The Movies’ ‘Riveting!’ Blurb Mill

“An explosive warp speed 10 . . . Sheer fun and excitement . . . The wildest galaxy ride of ‘em all.”

After Susan Granger of cable channel American Movie Classics gushed for “Star Trek: Generations,” it’s no wonder Paramount Pictures splashed that praise across ads for the film.

Never mind that Granger had a cameo in the 1994 movie (she says it ended up on the cutting room floor) or that her son is a senior Paramount executive. Or that American Movie Classics doesn’t air film reviews from Granger or any other critic.

In the world of Hollywood movie blurbs, full disclosure is the exception rather than the rule and truth in advertising can often be an oxymoron. Any studio loves to tout a thumbs up from Gene Siskel or Roger Ebert, or praise from other major broadcast critics and those from publications including Time, Newsweek, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. The independent films dominating tonight’s Oscar ceremonies, such as “The English Patient,” “Shine,” “Fargo” and “Secrets & Lies,” all owe a debt of gratitude to major critics.

But when studios can’t get praise from those quarters, there’s an alternative. Offering up a buffet of bite-sized hyperbole is a cottage industry for what are known in Hollywood as “blurbmeisters,” a few of whom can be counted on to come through with a description of a box-office turkey as “Riveting!” or a sophomoric summer comedy as “Hilarious!” or a host of actors as “Oscar-bound!”

All critics inevitably produce blurbs used by studios; Siskel and Ebert’s “Two Thumbs Up!” appears on scores of ads each year for films they like. But the most prolific blurb producers, especially those who will often gush over a film most critics hate and moviegoers shun, are radio or television critics, frequently those who syndicate short film reviews to stations that don’t have in-house critics. Increasingly, blurb producers are writing reviews on World Wide Web sites.

For their part, reviewers known for producing blurbs say they are only expressing their opinions, with some arguing that they are more in touch with general audiences than other critics.

“It’s a matter of opinion,” said Ron Brewington of American Urban Radio Networks, one of the most commonly quoted reviewers. “If a film is good, I say it’s good.”

Behind the adjective-packed ads is a symbiotic relationship that starts with studio marketing executives who are cynically confident they can get whatever quotes they need to fit an ad campaign no matter how bad the film. On the other end are little-known reviewers whose words are given weight far out of proportion to their audience reach, who often aggressively try to get their blurbs into print and who are lavished with perks and access at media junkets.

“A lot of them are writing to get into ads. Then they use it to prove to their employers that they are important to the industry and hope to elevate their position,” says the top marketing executive at one studio.

Studio publicists often prod reviewers to agree to quotes that fit a marketing campaign. Last year, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was caught by the trade paper Variety distributing a checklist of quotes to reviewers to mark off. MGM officials now say they were trying to attribute praise overheard at a screening.

So it may be no wonder that dozens of films each year are described as “Riveting!” as the box-office bomb “The Juror” was by two reviewers. Or that “The Island of Dr. Moreau”--one of the most panned films of the year--can end up with the endorsement “Campy, Creepy and Cool!” from Jeff Craig of the syndicated radio program “Sixty Second Preview.”

Praise also is lavished in cookie-cutter style. Jim Ferguson of the Prevue Channel, a promotional channel that runs alongside the nightly TV program listings on cable systems, was quoted in ads as saying the John Travolta film “Michael” was “Hilarious! Nonstop holiday fun!” Likewise, Ferguson used “Nonstop fun!” to describe “She’s the One,” starring Jennifer Aniston, and director Tim Burton’s “Mars Attacks!” As for the Jamie Lee Curtis comedy “Fierce Creatures,” he called it “Nonstop fun, a must-see comedy!”

“A lot of these quotes are starting to sound awfully generic,” bemoans Gerry Rich, president of worldwide marketing for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and United Artists.

The most prolific blurb producers are familiar to anyone who reads movie ads: Brewington of American Urban Radio Networks, Paul Wunder of WBAI Radio in New York, Ferguson of Prevue Channel, radio reviewer Bonnie Churchill, Craig of “Sixty Second Preview,” and Granger.

Many of the quotes are solicited by anxious studio publicists immediately after screenings. Some reviewers fax positive reviews or quotes before their reviews run. Many will agree to use quotes suggested by studio marketing executives.

“It’s like ordering pizza,” one top studio marketing chief says. “Do I want pepperoni, or do I want sausage? Do I want them to say ‘Don’t miss this!’ or do I want them to say the movie is ‘Riveting!’ ”

Bruce Feldman, former top marketing chief at Universal Pictures, recalls attending a strategy meeting in which a mock-up of a movie poster was displayed for an upcoming comedy with the word “Hilarious!” printed on it. When asked where the quote came from, Feldman recalls, one executive replied: “Don’t worry. We’ll get it.”

