THB #212: Olivia Gone Wild/Variety Gone To Click Bait

On Friday, I was seething over a series of stories that were being bounced around the industry in ways that emphasized attention-getting over journalism. I decided not to write anything, in no small part because I didn’t want to be seen as defending anyone or anything when my anger was being driven by the lazy ease with which some of this stuff was being handled.

As noted earlier today, over the weekend, I ended up watching the 2-hour conversation with Jon Bernthal that seems to have been produced weeks ago and which was published after the Olivia Wilde Wednesday cover story in Variety.

I believe that the video conversation is a unique and valuable event. When I wrote a newsletter to offer it to you, I found myself deconstructing Variety’s coverage (including LaBeouf’s defense published by Variety on Friday). I didn’t want this media analysis to distract from my offering of the video, so I pulled it from the newsletter.

But after some consideration, I think there is a different kind of value in analyzing what was published as cleanly and objectively as I can. (Don’t worry… I’m still mean when it’s warranted.)

The Wilde cover story writer, Elizabeth Wagmeister, starts the piece with what might be a parody of the Almost Famous lede, "I'm flying high over Tupelo, Mississippi... with America's hottest band... and we're all about to die."

“It’s teatime in London, and Olivia Wilde is talking about the O-word.”

Nothing really wrong with most of the piece. It’s publicity and bravado… the norm. Olivia Wilde is a fun interview, a good quote, and I believe, a decent person. But she is having a bit too much fun here and Variety doesn’t seem to understand that she is hanging herself… too excited about the click bait.

For instance…

The “getting served on the CinemaCon stage” story is told with no apparent effort to get a response from Jason Sudeikis’ camp and for most of the 6 paragraphs on the subject, Variety allows Wilde to claim Sudeikis planned this event personally without challenging anything of Wilde’s undeniable inferences.

“In any other workplace, it would be seen as an attack.”

Actually not. In any other workplace, serving papers would be normal, as it is often where people are most accessible. I’m not justifying the choice… but she wasn’t scared, she was embarrassed.

“I hated that this nastiness distracted from the work of so many different people and the studio that I was up there representing,” she says. “To try to sabotage that was really vicious. But I had a job to do; I’m not easily distracted.”

Assigning intention without any proof of intention is not healthy rhetoric.

“The only people who suffered were my kids, because they’ll have to see that, and they shouldn’t ever have to know that happened. For me, it was appalling, but the victims were an 8- and 5-year-old, and that’s really sad.”

If she is concerned about the kids “hav(ing) to see that,” are her accusations against her ex-fiance, their father, in Variety a non-issue?

Moving on… there is a lot more talk about the movie… great.

But then we get to the Florence Pugh hunk.

“When it’s reduced to your sex scenes, or to watch the most famous man in the world go down on someone, it’s not why we do it. It’s not why I’m in this industry,” Pugh says (about the trailer for this movie). “Obviously, the nature of hiring the most famous pop star in the world, you’re going to have conversations like that. That’s just not what I’m going to be discussing because [this movie is] bigger and better than that. And the people who made it are bigger and better than that.”

“Pugh — who declined to be interviewed for this story (her publicist said she’s filming “Dune: Part Two” in Budapest)”

“After Wilde posted on Instagram an adoring behind-the-scenes photo of Pugh at work, TikTokers noticed that Pugh didn’t share anything about the film in return.”

“The internet theorizing has run rampant, and Page Six ran an anonymously sourced story claiming that Pugh was unhappy about Wilde and Styles’ relationship.”

Variety runs anonymously sourced stories every day, including this one.

“Then came a report that Styles was being paid more than three times the amount Pugh was getting paid.”

The response from Wilde, via e-mail after the interview and photo shoot because, apparently, Variety didn’t have the guts to challenge her on the issue on the day - “The absurdity of invented clickbait and subsequent reaction regarding a nonexistent pay disparity between our lead and supporting actors really upset me. I’m a woman who has been in this business for over 20 years, and it’s something that I have fought for myself and others, especially being a director. There is absolutely no validity to those claims.”

That’s what you call a non-denial denial, even coming from a woman with earned status as a feminist in the industry. The claim out there is that Pugh got $700,000 and Styles got $2.5 million. Nothing Wilde said at all precludes Pugh getting, say, $1 million and Styles getting $2 million. It is not Wilde’s position or right to offer specific salaries. But “they were paid the same” or “the #1 on the call sheet (Florence Pugh) was obviously paid more than the #2 on the call sheet (Harry Styles)” never gets said.

Wilde’s denial leaves the door wide open… including to there not being a disparity. But if there isn’t one, why not say that?