When Nikki Finke started writing Deadline back in the days of the writers strike it was a revelation. Here was a woman pushing the envelope all across Hollywood — agitating and infuriating — people across the board. I fell in love with her when she outed Jeff Robinov who then ran Warners Brothers for saying that he would never make another movie staring a woman after the Jodie Foster film, The Brave One wasn’t the success he wanted. The things she said on Deadline gave me courage to push the boundaries on Women and Hollywood. And I especially love the fact that she’s a mystery and no one knows what she really looks like and that media folks are bidding for a photo of her.
Nikki Finke had a lot of power and it was beautiful, and scary, to watch. I would cringe when reading some posts, and I would laugh out loud at others thinking about the gigantic balls she had. Then she did was every single independent blogger like her would have done when a suitor came calling, sell her blog so that she could get paid for the great work she had created.
But things changed after she sold it to Jay Penske and for an overview of the current, sad situation read this Vulture piece. Deadline is now Nikki Finke-less and it still reports the news as well and as fast as the rest of the outlets but we all know it has lost its voice. And the thing about blogs that make them special, is the voice.
To let us all know that this whole brouhaha is not yet over, Funny or Die has released a fake trailer for a suspense thriller starring Jean Smart as Finke.
In the video, Finke is anything but a victim. She’s cast as a suburban mom and a brave journalist (“only one blogger has the courage to tell the truth”), while Jay Penske is the backstabbing Goliath seeking to shut her down (“sometimes the blogosphere can become… a terror dome”). The sketch is a better parody of the bloodsport and schadenfreude surrounding Finke’s departure from Deadline — than of the Finke v. Penske battles, which may be too insider-y to attract general audiences.
Watch the Funny or Die video:
https://medium.com/media/766057b4714558ed9370d6047d014c87/href