Broadcast reviewers, from whom the bulk of the blurbs come, say critics often get a bum rap.

“This whole ‘quote whore’ and ‘blurbmeister’ stuff is overblown,” says Joey Berlin, executive director of the Broadcast Film Critics Assn. He does work for “Sixty Second Preview” and other media outlets. “There is a viable business reason for the studios to get the quotes, and for the reviewers to get the exposure.”

But, Berlin adds, “I think it’s extremely rare that anyone gives a quote on something that they don’t honestly think about a picture.” He says many of the critics with the reputation as blurbmeisters do plenty of negative reviews that go unnoticed.

For all of the presence these critics have in movie ads, Hollywood marketing executives and fellow critics know relatively little about them.

“I’m chairman of the National Society of Film Critics, and I have yet to meet a lot of these people,” says New Times Los Angeles critic Peter Rainer. “Most of these people who are quoted appear to exist only in ads. Nobody is aware of their outlets and, in some cases, it’s not clear if the outlets actually exist.”

Some of the reviewers are unabashed fans of the movie industry, such as Churchill, who boasts on her personal Web site that she, “like her relative Sir Winston Churchill, has written thousands of syndicated columns and scripts, as well as 75 published books and booklets” and that her “positive, accurate reporting” has endeared her to stars.

More mysterious is someone like Jeff Craig of “Sixty Second Preview,” which is aired by about 200 stations nationwide. A prolific producer of blurbs, Craig is one of the most widely quoted critics in movie ads. Yet marketing executives at major studios said they’ve never met him.

There’s a good reason: Technically speaking, Jeff Craig doesn’t exist. It’s the on-air pseudonym for Jeffrey Craig Rubenstein. He’s president of the Westport, Conn.-based company 60-Second L.P. Inc., according to a listing published by business information company Dun & Bradstreet, which estimates the company’s annual sales at $190,000. Rubenstein didn’t return numerous calls, but has acknowledged that he doesn’t see all the films he reviews, relying on a group of freelance reviewers to fill him in.

Pseudonyms aren’t unusual among broadcast critics. Doug Harris, who records radio’s syndicated “Front Row Center,” goes so far as to use two names: Brian West, a more serious critic, and Junior Mintz, a good old boy for his Houston audience. Of director David Lynch’s “Lost Highway,” West said it was “creepy, bizarre and frankly makes no sense.” Mintz said it was “way, way out there . . . in the ozone,” but added that the film features “some spectacular nudity” by actress Patricia Arquette “and that’s worth the price of admission right there.”

Studio marketing executives such as MGM/UA’s Rich say the public is savvy enough to see through blurbs, and that ones from unknown critics have limited effectiveness.

So why use them?

Marketing costs have soared in recent years--it now costs nearly $20 million on average to market and promote a movie--as Hollywood studios compete to draw whatever attention they can to the films they are cranking out. Since few moviegoers take the time to read film reviews, even blurbs from little-known critics can have value, often in damage control. “You need them when you have an unreviewable movie,” admits one top marketing executive.

Studio executives also say they face a Catch-22: Release a film with no quotes, and people will think it was so bad that even the blurbmeisters didn’t like it. Only a handful of sure-fire hits, such as “Independence Day,” have shunned quotes altogether in their ad campaigns.

Studio marketers know how to run with the ball once they have a gushing review, sometimes slicing and dicing it up to suit their ad needs. For the Tim Allen film “Jungle 2 Jungle,” Walt Disney Co. executives highlighted three phrases “Heartwarming!” “Hysterical!” and “The Perfect Family Film!” all from a single reviewer, Jim Svejda of KNX/CBS Radio in Los Angeles, who lately has become one of the most quoted reviewers in ads.

Sometimes blurbs are tailor-made. WBAI’s Wunder says he was once approached by a studio asking him to change his designation of a film from one of the year’s best to “The Best Film of the Year.” Wunder says it posed a “moral dilemma” because he still had a major film to see that year. He allowed the studio to do it anyway. More recently, he says, he granted permission to studio marketers to insert “scary” into his description of “Scream” as “hip and fun.” He said he agreed to the request because it reflected his view of the film.

Some reviewers are aggressive about getting their reviews and blurbs into the hands of studios, often in advance of broadcast or publication. Executives with CRN International--parent of Connecticut Radio Network, which was syndicating Susan Granger’s reviews on radio--were upset when they saw her quoted in a New Haven Register profile as saying she faxes her reviews to studios before she airs them, according to sources at the company. She and the network have since parted ways; neither wants to discuss it.

Sources at CRN added that executives there were upset that Granger had agreed to the “Star Trek” cameo, which they considered a conflict of interest. She would say only that the cameo was cut from the film. Granger says she’s now a consultant to American Movie Classics, which appears after her name in blurbs, even though an AMC spokeswoman confirmed that the cable channel doesn’t run reviews. According to the spokeswoman, Granger appeared on a program in 1990, asked to use AMC’s name and “we’ve never revisited it since then.”

