Buzz Buzz Buzz

By BRUCE HANDY

It isn't often one has the chance to sit in a room and be spun by not just one, not just two, but three masters of the promotional arts. Then again, it isn't every day that a major "new media venture" is announced. Well, actually, it is every day that a major new media venture is announced, or so it seems anyway.

The real news last week was that Tina Brown, editor of the New Yorker, had stopped the media world dead in its tracks with the announcement that she would be quitting the most prestigious job in magazines for a promising but also somewhat vague-sounding enterprise. Whatever its actual merits, in a world in which even Linda Tripp feels she needs a spokesperson, marketing is everything--a point Brown has often made herself. And whatever one thinks of the 44-year-old Briton's tenure at the New Yorker, she is indisputably the greatest buzz generator in the history of American publishing, author of the notion that a magazine must be talked about and not just read. Her new partner is himself no slouch in this regard: Harvey Weinstein, co-chairman of Miramax Films, whose gift for salesmanship has helped generate 110 Academy Award nominations and 30 actual Oscars over the past decade for his company's generally ambitious movies (which include the likes of The Piano, Pulp Fiction and Good Will Hunting, as well as Scream). The third member of what Weinstein refers to, perhaps inevitably, as "the Three Musketeers" is Ronald A. Galotti, the "blockbuster publisher of Vogue" (Brown's words) and before that Brown's colleague as publisher of Vanity Fair, site of her previous editorship (both magazines are part of the Conde Nast group, owned by S.I. Newhouse Jr., who also owns the New Yorker). Though he cuts a lower media profile than his colleagues, Galotti is known to cognoscenti as the model for "Mr. Big" in the New York Observer's now discontinued "Sex and the City" column.

Clearly these are capable people. If all goes according to plan, their new media venture will produce television shows and publish books, and also create a new general-interest magazine in the hope that its articles will provide the germs for new films, some of which Brown and Galotti may also produce. "You don't have to be a genius to look at this project and understand how successful it's going to be," Galotti explains. Many observers agree that the move is a bold and brilliant one; a few see it as odd and maybe even foolish: Brown is either a visionary or months away from being just another Hollywood Jane with a development deal. Some see the new venture as the ultimate consummation of journalism's fascination with celebrity and glamour, of the notion that the news should be at least as entertaining as, say, a mediocre cartoon show. Even in a world where many news outlets are comparative backwaters amid larger, entertainment-oriented companies (like this magazine's parent, Time Warner), it is hard not to wonder whether some new threshold has been crossed. And if anyone is interested in turning this article into a movie--Should I beef up the Galotti bits for George Clooney?--please don't hesitate to call our publicity department.

These were the sorts of thoughts one had while sitting with Brown, Weinstein and Galotti last Thursday afternoon in the midtown Manhattan hotel room where they had been holed up taking phone calls and giving interviews since announcing their new venture the day before. With assistants and publicity folk fluttering about like bridal attendants, one had the feeling of being at the white-hot center of the world. If there is to be a culture clash between Brown and Galotti--both used to the bottomless largesse and stylish cool of Conde Nast--and the more profane, tightfisted world of Miramax, it was not yet apparent. Indeed, as words and phrases like "synergy," "21st century" and "content is king" flew about, all three principals seemed as energized by one another as by the prospects for their partnership. Imagine the giddy, self-important friendships of high school; then imagine a high school in which the upperclassmen are Barry Diller and Michael Eisner, and you will begin to get the picture.

Brown (seemingly not annoyed by the fog of Weinstein's cigar and cigarette smoke): "As soon as the three of us sat around a table, this thing became real real real. I think we all felt we were on to a winner."

Galotti: "It kind of reminded me of that scene in Close Encounters where the computers start to realize they can actually talk."

Weinstein (a bit later): "I can tell you some of the top companies in America are saying, 'How can we get involved in this?'"

And so on. The venture really began two years ago when Weinstein asked permission from his overseers at Disney, which owns Miramax, to fund a new magazine, a longtime goal of his. Weinstein was already a friend and fan of Brown's, and when he read last month that her contract with the New Yorker was due to expire on July 1, he approached her with an offer. More than a year ago, according to Disney chairman and CEO Michael Eisner, he and Brown--they too are good friends--had begun having general discussions about her joining the company in some capacity. The Miramax deal, Eisner explains, "is the culmination of two separate conversations."

