Gary Dretzka
Noah Forrest
Leonard Klady
David Poland
Douglas Pratt
Ray Pride

Psychologists use word-association games to gain insights into the psyches of their patients. Play the same game in Hollywood and the responses tend to cut closer to the bone.

In certain journalistic and p.r. circles, the word "junket" invariably is followed by "whore." Ouch.

This knee-jerk linkage derives from the widely held perception that a studio can ensure positive press for a movie simply by flying a pack of entertainment writers to Los Angeles, or some other semi-exotic locale, putting them up in a swank hotel, comping the mini-bar and handing out souvenir goodie bags with T-shirts, caps and soundtrack CDs. All they have to do in return is attend a screening, endure a couple of roundtable interviews and, occasionally, promise not to ask embarrassing questions.

Ivory-towers idealists who still worry about such arcane concepts as journalistic integrity tend to look down on the reporters who participate in these affairs, sometimes as often as three or four times a month. Generally speaking, the complainants are gainfully employed and don’t have to worry about such things as medical insurance and Social Security contributions, as do free-lancers.

The ethics police might be encouraged by the latest twist in studio-financed publicity campaigns. Last week, Buena Vista Home Entertainment invited reporters to participate in a junket that didn’t involve plane trips, hotels and free food. Held to promote Tuesday’s release on DVD of the killer-croc thriller Primeval, it was conducted entirely via the Internet.

If the experiment is deemed successful, costly fly-in junkets could go the way of the dodo bird, a clumsy flightless creature whose gluttony may have precipitated its demise. After all, if studios no longer are uptight about using broadband services to distribute their products, why would they hesitate communicating with reporters the same way?

At a time when newspapers are choreographing their own extinction, the temptation to shed even more ballast from their travel and freelance budgets could be too tempting to resist. Trouble is, once the lid of Pandora’s digital strongbox is lifted, there will be no way to contain the demons of bargain-basement journalism.

For those who may not understand the concept, junketeers are herded to screenings in buses, and, even if a movie stinks, are obligated to ignore the stench and turn in a story. If , however, the reporters enjoy the picture or like the actors, their articles tend to go overboard on praise. Either way, few of the participants venture much further than the roundtables for quotes and background. Worse, many writers see nothing wrong with adding their blurbs to newspaper ads that run on the Sunday before that film opens.

If the reporters play the game, they tend to get invited back for bigger and more elaborate events. If they don’t, well …

Some newspapers and magazines refuse to take the freebies, insisting their representatives pay their own freight. Los Angeles-based freelancers can drive to the screenings and interviews, thus avoiding any appearance of a conflict of interest (save for comped parking and sandwiches in the waiting room). After seeing the movie, some even have passed on the opportunity to interview the stars and further publicize it.

It’s not a luxury out-of-town junketeers can afford. If their newspapers expend the time and money to send them to L.A. or New York, the reporters damn well better come back with a glossy interview.

Although reporters are the ones branded with the scarlet letter, it’s their employers who benefit most from such studio largess. The interviews are promoted to readers, viewers and listeners as if they contain information not also made available to the several dozen other reporters in attendance that day and heard first in those making-of documentaries on HBO and Showtime. A fortunate few get one-on-one interviews, but the actors know they‘re there to plug the product and rarely go off-script.

(Press days for indie films tend to be far more casual and informative. More often than not, they’re conducted on weekdays or at festivals, and the participants really appreciate the coverage. Another plus: the films are about something other car crashes and product-placement.)

Because junket coverage isn’t judged by the same criteria used to rate the journalism that emerges from Baghdad, Washington or Sacramento, almost no one outside the movie, broadcast and newspaper communities gives a crap. It’s only when studio publicists take the liberty of inventing quotes or bribing pet writers with the promise of special favors that anyone raises an ethical eyebrow. Even then, however, media outlets continue to reward such notorious abusers as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association with ridiculously overblown coverage of their sham awards ceremonies.

As more and more newspapers are forced to reduce their staffs and news holes, budget-obsessed editors will use inexpensive junket-spawned copy and other non-critical reportage -- as well as, generic wire-service criticism -- to fill holes in feature sections. Niche Internet sites and bloggers of all color, stripe and intelligence already are filling the credibility gap.

Although junkets for potential blockbusters will continue to be held in Hawaii, the Bahamas, Disneyland, Alcatraz and on aircraft carriers, studio economics will demand press weekends for lesser titles be radically scaled down, just as post-premiere parties have taken a hit.

