Maybe it's a sign of the perilous times in which we live, but everyone, it seems, wants to be anonymous these days. (Except screenwriters, who already are way too anonymous and, in their quiet desperation, seek a little attention, just a mention here and there, even when their films suck.)
Now that Newsweek has fallen on its sword, admitting to a systemic problem in the way it reports and fact-checks stories, a familiar cry once again rises throughout the land: No more anonymous sources! No more anonymous sources!
As if journalists could continue to be an effective block against the scurrilous, the demonic, the base, the fatuous, and the justplainstupid without the freedom to use anonymous sources.
But enough about Washington.
Let's turn to the city where anonymous sourcing operates at a much higher plane -- Hollywood. Now, that's my kinda town.
The entertainment industry functions not so much in a parallel universe, but rather in a sort of make-believe universe. It is in the business of devising fantasies, and so, to large extent, it believes in them. Real life? That's somewhere else, somewhere nearer Cleveland.
Which is another way of saying that you can flat-out lie in Hollywood and it's okay. Actually, it's more than okay. It's ... expected. It's the currency that sparks the buzz that drives the deals that propels the egos who run the biz. You can lie frequently and with utter impunity in the Hollywood community and still be regarded as a statesperson. (It helps, though, if you favor Armani, Zegna, and Range Rovers.)
That's all because, let's face it, no one in the industry believes much of what their colleagues say -- not about casting, not about grosses, not about quarreling directors, not about their golf game or their sexual prowess. Nothing (although the sex-prowess accounts are invariably fascinating.) It's all just idle talk, confabulation. Innocent lies.
Innoncent lies ... that extend deep into Hollywood's twisted relationship with the press.
Rumsfeld might be a pretty skillful liar. Perhaps we can agree on that, eh? Condi Rice, even better. By Washington standards they are genuinely gifted truth-spinners. But by Hollywood standards, my friends, these guys are pikers.
What I'm saying is that the lying game is the game in Hollywood. And I dare you to show me different.
For journalists who cover the town, as I once did, this is a very big problem. Every reporter knows this, and very few manage to penetrate the invented stories that spew forth from the studios, the agents, the publicists (they're in a class by themselves!), the actors, the lawyers -- what everyone basically regards as "the machinery of Hollywood."
Even some of the most hardened journos in the country -- war correspondents, overseas bureau chiefs, and Washington vets -- quickly discover, when they are posted to a tour of duty in L.A., that Hollywood is an extremely formidable beat.
I've always said, for example, that just about any credentialed journalist in the country can get in to see the Vice President of the Unites States, just as long as he's got a significant audience and he's willing to be patient. He'll get his 20 minutes with the Veep. On the other hand, you won't get five minutes with Barbra Streisand if Babs doesn't care to see you, no matter what organization you represent. You can cool your heels at her curbside all winter, for all she cares. In Hollywood, the only constituencies that really count are the ones who greenlight projects.
Which, finally, brings me around to the subject of anonymous sources and the role they play in the hyper-competitive entertainment industry. If it weren't for the reliance of anonymous sources, Hollywood reporters often would have no sources at all -- at least none who would say anything of substance.
If you're an entertainment reporter, obviously you seek the best information you can get at the very highest level. On the record, whenever possible. But rarely does anyone in that tight-knit community ever say anything on the record that reveals an important truth. On the record, what you get is true lies.
* Cameron Diaz will agree to do a picture next year with Warners, saying she's exicted about the directors being mentioned.
* Robin Williams is talking to Disney TV about hosting a syndicated game show in 2006.
* Twentieth Century Fox's chairman announces he wants to release more animated films over the next three years.
* The president of the William Morris Agency compliments the Creative Artists Agency on signing several major clients.
Which of these scenarious could never, ever possibly happen?
Let's just say that the day the head of one talent agency tips his cap to the head of a crosstown rival is the day CSI Miami's David Caruso takes home a Primetime Emmy for Best Actor. That kind of thing doesn't happen because the rivalries are too fierce, the financial stakes too large. Hollywood is a beautiful town in which beats a diseased heart.
To find out what the head of William Morris sincerely thinks about anything, and I mean anything, a reporter would have to promise not to reveal his identity. That done, you'd stand a chance of getting some interesting information, some of which would probably be insightful. (The rest would be true lies, of course.)
This is how it works in Hollywood. It's not a good thing, and I'm not defending the convention.
Understand, though, that relying on unnamed sources is necessary everywhere in journalism, and maybe nowhere more so than in the overcaffeinted corridors and backlots of the showbiz capital. It's the only way the town's untainted reporters (probably fewer than 50 percent of the ones employed there) are ever going to deliver the goods.
By the way, I heard just this morning that one of Hollywood's top directors was praising the studio that sliced 10 minutes off his film following an audience test screening. Wait, no, that couldn't possibly be true. What I'd want to hear is what the director would say if he could speak to a writer without attribution. That would be cool. And surely unprintable.
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