..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

February 16, 2004

Commentary
How Liars Behave When They Get Caught
Roger Friedman & The Passion
by David Poland

_____________________________________

On Friday, Roger Friedman and FoxNews.com published a false and clearly malicious story about the release pattern of The Passion of the Christ in markets with large Jewish populations. I refuted the story in no small amount of detail on Friday afternoon. I also called for Friedman to lose his job for failing to live up to the most basic standards of journalism in his attack.

I expected the response from FoxNews.com to be a retraction. However, I exchanged e-mails with a Gibson representative on Friday, after I wrote and published my commentary, and it was clear that their response would go no further than a gentle complaint and a hand slap to Friedman.

Remember Saving Private Ryan? where the American soldier lets the Nazi soldier go and in the third act the Nazi soldier comes back to kill him? A lot of people thought that was too obvious… too cliché. But the point was that sometimes, you have to put evil down, because if you let it linger, it will come back again, not only evil, but resentful of your kindness.

On Monday, Roger Friedman wrote about The Passion of the Christ again… and compounded his Friday lies.

He starts on a different tack, claiming ""The Passion" is now the most expensive vanity production in history."

Well, the trouble with that comment is that unless you are focusing on the idea of "vanity" as specific to Roger's opinion of self-indulgence, the comment is utterly inaccurate, even in this still-young year. Billionaire mogul Phillip Anchutz spent over $100 million out of his pocket to produce a remake of Around The World In 80 Days which finally got picked up for distribution by Disney a few months ago. Likewise, the DeLaurentiis/Jon Avnet Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow was a $70 million without a distributor until Paramount grabbed it. In fact, I had a conversation with a top studio exec just the other day in which he pointed out that there is a new trend in private financing for quite expensive projects which are then presented to studios for distribution.

In addition, you may have noticed that there have not been many, if any, television ads for The Passion of the Christ. The media, including Friedman, have given the movie far more free advertising than any movie from any studio could ever pay for itself. I would estimate the P&A of this film to be closer to the $15 million range than the $25 million range, unless there is going to be an intense television push in these last nine days before release. The magic 8-ball says, "No way!"

That said, Friedman returned to the scene of his original crime: "Since Friday morning's column regarding distribution of "The Passion," Newmarket Films tells me it's added a couple of theaters - namely AMC Century City on the Beverly Hills/West Los Angeles border, and the AMC theater on West 84th Street and Broadway in Manhattan and the Clearview Chelsea on West 23rd Street."

Let's jump right past the arrogant subtext that somehow Newmarket responded to Friedman's column. The AMC Century City was booked and selling tickets before last Friday. Once again, Friedman avoids admission that the highest grossing theater in the country - Pacific's theater at The Grove, in Los Angeles - has the film and is in a Hassidic neighborhood. Additionally, he fails to acknowledge the bookings at The Arclight and The Universal CityWalk. (All bookings can easily be confirmed with a phone call… sorry Roger, looking at commercial ticketing sites is not the end of your journalistic responsibility.)

The fact is that there is no major, non-art house public movie theater in Beverly Hills. I was picked apart by a few Chicagoans for not including the far north and south side in my list of city theaters in the last Friedman retort. But I was responding to Friedman's "only 2 theaters in Chicago or you have to go to the suburbs" comment. However, in Beverly Hills, there is no equivocation. There are only four public screens in all of Beverly Hills… all art screens. The Beverly Center is not in Beverly Hills, but in West Hollywood. The name comes from the street it is on, not the city.

As far as New York goes, I spoke to Clearview on Friday and the Chelsea was booked long before Roger's article, just as Clearview's Ziegfield was not. The AMC on 84th St in Manhattan was selling tickets before Friday as well.

Friedman goes on to offer opinion - which is not actionable, though clearly malicious and completely bent to fit his political position rather than reality - that "this still means, especially in Manhattan, that the film is pitched away from an upscale demographic, and instead toward one that is less well off economically. For a major release not to be in the Ziegfeld or in the Sony Lincoln Plaza on the West Side means that Newmarket and Gibson are making quite a statement about how they think this film will be received."

After going on about Long Island, about which I have an ignorance that I cannot overcome without a lot of research I don't have time to do today, he adds: "It's interesting, as a matter of fact, that Newmarket and Gibson are largely booked into single theaters in multiplexes that are part of malls and not in stand-alone prestige theaters. They seem to be gambling on a wider, commercial audience and not an upscale, more discerning one."

He has this right… they are expecting a wide audience. But the spin about "discerning" is an absurdity. The first people to be on line after evangelistic Christians and worried Jewish politicians will be cineastes, who are more than a little curious about a film shot by a Malibu resident in a foreign language that was also intended initially to be shown without subtitles. Moreover, Friedman's spin on the availability of the film in major markets is, again, false.

Hysterically, Friedman even misquotes himself. He writes in this story, "As I said on Friday, I think everyone should see this film in order to be able to judge it properly."

What he really wrote was: "Everyone should have the chance to see this film and decide for themselves if Gibson has done the right or wrong thing with his $25 million."

Perhaps some will choose to not see any difference between the two comments. Both speak to seeing Gibson's film. But there is a very real difference between "everyone should have the chance to see this film" after a long piece claiming that the movie is being hidden and "everyone should see this film."

I stand by my original statement that Friedman should be fired for Friday's column. The errors of today's column are not as severe - though many errors of fact are repeated again - and much more of the column is couched in the cushion of opinion, however misguided.

I would also like to point out that I have gotten a very wide range of mail since Friday on the subject, almost all of it supportive of my position. However, there were those who used Friedman's column and my attack on its veracity as a jumping off point for anti-Zionistic or anti-Semitic comments. This is, again, why so many are afraid of the effect of The Passion of the Christ in a society that still harbors anti-Semitism, among many other bigotries, without much reservation.

For me, the movie is one issue. I will review it on its merits once I see it. The political gamesmanship of Mr. Gibson is another. I have written about that before. And any journalist or outlet that abandons the principles of bringing insight to the public with every effort to be as accurate and honest as possible remains pond scum in my book, no matter for what side of the issue they or I stand. The "ends justifying the means" is not any more acceptable for journalists than for any other group of professionals in any field.

- David Poland