Last week, BVHE used the occasion of the launch of Primeval to host an online junket that required nothing more of a writer than possession of a computer capable of downloading movies and retrieving data at high speeds. If the computers were equipped with wireless software, the whole thing could be covered in a Starbucks or a park bench adjacent to a hot spot. Participants also were able to watch the movie and ask questions of director Michael Katleman, simultaneously. The bonus making-of documentary and deleted scenes also were streamed.

The way it worked, participants were given a special password in advance of the screening. Thus connected to the special Primeval website, the movie could be viewed in a window about the size of a baseball card. After 45 minutes, a moderator opened the chatline for questions, which Katleman would answer after the movie ended. Digitally produced transcripts of the morning and evening sessions would be made available the next morning.

Although the image wasn’t nearly as clear and precise as it should have been -- and will be, once broadband delivery evolves -- it was simplicity itself. For those of us with short memories, a DVD would arrive in the mail within days.

We cyber-junketeers would have plenty of time to file our stories and help BVHE put the 95-minute, R-rated Primeval -- available in DVD and Blu-ray -- on the road to profitability. Since no money, tchotchkes or appetizers were exchanged, the onus of prostitution was removed. The biggest drawback was the inability of reporters to ask follow-up questions or enjoy the kind of face-to-face interaction facilitated by on-site, phone and vidcam interviews. (For all we knew, an AD, location publicist or well-trained chimp was answering on the receiving end.) None of my three questions even made the cut.

Primeval had opened on 2,444 screens on January 12, without being screened for critics. It was one of several movies this past winter that would take the same route. In exchange for a pan-free weekend, the marketing executives risked incurring the wrath and/or derision of easily bruised writers.

When the reviewers finally did catch up to Primeval, they mostly were unkind. Some thought the based-on-reality thriller should have been more blatantly campy, like Anaconda, Lake Placid or Piranha, while others weren’t thrilled by the gore or manipulated climax. Katleman concedes that some viewers also felt "deceived" by a marketing campaign that made Gustavo a serial killer on the order of Hannibal Lector.

The risky strategy, however, already had worked to the tune of a $6.8-million opening weekend. The movie would top out eight weeks later at $10.6 million, not counting foreign revenues. Typically, such genre fare does quite a bit better in DVD, and brief theatrical runs serves both to build momentum for a film’s afterlife in ancillary markets and lift the onus of going out straight-to-video.

Mainly, though, Primeval benefits from audiences aware of the continuing presence of an actual 20-foot-long killer-croc in the rivers and lakes of war-torn Burundi. The African nation is 85 percent Hutu, and locals dubbed the bullet-scarred reptile Gustave, after a particularly nasty Tutsi politician. The nickname helped the legend spread beyond the borders of Burundi, eventually piquing the curiosity of documentary makers and journalists from PBS and National Geographic.

In the movie, which stars Dominic Purcell, Orlando Jones, Brooke Langton and Jürgen Prochnow, an American television crew hopes to capture images of Gustave while researchers hope simply to capture him before he kills again. Their mission is complicated by the continued rebel insurgency and slaughter of both combatants and innocent natives. Indeed, one of the reasons given for Gustave’s incredible size is the ready availability of corpses in the Rusizi River.

"We had a very hard time maintaining the R rating," Katlem said in response to a written question. "Initially, many of the kills were much more graphic. The ratings board was very nervous that once the final touches were put on the film with the effects, it would be far too graphic.

"In the end, I am pleased with what we were able to accomplish and still maintain the R rating."

During the Q&A, Katleman was encouraged by the reporters -- 40 from U.S. outlets, and another 15-20 from overseas -- to describe how he married CGI replications of a rampaging Gustave with the material shot on location in South Africa. He believes than CGI Gustave has far more realistic movements and texture than the animatronic and robotic critters produced in previous killer-animal flicks, including Katleman‘s primary inspiration, Jaws.

The TV veteran, a newcomer to the horror/thriller genre, replied to another question, "When I read the script, there was something about it that intrigued me. In a sick way, I began to become excited about figuring out all the different ways that a crocodile could kill a human.

"This was a new experience for me from what I had done on TV, and it definitely excited me to be doing something different."

Those who may be interested in learning more about the real Gustavo -- who, in April, returned from a long hiatus with a vicious attack -- were encouraged to check out the National Geographic website. For a look at how the CGI was conceived, of course, there was the "croc-umentary" added to the DVD

It will interesting to learn how the returns from the cyber-junket for Primeval are graded by Disney marketing executives. If favorable, other studios will certainly follow BVHE’s lead to see if it works for their features and DVDs. If not, the potential benefits of such marketing conceits will send everyone back to the drawing boards.

As for the "junket whores," they’ll just have to learn to conduct business with their legs closed.

June 12, 2007

- Gary Dretzka

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