In Hollywood quarters, movie blurbs are viewed as something of an inside joke. Variety’s Timothy Gray regularly pokes fun at blurbs with his “Gary” awards, named after longtime Los Angeles TV film critic Gary (“On a Franklin scale of 1 to 10, 10 being best . . . “) Franklin. Among Gray’s categories: “Rosy-eyed riveters” in honor of all of the movies described as “Riveting!”

Several Internet sites advising people on what movies to see specifically mention watching for red flags such as praise from blurbmeisters. Major critics and some Hollywood executives find the recent proliferation of gushing blurbs troubling, viewing the reviewers as co-conspirators with studios in duping audiences to see stinkers. They also say it makes a mockery of serious film criticism.

“What all this blurbing has done is kind of devalue the currency of criticism,” complains Times film critic Kenneth Turan. “It’s made me think twice about using such words as ‘masterpiece’ or ‘best ever’ that have been so overused in ads, and used in such a knee-jerk fashion by the blurbmeisters. There’s probably no film out there that some critic somewhere hasn’t called a ‘masterpiece.’ ”

In January, the National Society of Film Critics, fearing the blurbs had gotten out of hand, for the first time considered issuing a statement condemning the practice, but backed off because some members thought it might be considered elitist.

To some extent, the issue reflects tension between critics in electronic media, where catchy sound bites are the norm, and reviewers in print. Some critics say the lucrative celebrity status enjoyed by such reviewers as Siskel, Ebert and Leonard Maltin has prompted reviewers to become more hyperbolic to get noticed.

Ad blurbs tend to come from broadcast critics partly because their reviews are commonly broadcast before the release date, while major print publications typically wait until the opening day. So studios that want quotes to run in ads on the film’s first day usually use broadcast reviews.

Reviewers who are often quoted say that the splashy treatment studios give their quotes makes it seem like they gushed about movies when they really didn’t.

WBAI’s Wunder acknowledges being “more positive than some critics.” But sometimes even his negative reviews are overshadowed by a single positive sentence studios want to lift for an ad.

Like most reviewers, Wunder trashed last year’s Demi Moore film “Striptease,” although he said that he admired the performance of actor Ving Rhames.

And so the “Striptease” blurb from Wunder read: “Ving Rhames is spectacular!”

Bates is a reporter covering the entertainment business for The Times. Pollack Bianco is a free-lance writer in Los Angeles.

* OSCAR ANTICIPATION: With the counttdown on, a look at the balloting, preparations and post-show parties. F1

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Revenge of the Blurb

No matter how bad the film, Hollywood studios can find some reviewer to produce a hyperbolic quote about it. The following films were regarded by many critics as among the worst of the year and were disappointments--or out outright bombs--at the box office. But studios managed to get gushing praise nevertheless.

“One of the Summer’s Best!”-- Joel Siegel, of WABC-TV, New York, on “Striptease.”

“It Shines as Brightly as ‘Terms of Endearment,” --Jeff Craig, of Sixty Second Preview, on “The Evening Star.”

“Tune In, Turn On, Laugh Your Head Off!”-- Sara Edwards, of NBC Newschannel on “Cable Guy.”

“Fun and Funny!”-- Don Stotter of Entertainment Time-Out, on “Carpool.”

“A FUNNY, FEEL-GOOD 10!” “You’ll have a SMILE ON YOUR FACE and a TEAR IN YOUR EYE at this happy, heart-warming FAMILY COMEDY that’s HEAVEN SENT for the holiday season.” -- Susan Granger, of CRN international an American Movie Classics, on “Dear God.”

“Jamie Lee Curtis and Jennifer Love Hewitt are TERRIFICALLY FUNNY in the FAMILY COMEDY of the summer!”-- Jeanne Wolf of Jeanne Wolf’s Hollywood, on “House Arrest.”

“It’s CAMPY, CREEPY and COOL! It’s a WILD FILM!”--Jeff Craig, of Sixty Second Preview, on “The Island of Dr. Moreau.”

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CLICHE DETECTOR

Blurb cliches are common in film ads and among the most common are:

“Thrill Ride!” “Hilarious!” “A 10!”

“****” “Non-Stop” to describe laughs, action or thrills.

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But by far the most overused is undoubtedly “Riveting!” Some recent uses:

A RIVETING Drama-- Craig on “Courage Under Fire”

RIVETING!-- Jim Ferguson of the Prevue Channel on “The Juror.”

RIVETING!-- Peter Stack, San Francisco Chronicle, on “Primal Fear.”

RIVETING!-- Jim Ferguson of the Prevue Channel on “A Time to Kill”