For her part, Brown has been having a tough, unhappy year at the New Yorker. She has long suffered the invective of traditionalists who feel she has perverted the tony magazine started by Harold Ross in 1925. More recently, media reports have focused on the fact that the magazine, which had been unprofitable pretty much since Newhouse bought it in 1985, still loses money despite the increase in readership and media attention Brown had brought it. "I can't imagine a more abysmal failure than to sell the soul of a magazine and then lose money in the process," says Garrison Keillor, a former contributor who famously left as soon as Brown took over. "A couple of years of meetings at Miramax will be good penance."

To be fair, the magazine is losing less money than it did a few years ago, and Brown has been ill served by blunders and feuding on the business side. In May she was given only a day's notice when a new publisher was brought in; furthermore, it was announced that the magazine's traditional independence was being curtailed and that it would be formally brought under Conde Nast's control, a move Brown opposed and one that meant she would have to deal directly with the company's bombastic president and CEO, Steve Florio.

Then two weeks ago, her mother died of cancer--which she would later say brought "clarity" to her thinking about her future. Still, almost no one inside or outside the New Yorker expected her not to re-up, even as her contract expired. Her teary announcement to her staff members that she was moving on left many of them depressed and uneasy about the magazine's future. One editor offered what may be the ultimate tribute to the solemnity of the moment: "I didn't hear anything snide today." Handicapping the odds on who the next editor might be, while gently dropping one's own name into the mix, quickly became Manhattan's favorite parlor game.

Would anything have kept Brown at the New Yorker? "Not once Harvey mentioned ownership," she says. "I wasn't looking for another 'job.' I really wasn't. The New Yorker as a job is the best job in American journalism. But [the deal with Miramax] was a whole other ball game."

Brown and Galotti will enjoy profit participation to start with, which will eventually turn into equity stakes. The partnership will produce journalistic specials of some sort for ABC (also owned by Disney) that will feature Brown doing interviews. Beyond that, details are sketchy, perhaps even to the principals themselves. But Weinstein makes the whole thing sound easy: "The idea is to marry the two cultures together and say, 'This is a brilliant story that takes place in England; we'll give that to Anthony Minghella [director of The English Patient]. This is something that's feminist and sexy; that sounds like Jane Campion [The Piano]." Ahh. Why didn't Jeffrey Katzenberg think of that?

Ask Brown to describe the as-yet-unnamed magazine and she responds, "It's going to be topical, contemporary, high-quality, provocative." How that will be different from the New Yorker or Vanity Fair (or any number of other magazines) remains unclear. For his part, Weinstein says that despite his reputation as a control freak (filmmakers have nicknamed him Harvey Scissorhands), the new magazine won't have any more trouble from him than TIME and (Time Inc.-owned) ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY get from their corporate cousin, Warner Bros. co-chairman Terry Semel. When a reporter notes that those magazines don't report to Semel--and weren't expressly conceived to funnel ideas to Warner Bros.--Brown interjects that the proof of integrity will ultimately lie, as it should, with the magazine itself. "There is a kind of whiff of corruption that comes off an unpure magazine. It's like that empathic communication between dolphins--you don't have to speak about it."

The premise that journalism provides good fodder for movies is not an altogether well-tested one. There have been some notable examples, from Saturday Night Fever and Urban Cowboy to, more recently, Con Air and The Peacemaker. In fact, optioning magazine and newspaper articles has been a growing trend in Hollywood the past few years. Susan Lyne, a former executive editor of Premiere who pursued magazine-based movie projects for Disney and now works for ABC, cites economics: "You're no longer able to buy high-end books for under seven figures, while magazine options for the most part are still five-figure purchases. And a 10,000-word magazine article is often more than enough source material for a two-hour movie; in some cases, they're arguably better than 800-page books, which are harder to cut down." Nonetheless, a recent Variety study pointed out that of 146 major studio releases last year, only three were based on articles, although this may be due to a lag in the development cycle.

At any rate, with no concrete plans to speak of, what we are left with is the glittering promise of yet another supergroup. This used to be the province of rock stars; now it belongs to disgruntled media executives. Whether the Brown-Galotti-Weinstein alliance will prove to be another DreamWorks, which seems to be working out O.K., or a misguided marriage, like Mike Ovitz being shoehorned into Disney, remains to be seen. Only the sizzle, the sell, is certain. As a reporter prepares to turn off his tape recorder, the interview over, Weinstein can't help but remind him, "You've got some humdinger stuff there."

--With reporting by Charlotte Faltermayer and Andrea Sachs/New York and Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles

With reporting by Charlotte Faltermayer and Andrea Sachs/New York and Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles