the inner workings of Hollywood, to the point where my mother will tell me a rumor about something that I haven’t even heard,” said producer Mark Gordon, who produced the original hit action-thriller “Speed” and the coming Tom Hanks film, “Saving Private Ryan.”

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By revealing too much too soon about the movie-making process, Gordon believes, “it in some ways demystifies a project and may hurt the illusion of the film itself--which is lights and shadows to begin with.”

Even before a movie reaches principal photography, rumors can have an impact on how the project is perceived.

While rumors have always been part and parcel of Hollywood in a town ravenous for news and gossip about celebrities and films, a rumor can flare into a nightmarish headache for a studio, which must then struggle through advertising and publicity to overcome that negative image.

In their recent book about troubles at Sony Pictures Entertainment titled “Hit & Run,” authors Nancy Griffin and Kim Masters told the story of how a rumor once circulated about Francis Ford Coppola’s darkly erotic film “Bram Stoker’s Dracula.”

“There were reports from early test screenings that audience members vomited in disgust,” the authors wrote. “[Then Columbia/TriStar chief Mark] Canton pushed Coppola to re-cut the picture to make it less gory and more palatable to audiences. Still, rumors that ‘Dracula’ was blood-splattered were so persistent that Columbia could not make valuable deals with a fast-food chain or a toy company.”

One rumor about a project, a studio executive remarked, can create a stink around a project that, if repeated often enough, can turn the public off long before the movie ever comes out. And with movies today needing to make it on their opening weekend or else, that could doom years of effort and millions of dollars in production and marketing costs.

Producer Marvin Worth (“Malcolm X”) said there is so much disinformation swirling around Hollywood that it makes behind-the-scenes deal making that much more difficult.

“A story will come out that we’ve signed somebody for a picture and we didn’t,” Worth said. “It makes the actor [expletive] off.”

Worth believes agents circulate rumors to the trade press about deals that may or may not be in the works, although those stories are often unsourced.

“I’m always suspicious when I read so-and-so has ‘no comment’ and the only guy named is the agent,” Worth said.

By planting a story without attribution, an agent can then use the resulting publicity to spruce up a client’s image or muscle the other side into making a decision.

“If you print a story that somebody is going to direct a film,” Worth said, “and that director is talking to somebody else at the same time, or let’s say the studio doesn’t know, it costs you.”

Hal Lieberman, former head of production at Universal and now a producer, said seeing a story about a pending deal in print can influence its course, for better or for worse.

“If you are beginning to load a movie [discussing stars and a director] and you are not yet greenlit, but the elements are written about and you are receiving a positive point of view from the press and the public, it helps motor it easily,” said Lieberman, executive producer on Universal’s coming thriller “Jackal.”

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One studio executive said the electronic media and the Internet mean that news and rumors about films appear almost instantaneously; once rumors take root, he added, a picture can be harmed.

The executive said that studios can’t stop people from logging onto the Internet and pontificating about a film they may have seen at a test screening. Studios also can’t prevent journalists from writing stories about casting decisions or re-shoots.

“From where I sit, I cannot subvert the process simply because people in the audience will pick up a phone or go to a computer,” the executive said. “I have to believe, at the end of the day, that if what I am making is good, the quality of the idea and the quality of the elements will prevail.”

So, filmmakers say, they simply deal with the rumors as they come.

Singer, who is currently involved in the Universal/Imagine production of “Mercury Rising” starring Bruce Willis, said he couldn’t believe some of the tales being told about his film “Dante’s Peak” when Universal Pictures engaged in a race with rival 20th Century Fox, which was making its own lava-runs-amok thriller, “Volcano.”

“I heard rumors that our second unit crew was shooting first unit scenes to accelerate [production],” Singer recalled. “I heard Fox had three directors shooting scenes simultaneously. . . . The fact is, people love to talk.”

Like casting, producers also say they are annoyed when a decision to re-shoot a scene is portrayed in the media as a project in peril. It could mean that, filmmakers say, but usually it doesn’t.

“If a scene is re-shot, suddenly this is a picture in trouble,” he said. “That’s how it’s portrayed.”

There is one way to try to head off rumors, Neufeld said: Buy a paper shredder. That way, something casually tossed in an office wastebasket--like a call sheet--won’t wind up the next day as a full-blown rumor.

“If you delay an actor’s call one day and it’s on a call sheet,” Neufeld said, “suddenly you hear that that picture is behind schedule.”

Neufeld said he finds the whole process of how casting decisions are reported “pernicious.” “In the old days, you put a movie into pre-production, you cast it, and when somebody was signed, the studio would make an announcement,” he said. “Now, very often, I’ll pick up a paper and there is a story printed on the front page as if it’s fact. Then you’ll call up the journalist and say, ‘Where did you get this from?’ He’ll say, ‘I can’t reveal my source.’ Well, I say, ‘Why don’t you call me? I’m the one producing the movie.’ ”

Neufeld said that reading a story about a premature deal “can blow the actor right out of the movie.”

“Or, they’ll mention some mythic figure that they say you’ve agreed to pay an actor, when you haven’t even got into negotiations yet,” Neufeld added. “That can upset the studio. And, it can also upset the actor. They’ll call their agent and say, ‘I understand that so-and-so is getting such-and-such. Why don’t you get me that?’ ”